Inspiration! Roundup: Protectors win one, Miss Senior America, no more stolen sisters, and more

This week's "I want to go to there":
Sunny road trips with a VW Van.
This might have something to do with the SNOW we just got in Vancouver.

No DAPL... Wins?

WHAT IS HAPPENING???? I have to admit, everyone, as much as I am a protester-type person, I am also very cynical about the power of protest. When my boyfriend and I saw the news that the Dakota Access Pipeline had stopped construction and will be re-routed, we were in shock. This is so encouraging!

Let's not forget, of course, the immense sacrifice on the part of the Water Protectors to make this happen - this wasn't just a march in the streets. This was months of giving up their lives and receiving violence.

Freedom

“The really important kind of freedom involves awareness, and attention, and discipline, and effort and caring for other people, over and over in myriad petty little unsexy ways everyday.”
-David Foster Wallace

Miss Senior America

Okay, I am firmly opposed to beauty pageants as a ridiculous, antiquated, and generally sexist thing that happens. So why, then, am I kind of excited and bewitched by the Miss Senior America pageant? Probably it has something to do with the fact that we assume seniors would be incapable of doing any of the things that beauty pageant contestants do, and the fact that recognizing the beauty and talent of a senior woman is actually a bit countercultural, even if it is born out of a ridiculous tradition of objectifying women.


What ELSE Can We Do?

We’re in the world and its chaos:
we can change the way we think about things
we can imagine
we can find new ways of doing and being
we can see other perspectives
we can consider
we can think and make and discuss critically
we can question
we can fail and fail better
we can privilege ideas
we can dream
we can succeed

Okay, this came from a sponsored post on Hyperallergic for an art school called Transart. But I don't care. Sometimes advertisers are inspiring, aren't they?

No More Stolen Sisters

This stunning dance by A Tribe Called Red uses holographic technology and video to dance honouring the memory of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. It's beautiful and haunting.

Note: I have realized that videos embedded from Facebook don't always show up in RSS feed readers. So you may want to click through to the blog to see the video.

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