Category: Quotes

Guess.What.Day.It.Is?

Live & Learn12 Comments

camel,hump day,wednesday

This shot was taken on the Ndoto Mountain Range in Kenya in 2010 of the Samburu tribe.  The photo is part of a long-term project by Jimmy Nelson, a British Photographer, to capture indigenous people.  The project titled Before They Pass Away captures stunning images which feature 15 million people from 29 tribes on five continents.  Before They Pass Away is his effort to capture the “natural authenticity” of these tribes where he believes the “the purity of humanity exists.” “Jimmy Nelson found the last tribesmen and observed them. He smiled and drank their mysterious brews before taking out his camera. He shared what real people share: vibrations, invisible but palpable.” Nelson’s ultimate goal, to create “an ethnographic record of a fast disappearing world.”

Be sure to check out the “art prints” tab on his web site for more photos: Before They

And don’t miss his Ted Talk Video here: Jimmy Nelson: Gorgeous portraits of the world’s vanishing people

Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again

She’s 15.

Live & Learn9 Comments

The Magic of a Train

To the Editor:

Re “Our Trouble With Trains,” by Richard White (Op-Ed, May 19):

I love trains. I live in the suburbs of Chicago, and I ride the commuter train to and from my high school in the city every day. It’s been a year since I began taking the train; the charm hasn’t worn off yet.

There’s something magical about stepping onto the train — it transports you to a world where politeness is the norm. Talk in a lowered voice to avoid disturbing other passengers. Move your bags if someone needs to sit down next to you. Hold the door for the people walking behind you. The knowledge that choosing the train over a car helps the environment brings an extra rush of pleasure.

I adore this microcosm of etiquette and patience, and I feel that if more people experienced the satisfaction of a good train ride, they would be more willing to invest in passenger trains. Fixing our railroad system does not require us to suddenly leap to the level of the high-speed, luxurious trains in Europe and Japan; it could start with small improvements to the commuter trains that people take every day.

~ ALIA ABIAD, 15, St. Ignatius College Prep, 9th grade in Western Springs, Ill.

On May 15th, The New York Times announced An Invitation to High School Students, introducing a letter-writing competition where students were invited to submit a letter to the editor in response to a news article, editorial, column or Op-Ed essay in The Times.

Check out the other winners’ submissions here: The Voices of Students: The Winners Are…

Aye Aye

Live & Learn16 Comments

negative,positive
This idea is simple.
We’re updating the guidelines to add:

“Avoid gratuitous negativity.”

Critical thinking is good; shallow cynicism, on the other hand, adds nothing of value to the community. It is unpleasant to read and detracts from actual work. If you have something important but negative to say, that’s fine, but say it in a respectful way. Negativity isn’t the problem–gratuitous negativity is. By that we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment. This includes all forms of meanness.

~ Sam Altman, New Hacker News Guideline @ Y Combinator Posthaven

 

He wants to tell us what matters here

Live & Learn20 Comments

cover-kent-haruf-souls

Kent Haruf died on November 30, 2014 at the age of 71.  He finished this novel shortly before he died and it was published posthumously.  The story is based in a fictional small town of Holt, Colorado, the home of his award winning Trilogy: Plainsong (1999), Eventide (2004) and Benediction (2013). Ursula Le Guin’s book review beautifully captures the feeling of this novel:

Ursula K Le Guin:  “I don’t think there’s a false word in Kent Haruf’s final novel, Our Souls in the Night. Nor, for all the colloquial ease and transparency of the prose and the apparent simplicity of the story, is there a glib word, or a predictable one. Ordinarily the circumstances of the writing of a novel aren’t of much interest to me as a reader, but in this case, I am moved, even awed, to consider that the book was written while the author was dying. It is a report from the edge of darkness, made in the consciousness of responsibility. Haruf is bearing witness. Having gone farther than we have, he wants to tell us what matters there. His knowledge of his situation, and my knowledge of it as I read the book, made me appreciate the rare privilege of being with a person who is past the need to say anything but what needs to be said.  The voice is quiet. All the darkness is there, but we’re looking at the light. A lamp in a bedroom in a small town in Colorado.

: A remarkably simple invitation sets things in motion. Addie Moore, a widow, asks Louis Waters, a widower and neighbor, to sleep with her. “Sleep” means both more and less than you might first think for these septuagenarians (in their 70’s).

After dark one night they walked over to the grade school playground and Louis pushed Addie on the big chain swing and she rode up and back in the cool fresh night air of late summer with the hem of her skirt fluttering over her knees. Afterward they went back to bed in her upstairs front room and lay beside each other naked in the summer air coming in from the open windows.

~ Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night: A novel

Kent Haruf’s Our Souls in the Night: Highly recommended.