Krista Tippett interviews civil rights legend and Congressman John Lewis in Montgomery, Alabama during the Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage. Amazing man!
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Flash mob delights Spaniards waiting in the unemployment line in a Madrid office with The Beatles classic “Here Comes the Sun.” The soloist is marvelous.
I grew up with Evil Knievel and the Flying Wallendas. Thrilling as their stunts were, it was always a noisy spectacle. It seemed to be more about man conquering the Grand Canyon or the Tallulah Gorge than interacting with nature. The backdrop was a prop.
In this video, though, Michael Schaefer and Dean Potter create a scene as thrilling in its composition as in the act itself of walking the highline at Cathedral Peak. As the sun sets and descends, the moon rises and looms large — the orb cradling the dyad of rock towers turned burnt-red. As the National Geographic filmmakers say, it is “the ultimate full moon shot” — captured from over a mile away with a serious telephoto lens.
As Mr. Potterbegins his unaided walk, you hear the camera operator take deep, calm but anxious, meditative breaths. And you breathe with him. Oh, if we all could witness such panoramic beauty like this each day…
Seinfeld on How to Tell a Joke
From our senior editor Trent Gilliss’ Tumblr:
“In my world, the wronger something feels the righter it is. So too waste this much time on something this stupid… that felt good to me. “
A superb five-minute short on how Jerry Seinfeld writes a joke from The New York Times.
Seinfeld’s take on wasting time might just be the polar opposite advice given by Jon Kabat-Zinn in our podcast for this week.
Krista’s essay on why she doesn’t do Christmas prompted reader Jeff Jackson to share this video on the Advent Conspiracy. It’s well done.
Ushering in Hanukkah with a Song
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The Maccabeats put together another excellent cover to celebrate Hanukkah with Matisyahu’s “Miracle.” Chag Sameach to all our Jewish friends out there!
“O Come, Emmanuel”
For so many Christians, this song was sung and played this past weekend on the first Sunday of Advent. But I’m going to guess that very few church services featured such a stirring pairing of piano and cello.
Krista Tippett on the other side of the lens, doing an interview for The Nantucket Project series, ”Collective Intelligence: The Miracle of Human Progress.” Looking forward to seeing the end product. It should be a cool series.
The Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been found guilty of religious hatred for their protest inside the Cathedral of Christ the Savior today. The Interfax news agency translates the Khamovnichesky Court verdict as such:
“The Pussy Riot singers colluded under unestablished circumstances, for the purpose of offensively violating public peace in a sign of flagrant disrespect for citizens.,” the court said in a verdict being pronounced on Friday.
The women were motivated by religious enmity and hatred, and acted provocatively and in an insulting manner inside a religious building in the presence of a large number of believers,” the court said.
The court also has found that the Pussy Riot activists realized that their actions during the “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior were insulting and intended to communicate information on the stunt to a broad range of believers.
“Intending to make the planned actions public and ensure that they drew public response, to draw the attention of the public to their illegal actions, and to communicate the expressed disrespect not only to the clergy and people in the church, but also to other citizens who were not present in the church at the time [of the punk prayer], but shared Orthodox traditions, Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina, and their unidentified accomplice informed various media assistants and active bloggers on their action,” the sentence read in the Khamovnichesky Court on Friday says.
Up top is the video of the Pussy Riot “protest-as-prayer” performance for which three members of the band have found guilty.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
After that last post, how could I resist following it up with Patrick Stewart reciting Sonnet 29.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
