Joe Biden's first speech as president

President Biden begins the daunting task of unifying a divided America :  "We,the American people, seek a more perfect union"

https://youtu.be/cTtKDN4LgL8

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-president-joe-biden-s-full-inauguration-speech-1.5880671

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, arrive at his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20. PATRICK SEMANSKY/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chief Justice Roberts, Vice-President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Vice-President Pence and my distinguished guests, my fellow Americans: This is America’s day. This is democracy’s day. A day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve. Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew. And America has risen to the challenge. Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause: the cause of democracy. The people – the will of the people – has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded.

We’ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.

So now, on this hallowed ground – where just a few days ago violence sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundation – we come together as one nation, under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries. As we look ahead in our uniquely American way – restless, bold, optimistic – and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be.

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I thank my predecessors of both parties for their presence here today. I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

And I know ... and I know the resilience of our Constitution and the strength, the strength of our nation, as does President Carter who I spoke with last night, who cannot be with us today, but whom we salute for his lifetime in service.

I’ve just taken the sacred oath each of those patriots have taken. The oath first sworn by George Washington. But the American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us, on we the people, who seek a more perfect union.

This is a great nation. We are good people. And over the centuries, through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we’ve come so far – but we still have far to go.

We’ll press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities. Much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build and much to gain. Few people in our nation’s history have been more challenged, or found a time more challenging or difficult, than the time we’re in now.

A once-in-a-century virus that silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II. Millions of jobs have been lost; hundreds of thousands of businesses closed. A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. A cry for survival comes from the planet itself – a cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront and we will defeat.

To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity, unity.

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Jackson Smith, 8, cheers and claps as he watches the inauguration with his family at their home in Beverly Hills, Mich. EMILY ELCONIN/REUTERS

In another January, on New Year’s Day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the president said, and I quote: “If my name ever goes down into history, it’ll be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause.

Uniting to fight the foes we face: anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.

With unity, we can do great things, important things. We can right wrongs. We can put people to work in good jobs. We can teach our children in safe schools. We can overcome the deadly virus.

We can reward work and rebuild the middle class and make health care secure for all.

We can deliver racial justice and we can make America once again the leading force for good in the world.

National Guard members salute in front of the Capitol building during the inauguration ceremony. ALLISON SHELLEY/REUTERS

I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know that the forces that divide us are deep and they are real.

But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.

The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured. Through civil war, the Great Depression, world war, 9/11; through struggle, sacrifices and setbacks – our better angels have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us – enough of us – have come together to carry all of us forward.

And we can do that now. History, faith and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other, not as adversaries, but as neighbours. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature.

For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos.

This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you, we will not fail. We have never, ever, ever, ever failed in America when we’ve acted together.

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A Trump supporter holds a flag in West Palm Beach, Fla., on inauguration day. MARCO BELLO/REUTERS

And so today, at this time, in this place, let’s start afresh, all of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another.

Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.

And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated, and even manufactured.

My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this. America has to be better than this, and I believe America is so much better than this.

Just look around. Here we stand, in the shadow of the Capitol Dome – as it was mentioned earlier – completed amid the Civil War, when the union itself was literally hanging in the balance.

Yet, we endured. We prevailed. Here we stand, looking out on the great mall where Dr. King spoke of his dream. Here we stand where, 108 years ago at another inaugural, thousands of protesters tried to block brave women marching for the right to vote. And today, we mark the swearing-in of the first woman in American history elected to national office, Vice-President Kamala Harris. Don’t tell me things can’t change!

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Open this photo in gallery

The 1913 inauguration Mr. Biden was referring to was Woodrow Wilson's, shown at top. The capital saw a large suffragist march the day before. He contrasted the era when American women couldn't vote (which ended nationally in 1920) the swearing-in of Kamala Harris as vice-president. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; JONATHAN ERNST/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Here we stand, across the Potomac from Arlington cemetery, where heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion rest in eternal peace.

And here we stand, just days after a riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, to drive us from this sacred ground.

It did not happen. It will never happen. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Not ever.

To all those who supported our campaign: I’m humbled by the faith that you’ve placed in us.

To all of those who did not support us, let me say this: Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America. The right to dissent peaceably. Within the guardrails of our republic, it is perhaps this nation’s greatest strength.

Yet hear me clearly: Disagreement must not lead to disunion. And I pledge this to you: I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. And I promise you, I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.

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Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and their spouses attend a church service before the inauguration at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. TOM BRENNER/REUTERS

Many centuries ago, St. Augustine, a saint of my church, wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love. Defined by the common objects of their love. What are the common objects we as Americans love, that define us as Americans?

I think we know: Opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honour and, yes, the truth. The recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies, lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and a responsibility as citizens, as Americans and especially as leaders – leaders who have pledged to honour our Constitution and protect our nation – to defend the truth and defeat the lies.

Look, I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand, like my dad, they lay in bed wondering: Can I keep my health care? Can I pay my mortgage? Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.

But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts; if we show a little tolerance and humility; and if we are willing to stand in the other person’s shoes – as my mom would say – just for a moment. Stand in their shoes.

Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days, when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand. That’s how it has to be. That’s what we do for one another.

And if we are this way, our country will be stronger, more prosperous, more ready for the future. And we can still disagree.

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Christine Alverno and her daughter Julia Crump, of Troy, Mich., try to get a glimpse of Mr. Biden as he leaves church on inauguration day. JACQUELYN MARTIN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

My fellow Americans, in the work ahead of us, we’re going to need each other. We need all our strength to persevere through this dark winter.

We’re entering what may be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus. We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation, one nation. And I promise you this: As the Bible says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” We will get through this together. Together.

Look, folks, all my colleagues that I served with in the House and the Senate up here: We all understand, the world is watching, watching all of us today. So here’s my message to those beyond our borders: America has been tested, and we’ve come out stronger for it. We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again – not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. And we’ll lead not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. We’ll be a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress and security.

Look, you all know, we’ve been through so much in this nation. In my first act as President, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silent prayer to remember all those who we lost in this past year to the pandemic, those 400,000 fellow Americans: moms, dads, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, neighbours and co-workers. We’ll honour them by becoming the people and the nation we know we can and should be. So, I ask you, let’s say a silent prayer for those who have lost their lives, and those left behind, and for our country.

Amen.

Flags line the National Mall in front of the Capitol, representing the Americans who aren't able to watch the event in person due to the COVID-19 restrictions on large crowds in Washington. STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES

Folks, this is a time of testing. We face an attack on our democracy and on truth, a raging virus, growing inequity, the sting of systemic racism, a climate in crisis, America’s role in the world.

Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways – but the fact is, we face them all at once, presenting this nation with one of the gravest responsibilities we’ve had.

Now we’re going to be tested. Are we going to step up, all of us? It’s time for boldness, for there is so much to do.

And this is certain: I promise you, we will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era. Will we rise to the occasion, is the question. Will we master this rare and difficult hour? Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world to our children? I believe we must. I’m sure you do as well. I believe we will.

And when we do, we’ll write the next great chapter in the history of the United States of America, the American story, a story that might sound something like a song that means a lot to me. It’s called American Anthem. And there’s one verse that stands out, at least for me, and it goes like this:

The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day

What shall be our legacy? What will our children say?

Let me know in my heart when my days are through

America, America, I gave my best to you

Let’s, us, add our own work and prayers to the unfolding story of our great nation.

If we do this, then when our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us: “They gave their best, they did their duty, they healed a broken land.”

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Joe Biden is sworn in as president by Chief Justice John Roberts as Jill Biden holds the Bible. ANDREW HARNIK/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

My fellow Americans, I close the day where I began, with a sacred oath before God and all of you. I give you my word: I will always level with you. I will defend the Constitution. I’ll defend our democracy. I’ll defend America. And I’ll give all, all of you, keep everything I do in your service, thinking not of power but of possibilities, not of personal injuries but the public good.

And together we shall write an American story of hope, not fear. Of unity, not division. Of light, not darkness. A story of decency and dignity, love and healing, greatness and goodness.

May this be the story that guides us, the story that inspires us and the story that tells ages yet to come that we answered the call of history. We met the moment. Democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch, but thrived, that America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another and generations to follow.

So, with purpose and resolve, we turn to those tasks of our time, sustained by faith, driven by conviction and devoted to one another and the country we love with all our hearts.

May God bless America and may God protect our troops.

Thank you, America.

The Bidens leave the Capitol's west front after the swearing-in ceremony. CHANG W. LEE/POOL VIA REUTERS

Forces of autocracy threaten democracy in America by attempting to use force to disallow and reverse the outcome of a legitimate democratic election

Full text transcript here: 

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.5871385/january-13-2021-episode-transcript-1.5872935

 IMPEACHMENT: FORMER REPUBLICAN Guest: Steve Schmidt 

 CH: Donald Trump is now the only president in United States history to be impeached twice. This afternoon, the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted in favour of an article of impeachment that accused Mr. Trump of incitement of insurrection. The proceedings have revealed fractures in the president's party in his final days in office. Ten Republican representatives also voted in favour of impeachment, including the number three House Republican Liz Cheney. Steve Schmidt is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project and a longtime GOP strategist who left the party during the Trump presidency. 

 CO: Mr. Schmidt, no House Republicans voted in favour of impeachment last time. What does it say to you that there were 10 who support impeachment today?

 STEVE SCHMIDT: Well, it says that. The Republican Party has broken into two factions, an autocratic faction, which is the Trump faction which incited insurrection, incited violence at the United States capital, which fell last week to Trump's thugs. And it shows that there is a bipartisan consensus that wants accountability for the criminal president of the United States and the unfathomable, unprecedented breach of his oath of office.

 CO: A number of the speeches that people gave today, some of them clearly still support Mr. Trump and his rhetoric and his claims. But numbers of others said that they condemned him for what they did or criticised him, but they felt that this wasn't the way to go, that it was time to seek a higher ground, I think someone said to tone down the rhetoric. Should they be regarded differently amongst the Republicans?

