Inspirational and good news.
Hello, and happy Friday!
This installment of Band of the Month features Chang-A-Lang. This Toronto born and raised, fist-pumping three piece deserves recognition for their jovial on-stage energy and socially aware attitude. Chang-A-Lang will make you shake on the dance floor as they maintain enthusiasm about positive change in the world.
Check the link below for a track from their album ‘No Clean Rock and Roll’.
Save the Environment by Chang-A-Lang
Band of the Month by Greg O’Toole
Welcome to the new, biweekly addition to Things Are Good!
Band of the Month will be recurring every other Friday as a way to kick start the weekend with good news and good music!
Today’s Band of the Month is Beams; A seven piece Toronto band with a hearty, bluegrassy-folk sound. Beams are today’s Band of the Month because their smile inducing on-stage rapport is not only obvious, but infectious to everyone in the room. Partner that with charming vocal harmonies and instruments like mandolin and saw (that’s right, saw), and you’ll be grinning all weekend.
Check out the link below for a taste of the band!
Band of the month by Greg O’Toole
Residents of Charlottetown, P.E.I. decided to make their city nicer, more sustainable, and more fun by transforming one of their streets from car-dominated to people-friendly. They’ve made a great video showing what they did and hopefully it’ll inspire other communities to realize that streets are for people and we should use public space to celebrate the public.
People were really excited to join in on the one-day project, says one participant in the video. “People would just be walking by and like, “Oh, what’s going on?” I would tell them, “We’re transforming a street, do you want to take part?” All of a sudden, they were grabbing paint or chalk.”
Thanks to Kathryn! Who found it Huffington Post.
Edward Burtynsky: OIL is the photographer’s examination of how humanity uses oil through photographs. The project started as a display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and has been translated to book form and, more recently, as an app for iPads.
I love the use of art to showcase our relationship with the commodities that we consume and Burtynsky does that quite well.
In addition to revealing the rarely-Ââ€seen mechanics of its manufacture, Burtynsky captures the effects of oil on our lives, depicting landscapes altered by its extraction from the earth, and by the cities and suburban sprawl generated around its use. He also addresses the coming “end of oil,†as we confront its rising cost and dwindling availability.
Bridging the disconnect between our consumer world and that of the oil industry, Burtynsky’s photographs, transfixing in their clarity, take us on a journey. Starting at the source Burtynsky shows us international drilling sites and refineries, then continues to distribution methods and the motor culture of freeways, eventually, leading us to the inevitable end of oil at scrap-Ââ€yards, recycling grounds and abandoned oil fields.
The Oil iPad app is well done and has the photos from the exhibition plus commentary from Burtynsky. Throughout the app he narrates some photos and provides his thoughts on how we can improve our knowledge about oil use in modern culture.
If anybody out there still thinks that oil extraction as it’s currently practised is fine for people and the environment do the world a favour and tell that person to check this out.
You maybe lucky enough to catch the exhibit in person too. The BURTYNSKY: OIL exhibition is at The Photographers’ Gallery in London May 19 – July 1, 2012. After that it travels to the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno (July 9–September 23, 2012); to the Taubman Museum in Roanoke (October 19, 2012–January 6, 2013); and to the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa (June 4–September 2, 2013)
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