It’s always inspiring to come across an artist whose work demonstrates an uninhibited style and great use of color. Minjae Lee, who lives and works in Seoul, South Korea, is one such artist. His highly skilled illustrations which focus on the youthful beauty of the female face remind us of tribal art around the world as different cultures express their unique qualities.

He seems to invent his own sense of meaning through color, shape and symbolism and provides so much detail that you can spend quite a bit of time just looking at the visual elements. To be able to see an artist at work is a treasured bonus and we are happy to provide an insight into his latest creation in the following time lapse video.

As an artist in his early 20′s, it will be interesting to see how or if his perception of beauty changes as he ages. We look forward to watching his career evolve! For more information on Minjae Lee’s work and portfolio, please click here.

Our world is filled with images, or more specifically designs.  In any given day we might see hundreds of logos, stamped on items in our household, embossed on signs and posters dotting the roadways and emblazoned on buildings in our neighborhood.  I remember traveling to Vermont years ago and noticing a “silence” of logos–where roadway billboards have been banned since 1968 (the same is true for Hawaii, Maine and Alaska).  It’s noticeable when it suddenly disappears.

That made me wonder about what I’m not noticing.  Or more appropriately, what am I unconsciously noting throughout the day without giving it much thought? Can I identify the major logos around my home? Do I notice them around town?  How do I associate those designs?

This past year a film about the pervasiveness of logotypes won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. Logorama, created by H5, and produced by Autour de Minuit, tells a story set in Los Angeles using more than 2,500 modern day and dated logos, commenting on a world dominated by images that are almost embedded into our subconscious. You can check out a clip here.

Likewise, in a video posted by designer Adam Ladd, he asked his 5 year-old to free associate on various logos he showed her.  It’s both incredibly cute and leaves an impression; it’s amazing to see which images have really made an impact on such a young observer.  Check it out:

Whether you find logos sinisterly pervasive like in Logorama, or interesting and even clarifying–it’s nice to take a moment to notice.  For us here at HarmonyWishes, we’re invested in promoting creative and original imagery with positive messages.  So on a day when you might be checking out the designs and logos imprinted in the world around you–we invite you to also grab onto an image that inspires you; send it off to someone you love.  We’ve got a myriad to choose from in our galleries.  Go take a look at what’s new and let it shape your day!

Cheers,

Megan

As someone who believes images can be more powerful than words, this belief was recently reinforced when I became aware of JR, a French street artist/photographer who won the 2011 TED prize for several of his thought provoking and masterful projects where he was able to start a dialog between opposing sides in global conflicts (Face2Face) as well as open a window to women’s roles in war and in communities where they face hardship in a world dominated by men (Women are Heroes).

The breadth of his projects are ambitious and continue to grow as he returns to locations to add more images to his original canvas. That canvas is generally a building but can also be a train, a bridge, or other expanse which is large enough to contain his photographs. To try to describe the work hardly does it justice, so here’s a video which in bound to fascinate and motivate all of us who believe change is possible.

For more information on his projects, books and videos, just click here.

I was reading an article by Laura Miller on Salon.com that touches on the effects and influences in reading great books.  In Miller’s review of William Deresiewicz’s “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship and the Things That Really Matter”  she ponders the question “Does reading great literature make you a better person?” And if you’re curious, she promptly responds to her own query: “Some of the best-read people I know are thoroughgoing jerks, and some of the kindest and noblest verge on the illiterate — which is admittedly an anecdotal argument, but then, when it comes to this topic, what isn’t?”

I often oscillate between easy-going pleasure reading and something more edifying.  But who is to say that both don’t serve a good purpose.  So without further qualifying my reading choices, here are the latest books on my shelf:

 

Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis

Obviously this is no new find, as the 2003 best seller won the Pulitzer Prize. I’ve had it physically on my shelf for years.  But only as I started watching the HBO John Adams series with my neighbor, and found myself lacking key historical context, did I find the moment in which this slim book would find its way into my hands. Founding Brothers chronicles six fascinating stories from the initial formative years of the United States of America. For me, so much of American history is shrouded in cultural legend and basic elementary school teachings.  Ellis’ book made me pause to consider the obviously intelligent, but also deeply imperfect individuals at the center of the formation of a country; how keenly aware they were of their large role in history; and how their major arguments and conflicts are still quite present in the large challenges that face the United States. Ellis has a gift for intelligent storytelling. The narrative moves at a quick pace, teaching as it entertains.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