 SS: They should not be regarded differently. And the offer they're making is extremely disingenuous. "Tone down the rhetoric" after four years of complicit silence, listening to Donald Trump stoke a cold civil war that culminated in violent desecration of the floor of the House of Representatives, the floor of the United States Senate, Confederate flags being carried through the Rotunda, the United States Capitol, the Citadel of freedom, the people's house? At the end of the day, what they offer is appeasement to all of us who believe in American democracy. What they offer is surrender to the autocratic movement that Trump has birthed in the United States. And at the end of the day, we saw last week seven United States senators and 147 members of Congress rise in the name of a conspiracy theory that was factually rejected on 60 different occasions in federal courts seeking to disenfranchise tens of millions of Black voters to install the loser of the presidential election as the winner, which would have brought about the downfall of the American republic in its 244th year of independence. 

 CO: Do you think that the Republicans who voted against impeachment today and those who were voting last week, do you think that they actually believe that -- they actually support him -- or are they afraid of him, afraid of his influence and power. But there are a sizable number, millions of people in your country, who support those people who were on Capitol Hill on last Wednesday. So why is that? 

 SS: Well, obviously, a majority of the country does not support American autocracy -- a majority of the country decisively voted for Joe Biden. But we have a problem in the country because the president of the United States has been faithless to American democracy. And we see this all over the world. Canada is not immune to this. We see this in Europe. We see Democratic rescission everywhere we look. It's a dangerous movement. So we're going to be in a fight in America for the next 25 or 30 years where the pro-democracy side can never again lose a national election to the autocracy side, or it will be the last election we ever have in America.

 CO: You said at the beginning that there was a split, a clear schism in the Republican Party, what we saw today. So what happens? Do you see the party does split apart? Is that the future?

 SS: Yeah. Look, the autocrat will not be able to sit next to the small-d Democrats inside the Republican conference. 147 people rose to throw out the results of an election that would have brought about the downfall of the country, that's not a reconcilable position. You have a conservative movement led by Liz Cheney and an autocratic faction led by Kevin McCarthy. And one of the things that you're seeing is this movement by corporate America to fundamentally defund the autocratic faction of the Republican Party by refusing to give contributions ever again to any candidate, to any member, to any committee controlled by any member who rose to strike down American democracy, who rose to disenfranchised millions of Black voters, who rose in defence of conspiracy theories, who lied to the country, embraced the big lie and incited insanity until it spilt over into violence in the capital of the United States

If a photon had eyes, what would it see? What does the universe look like from the point of view of a photon?

Seeing is not always believing!  

There is a deeper reality beneath that wch appears to our senses

Reality is not always as it appears to the senses!

 In some ways The entire physical world as it presents itself to our senses is an illusion. The evidence of our senses is often unreliable. We should not be controlled or dominated by the evidence of. our senses alone. To blindly believe in and accept the evidence of our senses at face value , is to be fooled! The eye may see the large as small To our eyes the sun appears the size of a bowl; but reason/intelligence tells us that the sun is much,much larger!. Our eyes see the sun traversing the sky from dawn to dusk, but reason tells us this is a perceptual illusion caused by the rotation of the earth. When we stand on a basketball we are very aware of the curvature of the sphere we are standing on; but when we stand on a sphere the size of the earth we have no awareness of its curvature...and indeed the earth appears to our senses to be flat When we stand still on the surface of the earth we are completely unaware of any sensation of motion...yet the earth is orbiting the sun at the astonishing speed of 29.658 km/second. (Total circumference of earth's orbit divided by the solar year is 365 days,5 hours,48 minutes, 46 seconds!) ... and the velocity of our Sun's orbit around the galaxy  is about 220 km/s.(230 million years to complete one orbit around t he center of our Milky Way galaxy)

There are countless other instances (e.g. Moonlight is actually (reflected) sunlight...and stars are not stars at all, but distant suns!). where reason belies the evidence of our senses. This does not mean we should distrust and totally dismiss the evidence of our senses (our senses are our primary means of acquiring knowledge) ...but rather that we must look deeper. We must question, verify and interpret this sensory evidence according to reason and intelligence.

If we depart from the earth at the speed of light, to our eyes the earth disappears (becomes invisible)because no light leaving the earth can reach us.When we look back at the earth our eyes can only see blackness. But reason tells us that the earth is receding from us at the speed of light,and the distance between us is increasing at. 299792.458 km/second. Or to put it in another equivalent way the space/distance between us is expanding at approximately 300,000. km/sec  

     

  All motion is measured relative to a stationary object or fixed pointl According to the relativity of motion, no observational frame of reference has preferential status or superiority/exclusivity If we transpose our view point (observational frame of reference) to the. photon and use it as our fixed frame of reference, it is the earth that is moving away from the photon at light speed. This " thought experiment" contravenes the dogma that no object possessing mass can travel at the speed of light.

