The cave that you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.

~ Joseph Campbell

The Monster Project
artist Kylin O’Brien, USA

Visit the web site: The Monster Project.
See more of Kylin’s O’Brien’s artwork.

New York-based artist Kylin O’Brien works with children’s drawings for The Monster Project, initially launched at the 12th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival in DUMBO Brooklyn in 2008. Kylin’s art enhances walls in cities around the U.S., including in New York, California and Florida, and in time plans to include more cities in the U.S., as well as international locations.

This public art initiative transforms monsters into guardians in neighborhoods around the city. Children’s drawings of monsters, with some fine tuning from Kylin, become murals as large as 20 feet high and 80 feet long, painted on walls in neighborhoods where children can appreciate their own young perspectives as public art.

Kylin’s work has inspired other artists to explore and celebrate children’s drawings of monsters. The Monster Project was invited to California in 2010 by artist/curator Rodney Artiles – this resulted in two more monsters coming to life on the West Coast. Artist Jennifer Bevill also took an interest in The Monster Project and she has used the project concepts in her 2nd and 5th grade curricula at Brooklyn’s PS8. The newest monster addition is in Miami, Florida, with new monsters being planned as funding allows.

[Image copyright: Jenn Kendall]

The hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lori Koop
Ceramics Artist, USA
Websites: Lori Koop and UPWoRD

Lori Koop is a ceramics artist who mixes pottery and poetry. You can sign up for UPWoRD of the week to –  “Meet with a most fabulous friend each week . . . a friend that is lifelong and committed. A friend that wants to see you happy, doing what you love and living on purpose. Connect with YOU!”

[artwork image copyright: Lori Koop]

This article is part of CNN’s global series – read the full article HERE.

[100,000 children now participate in 91 countries]

New York (CNN) — It’s not every day that a 13-year-old boy gets a chance to address the United Nations General Assembly. But Felix Finkbeiner is no ordinary teenager.

Finkbeiner is already the head of his own organization, Plant for the Planet, dedicated to planting millions of trees all around the world.

At the U.N. earlier this month, Finkbeiner had one item on his agenda: taking adults to task for their lack of action on planting trees.

In the normally staid U.N., Finkbeiner had a field day telling off a group of adults. His message to the diplomats was simple: “stop talking and start planting.”

Finkbeiner warned the countries that disappearing trees would create a climate crisis for children’s future.

“We children understand that the adults know everything about these crises, but we children don’t understand why there’s so little action,” he said.

Plant for the Planet was founded in, of all places, a fourth grade classroom in his native Germany.

A presentation Finkbeiner gave in class about Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who planted 30 million trees in Kenya, inspired the movement.

But Finkbeiner believes this tree crusade can only be successful if it is led by children.

“We children are the majority in the world but we can only make a difference if we work together. So we have to work together because if we do this, we can have a big impact,” he says.

We children don’t understand why there’s so little action. –Felix Finkbeiner

This tree-planting campaign has already had an impact worldwide. Finkbeiner says there are 100,000 children participating in 91 countries with 3.5 million trees planted.

[Photo credit: CNN]

A key creative breakthrough occurred when Emory mathematicians Ken Ono and Zach Kent were hiking.

Original Article: Walk in the woods leads to math ‘aha!’

Walk in the woods leads to math ‘aha!’
Posted By Carol Clark-Emory On January 24, 2011 (1:03 pm) In Top Stories

EMORY (US) — The recent discovery that partition numbers—the basis for adding and counting—behave like fractals is a mathematical breakthrough centuries in the making.

A partition of a number is a sequence of positive integers that add up to that number. For example, 4 = 3+1 = 2+2 = 2+1+1 = 1+1+1+1. So we say there are 5 partitions of the number 4.

It sounds simple, and yet the partition numbers grow at an incredible rate. The amount of partitions for the number 10 is 42. For the number 100, the partitions explode to more than 190,000,000.

……

Seeing the forest
Ono’s “dream team” wrestled with the problems for months. “Everything we tried didn’t work,” he says.

A eureka moment happened in September, when Ono and Zach Kent were hiking to Tallulah Falls in northern Georgia. As they walked through the woods, noticing patterns in clumps of trees, Ono and Kent began thinking about what it would be like to “walk” through partition numbers.

“We were standing on some huge rocks, where we could see out over this valley and hear the falls, when we realized partition numbers are fractal,” Ono says. “We both just started laughing.”