This historical novel imagines the story behind the fantastical tale of Alice in Wonderland.  Before Lewis Carroll became an inimitable literary figure, he was Charles Dodgson, a professor of mathematics and deacon at Christ Church in Oxford. Our protagonist is Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the real-life daughter of Christ Church’s beloved dean, and the girl who inspired the story of Alice and Wonderland. This story is fiction, though the author works hard to imagine a  narrative based on historical accounts.  For those who love Alice in Wonderland, you might find this a hard read–as the nature of the relationship between the young girl who served as Carroll’s muse and the older professor as depicted here is far from innocent.  I found the tale both gripping and ultimately tragic.  For a woman who inspired such a fanciful and delightful Victorian story, the real woman’s life seems so unfulfilled and half-lived in Benjamin’s portrait. I recommend reading the second edition of the book that has two fascinating addenda in the end that elaborate on the historical accounts, as well as the Victorian lens with which it is important to read the story.

Looking for Alaska by John Green

I have been told by many friends to pick up one of John Green’s books, 1)Because he’s an emerging and talented Young Adult author, and 2) Because he went to college with a good friend.  I was not disappointed.  There is something marvelous about really well-written Young Adult fiction; I recommend it heartily. Green tells the story of a somewhat nerdy loner navigating the world of boarding school education. His idiosyncratic and unbelievably confident new friends tangle him into a series of events that take on monumental proportions–if not because everything feels monumental when you’re 16, but also for their tragic outcome. Green’s voice, and the voice of his narrator, is  filled with wit, humor and vulnerability. It’s absolutely engaging.

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

A fascinating glimpse of the circumstances and details of this legendary woman.  Schiff’s portrait of the young leader places Cleopatra’s myth in the context necessary to better understand the politically-precarious and often violent environment in which an 18 year-old girl took the throne, and served as Egypt’s last Pharaoh.  The complex world of ancient Egyptian politics is made colorful and understandable through Schiff’s diligent research and skillful prose.

 

I rarely watch television news in Mexico, nor online. I prefer to gather my news through periodicals, online or otherwise–as I tend to find sensational and negative news populating the large majority of our airwaves. So when I came across Cord Jefferson’s People Are Awesome reports on Good Magazine’s site, I got really excited with the thought of hearing good news about great people. I shared a People Are Awesome story in February on the blog about the Pay it Forward concept sweeping the globe. Ready for another round…?

Over a year ago Japan was devastated by a tsunami that destroyed many towns and cities along its giant coastline. Now as we watch March 2012 close, I wanted to celebrate something inspiring that arose from that tragedy. It was widely reported by major new sources several months after the tsunami, that over 80 million dollars in cash was found in the rubble of many Japanese towns hit hard by the natural disaster–all of it returned to local police.  To be sure there was property recovered and not reported or returned.  But over 80 million dollars collected from cracked open safes, some with land rights documents, bankbooks, and even one with almost a million dollars inside.  Incredible!  Despite the widespread damage–many losing loved ones, homes and property–the Japanese people had a collective moral compass that found that same property being returned to authorities and then owners.

Perhaps honesty and decency shouldn’t be surprising. (Though to philosophers like Rousseau, Man is innately selfish.)  Unlike Rousseau, I tend to think there are a lot more cases like the one in Japan–where a community collectively inspires a culture of honesty, kindness and compassion.

Can you think of a story of human kindness that has inspired you?  Share it with us here!  We want to spread that news of hope to our HW community.  So post a comment or link below.

 

Cheers,

Megan

At HarmonyWishes we believe everyone has a message worth sending – that’s why we created the ability to pair your personalized message with a high quality image in the form of an ecard. But even the most prolific among us can get ‘stuck’ in life, in love, in our jobs, and lose touch with that message.

That’s why we were delighted to find bentlily, a site where Samantha Reynolds shares her poetry and allows you to find YOUR voice through an InstaPoem. Just answer about a dozen questions with a single word, submit, and a poem is created! The questions change so you can make a variety of poems. It’s kind of like a Rorschach test in poetry form! The first one I did not only turned out beautifully, but really gave me pause for thought as I saw my voice emerge.

To try it out, click here, and let your words light your creative soul.

I recently learned that books don’t have to be hard cover, soft cover or digital! Have you heard of “human books”? The concept started in 2000 in Copenhagen, Denmark as a way of overcoming prejudice and has spread literally around the world. I read about just such an event in Florida where rather than go in to the library to check out a book, you could “check out” a “human book”, spend 15-20 minutes hearing that person’s story, then ask questions for another 10 minutes. What a fantastic interactive event for just about anyone who has a curious streak and wants to have a dialog with their “book”, and not just a one way reading experience!

