The U.S. military now has a robotic flapping hummingbird (!) in its bag of tricks. Pity our enemies nectar supplies.
Fascinating.
Thank you, wired.com!
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” –Lewis B. Smede
Forgiveness. Of the thousands of words in the English language, few carry as much emotional charge and power as the word “forgive”. For me personally, I am often reminded of the famous Robert Frost poem “The Road Less Traveled”:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Forgiveness is a tricky concept. It requires a complete breakdown of ego, a dissolution of pride. It is not something that can be done easily or halfway. When somebody wrongs you, hurts or shames you… the first and often enduring reaction is anger, vengeance, or on the flip-side, total avoidance. Fences are built. Walls erected. The drawbridge raised — the battle lines heavily drawn and reinforced. We revert to our basic animalistic nature — to protect ourselves, to survive, to lash out in reciprocation of the injustice inflicted upon us. And why not? It’s a natural impulse.
And yet, more often than not, this initial reaction has the tendency to take over. To mutate beyond that first inflicted wound into something more cancerous. A scar that refuses to heal. I know I am talking here in large, sweeping generalizations… but we have all felt this in some way — When somebody wrongs you, it is extremely difficult, sometimes damn near impossible to find it in your heart to forgive them. And this to me is when you approach that fork in the road — you can stay on the path of perpetual hurt (which in many ways is the easier path), or you can take a sharp turn onto the less traveled road. The road of forgiveness. For the sake of argument, let’s call it the higher road.
And this is where the story of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson-Cannino comes in…
In 1984, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was a beautiful, young student at Elton college. An African-American man broke into her room, and at knife-point, forcibly raped her. She was devastated, emotionally, physically destroyed in that instant. Working with the police, she managed to create a sketch of the assailant, and then picked him out of a lineup. She testified that 22 yr old Ronald Cotton was undeniably the man who raped her. Ronald, who claimed innocence, was thrown in prison with a 50 yr sentence. For Jennifer, it was the happiest day of her life.
Eleven years later, with the aid of new advances in DNA evidence, Ronald Cotton was proven innocent and cleared of the crime. He was released at 33, a free man. And the surprising part… he held absolutely no hostility towards the desperate white woman who had mistakenly slandered his name and robbed him of a decade of his life. In fact, he felt empathetic. He understood her hurt, the depth of her anger. It was the same anger he himself still held toward the real rapist, the man who had gotten away and allowed Ronald to take the rap.
At the same time, Jennifer was devastated by the news she had put an innocent man in prison. The guilt and shame was so palpable, it threatened to crush her in a way the anger never could. And the only thing that saved her was meeting Ronald, and him telling her in all sincerity “that he forgave her a long time ago.” At that moment, Jennifer was able to allow herself to let go. To forgive herself.
In her own words: “At that moment I began to heal. Ronald taught me how to let go of all that pain; his forgiveness set me free that night. Without Ronald, I would still be shackled to that moment in time, and it would own me forever. I soon discovered that I could even forgive the man who had raped me—not because he asked me to, nor because he deserved it—but because I did not want to be a prisoner of my own hatred.
And now, most incredibly, the two are friends. They have written a book together: Picking Cotton. They go on speaking tours. Can you imagine that? Two lives completely decimated by one tremendous wrong, bonded together and ultimately redeemed by the healing power of forgiveness. Could you forgive somebody who had raped you, or wrongly accused you? And not just forgive, but move further… grow intimate and close?
I stand in amazement and awe at these two people, at their strength and resiliency. At the power of their positive and unbreakable spirits. And I challenge you all, I challenge myself, to follow their example. To take ownership for our own words and actions. To forgive when we have been wronged, and to acknowledge when we have done wrong to others (perhaps an even more difficult feat). There can be no growth, no resolution, without first forgiveness.I leave you with the words of the great English poet Alexander Pope: “To err is human; to forgive is divine.”
Happy 4th!
-Aaron
If you have time, 60 minutes did an interesting in-depth piece on their story which can be watched here…
So funny.
If you’re looking for something to do, feel free to get lost in the hilariousness that is threeframes.net. I don’t know who runs the site, or where they got the idea, but the premise is simple: throw together three consecutive frames from any video ever, and make a .gif out of it. You don’t even need to know the above image is from the movie Jaws to appreciate it as it is in it’s new form. All you gotta do is imagine the shark yelling, “Nom, Nom, Nom!”
