In looking for some sidebar video for a blog post, I stumbled across this lovely clip of Maya Angelou discussing from where she draws her inspiration. Her thoughts seemed worth sharing.
Her thoughtfully chosen words, spoken with a beautiful, powerful voice, are an inspiration.
Journalists, especially those of us who have yet to publish our best-selling book or start that chat show, don’t often have a particularly interesting financial portfolio.
And those of us who don’t work the business beat often know little about the stock market. To our (readers’ ?) detriment, likely. But there’s always time to learn…
Enter the bull and bear cartoons! Thanks to my boyfriend, who perhaps knows (read: obsesses) a little too much about the stock market, I have been introduced to the Emmy-winning team of Hoof and Boo. They’re easily the most fun way to warm up to a perusal of market news.
Have a look:
A friend who lived an Irish Catholic childhood turned me on to McCourt’s books. And about a third of the way into each one of his three books, I began trying to read more slowly.
I didn’t want the book to end; I enjoyed his characters and his dry point of view so much.
A loss. Wish he would have written more!
This gorgeous video took 14 years to produce.
That’s because it depicts a story about suburbanization. Two farmers talk about leaving their land while a homeowner talks about life with her family in their new house. This story is unfolding all over the American Midwest.
As Mindy McAdams points out, the juxtaposition in the photos is effective in evoking a response in the viewer. This is a story that makes you happy some photographers stay in the same place for a while. It’s also a story with photos that make you realize people will do the same activities all around the world no matter what the circumstances.
And, it is a story that makes me happy some farmers hold out. For example, some landowners on Book Road in Naperville, Illinois, have been holding on to their land while other farmers have sold land that is now a WalMart. I am so much happier when I drive past open land than when I cruise past the ubiquitous and repetitive strip malls which characterize so much of the American landscape.
My adolescence transpired during a transition phase in Naperville. Land had been sold to developers but had not yet been developed. That meant lots of good places for soccer practice.
I also truly felt like I grew up “on the plains” of the Midwest, because I could go outside and see large swaths of undeveloped land. To this day I find wide open spaces “fit my eye”. I hate obscured landscapes such as Interstate 95 in South Carolina, which is buttressed on either side by pine trees. It’s impossible to look out over the landscape.
My boyfriend points out to me, though, that I should not have felt like I grew up on the plains. Apparently the authentic Illinois landscape included a lot of forest. I’m not sure about that, though, because I grew up going on so many “prairie” themed field trips. Something to Google….
from Flickr user Myrrien
Her case was frightening for so many reasons. It would have been awful to see Iran sentence her to a more severe punishment as a way to chill the (perhaps) slight thawing of relations with America (sad for her safety and the improvement of international relations).
It is interesting to read speculative reports saying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei perhaps had a hand in orchestrating her release.
On a somewhat tangental thread, I also am starting to wonder - after reading so many vehement denials - if Saberi was actually spying in any capacity for the United States. She’d certainly have been a good candidate for that line of work.
Of course the U.S. government would not be so brazen as to reveal her as a spy (plus, that would be illegal, as the Valerie Plame affair reminds us). But I wonder if many journalists were asking government officials about this issue.
Which begs the question: Is it unethical for journalists to ask questions that lead the interviewee to break the law? I.e., should journalists ask government officials if Saberi is a spy knowing they are anyhow not supposed to publish the information that she is a spy?
Or is it unethical (and illegal) only when it comes to publishing the information? I don’t think it is illegal for journalists to know classified information. In fact, knowing classified information could make a reporter better at her job. It’s only illegal when she tells someone that classified information (by way of publication).
Perhaps more information will come out about this in coming months. So far I have not seen reports making an issue of investigating Saberi’s background.
Anyway, what’s ultimately sobering about this is that for every reporter released, there are others going into the Big House every day. My RSS reader brought me this story about two reporters in Zimbabwe who are being prosecuted for “‘publishing falsehoods.’”
I also saw this story break over the weekend, about the murder of a Mexican journalist. Seems like whenever journalists are killed in Mexico no one can ever officially tell if it is because of their work.
Sad, especially given how many young American journalists who want to work hard to support their colleagues taking on tough stories in dangerous places are sitting at home right now on company-mandated furloughs.
Anyway, violence and intimidation (economic or physical) against journalists should not go unaddressed. Brings to mind this chilling video, inspired by a poem I first read at Yad Vashem from the ALDE Civil Liberties campaign: