Things

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On an Unexpected Beauty

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard. (Gene Wolfe, writer)
Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world. (Giuseppe Mazzini, activist)
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Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last art, but fame relates all, and often more than all. (Thomas Fuller, clergyman)
If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect. (Brian Eno, musician)
I recently saw this 5+-minute report from CBS News about a place that is old, but special – simple, yet complex – beautiful, yet haunting. All this equals a sum of amazing. Enjoy.
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On Wonderful Skies

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I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings. (Gustave Flaubert, novelist)

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. (Coco Chanel, designer)

You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it’s like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos. (Tom Hanks, actor)

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On an Edible Color Palette

Life is like a jar of jellybeans – It doesn’t matter what you’re gonna get – they all taste good.  (Vishal Singh)
I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every ‘Harry Potter’ book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way. (Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO)
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans. (Ronald Reagan, former US President)
Yes, this Explore is about jelly beans. This is not a musical tribute to them, but a very interesting less-than-4-minute report I saw on CBS Sunday Morning earlier this year. Watch and enjoy.
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On Exploring a Musical Design

Introduced in 1202 by Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci), the Fibonacci Sequence is a series of numbers formed when the next number is determined by adding the previous two numbers. By definition, the series begins with 0, 1.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, …
The Fibonacci Sequence is also related to the Golden Ratio – the divine proportion – the golden mean – the ratio that is most pleasing to humans – the ratio applied in architecture, drawing, painting, designs, and more – the ratio commonly found in nature. For your weekend Explore, here’s an original musical composition inspired by the Fibonacci Sequence. Enjoy, and for those needing more about Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio, see the links below the video.
Two related past posts
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On an Alaskan Sky

From wonder into wonder existence opens. (Lao Tzu, philosopher)

The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer. (Philip Pullman, “The Golden Compass”)

The northern cheek of the heavens,
By a sudden glory kissed,
Blushed to the tint of roses,
And hid in an amber mist,
And through the northern pathway,
Trailing her robe of flame,
The queenly Borealis
In her dazzling beauty came!
(May Riley Smith, “Aurora Borealis”)

O’er all the widespread northern skies,
How glows and waves that heavenly light,
Where dome, and arch, and column rise
Magnificently bright!
(Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, “The Aurora Borealis”)

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. (Henry David Thoreau, author-poet-philosopher)

I’ve stood outside my house in Montana looking at the northern lights… crackling against the night sky. To me, that’s magic. (Christopher Paolini, author)