SOF Observed

Gaza’s Steadfast Faces of Survival by Trent Gilliss,...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:00:00 -0500

Gaza’s Steadfast Faces of Survival

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

“This, I realized, was what I could add. Not the familiar scenes of destruction in Gaza but the steadfast faces of survival. To capture each intimate portrait required that I spend just a little more time with people, that I hear a bit more about their lives, look more deeply at them. And find the story of Gaza in their faces.”
—Asim Rafiqui, photojournalist

The Virginia Quarterly Review has published Rafiqui’s stunning set of black-and-white portraits of Palestinians living through the ongoing struggle for Gaza. The photojournalist’s introduction to “Portraits of Survival” with its brief captions give the viewer an intimate glimpse into his subjects’ lives.

A point emphasized that resonated with me in several stories: stripping a person of the ability to offer hospitality to a guest is to strip one of his or her dignity.

Day 22 - Ilana Alazzeh: “Singing in a Car” Revealing...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:00:00 -0500

Day 22 - Ilana Alazzeh: “Singing in a Car”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 4:14]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Our 22nd voice in this series is Ilana Alazzeh, a student at Smith College in Massachusetts. Growing up in California, Texas, and Virginia, she talks about spending Ramadan with a family rich in religious diversity, and driving while singing Jewish and Christmas songs during Ramadan.

Check back on this blog each day or on our Facebook page to hear a new voice in our “Revealing Ramadan” series. If you’re the on demand type or simply need a more automated form of listening, we’ve produced a special podcast feed that’s available now. Oh, and a special show too!

Day 21 - Anisa Abd el Fattah: “Laughter and...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:00:00 -0500

Day 21 - Anisa Abd el Fattah: “Laughter and Tears”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 6:38]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Our 21st voice on this last day of August is Anisa Abd el Fattah. She is an African-American woman from the Midwest who was raised in a family of Baptist ministers and converted to Islam 20 years ago. She’s the founder of the National Association of Muslim American Women, and tells two Ramadan stories about an iftar faux pas and the beautiful recitation of her 7-year-old son.

Lend Us an Ear by Chris Heagle, producer Time for a few aural...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:35:00 -0500

Lend Us an Ear

by Chris Heagle, producer

Time for a few aural calisthenics. We’ve gotten some great feedback from our audience in the past when we’ve posted about music, so it seemed fitting to bring this question to your ears. We’re still settling into our new name, Being, and as part of this evolution, we’re working with a composer to develop new theme music for the program.

We’ve gone through many iterations already and as we near the final theme, we thought it would be fun to hear from you. If you clicked on the player above, you probably recognized our existing theme. Below are three versions of the new theme we are working on. They are in slightly rough form as we’re still playing around with melodies and instrumentation. I’ve laid in Krista’s voice over portions of each since that is primarily how they will be heard. Turn up your headphones and let us know what you think.

Being Theme with Cello.
The first features a cello in the lead. Does this fit with the wide range of voices heard on our show? What if an acoustic guitar was the instrument out front? As you listen to this one, you’ll notice that the backing tracks like percussion and rhythm guitar are the same as the previous, but the instrument that carries the melody has changed.

Being Theme with Guitar.
Too folksy for you (or maybe not enough)? What if an electric guitar playing in a jazz style was featured? It’s a pretty similar melody to the acoustic version, but the tonality of the guitar gives it quite a different feel.

Being Theme with Electric Guitar.
Do you have a favorite? Does the instrumentation affect how you hear Krista’s voice? Or maybe you wish we would leave the theme alone? Curious to hear what you think.

Image courtesy of the Laboratory for Computational Neuroscience, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

Day 20 - Muna Jondy: “After Faith, It’s...

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:00:00 -0500

Day 20 - Muna Jondy: “After Faith, It’s Character”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 4:14]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Muna Jondy is the 20th voice in this series. She’s an immigration attorney who runs her own private practice in Michigan. Muna, who was born in the U.S., is one of nine children of immigrant parents. She says the simplicity of her faith streamlines her life, but that the society around her can make it difficult to raise her children in an Islamic manner — instilling values of kindness, consideration, and community.

