Thursday 30 August 2007

World Press Photo awards

Last night I visited the exhibition of the World Press Photo awards. The combination of beautiful, ingenious photography and the mayhem in the world and the things man does unto man was powerful stuff. The exhibition of the winners is in London for a few more weeks, but then continues its tour round the world. If you can't see it live, however, the website is really interesting too.
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Friday 17 August 2007

Vicky's water project

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Vicky Buchanan was a friend of a friend of mine. She was knocked off her bike and killed whilst cycling to work last October. She was 28.
V
icky and her fiance Adam had been due to marry in September. But now Adam has resolved that some good should come from the tragedy and so on September 30 Adam, plus a swarm of 200 friends and family - the majority of whom would have been wedding guests - will take part in the Great North Run half-marathon to raise funds for a unique memorial,
. The project was launched with the £10.88 she was carrying when she was killed but has targeted a figure of £226,000 to bring clean, running water to the inhabitants of a town in Ethiopia where Vicky had been working during her Masters degree.
The Daily Telegraph has just published this
about Vicky, her project, and her legion of friends and family who have put their trainers on to celebrate her life. If you would like to make a donation you can do so
.

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Thursday 16 August 2007

Pause for thought

I hope
won't mind me stealing his idea of flagging up interesting chunks of text to provoke a bit of thought and self-reflection. Here goes with tough, tell-it-as-it-is climber
:


“Memories and hope are not so different; one is ‘having done’ the other is ‘to do.’ Neither constitutes action. You are what you do; thus, if you do nothing, you are nobody. If you once did great things, you think you are great. You coast along on dead, preserved laurels, lifeless and wasting away.
I spent 12 weeks on crutches after knee surgery. During recovery I surrounded myself with wannabes, pretend-to-bes, has-beens and never-will-bes. I met people who wasted their talent or were afraid of it. They taught me why I hadn’t become a good climber. Like them, I was afraid to succeed, scared to commit. I didn’t want to be any better than anyone else. Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who don’t think enough of themselves to make something of themselves - people who did only what they had to do and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better.”

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Cycling across an Ocean

Screenshot_1 This guy, Greg, has cycled 647 miles in 24 hours! He now plans to pedal a high-tech pedalo across the Atlantic Ocean and beat the current 43 day record... Visit his site here.

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