 This .may be why any light or light source moving away from us at light speed is invisible and undetectable (as in "dark energy/dark matter"). Perhaps we should think of darkness not as the absence of light,but rather as light that is receding from us, or unable to catch up to us! When we peer deeper into the apparently dark spaces between the stars we see more stars and more light. The deeper into space we look, the more light we are able to see/capture. Is there a way of knowing how much of what exists in the universe Is in the form of light (electromagnetic radiation)?

rhaps Most of what. exists is in the form of light, most of wc h is invisible and not measureable

It is a mystery how the further back in space we look,the further back in time we see! Is there a limit to how deep we can look and how far back we can see?! Perhaps some day we will be able to see all the way back to the light that was transmitted from the original source 14.7 billion years ago! Perhaps we will be able to see the Big Bang ( the First Cause)-- the beginning of the universe! The beginning of time!

The buzz of bees is music to a flower's ears.

 

Flowers can hear buzzing bees—and it makes their nectar sweeter

PHOTOGRAPH BY DENNIS FRATES/ ALAMY READ CAPTION

“I’d like people to understand that hearing is not only for ears.”

4 Minute Read

By Michelle Z. Donahue

PUBLISHED January 15, 2019

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/flowers-can-hear-bees-and-make-their-nectar-sweeter/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=facebook::cmp=editorial::add=fb20201230science-resurfflowershearing::rid=&sf241420669=1&fbclid=IwAR3CuoJbAo7BwCsVhum_qGRNeGqDB-Ar3WdwJMf9ygtazhTXjqvtLmPY6bQ

Even on the quietest days, the world is full of sounds: birds chirping, wind rustling through trees, and insects humming about their business. The ears of both predator and prey are attuned to one another’s presence.

Sound is so elemental to life and survival that it prompted Tel Aviv University researcher Lilach Hadany to ask: What if it wasn’t just animals that could sense sound—what if plants could, too? The first experiments to test this hypothesis, published recently on the pre-print server bioRxiv, suggest that in at least one case, plants can hear, and it confers a real evolutionary advantage.

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Hadany’s team looked at evening primroses (Oenothera drummondii) and found that within minutes of sensing vibrations from pollinators’ wings, the plants temporarily increased the concentration of sugar in their flowers’ nectar. In effect, the flowers themselves served as ears, picking up the specific frequencies of bees’ wings while tuning out irrelevant sounds like wind.

The sweetest sound

As an evolutionary theoretician, Hadany says her question was prompted by the realization that sounds are a ubiquitous natural resource—one that plants would be wasting if they didn’t take advantage of it as animals do. If plants had a way of hearing and responding to sound, she figured, it could help them survive and pass on their genetic legacy.

Since pollination is key to plant reproduction, her team started by investigating flowers. Evening primrose, which grows wild on the beaches and in parks around Tel Aviv, emerged as a good candidate, since it has a long bloom time and produces measurable quantities of nectar.

A brown and yellow hoverfly rests on a dewdrop-covered evening primrose in the U.K.

Photograph by MichaelGrantWildlife/ Alamy

To test the primroses in the lab, Hadany’s team exposed plants to five sound treatments: silence, recordings of a honeybee from four inches away, and computer-generated sounds in low, intermediate, and high frequencies. Plants given the silent treatment—placed under vibration-blocking glass jars—had no significant increase in nectar sugar concentration. The same went for plants exposed to high-frequency (158 to 160 kilohertz) and intermediate-frequency (34 to 35 kilohertz) sounds.

But for plants exposed to playbacks of bee sounds (0.2 to 0.5 kilohertz) and similarly low-frequency sounds (0.05 to 1 kilohertz), the final analysis revealed an unmistakable response. Within three minutes of exposure to these recordings, sugar concentration in the plants increased from between 12 and 17 percent to 20 percent.

A sweeter treat for pollinators, their theory goes, may draw in more insects, potentially increasing the chances of successful cross-pollination. Indeed, in field observations, researchers found that pollinators were more than nine times more common around plants another pollinator had visited within the previous six minutes.

“We were quite surprised when we found out that it actually worked,” Hadany says. “But after repeating it in other situations, in different seasons, and with plants grown both indoors and outdoors, we feel very confident in the result.”

Flowers for ears

As the team thought about how sound works, via the transmission and interpretation of vibrations, the role of the flowers became even more intriguing. Though blossoms vary widely in shape and size, a good many are concave or bowl-shaped. This makes them perfect for receiving and amplifying sound waves, much like a satellite dish.