Day 19 - Hussein Rashid: “The Night of Power, and...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:00:00 -0500

Day 19 - Hussein Rashid: “The Night of Power, and Imperfection”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 5:23]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

The 19th voice in this series is Hussein Rashid, a Nizari Ismaili Muslim who was born and raised in New York City. He recounts one of his favorite vigils of Ramadan, Laylat al-Qadr or The Night of Power — a night in which many Muslims stay up all night in constant prayerm, reading Qur’an, reflecting. On this night, Muslims believe that the Qur’an was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. He also recites one of his favorite passages from the Quran prayed on this night, The Verse of Light.

Hussein currently teaches at Hofstra University in New York and writes for several blogs, including Religion Dispatches.

Valuing Intellectual Depth and Its Relationship to Work and Life...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:36:39 -0500

Valuing Intellectual Depth and Its Relationship to Work and Life in All Its Forms

by Krista Tippett, host

I was hooked by the opening lines of Mike Rose’s lovely book, The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker:

“I grew up a witness to the intelligence of the waitress in motion, the reflective welder, the strategy of the guy on the assembly line. This, then is something I know: the thought it takes to do physical work. Such work put food on our table, gave shape to stories of affliction and ability, framed how I saw the world … I’ve been thinking about this business of intelligence for a long time: the way we decide who’s smart and who isn’t, the way the work someone does feeds into that judgment, and the effect such judgment has on our sense of who we are and what we can do.”

Mike Rose grew up in an immigrant family in the center of Los Angeles; I grew up in a small town in the melting pot of Oklahoma. I did not grow up around much physical work, but I did attend a school where advanced classes in languages, math, and science were axed to sustain a strong football team. His story of his late discovery of the strength of his own mind, and, even later, grasping the forms of intelligence he had known without appreciating, sparked all kinds of longing and recognition in me. Our stories taken together are disparate but kindred facets of a schizophrenia in the American story that thrives, largely unexamined, in our public life. Despite our national history of exceptional intellectual achievement, we also harbor what the historian Richard Hofstadter classically observed as a “national distaste for intellect.”

This takes the form of a defiant bias against “book learning” where I grew up. Joe Six-Pack is, after all, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson’s “common man.” Sarah Palin strums these guitar chords powerfully, as Mike Rose points out — a phenomenon that learned commentators deride but fail to understand. For the other side of our schizophrenia is a learned dismissal of the cognitive accomplishments of “average” people, working people, summed up in a phrase like manual labor.

Mike Rose can demonstrate the error of such dismissiveness with hard research. But his concern goes deeper than that and is relevant to us all. Failing to see and nurture the intellectual and civic substance of all kinds of work, he worries, is profoundly undemocratic. It limits our collective vision and range of action from school reform to social planning. We shape educational policies with economic competitiveness in mind; we don’t ask what kind of education befits a democracy. Mike Rose asks this question through his life story and in his scholarship, and speaking with him leaves me at once nourished and challenged.

My conversation with Mike Rose is more about intelligence and its relationship to work and life than it is about schooling per se, though he also offers very fresh and provocative observations on standardized testing and on what we might collectively learn from the controversial experience of No Child Left Behind.

Working on this show strummed some guitar chords already resonating in me and my colleagues after our show last fall titled “Learning, Doing, Being” with neuroscientist Adele Diamond. Many of you responded passionately to that show, and Mike Rose helps explain that response, I think. He calls forth — in a way we rarely do in our society, even in discussions about educational policy — the life-changing memories so many of us can summon of school or of teachers or of moments of reading or learning when our minds came alive; and how such moments formed who we wanted to be, who we are. We’ve gathered those insights on our website and would love to add yours.

What moments in your life shaped who you are in terms of becoming, longing, hope, and possibility?