Here’s how one such organization, Urban ReThink, describes how you can become a human book:

“If you have a story of a unique personal experience or a fictional story which you would enjoy sharing, or if you would be willing to serve as a reference on any topic of your choosing, consider participating as a “human book.” Human books are regular people like you and me who are open and ready to share their experiences and knowledge with others.”

Here are the three types of human books you can become along with some examples:

Autobiographical – This human book tells a story based on a particular experience they lived. It could be anything from a silly story about a crazy misadventure with your friends, to a significant story of a challenge you’ve overcome, to the story of how you opened your own business.

Fiction – This human book tells a story which is fictional but it must be told as if they are the character in the story who is speaking about their life. It could be the story in the day of the life of a boot as told by the boot itself.

Reference – This human book has knowledge on a particular topic. When checked out, the “reader” may ask them specific questions or ask for a nutshell overview of said topic. For example, if the reference book was on photography, the reader could ask them how to best photograph their pets or they could ask how a camera works in a nutshell. These human books need not be experts and have all of the answers, but it is important to be able to suggest how a reader may be able to find the answer they seek.

As explained in this video from Acadia University Vaughan Library, it’s a way to have access to people you would not normally meet and interact with in your everyday life.

What a fascinating concept! And one that can be universally explored and used in a variety of settings. Click here to see where it all started in Denmark.

My first introduction to Heifer International was at the church where I grew up through childhood and adolescence.  Every year around Christmas time, a booth was set up during Coffee Hour in the church’s basement, with devoted volunteers trying to entice church goers to purchase a rabbit, a beehive or a goat for a family struggling with nutrition and survival in the developing world.  Later in High School, I traveled with a band of my peers during Spring Break to do service work at one of Heifer’s training facilities in Little Rock, Arkansas.  There, we learned about sustainable farming (though it wasn’t a buzz word in the 90s, like it is now).  We shoveled sheep dung, mucked out goat stalls, lugged the chicken coop around the yard to aerate the dirt.  I’m not sure how happy my family was on my return when, at Easter brunch, I proclaimed that pee and poop could run the world, and then explained to them the detailed cycles on the farm.  I was quickly sold on the idea.

 

Heifer’s aim is to end hunger and poverty through mutual effort (money from donors to pay for much-needed livestock; training from skilled program managers on how to best utilize those resources; and the commitment from families to transform their lives through their own hard work). Heifer provides gifts of livestock and training, helping families to “improve their nutrition and generate income in sustainable ways. We refer to the animals as ‘living loans’ because in exchange for their livestock and training, families agree to give one of its animal’s offspring to another family in need. It’s called Passing on the Gift.”

Now in Oaxaca 19 years later, I have met local program managers for the Heifer projects based in Mexico (one of which is a member at the Hub), that support initiatives all over southern Mexico. It’s incredible to see the  work that is involved in coordinating, facilitating and training small families to best take advantage of Heifer’s resources.

 

In a recent newsletter Heifer sent out, they shared news of the launch of an expansion of their model.  You can read the entire notice here.  The central change is a shift from helping raise marginalized communities up to subsistence through sustainable techniques, to now going beyond that–supporting community-based work to build “social capital and business skills and knowledge that empowers the communities to take appropriate actions to achieve sustainability.”  Heifer International is making a push to join a “global movement building coalitions of governments, the private sector, multilaterals, bi-laterals and foundations to find more effective solutions to end poverty and hunger.” These efforts will hopefully grow Heifer’s impact each year.

 

I’m inspired by projects like Heifer who, even though already successful in their work, still strive to adapt and change their operational model to meet the very real needs on the ground.  Adaptation and flexibility can combine with grounded experience to form stronger and more-resilient initiatives.  That can only help usher Heifer, and all of its beneficiaries, into a more hopeful tomorrow.

 

What growing initiatives have you seen out in the world?  Tell us about an initiative that you know that is adapting to meet growing needs in today’s reality.  We’d love to share their story with our community!

 

Saludos,

Megan

Remember the movie Pay it Forward, based on Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel?  It was a 2-hour flick boasting the concept of karmic social responsibility?  I remember being slightly disappointed in the Kevin Spacey-Helen Hunt vehicle.  The preview had me jazzed to see a movie that could be both compelling and inspire a renewed interest in creative human kindness.  But in reality, I felt it falling short in inspiring a population to take up its central plot device to transform the world.

 

Paying something forward actually has its roots in contract law, wherein creditors ask debtors to pay their debt forward to a third party beneficiary, often unknown to the creditor.  In sociology, paying forward is a concept referred to as “generalized reciprocity.”  Likewise, invitations to pay forward a kindness can be found in poetry, theater and philosophical ruminations all throughout history.  And in more recent years, the concept of paying forward kindness has been utilized by such organizations as Kiva.org, where lenders of small entrepreneurs can, instead of collecting the repaid loan, decide to forward the money on to an additional entrepreneur in need. Or like at the Hub where I work, the Pay it Forward concept is used in a kind of Timebank, where users can receive the help, that then they pay forward to others with a skill they have that is in need (FYI, HarmonyWishes community, we’re currently looking for small donations to help us get our Timebank system up and in use for a wider group of Oaxacans.  Click here to help!)

 

So, perhaps I was wrong to write off the movie so quickly.  It appears that the Pay it Forward idea is galvanizing do-gooders around the U.S. in the last several months.  I first learned about the recent Pay it Forward  trend in coffee shops from Cord Jefferson’s Good Magazine article this January, “It all started two years ago at Corner Perk, a small, locally owned coffee shop, when a customer paid her bill and left $100 extra, saying she wanted to pay for everyone who ordered after her until the money ran out.” Soon the idea caught on with the wider community, finding others stopping in to do the same. But Corner Perk isn’t the only coffee shop to report these random acts of kindness.  It seems the benevolent winds have wafted into even the largest of coffee chains like Starbucks.

 

The Pay it Forward concept isn’t exclusive to coffee shop purchases.  That same kindness has extended to big department stores, like Kmart, where anonymous donors have been paying off layaway accounts for strangers.  In another article by Jefferson on Good’s site (he’s got a great series entitled “People Are Awesome” that’s worth following), he observes, “So far no organization has come forward to claim responsibility for the layaway giving movement, meaning either organizers want to stay anonymous or this is just a very kind, very heartwarming grassroots effort spreading virally across the country.”

 

I wonder if Ryan Hyde imagined a grassroots movement like this sweeping the nation, heck, the world (!) after the release of her book, or later the movie–only to be slightly disappointed.  Well, don’t despair! Your idea has been slowing churning in the collective subconscious.  It needed only the effort of a small few, and some good press coverage, to spread a bit further.  Let’s see how far it goes.  Maybe another 12 years will see the Pay it Forward concept reaching further.  I’m curious to see the impact of a thousand tiny kindnesses.  How about you?

 

Cheers,

Megan

Some call it the “Village that could Save the World.”  Gaviotas, Spanish for “seagull,” is the original vision of Paolo Lugari, as well as the years-long labor of a team of scientists, agronomists, engineers, and doctors. Since 1971 this group has built and expanded a sustainable tropical civilization on 25,000 acres of los llanos, barren plains east of the Andes in one of Colombia’s most unforgiving environments. Complete with family homes, a refectory, commissary, and school–Gaviotas has been not only the birthplace and proof of a true eco-village, but also the site of tremendous technological innovation in the field of sustainability. Alan Weisman (author of a book about Gaviotas) stated in an article in the LA Times about Gaviotas, ”Solar water heating systems developed at Gaviotas now heat water in the president’s palace in Bogota, as well as in the three largest public housing developments – one with 7,500 units – in Bogota and Medellin. At Clinica San Pedro Claver, one of the nation’s biggest hospitals, Gaviotas is installing not just solar water heaters, but boilers, coaxing from Bogota’s cloudy climate temperatures sufficiently hot to sterilize instruments around the clock.”

The Gaviotas community project has spanned over 40 years now.  But more surprising is how its taken shape in the last five. Gunter Pauli, an entrepreneur, and protegé of Gaviota’s visionary, Lugari, has spearheaded a new path for the Gaviotas project. Under an agreement with Colombia’s Ministry of Defense, Pauli has spent the past five years “…drawing up plans and enlisting support to build out the Gaviotas model across the entire northeastern quadrant of Colombia – a vast area roughly the size of England.”  The plan is to transform a section of Colombia’s savanna- a place resigned to agricultural and economic destitution; then, to carefully develop it using techniques learned and matured at Gaviotas, to build a clean-tech economy for over 5 million people.  And an added side benefit? Gaviotas II could become “one of the largest biodiverse reforestation projects on earth” (enough trees to offset Japan’s CO2 emissions), as stated in Paul Kaihla’s enlightening article in CNN Money Magazine.  As if that weren’t enough, the longer vision for Gaviotas II is to create a kind of living experiment.  If Gaviotas can prove that sustainable design can also end dependence on oil through the export of biodiesel, it could become possible to pitch that model to a myriad of developing countries. Success draws investment.  And investment can expand the project worldwide.

 

Whether or not Gaviotas becomes, as Weisman’s article title posits, the “village that could save the planet” remains to be seen.  But it certainly stands out as a shining example of ingenuity, perseverance, and confidence in a new model for common well being.  Hurrah!

 

Saludos,

Megan