The term fractal was invented in 1980 by Benoit Mandelbrot, to describe what seem like irregularities in the geometry of natural forms. The more a viewer zooms into “rough” natural forms, the clearer it becomes that they actually consist of repeating patterns. Not only are fractals beautiful, they have immense practical value in fields as diverse as art to medicine.

Their hike sparked a theory that reveals a new class of fractals, one that dispensed with the problem of infinity. “It’s as though we no longer needed to see all the stars in the universe, because the pattern that keeps repeating forever can be seen on a three-mile walk to Tallulah Falls,” Ono says.

….

A key creative breakthrough occurred when Emory mathematicians Ken Ono, left, and Zach Kent were hiking.

the likelihood note: Nature holds the keys – get outside!

[Photo Credit: Emory University]

get thee to the Uffizi!

go Google – your Art Project is great!

Web site:  Google’s Art Project

Google certainly doesn’t need help with promotion, but their Art Project is the next best thing to being in these galleries across the globe.

Be sure to visit the Art Project, though don’t miss out on any opportunity to actually step inside these museums, as a virtual experience isn’t quite the same as actually being there.

Being there is best; Google’s Art Project is the next best thing!

We joined the group because during Taylor’s time the war was closing in on us. Our sisters, mothers and daughters were behind the fighters and in front of the fighters. We knew what would happen if the soldiers continued. We stood up on the street and cried for peace. We begged them. We went to them and physically begged for peace.

~ Mama Kolubah Johnson, Peace Women member

Peace Women ~ Liberia

Via Trust.org, by Jenny Hobbs
Read the Full Article HERE

Photo: Jenny Hobbs, Concern Worldwide / Louise Yarsiah leads the women of WANEP in song in Liberia.

(excerpt)

Few people are aware that a group of women – calling themselves the Peace Women, dressed in colourful lappas (Liberian cloth), bright white t-shirts and white headscarves, were instrumental in bringing peace to Liberia. Their story, which begins with the simple act of sitting along the streets for months under the hot sun or torrential rains of Liberia, led to the exile of alleged warlord Charles Taylor in 2003, now awaiting his verdict in The Hague.

In 1998, women from all tribes and religions in Liberia united in their common goal for an end to violence, and played an essential role in the decommissioning of young rebels to install peace and democracy in a war-torn country. The movement took place under the auspices  of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP). Today the work of these Peace Women continues. Here in Liberia, 75 women gather on a dusty football pitch to hold a 40-day fast and prayer meeting in solidarity for the women and children in neighbouring Côte D’Ivoire, where over 7,700 refugees have fled to Liberia.

The conflict in Côte D’Ivoire is escalating rapidly – official figures from UNHCR predict that 150,000 refugees are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, although the scale and uncertainty of the conflict indicate that these figures will rise significantly.

As Mama Kolubah Johnson, a member of the Peace Women group explained to me, the dangers for women in Côte D’Ivoire are well known to her group:  “We have passed through the same problem here. Women and children suffer during war, women are raped, sometimes with their husband there. When men have guns they can say: ‘My man! This woman not for you, yeah?’ If the person has a gun your husband can’t say anything.”

Mama experienced the horrors of war when she was trapped in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, as the rebel factions surrounded the city. Her husband was brutally killed during the war – oil was poured over him and he was burned alive while his wife was forced to watch. She was then left alone to care for her six-year-old daughter. It was then, that Mama Johnson decided to join the Peace Women’s movement.

[Photo: Jenny Hobbs, Concern Worldwide]

I urge the international community and donors to support Arab women so they can realise their rights.

~ Ali Caracalla, one of the co-writers of “Out of Hand”

“With a loud voice, I call on men all over the world to respect women’s rights.”

~ message to mark International Women’s Day, from Ali Ahmed Raad, teacher and volunteer for civil society organisations

via www.Trust.org
Read the Article by clicking HERE

Aid Worker Diaries – The Lebanese Men Campaign to End Violence Against Women
(excerpt)

On a stage in Lebanon, an oppressive father whips his daughter – punishment for disobeying his command and eloping with the man she loves. For Ali Caracalla, one of the co-writers of “Out of Hand”, this is more than just a play. “It’s inspired from our reality,” explains Ali, a computer science student at Lebanon university.