Day 18 - Naazish Yarkhan: “Celebrating Eid in the U.S. and...

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:00:00 -0500

Day 18 - Naazish Yarkhan: “Celebrating Eid in the U.S. and India”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 5:31]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Our 18th voice is Naazish Yarkhan, a writer and editor who grew up in fairly secular family in Bombay, India and now lives in suburban Chicago. She tells the story of celebrating Eids in her native country then and how much more joyous it is for her now in the United States. Immigrant communities celebrate together, she says, and brings the richness of various traditions and festivities to their adopted home.

Touch. Solomon on The Moth. by Trent Gilliss, senior...

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 06:54:46 -0500

Touch. Solomon on The Moth.

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Working for Speaking of Faith (soon-to-be Being) has ruined me. My life is invaded with connections that I otherwise would’ve been oblivious to. So vacations are never completely free of imaginative associations. Nevertheless, I’m thankful. It’s a gift.

A lazy Saturday afternoon. My two boys down for a nap. My wife writing. Me? Cleaning the kitchen. To enliven the mind while performing this domestic simplicity, I cue up a recent edition of The Moth podcast. And who should be the storyteller? Andrew Solomon — a former guest on “The Soul in Depression” who most recently took the stage with Krista at the New York Public Library.

In the audio above, he tells the remarkable story of Cambodian woman he met while doing research in that country. He wanted to understand what happens when an entire nation has been subjected to a trauma. This Cambodian woman had survived the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

In a resettlement camp, she started a group to help shattered women refugees rendered lifeless by the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime. As Solomon tells it, she developed three steps to bring these women back to society and help them rediscover their humanity. It’s the third step that struck me and reminded me of a Quaker’s story from 2003:

“‘I would teach them the third thing: which was to perform manicures and pedicures.’ … She said, ‘You know, the worst atrocity of all that was brought by the Khmer Rouge was that half the country turned against the other half of the country. And people who lived through that period knew that they couldn’t put anything in anyone else, and they completely lost the habit of looking anyone else in half in the eye.’

She said and ‘All of these women had been deprived for a long time of any occasion to indulge in the least bit of personal vanity. I brought them to my hut, and I built a special room that I would fill with steam. And it was a pleasure for them to feel beautiful. But what was really amazing for them was that, in this context, it was something that was at once very intimate and very impersonal. And they would start, because I was telling them how to do it and giving them some instruction, to handle each others’ fingers and each others’ toes. And it meant they were touching each other. And if I had told them to begin to hold each others’ hands or to have some kind of physical contact with other people, they would’ve shied away and they would have pulled back. They weren’t ready to do anything with anyone. But, in this context, they would touch each others’ fingers, touch each others’ toes, and then, because it was such a funny context, and because they felt so happy about the fact that they were, for a moment, feeling a little bit beautiful again, they would begin to laugh together. And they would begin to tell each other little bits of stories and things and that was the way that I taught them to trust again.’”

This idea of slowly finding and gently rediscovering one’s humanity through touch is powerful testimony. Testimony I had heard in another story by Parker Palmer, who also appeared in “The Soul in Depression”:

“I’ll just tell that story quickly, because it’s such a great image for me. … There was this one friend who came to me, after asking permission to do so, every afternoon about four o’clock, sat me down in a chair in the living room, took off my shoes and socks and massaged my feet. He hardly ever said anything. He was a Quaker elder. And yet out of his intuitive sense, from time to time would say a very brief word like, ‘I can feel your struggle today,’ or farther down the road, ‘I feel that you’re a little stronger at this moment, and I’m glad for that.’ But beyond that, he would say hardly anything. He would give no advice. He would simply report from time to time what he was sort of intuiting about my condition. Somehow he found the one place in my body, namely the soles of my feet, where I could experience some sort of connection to another human being. And the act of massaging just, you know, in a way that I really don’t have words for, kept me connected with the human race.

