It's a Wonder-Full World
May 11, 2012
Every now and then, instead of all the suffering, problems,
irritations and frustrations of life, I see some things that fill me with wonder.
I hear a story about something amazing or inspirational or beautiful. I marvel
at the creativity and determination and sheer joyous spirit some people have.
I’d like to share a few of my more recent discoveries in this post.
An anonymous someone has left a number of intricate paper
sculptures carved from books at various libraries, museums and festivals in Scotland ,
beginning with the Scottish Poetry Library. (Click here for the whole story and photos of the amazing pieces.) Each piece was
accompanied by a tag with a short message. Here is the wording of the one found
at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, of a dragon in a nest: “A gift in support
of libraries, books, works, ideas…. Once upon a time there was a book and in
the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and
in the dragon was a story….” I would go to Scotland
just to see these wonder-full creations!
This inspiring video (thanks to my husband who sent the link
to me) demonstrates the power of belief and persistence. It’s also a pretty
good advertisement for yoga!
Imagine that you’re blind. You’ve created a system using
elastic bands, to enable yourself to write in longhand the novel that’s brewing
in your brain. You complete 26 pages and begin to think about finding a publisher.
Then your son comes to visit and breaks the bad news: your pen had run out of
ink. Your pages are blank. What happens next is the wonder-full part: using a
special police technique that involved shining light on the paper from various
angles to reveal the indentations made by the pen, Dorset
County England )
forensic service expert Kerry Savage was able to recover the entire manuscript
except for one line. Ms. Savage spent five months of lunch breaks working on
the project, in addition to her regular job helping to solve cases of murder,
fraud or arson. Click here for the whole story.
Scientists in a new field known as “soundscape ecology” are
using radio telescopes to record extended stretches of audio in wilderness
areas. They’re studying the sounds found in entire ecosystems, and the effects humans’
sounds have on nature, among other things. While this is interesting, what I
found wonder-full in this article was the links to short recordings of sounds found at Denali National Park and
Preserve, such as “Alpine stream feeding into an ice cave,” or “Bear with
cubs.” Sitting here in Florida , I
can listen to nature sounds from Alaska !
I hope you’ve enjoyed these stories—and I’d love to hear
from you if you have wonder-full stories of your own. Have a wonder-full
weekend!
4 comments
Hi Kathy ... wow, you have found a bunch of interesting new things! It is so neat when people think to do things out of the ordinary and then share them with others.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for stopping by today,
Kathy M.
My pleasure, Kathy. Glad you enjoyed these stories. I have been trying to collect more inspiring and happy things to counteract life's bad news. Some people are just so creative!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links to these stories - the one about the injured vet is SO inspiring! And what fun to listen to the sounds of Alaska - it brought my dog over to the computer to try to find out what was going on!!
ReplyDeleteCheryl--I got tears in my eyes watching that video! I'm so happy for him. Isn't it funny what sounds the dogs react to? Our dog ignores dogs barking on TV or the computer, but reacts to doorbells!
ReplyDelete