Source: Nezart Design 1 and Nezart Design 2.
Year: 2014
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: Shower Time!
Cloud Cult
Cloud Cult was formed in Duluth, MN in 1995 by Craig Minowa while pursuing a degree in Environmental Science, shining shoes and driving an ice cream truck. The band’s early work earned Cloud Cult several offers from record labels, but all were rejected in favor of self-publishing. In 1997, Minowa formed Earthology Records on his organic farm, powered by geothermal energy and built partially from reclaimed wood and recycled plastic. This nonprofit label uses only recycled materials and donates all profits to environmental charities. The band also tours in a biodiesel van. The band’s merchandise is 100% postconsumer recycled or made of certified organic materials. Cloud Cult has planted several thousand trees to absorb the band’s CO2 output. They also donate heavily to projects that build wind turbines as revenue generators on Native American Reservations.
In the year 2002, shortly after the unexpected death of his two year old son Kaidin, Minowa wrote over a hundred songs to deal with the loss. They Live on the Sun was finished in 2003 and went to #1 on college radio station charts across the country. Since that album, Cloud Cult’s music has been strongly inspired by the loss of Kaidin and the “big picture” issues of life: “who are we, why are we here, where did we come from, where do we go”. Minowa seems in constant pursuit of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Find this song on iTunes on the album “Light Chasers.” Find their official website here: Cloudcult.com
Listen, says ambition, why don’t you get going?
Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.
Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.
But to tell the truth after a while I’m pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen
and you can’t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.
Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.
Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another — why don’t you get going?
For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,
I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.
– Mary Oliver, “Black Oaks” in West Wind
Credits:
- Poem Source: WhiskeyRiver and Poetry Connection
- Photograph: YestoTexas.com
Sunday Morning: The Human
There are places in and around our great cities, where the natural world has all but disappeared. You can make out streets and sidewalks, autos, parking garages, advertising billboards, monuments of glass and steel. But not a tree, or a blade of grass or any animal, besides of course, the Humans. There are lot’s of Humans. Only when you look up straight up through the skyscraper canyons, can you make out a star or a patch of blue. Reminders of what was there long before humans came to be. It’s not hard going to work every day in such a place to be impressed with ourselves. How we’ve transformed the earth for our benefit and convenience. But a few hundred miles up or down, there are no humans, our impact on the universe is nil. In the last 10,000 years, an instant in our long history, we’ve abandoned the nomadic life. We’ve domesticated the plants and animals. Why chase the food, when you can make it come to you? For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. There are now people on every continent and the remotest islands. From pole to pole. From Mount Everest to the Dead Sea. On the ocean bottoms, and even, occasionally in residence two miles up. Humans, like the Gods of old, living in the sky. These days there seems no where left to explore. Victims of their very success, the explorers now, pretty much, stay home.