TED has a lot of interesting speakers, and a good collection of photographer speeches. DVAfoto pointed me out to Aaron Huey’s recent TED talk about the Lakotah tribe in the Black Hills. It is a gripping and poignant history lesson with powerful images to boot…once that have danced around in my head since Harper’s Magazine ran a portfolio of them months ago. I’ll be honest, this is an upsetting video that will make you question how much of a hero Lincoln was, and our government’s attitude in building this nation amongst other things. Upsetting pieces of information are good, but these days it can get overwhelming. I woke up to the news that yet another Illinois politician was lying on his resume (was I surprised, no…but maybe my idiotic optimism gets the better of me after going two days without hearing of a politician’s abuse of the public’s trust…which, wait…I don’t think the public trusts politicians so nevermind.) That combined with the BP oil spill, and their efforts to quell media coverage, their use of toxic chemicals to try and hide the problem under the ocean surface…and this is just Sunday morning’s news. Tomorrow will be a brand new day and give us many reasons to question the direction this country is going.

I hope you get some sunshine. I hope you watch this video first though, so if anything it helps you question just what we stand for and how good it really may, or may not be. I don’t mean to sound negative or condescending, or to say go do something about this, because I would be a hypocrite. What frustrates me most in my world is simply the lack of awareness and consideration, as well as the desire to learn the truth about these sorts of issues. It’s one thing to feel helpless about such issues but it’s another to not know and not try to know or worse to not even care.