Full text of Biden speech

Read the full text of Joe Biden's speech after historic election Biden is set to become the next president after a historic win. By ABC News Joe Biden's full speech after becoming president-elect Joe Biden, the president-elect of the United States, addressed the nation Saturday night after the tumultuous and historic election against Donald Trump came to a conclusion earlier in the day. Biden, a son of Scranton, Pennsylvania, fittingly garnered the final electoral votes he needed to go back to the White House as the apparent winner of the Keystone State, according to ABC News analysis. The man who served alongside the first Black president for eight years is making history again, bringing along the first female vice president in Kamala Harris, riding a shift in independent voters, many of whom chose Trump in 2016 but made a different choice this time around. Nearly 50 years into his political career and two unsuccessful presidential runs later, Biden is set to ascend to the highest office in the land amid the historic coronavirus pandemic, deep political divisions among the electorate and simmering racial unrest, all of which converged on the country in the months leading up to the election. Biden, who suffered deep losses over the course of his life, including his son Beau, pledged to be a president to all Americans and push to heal the deep divisions in the U.S. "I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify," he told the ecstatic crowed in Delaware, the state he represented in the Senate for decades. "Who doesn't see red states and blue states, only sees the United States. ******************** Read his full speech here: Hello. My fellow Americans and the people who brought me to the dance, Delawareans. I see my buddy Tom -- Sen. Tom Carper down there and I think -- I think Sen. Coons is there and I think the governor's around. Is that Ruth Ann? And that former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner? Most importantly, my sisters in law and my sister Valerie. Anyway ... Folks, the people of this nation have spoken. They've delivered us a clear victory, a convincing victory, a victory for we, the people. We’ve won with the most votes ever cast on a presidential ticket in the history of the nation, 74 million! And what I must admit has surprised me, tonight we're seeing all over this nation, all cities in all parts of the country, indeed across the world, an outpouring of joy, of hope of renewed faith in tomorrow, bring a better day. And I'm humbled by the trust and confidence you've placed in me. PHOTO: President-elect Joe Biden points a finger at his election rally, after news media announced that he won the presidential election, in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 7, 2020. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters President-elect Joe Biden points a finger at his election rally, after news media announced that he won the presidential election, in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 7, 2020. I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify. Who doesn't see red states and blue states, only sees the United States. And work with all my heart with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you. And for that is what America I believe is about. It's about people. And that's what our administration will be all about. I sought this office to restore the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class, and to make America respected around the world again. And to unite us here at home. It's the honor of my lifetime that so many millions of Americans have voted for that vision. And now, the work of making that vision is real, it's a task -- the task of our time. Folks, as I said many times before, I'm Jill's husband. And I would not be here without the love and tireless support of Jill and my son Hunter and Ashley, my daughter, and all our grandchildren and their spouses and all our family. They're my heart. Jill’s a mom, a military mom, an educator. And she has dedicated her life to education, but teaching isn't just what she does. It's who she is. For American educators, this is a great day for y'all. You're gonna have one of your own in the White House. And Jill’s gonna make a great first lady. I'm so proud of her. I'll have the honor of serving with a fantastic vice president who you just heard from, Kamala Harris, who makes history as the first woman, first black woman, the first woman from south Asian descent, the first daughter of immigrants ever elected in this country. PHOTO: President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill wave to the crowd after speaking at his election rally, after the news media announced that Biden has won the presidential election, in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 7, 2020. Jim Bourg/Reuters President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill wave to the crowd after speaking at his election rally, after the news media announced that Biden has won the presidential election, in Wil... Read More Don't tell me it's not possible in the United States! It’s long overdue. And we're reminded tonight of those who fought so hard for so many years to make this happen. Once again, America's bent the arc of the moral universe more towards justice. Kamala, Doug, like it or not, you’re family. You've become an honorary Biden. There's no way out. To all those of you who volunteered and worked the polls in the middle of this pandemic, local elected officials, you deserve a special thanks from the entire nation. And to my campaign team and all the volunteers and all who gave so much of themselves to make this moment possible. I owe you. I owe you. I owe you everything. And to all those who supported us, I'm proud of the campaign we built and ran. I'm proud of the coalition we put together. The broadest and most diverse coalition in history. Democrats, Republicans, independents, progressives, moderates, conservatives, young, old, urban, suburban, rural, gay, straight, transgender, white, Latino, Asian, Native American. I mean it. Especially those moments -- and especially those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. You always had my back and I’ll have yours. I said at the outset, I wanted to represent -- this campaign to represent and look like America. We've done that. Now that’s what I want the administration to look like and act like. For all those of you who voted president trump, I understand the disappointment tonight. I've lost a couple of times myself, but now let's give each other a chance. It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They are Americans. The Bible tells us, “to everything there is a season: a time to build, a time to reap, and a time to sow and a time to heal.” This is the time to heal in America. Now this campaign is over, what is the will of the people? What is our mandate? I believe it's this: Americans have called upon us to marshal the forces of decency, the forces of fairness, to marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time. The battle to control the virus. The battle to build prosperity. The battle to secure your family's health care. The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country. And the battle to save our planet by getting climate under control. The battle to restore decency, defend democracy, and give everybody in this country a fair shot. That's all they're asking for, a fair shot. Folks, our work begins with getting COVID under control. PHOTO: President-elect Joe Biden is greeted on stage by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris before he speaks in Wilmington, Del., Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. Paul Sancya/AP President-elect Joe Biden is greeted on stage by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris before he speaks in Wilmington, Del., Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. We cannot repair the economy, restore our vitality or relish life's most precious moments, hugging our grandchildren, our children, our birthdays, weddings, graduations, all the moments that matter most to us until we get it under control. On Monday I will name a group of leading scientists and experts as transition advisors to help take the Biden-Harris COVID plan and convert it into an action blueprint that will start on January the 20, 2021. That plan will be built on bedrock science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy, and concern. I will spare no effort, none, or any commitment to turn around this pandemic. Folks, I’m a proud Democrat. But I will govern as an American president. I'll work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as those who did. Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now. The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another, it’s not some mysterious force beyond our control. It's a decision. A choice we make. And if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate. And I believe that this is part of the mandate given to us from the American people. They want us to cooperate in their interest, and that's the choice I'll make. And I'll call on Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, to make that choice with me. The American story is about slow yet steadily widening the opportunities in America. And make no mistake, too many dreams have been deferred for too long. We must make the promise of the country real for everybody, no matter their race, their ethnicity, their faith, their identity, or their disability. Folks, America has always been shaped by inflection points, by moments in time where we've made hard decisions about who we are and what we want to be. Lincoln in 1860 coming to save the union. FDR in 1932 promising a beleaguered country a new deal. JFK in 1960 pledging a new frontier, and 12 years ago, when Barack Obama made history, he told us, "Yes, we can." Well folks, we stand at an inflection point. We have an opportunity to defeat despair, to build a nation of prosperity and purpose. We can do it. I know we can. I've long talked about the battle for the soul of America. We must restore the soul of America. Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. And what presidents say in this battle matters. It's time for our better angels to prevail. Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America is a beacon for the globe. We will not lead -- we will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. I know, I've always believed, many have you heard me say it, I've always believed we can define America in one word: possibilities. That in America everyone should be given an opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them. PHOTO: President-elect Joe Biden is accompanied on the stage by his wife Jill, and members of their family, after speaking in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 7, 2020. Andrew Harnik/Pool via Reuters President-elect Joe Biden is accompanied on the stage by his wife Jill, and members of their family, after speaking in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 7, 2020. You see, I believe in the possibility of this country. We're always looking ahead, ahead to an America that’s freer, more just. Ahead to an America that creates jobs with dignity and respect. Ahead to an America that cures diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. Ahead to an America that never leaves anyone behind. Ahead to an America that never gives up, never gives in. This is a great nation. It's always been a bad bet to bet against America. We're good people. This is the United States of America, and there has never been anything, never been anything we've been able -- not able to do when we've done it together. Folks, in the last days of the campaign, I began thinking about a hymn that means a lot to me and my family, particularly my deceased son Beau. It captures the faith that sustains me and which I believe sustains America. And I hope, and I hope it can provide some comfort and solace to the 230 million -- thousand Americans who have lost a loved one through this terrible virus this year. My heart goes out to each and every one of you. Hopefully this hymn gives you solace as well. It goes like this. “And he will raise you up on eagles' wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, and make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hand.” And now together on eagles' wings, we embark on the work that God and history have called us to do with full hearts and steady hands, with faith in America and in each other, with love of country, a thirst for justice. Let us be the nation that we know we can be. A nation united, a nation strengthened, a nation healed. The United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, there has never, never been anything we've tried we've not been able to do. So remember, as my grandpop -- our grandpop, he said when I walked out of his home when I was kid up in Scranton, he said "Joey, keep the faith." And our grandmother when she was alive, she yelled, "No, Joey, spread it." Spread the faith. God love you all. May god bless America and may god protect our troops. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In the Ground of Our Unknowing – Emergence Magazine

https://emergencemagazine.org/story/our-unknowing/?fbclid=IwAR0qjjC1VgiyV7d2mHrKlg22jeJrErNOAu9HNqorKK3LKr_fjvknlHXvVsE

Facing the paradoxes and ambiguities enmeshed with the COVID-19 pandemic, David Abram finds beauty in the midst of shuddering terror. As we’re isolated in this uncertain time, he writes, we can turn to the more-than-human world to empower our empathy for each other.

Right now, the earthly community of life—the more-than-human collective—is getting a chance to catch its breath without the weight of our incessant industry on its chest. The terrifying nightmare barreling through human society in these weeks has forced the gears of the megamachine (all the complex churning of commerce, all this steadily speeding up “progress”) to grind to a halt—and so, as you’ve likely noticed, the land itself is stirring and starting to stretch its limbs, long-forgotten sensory organs beginning to sip the air and sample the water, grasses and needles drinking in sky without the intermediating sting of a chemical haze. The reports of abundant fish returning to the effluent-clogged canals of Venice may not be true—mostly, it seems, the usual murkiness of the canals is clearing due to the circumstance that ceaseless boat traffic is not churning up those waterways, and so it’s become possible, for the first time in ages, to glimpse schools of fish who’ve always been there swimming through the suddenly pellucid waters. But if we can see those fish in the long quiet of these days, then those finned beings can also see us, can see the sun and the gleaming moon in ways they’ve not been able to for decades. Gray Whales and Humpbacks in the Pacific Northwest can suddenly hear one another’s hundred-mile songs and calls echoing through the depths, uninterrupted by the incessant mechanical whine of boat engines—since the whale-watching tours that hound them have stopped indefinitely, as have the growling propellers of cruise ships and the whirring of most pleasure boats (an underwater cacophony that’s been steadily intensifying over the years, monopolizing the exquisite auditory conductance of the aquatic realm, and confounding all those who communicate in buzzing blips and pings and singsong descants through the fluid medium).

