May 6, 2012
6:54 pm

posted by
Tamsin Smith

Human Nature, you say. Is it good or evil? Innate or mutable? Varied or universal? Metaphysically connected or scientifically determined? These debates populate the purgatory of Western political philosophy. And though I don’t intend to journey back through the centuries, nodding at Aristotle, Rousseau, and Locke along the way, I do wonder what to make of this divine human comedy that we call existence. In these inquiries, my solace is the belief that our questions are often more important than our answers.

Certain questions, in fact, beg never to be settled. There’s grandeur in the unknown and unknowable. Insight floats in mystery. And sometimes, we are blessed with encounters that stop the thinking mind and stir a sweetness that salves all sorrow and fear. It comes from within, an ancient vibration, like a bell banishing disquiet. Some can summon this in themselves. A rare few raise it in others. Great poets strike this secret chord. They do so by conjuring music. And great composers, of course, do this too, even more directly. (Click “Read More”)

April 27, 2012
6:32 pm

posted by
Tamsin Smith

I’ve just returned from China. There’s much to say about impressions upon visiting the country of my ancestors. It’s likely too much for just one blog, but I’ll start in the bone deep spots and leave politics for later. My maternal grandmother was Chinese, so one-fourth of my blond and green-eyed self, has some roots in a land that’s kept me (and those who look like me) on the other side of a wall for many rough decades. I went there hoping to peer over that wall, not as an interloper, but with the wish that I’d recognize something of myself in the soul of the place.

To do so, I had to shut my eyes against much that lies on the surface. I’m not saying that I could or will ignore the pollution, restrictions on freedom, and seemingly single-minded focus on making money. I’m only saying that beyond those (maybe even because of them) I wanted to find a living truth beneath the skin, some abiding values that would transcend time and space and circumstance. (Click “Read More”)

April 10, 2012
10:00 pm

posted by
Tamsin Smith

It’s National Poetry Month and I’ve been overindulging. Last night, to sober up, I dimmed the reading lamp, searched for a film to watch, and stumbled upon the documentary Rivers and Tides. Director Thomas Riedelsheimer’s portrait of Andy Goldsworthy is a blissful thing,

I was familiar with Goldsworthy’s public sculpture and have seen a number of his private commissions, but his more ephemeral creations — so richly and lovingly featured in the film — were a revelation. Goldsworthy partners with nature’s found objects (stones, twigs, leaves, streams, snow, shadow, and sunlight) to co-create works of startling beauty. Part of what makes these impromptu onsite installations so remarkable is that they exist now only on film, either as the photographs that Goldsworthy himself takes or in the moving pictures of this documentary. (Click “Read More”)

March 10, 2012
7:53 pm

posted by
Tamsin Smith

It must be the onset of Spring Fever. Everyone around me appears to be in a muddle about love. It seems that aligning relationship stars is much harder than even Shakespeare suggests, for at least a play has a finite end. In a fictional world, we can go on believing “All’s Well that Ends Well” and imagining Betram and Helena blissed out forever.

But life is no Rubic’s Cube. It has its paths and patterns, but there’s no formula signifying perfect alignment, much less completion. Yet the yen to be “done” – even if temporarily — is natural. Making an affirmative choice is part of finding, if not peace, then at least safe ground in a thicket of cross-cutting options. (Click “Read More”)

February 26, 2012
12:00 pm

posted by
Tamsin Smith

This Sunday — day of rest for the restless – I’m signed up to take a yoga class for writers. I love the idea of unleashing my imagination while aligning my spine. Time to get limber, physically and lyrically. Enter me, muse, through the sweat of my arm balance, the tears of my back bend. Deliver me from distraction and ennui, that I may find stillness in sequence, flow in a single ah! bright breath. (Click “Read More”)

January 20, 2012
2:35 am

posted by
Tamsin Smith

“Everything indicates – the smallest does, and the largest does…”

excerpts from Walt Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Ahoy! What a week I’ve had. Whitman provides the refrain for a string of days, rich in parts that furnish themselves toward the soul. That would be my soul, certainly, but also the eternal human soul. At each turn, I’ve witnessed reminders that a common experience envelops us all. Our personal details may vary at the surface, but beneath it all, we are akin. We are pilgrims driven by the same rough quests and questions, dreams and dread, losses and longings, heroics and humbled awe. (Click “Read More”)

November 25, 2011
11:37 am

posted by
Tamsin Smith

Walt Whitman is by turns comforting and disturbing me today. It’s why I sought him out. I’m overdue for a good cage rattling. Time to tip myself sideways and reexamine the landscape.

So, I sent my soul out to loaf on the metaphorical grass with instructions to listen for the password primeval, knowing that footsteps of my mind and the beatings of my own heart are all that will sound. Sure enough, the echoes came from within. I caught my own thoughts dancing with words of wisdom from friends and relatives, and mixing with the lines of poems and songs that I carry like talismans. These collected scraps are the stories we tell ourselves. They are our master works, our personal legends. The secret lies in the listening. The gift is finding insight from both the spider’s silken whisper and the wind whistling through the web. (Click “Read More”)

November 16, 2011
1:26 am

posted by
Tamsin Smith

Adolescent girls are standing up and stepping out across California this month to make their voices heard, declaring “it’s not fair” that girls who share their dreams for the future don’t have equal access to opportunities in countries like Ethiopia, Malawi, Guatemala, and Liberia. This is not simply about protest, however, these girls insist that change is at hand. They should know. These Philanthro-Teens are the ones making it happen, girl by girl.

Girl Up, a campaign of the United Nations Foundation, brought their Unite for Girls Tour to San Francisco this week. Gathering at the global headquarters of Levi Strauss & Co., teens from across the Bay Area joined peers like actress Alexandra Dadarrio, singer Olivia Somerlyn and the Girls Project Girl Performance Collective, in rallying the local crowd to help create a world where all girls have the chance to be safe, healthy, educated, and ready to lead…. (Click “Read More”)

October 20, 2011
9:57 am

posted by
Tamsin Smith

Back at the start of (RED), I used to refer to our team, our partners, and our growing cadre of inspired consumers as “a crazy band of fearless warriors” for believing that simple items like t-shirts and iPods could help eliminate AIDS in Africa. (RED) has since raised roughly $175 million for women and children impacted by HIV/AIDS in Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Ghana, and Rwanda. Sometimes crazy and fearless is the only way to move the needle when the status quo is unacceptable. (Click “Read More”)

9:47 am

posted by
Tamsin Smith

Just another day and a half in Cape Town, then we move on to Zambia, in search of more products for OBene to bring to an American audience. Our mission is to delight you with desirable finds and give back 10 percent of the sales price for you to spend – invest rather – with the charity of your choosing. And why shouldn’t empowerment swing all ways? This is the democratization of beneficial buying. (Click “Read More”)