Check it out here.
Have fun.
Thank you to SuperForester Steven!
Hey, Friends!
I was just folding some laundry this afternoon when, out of nowhere, I read some tiny writing on the backside of a t-shirt tag.
Love! A discreet message from an inanimate object who most literally has got your back no matter what the circumstances. So brilliant.
Have a wonderful Wednesday! I completely and wholeheartedly believe in you, too. <3
-C
Hey all!
SuperForester Brenda suggested this great song by Jarabe de Palo. A song about seeing the beauty in anything and everything, the lyrics and tune are just about as uplifting and upbeat as any can get! Seeing as Brenda suggested it, I’ll let her describe why she likes it so much:
Well first of all, “bonito” means pretty/ beautiful. And thats it, everything is beautiful! From the sky to the funny looking spot on your back, everything is beautiful! This song illuminates the fact that when you look (really look) and feel everything around you, its amazingly beautiful. It’s one of the most happy-optimistic-love-life songs I know.
And how can you NOT be in a better move after checking out his awesome dancing!
Brenda was kind enough to translate her favorite verses (the ones I put in bold) and I filled in the rest in case anyone was curious as to what else was going on in the song…as is so often the case, this translation is a meager echo of the pure awesomeness of the original song:
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
Beautiful morning
Beautiful place
Beautiful bed
How awesome does the sea look
Beautiful is the day
And it’s just begun, beautiful is life
Breathe, breathe, breathe
The telephone rings, my girlfriend complains
Things are going badly, life’s weighing her down
And living like that no longer interests her
And going on like that isn’t worth it
The love is lost, the party has ended
The engine that moves the earth stopped working
Life’s a joke with a sad ending
Future doesn’t exist, but I tell her…
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
Peace is beautiful
Life is beautiful
To be born every day is beautiful
Truth when it has no resonance of dishonesty is beautiful
Friendship is beautiful
Smiles are beautiful
The quality in a person is beautiful
Beautiful are the people that don’t regret
Those that win and lose
That speak with no lies
People are beautiful and that’s why I say…
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
How beautiful everything goes for you when it’s going beautifully for you
How beautiful it is
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
The sea, the morning, the house, the shade
The earth, the peace, and life that goes by
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
Your calmness, your salsa, the spot on your
Back, your face, your enthusiasm for the weekend
Beautiful the people that come and go
Beautiful the people who don’t get held back
Beautiful the people who have no age
Who listen, who understand, who have and give
Beautiful Portet, beautiful Peret
Beautiful rumba, beautiful José
Beautiful the breeze that’s in no rush
Beautiful this day, breathe, breathe!
Beautiful the people when they’re for real
Beautiful the people who are different
That tremble, that feel
That live the present
Beautiful the people who were here and are here no longer
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
How beautiful everything goes for you when it’s going beautifully for you
How beautiful it is
How beautiful everything is when everything is
Beautiful, how beautiful it is to be
Beautiful, everything seems beautiful to me
Dear dear world, have a lovely Wednesday!
-iman
Leave it up to an MIT student to take a shopping cart, NiCd aircraft batteries, new wheels, and a 15hp brushless motor and create one of these…
Remember sitting in those carts as your mum or dad did the grocery shopping? Well this little baby takes that experience up to the next level. (The 45mph level!) Check it:
Brilliant. I totes wanna take one of those with me the next time I go grocery shopping. Zoooom! Zip! Zap! I’d be outta there in seconds!
To learn more about the process it took to build this amazing go-kart, check out the inventor’s blog.
(Found via LikeCOOL, of course)
Come one, come all!
Urban Rustic is at 236 N 12th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 388-9444
See y’all there!
Love.
Listen to Michael Jackson’s “Man In The Mirror”:
Chills. ‘Nuff said.
A few weeks ago, I was pleased to discover an extraordinary talent: a man who created music out of the most obscure and wonderful instruments. I discovered Diego Stocco. I first shared with you all his “Music from Sand” creation. A few days later, I posted a few fresh tracks that Stocco himself recommended to SuperForest! Today, I’m very pleased to share an exclusive interview Mr. Stocco was gracious enough to grant us!