Just as, in multiple cities, the profusion of birdsong is becoming evident, no longer hidden by ringtones, honking horns, piercing car alarms, and people yelling into their phones (by all the giddy roiling thrum of business as usual).

And right now, late at night, a child is stepping outside her home in the suburbs of Shanghai—as another child is doing in Mumbai, and another in Madrid just before dawn. The child in Shanghai is walking the family dog with her father. The girl stretches her cramped limbs, leaning her head back—whereupon she notices something surpassingly strange.  Her eyes widen in wonder: a glimmering river of light is coursing above the silhouetted buildings! Numberless points of light (she knows they are stars) gleam and wink at her along the margins of the overhead river, while near the central current those lights seem to fold into a churning froth of bright cloud. “What is that?” she asks her father. He follows her gaze upward. “Oh,” he says, “that’s the Silver River.…”

In Mumbai, the boy’s grandmother says, “Oh c’mon, you know that: that’s the Ganges of the Aether.”

In Madrid, the father looks up, and then replies to his son: “That’s the Milky Way. Don’t you remember learning about it?” “Yeah…,” the boy answers. “I just didn’t know that you could actually see it.” The father looks back up, then removes his glasses. They both stare and stare.

Luminous beauty in the midst of shuddering terror. Interpersonal solidarity—layer upon tearful layer of empathy for one another—in the midst of enforced solitude and loneliness. The paradoxical, ambiguous nature of this moment is so confounding, so bewildering! I mean, how excellent that our arrogant species receives this collective slap-in-the-face reality check, waking us two-leggeds up to the simple truth that we are not at all in control, have never really been in control, that we live at the behest of powers—of a complex interplay of powers—far beyond our ability to fully fathom, to predict, or to steer. What hubris to have imagined we could do whatever we want with this exquisitely interwoven wonder of a world! And yet how awful that this lesson must come at the expense of so many unsuspecting human lives, so many innocent souls now shivering with fever and fright as they struggle to draw breath.

Here’s another ambiguity. We’re finally being forced to recognize that no top-down institution, governmental or otherwise, can fully ensure our safety. That our deepest insurance against disaster is going local—by getting to know our actual neighbors and checking in on one another when we can, participating in our local community and apprenticing with the more-than-human terrain that surrounds and sustains us. Eating more of what grows locally, and learning to grow some of these foods ourselves, reduces the long supply chains that bring not just foods and products from far-flung places into our lives, but also pathogens that would otherwise be way more limited in their circulation. Here in northern New Mexico, youth climate activists have in the last two weeks established a thriving and rapidly growing mutual aid system, whereby individuals are offering all sorts of gifts and skills to the wider community, wherein anyone can request needed help and be matched, fairly quickly, with someone providing those skills free of charge. In fact, by the time of this writing (in late March) analogous place-based mutual aid initiatives are sprouting up in localities pretty much everywhere around the world—wild harvesting needed herbs, providing childcare for doctors, delivering food and pharmaceuticals and equipment, offering skilled counseling (by phone) for folks freaking out, setting up sanitation systems in rural areas with scant water, handcrafting masks and protective gear. What a wonder! Yet at this same moment, the very same catastrophe that’s teaching us to bring our attention back to the local and nearby, forces us to take distance from every person in our vicinity, and to connect only via the most mediated and disembodied of ways, speaking only via the phone and the computer, exchanging information via FaceTime and Zoom and Twitter.

Even a neo-Luddite like me has to admit that the online and internet world has become a huge boon and blessing in this tenuous time! And of course even before the pandemic, the digital sphere was enabling crucial and unexpected alliances to spark up and proliferate under the radar, empowering vital mobilizations to crystallize long before top-down powers could catch sight of and try to quash them. Yet the internet has also enabled the consolidation and widespread organization of many insidious impulses as well, including the most sociopathic forms of fearmongering and scapegoating (to say nothing of the limitless capacity for personal data harvesting and surveillance that the internet offers, free of charge, to transnational corporations). In their enthusiasm for the wired world, many commentators have been saying, “Wow, the coronavirus is a fast track to the future! Once we see that we can enact much of our lives online, why should we go back to doing things in the far less efficient world of flesh-and-blood interactions?” In The New York Times, one columnist suggested that once we’ve learned how to conduct most college courses over the internet, why would we ever want to go back to sitting and lecturing in classrooms? Meanwhile, my son in tenth grade is jumping out of his skin with boredom at the doldrum dullness of screen-imprisoned classes, and my daughter—abruptly forced home from her blissful freshman year at college—is despairing at the drab inanity of college seminars without the delicious bustle of seeing, hearing, and especially feeling her classmates as they reflectively tussle with one another and with the professor while puzzling out problems together. She’s missing the (let’s face it) erotic goodness of real learning that happens in direct physical interchange with one another, when so much of what is really discovered happens at a bodily-felt level below the strictly cognitive layer of the words. The completely conscious layer of learning rides on that depth like ripples on the surface of the sea. Wisdom arises—whether within a student or a teacher, or within the awareness of an entire class—when the verbal, cognitive layer of learning is awake to its rootedness in the emotionally charged dimension of our corporeal and intercorporeal life with one another, in the palpable rooms and landscapes we inhabit together.

