community · environment · health

Healing Honey And The Beekeeping Craze : NPR

Beth Kelley

I’m far from home right now, and feeling it. I could use a touch of home…and for some reason honey seems very homey to me. Especially when it’s made at home! Don’t laugh, urban bee-keeping is becoming a big thing, as part of the local-vore, grow-your-own-food movement.

Beekeeping classes from Medina, Ohio, to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and New York are seeing an unexpected shift in enrollment. Numbers are way up as thousands of novices take up the hobby. And who are these new beekeepers? Increasingly, they’re women.

“The surge has really been with younger, urban women,” explains longtime instructor Kim Flottum, who teaches beekeeping in Medina.

Flottum estimates that there are about 100,000 backyard beekeepers across the United States. Exact numbers are hard to pin down. But subscriptions to the publication Bee Culture are on the rise. And when Flottum published a how-to book — An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden — 60,000 people snapped up copies. The book is aimed at making the hobby easier and using more lightweight equipment.

more via Healing Honey And The Beekeeping Craze : NPR.

anthropology · architecture · community · creativity · culture · design · environment · happiness

The Most Colorful Cities In The World

Beth Kelley

Living in the Pacific Northwest I can definitely appreciate the idea of adding more color to one’s life! Interestingly, it tends to be warmer climates that have the more colorful buildings, although Denmark and Finland has some of the most colorful interiors (and now exteriors) I’ve seen. Color has an amazing effect on human mental health and mood. People often talk about getting back into nature to see all the colors. Now, the colors can come to you (unless you live in a community with a rule against bright colors).

Urban life doesn’t have to be bleak and gray — in fact, many of the world’s cities pride themselves upon the bright palettes used to liven up their architecture. From the garish blue-walled buildings of Jodhpur, India, to the gentler pastels of Charleston, S.C., these cities are far from monotonous.

Charleston, SC
Charleston, SC
Nyhavn, Denmark
Buenos Aires, Argentina

More of The Most Colorful Cities In The World: Pics, Videos, Links, News.

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brain · community · creativity · happiness · mental health · play · psychology

Grandma the superhero

Beth Kelley

Mental health is important throughout the entire human lifespan, from infancy (see previous post) to old age.

Courtesy of Boing Boing, I ran across this great story about actively pursuing good mental health, helping out a fellow human being, and using creativity and silliness to accomplish it.

“Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika, a WWII survivor, feeling lonely and depressed. To cheer her up, he photographed her dressed up as a fictional superhero. To his surprise, she loved it. The photos are a bit comical, but there’s an underlying sense of hope, strength and courage in them.”

View Grandma’s Superhero Therapy (18 photos). From the blog: 

Frederika was born in Budapest 20 years before World War II. During the war, at the peril of her own life, she courageously saved the lives of ten people. When asked how, he tells us “she hid the Jewish people she knew, moving them around to different places everyday.” As a survivor of Nazism and Communism, she then immigrated away from Hungary to France, forced by the Communist regime to leave her homeland illegally or face death.

Aside from great strength, Frederika has an incredible sense of humor, one that defies time and misfortune. She is funny and cynical, always mocking people that she loves.

With the unexpected success of this series, titled “Mamika,” Goldberger created a MySpace page for his grandmother. She now has over 2,200 friends and receives messages like: “You’re the grandmother that I have dreamed of, would you adopt me?” and ” You made my day, I hope to be like you at your age.”

People often forget just how much fun, funny, and spunky people can be after living on this Earth for a few decades. My grandmas were and are unstoppable forces of nature.

There have been a few photographic projects with older folks, in retirement homes or elsewhere, but the artist in me definitely feels like this demographic is an important part of humanity to explore that has been relatively neglected.

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behavior · brain

We are music-powered beings

Beth Kelley1 Comment

It is amazing the power that music has on us. It can make us happy, cry, soothe depression, calm, enliven, and make us dance like idiots.

Babies are not immune to this, in fact there are some very famous dancing babies. Who can forget the kiddo dancing to Beyonce from a year ago?

Turns out this inclination to move and wiggle to music starts at an incredibly early age. NPR’s Science Friday showcased a study where babies where set up with headphones piping in very danceable beats. Infants would spontaneously start dancing to the beat. Sure, they weren’t all that great at it, but as the scientists point out, they’ve only been using their muscles for a few months here, so cut them some slack!

Click here to see the video

But I have never seen such a good demonstration of the power of music as with this little guy. Watch what happens right around 30 seconds and then again at 2:10.

architecture · technology

Funny Shaped Buildings

Beth Kelley

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe…and a young woman who lived in a basket.
People enjoy oddly-shaped structures, especially if they are functional. But what is the point? What do they do for us? They make us laugh, inspire creativity and "out of the box" thinking, and make us think of things in new ways. Oh yeah, and provide shelter.

And, in some cases, provide free advertising (free other than the cost of the building).

