The ocean stirs the imagination and inspires the heart. In its frolicking waves and every grain of sand is a story of the earth. And the beautifully timed crash of the waves whisper about nature’s simple treasures. For the sea and its tales along the land are a continual miracle. – Rosanna Abrachan
The tale we hear is thrilling – of knowledge passed down for generations, of artisanal fishing practices that grace us with sustenance from the Arabian Sea without depleting her waters.
Come sea!
Workers inspecting a bale of refuse at the Recology recycling plant in San Francisco. Foreign officials and others often visit the facility for ideas on how to handle their own mushrooming piles of garbage. Josh Haner/The New York Times
From the New York Times:
San Francisco, ‘the Silicon Valley of Recycling’
By
Robert Reed, who is enjoying a surprising career turn as a busy tour guide at the latest hot spot here, stood smiling one recent sunny morning before 10 foreign dignitaries and journalists. They included the mayor of Genoa, Italy, and the general consuls from Italy, Canada and Switzerland.
Each visitor wore a sport coat and tie, and a yellow safety vest to ensure they wouldn’t be run down by garbage trucks. Continue reading
Anybody can welcome you to a destination. Tell you about the must-do and the must-see. Weave you through its facts and fables, seat you through its culinary journey. At Xandari, we welcome you to our people. And the living stories they are. From what’s cooking to an effective cure for colds, good ol’ ways of growing with the land to dreams by the beach, we hear them loud. And, are part of them.
Here’s to our pride. Here’s to our people. Here’s to our family.
Rosanna Abrachan
Community, Collaboration and Conservation are the “3 Cs” that we stand by, and crafting these videos felt like a large family gathering with a smorgasbord of experiences to choose from. Thank you Anoodha and the RAXA Collective –Xandari Pearl teams!
Stay tuned for more!
A wonderful aspect of both young people and entrepreneurs is their ability to find creative solutions to apparently insoluble problems. The two overlap beautifully within the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Youth Agripreneurs Project (YAP), where the goal is to pilot innovation to help rural communities world wide.
Kulisha, which is the verb ‘to feed’ in Swahili, the national language of Kenya, is a proposed project that addresses both the problem of creating a sustainable food source in Kenya and the extractive fishing methods of coastal trawlers. Aquaculture is an important food industry in East Africa, but the method of using fish meal from wild caught anchovies is destructive on all levels. Kulisha’s goal is to produce sustainable fish feed in Kenya made from black soldier fly larva.
Our idea, Kulisha, will provide a low-cost, high-quality sustainable fish feed made from black soldier fly larvae. We will sell dried insects to these rural fish farmers to replace the anchovies they are using to mix their own. In addition, we’ll produce a nutrient-rich fertilizer as a by-product from raising the insects which will be sold at a low cost to local crop farmers. It is our long term goal to formulate and sell our own feed. Continue reading
Collaborative relationships are beautiful things. Most of human endeavors lend themselves to collaboration, and art is no exception. The stereotype of solo artist in studio is an old one, but in truth inspiration rarely occurs in isolation, and art doesn’t develop in a vacuum. Collaboration and community between artists, artists and patrons, or artists and those who appreciate art has existed in some form ever since the first charcoal marks on cave walls. Continue reading
“Sandcastle No. 3,” drawn on a single grain of sand, part of a Vik Muniz series from 2013.CreditVik Muniz, via Sikkema, Jenkins & Co.
We like it, for what should be obvious reasons:
At M.I.T., Science Embraces a New Chaos Theory: Art
Malabar Soul Food – embodies the spices of the land blended with the memories of distant homelands, taking people back to the time when people who loved them cooked for them in a way that was meaningful and satisfying.
Food is about sense memories: it embodies our personal and social history, giving us a sense of place, of home…
Sadhana Forest shows local people in India, Haiti, and Kenya how to plant trees in dry regions – and improve their lives. PHOTO: Sadhana
Do you believe in a literary cosmos? I do. In the seemingly innocuous collision of two pieces of writing SO removed from each other that they are all that similar. Two articles – one found last evening for work, one chanced upon during the routine Instagram surf on the way to work. One standing out in the mayhem of a news feed; the incredible story of an Israeli man and his wife moving to India in 2003 and buying 70 acres of barren land. To build, sustain a forest. Reafforestation, to be clear. The other titled The Builder’s High. Yes, I’m ‘building’ this up.