What he mainly did for me, of course, was to be willing to be present to me in my suffering. He just hung in with me in this very quiet, very simple, very tactile way. And I’ve never really been able to find the words to fully express my gratitude for that, but I know it made a huge difference. And it became for me a metaphor of the kind of community we need to extend to people who are suffering in this way, which is a community that is neither invasive of the mystery nor evasive of the suffering but is willing to hold people in a space, a sacred space of relationship, where somehow this person who is on the dark side of the moon can get a little confidence that they can come around to the other side.”

If there’s one thing you do this weekend, take 15 minutes and listen to Andrew Solomon’s story. And, then, pay attention. Those connections are waiting for you to be made — and to be shared.

Now that I’m done with the dishes I think I’ll rub my wife’s feet. Well, maybe…

Day 17 - Reuben Jackson: “Support in Those Beginning...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:00:00 -0500

Day 17 - Reuben Jackson: “Support in Those Beginning Years”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 3:58]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

On this 17th day of Ramadan, Reuben Jackson, an African-American man who was raised Southern Baptist and converted, or “reverted” as he says, to Islam in May 2001. He immersed himself in Islam’s sacred texts and memorized prayers by Yusef Islam (formerly Cat Stevens). His Ramadan reflection tells about the support he received early on from friends at his local mosque in Arlington, Virginia to trainers at his gym.

Walking. Without Words. by Trent Gilliss, senior editor For this...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Walking. Without Words.

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

For this Friday afternoon, a throwback video snack from 1968. Artistic renderings of being through ambulatory expression. The film as described by the National Film Board of Canada’s website:

Animator Ryan Larkin uses an artist’s sensibility to illustrate the way people walk. He employs a variety of techniques—line drawing, colour wash, etc.—to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot. The springing gait of youth, the mincing step of the high-heeled female, the doddering amble of the elderly—all are registered with humour and individuality, to the accompaniment of special sound. Without words.

Building New Paradigms for Helping Others by Krista Tippett,...

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:03:42 -0500

Building New Paradigms for Helping Others

by Krista Tippett, host

photo: JB Reed/Flickr

I met Jacqueline Novogratz in Vancouver, British Columbia last fall, at the same conference where I interviewed Adele Diamond and Matthieu Ricard. Sitting at the same dining table of ten, she became the center of conversation. I found her authenticity and passion magnetic, even as I labored to follow the discussion about business models and venture capital. Then, in the following weeks and months, I saw the Acumen Fund mentioned in commentary after commentary, singled out as a star in a new generation of social entrepreneurship.

The work Jacqueline Novogratz is doing is influential, and potentially transformative, to some of the world’s most entrenched issues of poverty and inequality. It is a young, somewhat experimental venture. But it is one catalyst in evolving our understanding and practice of foreign aid and international development. On this program last year, the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina described the debilitating effect of growing up surrounded by the most well-intentioned Western aid projects that defined him in terms of his poverty and his deficits — in terms, that is, of what he lacked and what they could provide.

In more recent months, the Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo has risen to the spotlight as part of a new generation of African economists who are calling, somewhat controversially, for an outright end to traditional Western aid. She and others argue that aid has kept leaders of developing countries focused on courting foreign donors and has fed corruption. They insist that a future beyond poverty demands that governments instead become accountable exclusively to their own people, creating infrastructures for basic services and nurturing indigenous creativity and enterprise. They point out that, since 1970, $500 billion of Western aid to the African continent has not yielded an overall rise in well-being commensurate with dollars given. Similarly and tragically, the massive devastation of the Haiti earthquake has laid bare a fragile infrastructure and degree of poverty that have persisted despite the small island country having one of the world’s largest per capita populations of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

I am not suggesting that all aid is bad. In the wake of our program with Binyavanga Wainaina, listeners who have been part of the universe of aid and development wrote to us about the hard truths they recognized in his perspective, while also pointing us to organizations that are making a difference with a wide range of approaches. Jacqueline Novogratz insists that traditional top-down aid is one of the most effective models when it comes to the eradication of disease, such as smallpox. And the necessity of massive humanitarian aid to keep people alive, fed, and sheltered after a natural disaster like that now unfolding in Haiti is undeniable.

