Riversider Magazine Hosts Inaugural Photo Show and Sale
The event at the Raincross District is an opportunity to buy prints of photos from the Riversider pages and beyond.
A prompt to encourage your practice of creativity this week from Riversider and local author Larry Burns.
Do you need a low stress way to include seven minutes of creative contemplation into your week? Consider this your helpful nudge towards a slightly more creative life. If it helps, come back every week for a quick hit of creative contemplation. Each week I’ll share a new nudge. It will include a Thing (T), a Place (P), and a Sense(S) for your focus, a TPS creative nudge.
In our last creative escapade, we networked our way into the tactile world of business cards, exploring the stories and the connections they weave into our lives. Did you make some magic while constructing card castles to house your dream job? Folding paper airplanes or other soaring objects out of these static little pocket billboards embraces the tangible and the symbolic; it’s making a flyer out of a flier. Even if you just used those seven minutes of creative contemplation to throw out a few stacks of old business cards, I hope the time left you looking ahead to the next story in your day.
This week, we're shifting our gaze downward, to the bustling metropolises that exist right beneath our feet. This is a moment for us to work in stillness, letting our creative object this week do all of the work. And they can work! It's time to get up close and personal with one of nature's most industrious creative architects: ants.
Their complex societies, intricate communication systems, and unparalleled teamwork are a testament to the wonders of the natural world. For this creative exercise, walk around outdoors until you find a nest of ants. From a safe distance, use your sense of sight to take in all the activity. How does it feel to watch something move while you stay still?
As we step outdoors and ground ourselves, we're not just connecting with the earth but with the myriad of life forms that shape and enrich it. And while ants might be easy to overlook, or look down on, they play a pivotal role in our ecosystems and have much to teach us about ingenuity, collaboration, and adaptability…all key ingredients to a healthy creative lifestyle!
To better engage with this rich world at your tiptoes (ChatGPT4 and I could not find an equivalent to “fingertips” here, can you?), put your mind and body to one or more of these activities:
Ants, in their tiny yet tenacious ways, remind us that moments of wonder are just a few steps from wherever we find ourselves. As you engage with your sense of wonder this week, remember that creativity isn't always about grand gestures or monumental projects. Sometimes, it's about pausing, observing, and finding inspiration in all the small things. Might our world not be all that different? Is it possible that the world we love today is the result of ceaseless effort, and the unsung heroes of our buried histories that shape our world, one grain of sand at a time?
Note: This column written with the help of ChatGPT Plus and related Plugins.
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