Teela Magar and Cing Neam prepare roti dough as part of Edible Alphabet, a program in Philadelphia that folds English lessons for immigrants to the U.S into a cooking class. PHOTO: Bastiaan Slabbers, The Salt
Roti is a staple in Indian homes. This unleavened flat bread made of stoneground wholemeal flour links tables in Asia and Africa. With its humble origins, simple spirit, and its versatility in being an economical yet nutritious accompaniment, the roti is a mainstay of an English-as-a-Second-Language class in Philapdelphia. So, how does breaking bread help immigrants pick up basics of English – a skill vital to their rehabilitation, assimilation, and survival in a foreign land? The Salt tells us:
“Food is warmth, it’s comfort, it breaks down those barriers.” Galeb Salman left his native Iraq 25 years ago and most recently lived in Thailand. He says he savors the choices and freedom he feels since arriving here in September with his wife and five kids. “When I think I want to learn, I want to study, I can. When I want to work, I can,” he says. “I feel we have good life now. …This is my new life.”
For six years, Mahabir Pun trekked long distances to check emails in Nepal. Until he brought the Internet home to his remote village. PHOTO: Hiking for Emails, Vimeo
In India, there exists this dwindling practice of writing letters to the Editor. Of publications. Most people write on current affairs, some write to highlight issues that range from a lack of streetlights to dissent. Some write in to commend actions, public campaigns. A handpicked bunch of these are published in a column titled Letters to the Editor. Mahabir Pun of a remote village in the mountainous country of Nepal wrote to BBC, asking for help to bring the Internet home.
Korogocho skaters are taking advantage of some of the best streets in one of Nairobi’s poorest slums. PHOTO: Will Swanson
Can a paved road and a pair of used skates aid development? An emphatic yes. This is the story of a failed slum upgrading project that saw the light of day when kids took to the streets. Over scavenging in the dump for things they could resell, the children took to the streets this time to skate. To keep out of trouble. To compete. For a chance at life.
What is it about the sea? The fact that it changes, and the light changes, and the ships change. The feel of being entwined with the ocean? That when we go back to it – whether it is to sail or to watch it – we are going back from whence we came.
– Rosanna Abrachan
The teamwork involved in crafting the videos that help define the guest experience at Xandari Harbour was as satisfying as creating the property itself. Thank you Anoodha and the RAXA Collective – Xandari Harbour teams!
Stay tuned for more!
Greater vasa parrot. Credit: Frank Wouters
Thanks to Ed Yong, writing in National Geographic, for this brief look at how Tool-Using Parrots Use Pebbles to Grind Seashells:
In the spring of 2013, Megan Lambert noticed the greater vasa parrots of Lincolnshire Wildlife Park doing something odd. They looked like they were licking the cockle shells that lined the floor of their outdoor enclosure. But when Lambert looked closer, she noticed that they were holding a pebble or date pit in their beaks, and rubbing these against the shells.
They were using tools. Continue reading
In keeping with the resolution made here, to share more in 2016 of what we care about , the buck starts here. No excuses for my recent quietude, but a note of thanks to those I handed off blogging to in 2015 so I could tend to our organization’s growth and development. Rosanna in India, Jocelyn in Costa Rica, Seth in Ithaca & Jamaica & Costa Rica, and a cast of others too numerous to name now, all kept our blog real, lively and on point. Thanks to them for that.
Now it is time for me to share again, and I may as well start with our organization. 2015 was a milestone year, and we have started 2016 with new leaders for both our Asia and our Latin America operations. In the photo to the left you see Saji Joseph, who now oversees La Paz Group’s Asia region from the organization’s home office in Kerala, India. Just one thing to say about him for now.
