(spreading, around the globe)
Keetra Dean Dixon is a vivacious, talented, young artist/designer working from an often-frazzled NYC-based workshop. The Anonymous Hugging Wall began as a 2008 installation in her native Alaska—it’s since been replicated far and wide… attesting to the popularity of her premise that the world really could use more hugs.
(I was privileged to have dinner with Keetra last night).
—Henrik Ibsen, (1828-1906)
(almost everywhere you look)
—Greek proverb
New York, USA
Today was John Lennon’s birthday. In 1971, forty years ago (wow, that went by fast) he recorded and launched the song “Power to the People.” I can’t help but wonder if and how he might be supporting the Occupy Wall Street protestors if he was still with us today…
New York, USA
Hats off to the ordinary citizens, 20-somethings, seniors, union workers, off-duty policemen, environmentalists, (and increasingly, journalists)—employed and unemployed—who are either camping out on Wall Street or visiting the protestors this weekend. I predict a steadily growing movement that will spread in both energy and girth, and that will ultimately help to create long-overdue change in the once-powerful United States of America (which much of the world still looks to for leadership). Keep it peaceful, keep it real—stay the course, good people!
The time to overthrow the corporate kleptocracy that has bedeviled your land, and—by “globalized” extension—the rest of the world, is long overdue… take in some reportage and commentary on this exciting grass-roots action here (Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Chris Hedges).
—Estonian proverb
—Chief Seattle, 1854
Porbandar, India
Today is the birthday of the great Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), now celebrated around the world as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Although I have not been able to find verification that the “Seven Dangers to Human Virtue” attributed to him were actually stated by him (this could, admittedly, be an Internet meme—the airwaves are filled with chatter about him), from what I know of the man, they seem to fit with his character and worldview.
The illustration is from a Russian postage stamp issued in 1969 in honour of Gandhi’s 100th birthday (illustrator unknown, copyright free through Wikimedia Commons).
