Image: source.

Loving the simple but unique jewelry from Sunday's Best! The perfect blend of simplicity, uniqueness, and style.

Puppies and birds!

Image: source.

"PBS reports that, because of the Obama administration's Secure Communities program’s failure to focus on high-level offenders, critics say it’s causing fewer immigrants to share information with police that can help solve cases or prevent future crimes. Thus, despite its name, the program may actually hurt public safety." via Immigration Prof. Blog.

“Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.” - Marianne Williamson

Beautiful work of Joetta Maue.

Image: source.

Image: source.

Photos of NYC subways in the 1980's. (5 days till my trip!)

The origins of ABC from I Love Typography.

Great photos of abandoned Antarctic spaces, including

Shackleton's former home.

Image: mrYen.

"More than 5 million children currently live in the United States with at least one undocumented parent. Close to 75 percent of those children are U.S. citizens. When one or both parents are deported, children often have to choose between living with their immediate family — in another country — or living without them in the United States." A Simple Truth: When Parents Get Deported Citizen Children Fight to Survive.

“You may seek companionship and warmth, for example, but if your unconscious intention is to keep people at a distance, the experiences of separation and pain will surface again and again until you come to understand that you, yourself, are creating them. Eventually, you will choose to create harmony and love. You will choose to draw to you the highest-frequency currents that each situation has to offer. Eventually, you will come to understanding that love heals everything, and love is all there is. The journey may take many lifetimes, but you will complete it. It is impossible not to complete it. It is not a question of if but of when. Every situation that you create serves this purpose. Every experience that you encounter serves this purpose.” Source.

Image: source.

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

- Rumi

Image: mrYen.

Ooooh, I definitely want to make my own lavender oil. I love when its hot and dry here in Oregon, and you can smell the lavender as you pass peoples houses (also I have a huge soft spot for lavender ever since going to Provence...)

Rap and GoogleMaps, a match made in heaven. Who knew?

Image: source.

Before seeing The September Issue this would've meant nothing to me, but I was pretty taken with Grace Coddington and would totally check out her memoirs.

Book shelf (room/tower) love!

"The CA legislature is considering a bill to eliminate juvenile LWOP for any crime."

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” - James Arthur Baldwin

“It is shocking and profoundly regrettable, but, apparently, sales of oranges are falling steadily because people can no longer be bothered to peel them. As soon as I read this, I began buying oranges more frequently and eating them with greater pleasure. Now I peel an orange very slowly, deliberately, voluptuously, above all defiantly, as a riposte to an age that demands war without casualties, public services without taxes, rights without obligations, celebrity without achievement, sex without relationship, running shoes without running, coursework without work and sweet grapes without seeds.” - From The Age of Absurdity:Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy by Michael Fole

Image: source.

Covers I'm loving: Bon Iver "A Satisfied Mind," Kelly Clarkson "That I Would Be/Use Somebody," Muse "Feeling Good," The Gaslight Anthem "I Do Not Hook Up," Ted Leo "Since U Been Gone/Maps."

Love it: The Book Cover Archive.

Image: source.

Obama bin Laden's abandoned Florida mansion - great photos.

Amazingly powerful photos highlight the complexity and reality of immigration.

Three movies I've seen recently, all of which I enjoyed, to varying degrees: "The Kids Are All Right" (not perfect, but oddly affecting and often funny), "I Am Love" (flawed, but gorgeous and enthralling), and "Inception" (fun but incredibly overrated). I especially loved the New Yorker's reviews of the last two. I liked "The Kids Are Alright" more than the NY'er did, although I agree with some of their criticism and I love this line from the review: "Paul, a bearded restaurateur, turns out to be randy but unthreatening, warm to the touch but cool about stuff, with a dash of smugness in his easy smile, all of which is a way of saying that he is played by Mark Ruffalo."

A Series of Questions by L. Weingarten is an “ongoing body of work explores the power dynamics inherent in the questions asked of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender-variant people.”

Image: Georgia O'Keefe, The Lawrence Tree.

This cover of Kelly Clarksons "I Do Not Hook Up" is so unexpectedly beautiful! (I love the original but this cover really takes it there. There's nothing like a cover that really brings something new to the original.)

“And then one student said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can’t even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns into cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you’re almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it’s that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what’s warm - whether it’s something or someone - toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being sad in the world and ready for sleep, that’s happiness.” - Paul Schmidtberger (Design Flaws of the Human Condition)

I really enjoyed the documentary Helvetica, and am looking forward to the directors new movie, Urbanized.

which "looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers."

Image: source.

"Stephen Colbert helps make it clear why repealing 14th amendment has become the latest anti-immigrant pet project. Because, clearly, changing the constitution – the foundational document of our freedoms and rights, considered sacred to our country – makes much more sense than reforming our currently broken immigration system. Right?"

This essay just barely scratches the surface, but touches on some interesting topics: The Town That Corbusier Built: Respect for the design of Chandigarh, India, is growing, even as the modernist city is showing wear. But who will care, if access to its most impressive monuments is restricted? Ashish Nangia addresses the above questions in “The Town That Corbusier Built” published yesterday on Design Observer. Le Corbusier was commissioned to design a city in 1950, to included a capitol complex and located in Punjab. Nangia assesses the political ideals and realities connected to the project, most importantly taking a concerted view of the legacy of Le Corbusier’s creation. Via Curated.

Image: source.