HSU IT Department

This is a project on Kickstarter, which I thought was so neat I had to share it. So much of the news we see is at the macro level; I love the idea of exploring the world one person and one conversation at a time. Check it out here.


"It’s been four years since Paul Salopek, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, set out on foot from a campsite in Ethiopia on the Out of Eden Walk - a 21,000-mile, decade-long experiment in slow journalism. Through words and pictures, audio and video, Paul is creating an unprecedented record of human life on a global scale at the start of a new millennium, through the eyes of the villagers, nomads, traders, farmers, soldiers, and artists who rarely show up in headlines but whose lives illuminate the contours of the modern world..."


Also no, I will not be watching the inauguration tomorrow.

Yesterday, while wandering the wilds of the Interwebz, I stumbled across this wonderful piece by Gerald Gould. Like Magee's High Flight or Masefield's Sea Fever, the words and the rhythm inspire a kind of pleasant restlessness. (All three poems also prompt a tear in the eye and a tightness in the throat, I've never been able to pin down why; perhaps because the wish to journey forth remains unfulfilled?) I think perhaps Bilbo might have appreciated it.


Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea,
And East and West the wanderlust that will not let me be;
It works in me like madness, dear, to bid me say good-by!
For the seas call and the stars call, and oh, the call of the sky!

I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,
But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;
And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,
For the river calls and the road calls, and oh, the call of a bird!

Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,
You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky!
-- Gerald Gould