Sharings on a Saturday morning (inspired by Maureen)

We are not here to question the possible. We are here to challenge the impossible. Natasha Tsakos

My friend Maureen has a new blog mission on Saturday's where she shares her weekly finds from cyberworld with everyone. (My finds are your finds).

This morning, to honour Maureen's generosity of spirit and because she always inspires me to look at the world through eyes of wonder and to listen to the world around me with a poet's ear, I want to include a couple of finds I had this week.

1. While looking for information on setting up arts based businesses, I found a short Ted Talk essay on Zulu basket weaving. The art form itself is amazing. The ingenuity is inspiring and the outcome wonderful.



In Maureen's blog she asks the question, "I wonder how we ever did without computers and the World Wide Web."

One of my favourite places used to be the library. I was always a research junkie. Could immerse myself in library card boxes, searching for links to links to links to ideas linking me to the articles I needed in books and periodicals and magazines. I loved flipping through the cards, and then the computer, searching out key words to connect me to the wonder of the mind at large in the world.

From the time my daughters were infants, the library was our home away from home. A short ten minutes -- okay make that thirty with a two year old's inquisitive nature at large in the world -- took us to the neighbourhood library where we would spend an hour or two looking at picture books, checking out CDs and cassettes and eventually DVDs.

I loved the library.

With the Internet's pervasive and accessible nature under my fingertips, I no longer visit the library that often -- and while I miss it, I love the immediacy of the world wide wide and its ability to deliver not just words but video and sound as well.

And then it happens again. I go looking for a quote and come upon a fascinating story and that leads me elsewhere.

2. The 'elsewhere' this morning is an article on a prison based art initiative led by conceptual artist Peggy Diggs. One of the comments by an inmate really hit me, "There's a penitent atmosphere in here, like a mausoleum. It's hard-edged. If you put people in a cell with hard corners, when they get out they're gonna turn hard corners."

He was speaking about a cardboard/portable desk they were designing. It needed round edges he said.

To read the entire article, "Living Like A Refugee: Peggy Diggs takes a design problem to prison", click here. It's worth the read.

and that's the thing about the web. I meet amazing people, like Maureen and Diane and Joyce and Cheryl and a host of other bloggers and artists, and I learn more and more about this amazing, wondrous and oh so fragile planet we share.

In the words of Boston Philharmonic Conductor, Benjamin Zander, "How Fascinating!"

3. And, because I can, and because this is one of my favourite videos to watch -- particularly in those moments when I need a lift, to feel inspired, I will share Zander's Ted Talk on Music and passion. it's worth the twenty minutes to get uplifted and inspired!