When we started this organization in 2010 the first thing I did to prepare for what would eventually become La Paz Group was to ask everyone I met in the hospitality business: who do you consider to be the best hotelier in India? The response was consistent, with stories about Saji’s leadership in various stories that sounded far-fetched to me at first, but now I believe completely. Maybe one day he will share some of those stories in these pages…
In addition to the successful planting of millions of trees and bushes in parts of Tigray, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in Africa as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), the announcement of another ambitious initiative by several African countries during the United Nations’ summit of climate change in Paris could spearhead the continent to becoming the world’s cleanest in the following decades.
Katrina Ceguera tends JetBlue’s farm outside Terminal 5 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. PHOTO: Chelsea Brodsky /JetBlue
Airports are growing a ‘green’ conscience, and how! If Kochi in Kerala, India is home to the world’s first airport to be completely powered by solar energy, then the Galapagos airstrip is not far behind. Going off-grid is just one way to offset massive carbon footprints left behind by the use of fossil fuels. Another way might be to add a touch of green – like JetBlue did at the New York airport.
JetBlue was intent on growing potatoes and other produce at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. It took three years of jumping through hoops before the T5 Farm, named for its location outside Terminal 5, came to fruition in early October, the company says.
Yao Ming has teamed up with the conservation nonprofit WildAid to spread the word that shark fin soup bears bad news. PHOTO: Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty
Yao Ming may now be a retired professional basketball player but him making it to the All-NBA Team five times is not a forgotten feat. That and the fact that at the time of his final season, he was the tallest active player in the NBA, at 2.29 m (7 ft 6 in). Ming, who was born in Shanghai, China, started playing for the Shanghai Sharks as a teenager. Now, miles away from the court, his life is still closely linked to the sharks – the animal kind. Ming is a strong advocate on protecting sharks and is pushing for a ban on shark fin soup, a delicacy that significantly contributes to the estimate of 1 in 4 sharks now being endangered.
The number of sharks in our seas has been steadily decreasing for decades. About 100 million sharks a year are killed — 73% of those are targeted for their fins, which are usually cut off before the shark is left to die.
The smallest and most isolated of the Canary Islands, El Hierro, has a way of combining hydro and wind power that may allow it, one day, to get all its energy from renewable sources. PHOTO: BBC
The question is not about who has the densest forests or flora resources showing up high estimates in green. It is one of keeping up a sustained model of efficient use of alternative and natural sources of energy. And on that front, El Hierro seems like it’s well on its way to self-sufficiency on the energy front.
For more than 30 years, El Hierro has been dreaming of becoming self-sufficient. And this year it took a big step forward. At the end of June its new hydro-wind facility, Gorona del Viento, came fully on stream and in July and August it provided roughly half of the island’s energy needs.That means the island’s 10,000 inhabitants are suddenly less reliant on supplies of diesel arriving over unpredictable seas from Tenerife, 200km away. In July, Gorona del Viento saved 300 tonnes of fossil fuels, but that is predicted to rise to 500 tonnes per month before long – the equivalent of saving 40,000 barrels of oil and 19,000 tonnes of emitted CO2 per year.
Catharine A. Conley, a NASA planetary protection officer. PHOTO: Paul E. Alers/NASA
You’ve heard of a myriad job profiles, but what do you think are the responsibilities of a planetary protection officer? This officer knows, and all her efforts are now focused on keeping micro-organisms and spores from Earth away from Mars.
At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Catharine A. Conley has a lofty job title: planetary protection officer. But with no extraterrestrial invasions on the horizon, Dr. Conley’s job is not so much protecting Earth from aliens as protecting other planets from Earth. Mars, in particular. “If we’re going to look for life on Mars, it would be really kind of lame to bring Earth life and find that instead,” Dr. Conley said.
Over 5,000 books make up the library at the local police station in Tirupur, a small town in Tamil Nadu state of India. PHOTO: BetterIndia
Can libraries be taken out of the four walls of an educational institution? Can it find a place in the midst of communities, accessible not only for children but for all who seek better understanding, greater learning? Like these 5,000 books that traveled from the US to a tiny police station in Tamil Nadu, India.
Organikos 