Tag: inspiration
Dead Wild Roses: The DWR Friday Musical Interlude – Mission Impossible
I’m so happy with the Piano Guys. They are making music “cool” and fun to do, I’m sure they inspiring many to relight their musical passions and get back to the instrument to continue work on the 10,000 hours required to achieve mastery. 😉 Notes Video: We composed
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Virtual Choir – Bringing the World Together in Song
Music is our great hope, the universal language, and the ultimate unifier. I can appreciate music from 1720 Venice just as easily as I can music from 1970 Toronto. Further, I’ve been doing so since before I could speak. Such is the power of music that distances of 7000 km
Continue reading350 or bust: Inspiring Action
It’s TED Talk Tuesday on 350orbust, and it’s time to get inspired. This week it’s Simon Senek on how great leaders inspire action:
Continue readingImpolitical: Olympic inspiration
This is not political in content, just a bit of inspiration as the Olympics gets underway. From a piece on Clara Hughes and her preparations for these games, this blog excerpt of hers from April: On quitting The race began and I wanted to quit. Less than 50 km into
Continue reading350 or bust: Take Time To Renew Your Spirit
* Yes, President Eisenhower was a Republican.
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Symbolizing The Maple Leaf
Canada is the maple leaf, the United States of America is the stars, one is modest and pragmatic, the other is idealized and constant. National symbols are chosen to represent countries, but somehow countries cannot help but represent their national symbols. For the religious and industrious United States of America
Continue reading350 or bust: Take Time To Renew Your Spirit
“Guard your light and protect it. Move it forward into the world and be fully confident that if we connect light to light to light, and join the lights together of the one billion young people in our world today, we will be enough to set our whole planet aglow.”
Continue reading350 or bust: TED Talk Tuesday
I’ve made a few changes around my blog, trying to get a bit more organized. One of the changes I’ve decided to make is to share one of my favourite things, and make Tuesday into TED Talk Tuesday. Many of you will be familiar with TED Talks, which are found
Continue reading350 or bust: Take Time To Renew Your Spirit
On this post-COP 17 Sunday, with its indecisive outcome and the sad truth which that outcome reveals about the industrialized world’s myopia and its potentially lethal addiction to fossil fuels, let’s look to Albert Einstein for some wisdom. He said: We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if
Continue reading350 or bust: These Are Times That Try Our Souls
At a time during the American Revolution, when things looked very dire, Tom Paine wrote the following (gender-updated language added). As things look mighty dire in Durban right now, this might be appropriate for the current times as well: These are the times that try our souls. The summer soldier
Continue reading350 or bust: Take Time To Renew Your Spirit
“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Occupy Wall Street: The emerging global pro-democracy movement, where it stands, what it means, and where we go from here
The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has already become a global grassroots populist pro-democracy movement, if we have eyes to see, has clearly already won a broad and growing base of support. What is needed now, I believe, is to further clarify and…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The schizoid nature of the Western world: Overcoming the root paradox of Western civilization – and our own minds
The Western world is still trapped in a paradox and a self-contradiction of our own making: we are schizoid with regards to the body, the material world and to our physicality. On the one hand, we have, as people of the modern world, embraced our physi…
Continue reading350 or bust: From Passive, Helpless Spectator To Creating Positive Change: “You Can’t Help Being An Optimist”
“You can’t help but be an optimist when you are contributing to positive change. Believe in your own power and then to be bold enough to use it. Together we will create a better world.” Marianne Schnall, writing in today’s Huffi…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The greatest of dangers
The challenge is not to become a machine. The greatest danger is not from outside: the greatest danger is ourselves – that is, the greatest danger is losing touch with our own hearts and common sense. Above all, strive to maintain compassion and pres…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The system is broken: strategic voting, coalitions, and the political regime under which we live
While I can of course see the rationale for strategic voting, there is much to be said for voting with one’s conscience. When we consistently choose the lesser of two evils, our choices are reduced to evil, and the results are evil. When everyone hol…
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