Ali is part of a growing movement of young men across the Middle East who, supported by Oxfam and partner KAFA, are committed to raising awareness amongst their male counterparts on ending violence against women. The campaign is the first of its kind in Arab countries, and underlines the importance of working with men and boys to bring about real and lasting change.

Last year, KAFA began a programme in Lebanon educating men, including a co-operative of beekeepers and a group of religious leaders, about the ills of violence against women, both to the women themselves, and to the psychological and economic health of the family as a whole.

This is Ali’s first time working as a volunteer for women’s rights, and he’s not alone. Ali Ahmed Raad, another recent graduate from university, is also beginning to speak out on women’s rights. Raad, now a part time teacher and active volunteer with several civil society organisations, has witnessed the psychological effects of women affected by verbal violence. “Psychological violence has a much deeper impact,” he tells me. Raad is trying to convince others that “violence can take several forms, such as verbal and emotional abuse.” In a recent focus group organised by Oxfam, Raad was surprised to learn that many men think “violence is all about the use of force against women.”

For Raad, this campaign is unique in the Arab World and offers practical solutions to help raise awareness of gender based violence. By wearing a white ribbon and taking part in focus groups, surveys and assessments, Raad hopes he can contribute towards ending violence against women in Lebanon. So far Raad has persuaded fifteen of his friends and colleagues to join the campaign. This is unprecedented in Lebanese society where, Raad explains, “engaging men to empower women is considered to be unusual”.

[photo credit: Photo: Jennifer Abrahamson/Oxfam]

p-oh!-etry

something Wild

by julie doane roberts

flames fall up, a blurred brass waterfall. blood-amber
and ash in blocks of cinder not yet asunder
and i wonder why purple ghosts

hold flame to a passing source.
in, on, under black wood in strips of licorice,
disintegrating, a comfort.
the sound, hot-spark.

i was left in a bag of skin along the trail.
erode away eternity from dirt like a bead of glass, faceted.  am i the only
child of jesse james and a random mary? accomplices, always.  i love a lot
but still nobody knows me. pick five lines,
make up your own story.

When i’m gone i’ll finally be as gone
as i’ve always been.

clouds, strewn, across the water, dancing ostrich-swan with wings
aflutter lyrical merganser orange in the setting sun. four red berries
bob in hollow leaves of rusty veins and yellow trim. spartina
soldiers check themselves, neat, along the rim.
cream, crimson, amethyst-branched i call me, but i will not come.

magic dust of white stone fragile lay the wind or feet who sway cups of you in shadow light with slipping
step, slipping
step.
fringed in mossy splotches of lime or forest green – a wild rose throne.

i’ll find my home, i’ll find my Home through paths i press
for Answers. and Chances. beauty falls where it will, or won’t. i echo
on bridges where below me waits a pool of purple gone vermouth, hoping
hope at will. won’t. can’t.
when i call me, i do not come.

The world is going grey for me but i will still wear red.

trunks fuse into smoke-dark lumps of root stairs,
down to up,
i twist and wish
like a child for something wild, some
thing

Wild.
This breath means the heavens to me, comes faster still.  dragon with burning
desire.

All i ever needed is the fire.

the fire!

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

~ Howard Zinn

Learn more here: OperationSAFE
Follow Operation Safe on Twitter: http://twitter.com/operationsafe

OperationSAFE helps children recover from trauma through art, play, story and friendship in places where care is not readily available. OperationSAFE is an all-volunteer organization and this great cause needs your help to raise awareness.

About OperationSAFE:
OperationSAFE started in response to the Sichuan quake in China in 2008 and has been helping children after large disasters ever since in China, Haiti and Tibet. They are currently working on an animated film and want to make it available for children worldwide who have suffered trauma from poverty, abandonment, abuse, disaster or war.

Video: copyright OperationSAFE

I See God/I See Allah – original college theater production

Play presents peaceful perspective on Islam – the word “Islam” means peace

Theater Web site:  Oregon State University Theatre Arts
Original Article Web site:  The Daily Barometer

Original play by Saudi Arabian writer Raja Alem
Put on by Oregon State University Theatre Arts and the Saudi Arabian Student Association
Cast comprised of students of the SASA (Saudi Arabian Student Association)

Members of the Saudi Arabian Student Association star in the University Theatre production

Article by Kayla Harr, senior reporter
Media credit: Hannah Gustin