The Acumen Fund is building a new paradigm — philanthropic venture capital. Working with entrepreneurs on the ground in places like Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, and India, the Fund invests in for-profit projects that bring basic services such as clean water, maternal health care, and ambulance services to people who make less than four dollars a day. During our conversation, she tells about one of Acumen’s longest-running and most successful investments in Water Health International, a company based in India that started with one entrepreneur and a technology for making water clean. It has now opened nearly 300 plants and is providing 400,000 people with clean water for the first time.

As I read Jacqueline Novogratz’s thought-provoking memoir, The Blue Sweater, and drew her out in conversation, I was struck by the qualities of character that equip her for this particular work. She is attentive to the beauty and meaning human beings continually create even in the harshest of circumstances. She has a vision for possibility where other eyes become fixed on obstacles. There is also a deep, surprisingly overt spiritual aspect to the way she talks about the Acumen Fund’s work. At its last annual meeting, she urged her investors — who include hedge fund managers, Google’s charitable arm, and the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations — to nurture “sharp financial edges with strong spiritual underpinnings.”

The Acumen Fund runs a Fellows Program, which draws around 600 applicants annually from 60 countries. In 2009, 59 applicants came from Pakistan alone. And the reading list these Fellows are given is as much about the cultivation of morality, character, and spiritual depth as it is about the cultivation of profitable markets.

Finally, in Jacqueline Novogratz’s “moral imagination” — a phrase she uses with relish — I find intriguing echoes of qualities that I’ve encountered lately in many of my conversations with new leaders from many different disciplines: qualities of listening, of attention, of curiosity. I love this counsel she internalized from the public policy guru John Gardner, one of her teachers and mentors at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and I will pass it on to my children: It is far more important to be interested in the world than to be an interesting person. She even speaks of “the market as a listening device.”

This raised some questions for my producers and me, as it did for listeners who’ve followed us on Facebook and Twitter, where we circulated this quote before the program was produced. I also sat down and posed some of these questions to Chris Farrell, American Public Media’s chief economics correspondent, to get a sense of what patient capitalism looks like to thinkers in the more traditional financial world. Jacqueline Novogratz’s vision and practice have spurred my own “curiosity over assumptions” about the moral potential of markets in the 21st-century world, and this is something I’m glad to ponder.

Day 16 - Parisa Popalzai: “Ramadan in...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:56:00 -0500

Day 16 - Parisa Popalzai: “Ramadan in Indonesia”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 3:04]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Parisa Popalzai, an Afghani-American woman who immigrated to California after the Soviets invaded her home country in 1979, is our 16th voice in this series. She is an American Muslim who didn’t grow up with Muslim friends and, in the process, began to lose her religious identity. Her year of studying abroad in the world’s most populous Muslim country gave her a new perspective on the month of Ramadan, and her religious identity.

The Happy Paradox of Photography and Meditation

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:12:36 -0500

by Monica Biswas, guest contributor I raced to get to the pond in Arlington, hoping there would...

TV Industry Publication Writes about Our Name Change

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:00:00 -0500

TV Industry Publication Writes about Our Name Change: by Trent Gilliss, senior editor You’ve...

Day 15 - Ny’Kisha Pettiford: “Who’s in the...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Day 15 - Ny’Kisha Pettiford: “Who’s in the Kitchen at Night”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 2:52]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

The 15th voice in our series is Ny’Kisha Pettiford, an African-American woman who works for a health care communications company. She grew up in a Christian household — her mother Catholic, her father non-denominational — and converted to Islam while in college. She talks about how her family celebrates holidays and the cultural warmth of her local mosque during the month of Ramadan.