Mental Floss put together a fun gallery of 10 buildings shaped like the products they offer. Above, the Kansas City Library garage with its facade of 22 giant book spines, including Catch-22, Invisible Man, and The Lord of the Rings. To the left, the headquarters of Newark, Ohio’s Longaberger Company makers of, you guessed it, maple baskets. "10 Buildings Shaped Like What They Sell"

Courtesy also of Boing Boing

anthropology · brain · creativity · Mental · neuroscience · psychology

The Evolving Minds Of Humans : NPR

Beth Kelley

 

 

Where do we get artistic ideas and inclinations? What is it about the brain that makes us like art? Neurologist Antonio Damasio writes about his ideas why in his new book, Self Comes to Mind.

In his new book, Self Comes To Mind, neurologist Antonio Damasio argues that consciousness gave humans an evolutionary advantage. Damasio describes the differences between self and mind, and traces the evolutionary path of the human brain.

Where do we get the ability to create works of art, to be moved by a piece of beautiful music or to feel bad when someone says something hurtful?

via The Evolving Minds Of Humans : NPR.

His main focus is on consciousness, but touches on the idea of creativity, new thinking, and artistic desires as part of our evolution as humans.

education · environment

Defending sloths, frogs, and other animals

Beth Kelley

First, happy Veteran’s Day. Thanks to all the veterans for defending us.

Speaking of defending, I’d like to introduce the Amphibian Avenger:

Not only did she fall in love with amphibians, she fell in love with sloths. And apparently the world did too!

The world’s gone bonkers for sloths. It seems my little video featuring the sleepy residents of the world’s only sloth orphanage is the equivalent of grade A cute crack for millions of LOL squee loving junkies. It’s been watched by nearly 2 million people around the world from Greece (one of the first countries where the clip went viral – but then they needed a laugh that week what with the small matter of total economic meltdown) to Guam (66 Guamians have now watched which is presumably the entire population).

The sloths are now more famous than Jesus having been featured in Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, the Approval Matrix in the New York magazine and on CNN all in the space of a week. Everyone is jumping on the sloth bandwagon – I hear that Madonna is adopting one, Jordan is attempting to marry one and Obama is considering using the sloths to help negotiate a peace agreement with North Korea.

Read more about it.

anthropology · education · learning · Nature

Come See My Gorilla Talk at Woodland Park Zoo on November 18th!

Beth Kelley

That’s right, I will be presenting a brown bag at Woodland Park Zoo on Thursday, November 18th, regarding my research with visitors to the WPZ’s gorilla exhibit. That’s next week, eep!

I have been volunteering with WPZ since June of 2009. During the summers of 2009 and 2010, I studied how visitors interacted with the exhibit, the gorillas, and what lessons visitors took away with them. I also interviewed visitors about their emotional responses to the gorillas.

I was amazed by how strongly people identified with gorillas, pointing out similarities between their hands, their facial expressions, and what they ate (even though Gorillas are vegetarians). They wanted to know how old the gorillas were, who was the mom and dad, if they got along, did they get bored, and all sorts of comments that indicated a high level of empathy. Interestingly, if people had read the signs they would have answered a lot of their own questions…

I will discuss what visitors responded to, what they learned, and what visitors missed.

 WPZ Flyer Gorilla talk

zoo.org

brain · creativity · design · music

10 Ways to Boost Creativity

Beth Kelley2 Comments

This list was compiled by the very talented Lori McNee (@lorimcneeartist) for The Top 10 Blog.

Lori is an internationally recognized professional artist who specializes in still life and landscape oil paintings. She shares valuable fine art tips, art business tips and social media advice on her superb blog FineArtTips.com.

Lori writes: Artists, writers, musicians and even bloggers have a common need to create. But, sometimes we hit a mind block and often find ourselves stressed, overwhelmed and unable to produce original ideas. This happens to me from time to time, so I decided share my top ten ways to boost your creativity.

1. Set aside a time and place.
2. Give yourself a break from technology. (um, but continue reading this blog for more ideas before you take a break!)
3. Try something new.

Read all of her ten tips and why here: http://www.thetop10blog.com/top-10-ways-to-boost-your-creativity/

anthropology · behavior · community · disease · education · environment · health · mental health · Social

How the places we live could heal us | Grist

Beth Kelley

This is an interesting follow-up/add-on to the RadioLab “Cities” episode I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. The Healing Cities Working Group of planners and health professionals in Vancouver, BC is working to create healthy environments in urban areas, particularly focusing on food and food sources.

It’s possible to interest public officials in the health impact of the built environment because Canada has nationalized health care.

“When you have a public health care system like we have in Canada, we all collectively pay the end-of-pipe costs,” said Holland. “So anything we have in our society that makes us unhealthy, we end up paying for it.” Of course, that’s true in the United States as well, but there is much less transparency and awareness of those costs because of the way our system is set up.

In Canada, Holland hopes to be able to involve doctors and public health authorities in the fight against sprawl and for more walkable and transit-oriented neighborhoods. Among the Healing Cities Working Group’s many planned initiatives is a partnership with health officials to advocate for more health-enhancing infrastructure and development at the local level.

via How the places we live make us sick, and how they could heal us instead | Grist.

Other studies have found that greener neighborhoods also decrease stress and make people more likely to walk or bike places. Where you live, what have you found works best for you personally to motivate you to get you outside, moving, and buying less insta-food?