I knew Diego Stocco was an incredible artist, but reading the responses to the couple questions I sent him showed me how incredible he really is. We are all familiar with his work from my previous posts so I’ll just dive right in and present the interview straightaway!
SuperForest: The readers of SuperForest know you as a sound designer and a composer. They’ve seen you make music from sand and a picture of you burning a piano. It’s quite obvious you aren’t just any sound designer or composer. How would you describe the work you do?
Diego Stocco: I would describe it as a journey into sounds, as a possible way to know more about the world that surrounds us.
At the basis of my works there’s a simple question like: “how would that thing sound if…?” That’s always the first step, trying to see objects and instruments under a different light.
SF: What inspired you to take such a unique approach to music?
DS: It’s basically curiosity. Creating sounds with unusual techniques is a process that can produce not just interesting sounds, but also a lot of insights about how certain things works.
It started with simple customizations of traditional instruments. For example, using thick piano strings on an electric guitar instead of regular strings. Then the process evolved into more articulated experiments like “Carbon Cello” where I was recording the sound of a cello transmitted to a cooking pot, or the “Typosonic Machine” which took me quite some time to build.
I’m always experimenting with sounds, there is so much out there that can be recorded and manipulated into something musical.
SF: What do you define as music?
DS: To me music is a amazing form of expression based on sounds, and since sounds keep evolving and transforming into new forms, so does music.
SF: What type of music would you listen to when you were younger? What sort of influence has that had on your music or work today?
DS: I was listening to pretty much everything I was getting in contact with. I had phases where I was listening to all the Beatles albums, Lucio Battisti, Bob Marley, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Peter Gabriel, and Mike Oldfield.
Later on I listened to Jamiroquai, tons of film music from various composers, classical and contemporary music, dance and ethnic music. I was also playing in different bands since I was 14 and that helped me get in touch with different musical styles too. I had a friend that owned a gigantic collection of music from all over the world. He would give me albums to listen to and each one of those became a piece added to the mosaic of styles I’ve been in touch with.
SF: You’ve experimented with a lot of unique sounds in your compositions, which so far has been your favorite?
DS: In general I prefer the ones where I’m playing with acoustic sources, but I don’t really have a favorite one. Everytime I can’t wait to finish the one I’m working on so I can start the next : )
Grazie, Diego! A big hug goes out to you for taking some time to talk to SuperForest. You can learn more about Diego Stocco by reading his biography here. And if you’re curious to see some of the work he’s been involved in over the years, check out his impressive credits list! And images like the ones pictured above can be found on Stocco’s flickr photostream!
Love to all,
Carla
Hello you yummy, sweet and chewy SuperForesters! Have I got a treat for you! I saw this exhibit about a month ago and I am just getting around to writing about it, but it was really awesome…in every sense of the word.
Each year, in Washington, DC, there is an art show called “Artomatic“. This year, it contained 10 whole floors of art (with drinks and snacks on floors 1, 2 and 9!) and over 1000 artists.
Not just painting, drawing, sculpting, woodwork, crafts, or macrame, but live art work, performance art, stand-up comedy, and yes, my personal favorite…an entire exhibit made out of Peeps marshmallow bunnies!
“The Peeps Show” as it was referred, was a contest to see who could make the best Peeps diorama. People or shall I say, “Peeple”, got extremely creative and it was such a pleasure to see with my own eyes. Here are but a few examples of the different dioramas.
“R-E-S-Peep-E-C-T”
“Double Peep Strike”
"Peep-Wee Herman's Playhouse"
"That's One Small Step for (a) Peep, One Giant Leap for Peepkind"
"The Peep Is Right"
"Sweeny Todd, The Demon Barber of Peep Street"
"Mary Peepins"
"Thelma & Louise: Peeps on the Run"
The winner, "NightPeeps"
My friends and I at the Peep Show!!
There were so many more of these creative and fun-to-look-at exhibits. To see more, go here: Peep Show III
There was a lot more to see at this years “Artomatic” including, a “Post-Secret” exhibit which was incredible emotional. You could read the actual anonymous postcards that people sent in containing their deepest and darkest secrets. There were great bands playing, a ton of people of all ages and a lot of the art was for sale! I definitely recommend going to Artomatic if you’re in the area next year. It’s quite an experience.