A Pictorial Corridor by Nancy Rosenbaum, associate...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:45:51 -0500

A Pictorial Corridor

by Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer

Conservation biologist Alan Rabinowitz has devoted his career to protecting “big cats” all over the globe — lions, tigers, panthers, jaguars, and more. His chosen vocation as a “voice for the animals” has brought him to places many of us only dream of visiting: the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, the jungles of Belize, the jaguar corridors of Brazil.

Experience a taste of Rabinowitz’s adventures for yourself. We’ve paired stunning National Geographic photographs of Rabinowitz’s work around the world with audio gems from his interview with Krista. Hear how Rabinowitz’s struggles with human physical impediments (a debilitating childhood stutter and more recently cancer) have shaped and fueled his passion. And while I’d love to someday ride atop an elephant, I’m glad to absorb these incredible photographs of tigers, panthers, and leopards from the safety of my desk.

Hindu Celebration of the Brother-Sister Bond by Shubha Bala,...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:10:00 -0500

Hindu Celebration of the Brother-Sister Bond

by Shubha Bala, associate producer

Today is Raksha Bandhan, or Rakhi, a North Indian, Hindu holiday celebrating the bond between siblings. One of the many legends reported to be the origin of the holiday comes from the Hindu epic, the Mahabaratha. Queen Draupadi once tore a strip of silk off her sari and tied it around Lord Krishna’s index finger to stop the flow of blood. Krishna found himself bound to her by this action of love and promised to repay the debt to her. He had this chance when her husband lost her through gambling. Krishna, using his powers as a God, indefinitely extended her sari as they tried to strip her naked so it could never be removed, thus saving her pride and being her ultimate protector.

Raksha Bandhan, as with most Hindu holidays, can be celebrated differently or with different names depending on one’s region of India. In essence, a woman ties a thread, or bracelet, on a brother, blessing him and praying for him to have a long life. In return, the brother vows to protect the sister and gives her sweets, gifts, or money. The traditions have evolved so that the people celebrating are no longer just siblings but often cousins, family-friends, or really anyone that can be considered to have a brother-sister-like bond. In fact, one Twitterer today complained, “Oh man I’m broke giving out envelopes to all my ‘sisters’.”

If you’re interested in hearing more about this holiday, including a story from the 15th century of Rakhi saving a queen’s life, listen to this interview on Radio Canada International.

In the photo above, a man shows off multiple bracelets received for the North Indian Hindu holiday Raksha Bandhan (Vishweshwar Saran Singh Deo/Flickr).

Day 14 - Steven Longden: “Suited and...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:00:00 -0500

Day 14 - Steven Longden: “Suited and Booted”

Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 5:08]

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

On this 14th day of Ramadan, a Mancunian who converted to Islam in 1993: Steven Longden. He tells the story of dressing up for prayers at a local mosque for one of his first Ramadans and his recollection of a beautiful recitation of the Qur’an. He also shares his own Arabic recitation.

The Glory of the Perseids (in One Minute) by Trent Gilliss,...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:29:24 -0500

The Glory of the Perseids (in One Minute)

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

After a wonderful couple weeks of vacation, most of it in the Swan Valley of the Montana Rockies, I find myself pining for the starry night skies and the richness of the Milky Way. Growing up in Minneapolis, my two young boys had never seen anything like it. They marveled and remarked without prompting. They’re 4 and 2. I grew up in North Dakota and the vast density of stars adorning the night sky was all I knew. I found myself delighting in their pleasure and saddened by the thought that this was an uncommon event for them.

Some mornings the news doesn’t cut it. Information is too much. We need something to help us remember the moments that give meaning to our lives. Something that gives us hope. Natural events that shake our inner being and relationship to this magnificent world. Henry Jun Wah Lee’s “Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way” time lapse is a welcome relief to start this day.

If you have a photo or a video or a quote that does this for you, share it here. I’m always looking for new material to post that might boost our spirits for the working week.

(photo: “Holland Lake” by Trent Gilliss)