So while I trust that there’s a lot we’ll be learning from the strangeness of these days in enforced isolation from each other, I sure hope that we’ll not be drawing upon this time to swivel huge swaths of our public and private life permanently into the virtual sphere, away from the necessarily fraught and vulnerable world of fleshly encounter in the thick of the sensuous—which, I hasten to add, is the only world that we share with the other animals, the plants, and the blustering winds. I mean, do we really wish to render education even more abstract and aloof from the perspectives of other creatures, from the intricately entangled wetlands and rivers, from the many-voiced forests with whom we share this round world? Do we really need to render ourselves still more oblivious to the reality of other, nonhuman lives? If so, then by all means let’s all pile online, and look to conduct more and more of our lives in virtual spaces.… But the cascading catastrophes of climate change, and our apparent inability (or unwillingness) to alter our lives in response to those cataclysms, suggest that it might be salutary for us to replenish our direct, sensorial contact with the wider community of beings wherever we live. We might wish to reacquaint ourselves with the other denizens of our locale.

After all, while this plague enforces a temporary distance from other humans, there is no reason not to lean in close to other beings, gazing and learning—for instance—the distinguishing patterns of the bark worn by each of the local tree species where you live. No reason not to step outside and pry open your ears, listening and learning by heart the characteristic songs and calls of the various local birds; no reason not to apprentice yourself to a spider as it weaves its intricate web in front of the porchlight. Or to practice recognizing and naming—as I have been—the different types of clouds that are conjured out of the blue by the scattered mountains in this region, the wispy brushstrokes and phantom ridges and clumped clusters that congregate and dissipate in the high desert sky. Estranged from direct human contact for a brief while, we’ve a chance to open a new intimacy with the wider world we’re a part of, with coyote and owl and aspen. Soon enough, if it’s not already happening where you are, spring will be exploding out of all those budded branches. And that is a goodness. If you live anywhere near a wetland, pay it an evening visit—see if you can join your voice to the gurgling chorus of frogs without shocking them all into silence (it takes practice, sure, but I promise it’s doable).

Sit down for tea with a lichen-encrusted boulder. Excellent. Now get over your shyness, wander over to the bank of the river that courses through your town, and invite the gushing current to dance with you. If it accepts, you needn’t plunge in (maybe save that for the summer), but rather gaze and listen and feel into the flux as you move—let its wildness tumble downstream through your muscles, coaxing the river into rapport with your own sinuous moves and meanders, experimenting till you find the right rhythm, the right syncopation for the erotic rock and roll of its alluvial groove.

Sure, it’s mighty important to keep apprised of the human news. Yet we can draw unexpected nourishment by walking away, now and then, from the screen-mediated sphere of our exclusively human concerns, rekindling our animal senses and rediscovering our solidarity with everything else.

So some of us are now learning to listen in to and maybe even converse with the elemental utterances of things that don’t speak in words, tuning our ears and our skin to the discourse of multiple other-than-human beings: each redwing blackbird or storm cloud or naked chunk of sandstone jostling with the rest of existence. And every one of us is now shuddering with inadvertent creaturely empathy at what’s befalling so many of our human sisters and brothers who abruptly find themselves unable to draw breath, their lungs ravaged, their bodies cut off by plastic enclosures and pumps from the touch or even the sight of their loved ones.

We breathe for each other. We feel each other’s feelings shuddering through us—we cannot help but do so! Yet is this because we’re all human, because we share a basic commonality of body and mind, because our species has its own autonomy and autonomous integrity, such that all of Humankind is a single collective Body that flexes and reverberates in each one of us?

Such is our common assumption, but actually … no, I don’t think so. If we consider the extant and far-flung span of our collective human flesh—if we consider the actual spatial shape of this hopelessly spread out thing we call humankind, we will notice, I think, that its shape is that of a sphere. Because it is the vast and spherical Earth that gives us our actual shape and coherence as a species.

And if we ponder the activity of any individual human at this very moment, we’ll notice that he or she or they are breathing (or struggling to breathe)—each of us drinking this unseen elixir that’s granted to us, ceaselessly—by the innumerable rooted, leafing, needled, stemmed, trunked, or algal beings that are also breathing in our vicinity. We have no autonomy, no integrity as a species separate from the other species of this world, no collective existence as a creature apart from the animate Earth. We can understand ourselves, and feel what it is to be human, only through our interaction and engagement with all these other, nonhuman beings with whom our lives are so thoroughly tangled. And yes, of course we can and indeed do feel a deep solidarity with one another, and with the rest of our kind. Yet we cannot stretch that bodily empathy out to all of our single species except by way of the more-than-human Earth. We cannot extend our senses to the whole of humankind without the sensitive and sentient Earth getting us there. It is this vast and sensitive sphere, glimmering with sensations, that grants us that ability to feel and resonate with one another, to ache when another aches—whether it be a small girl hospitalized in Iran or a young elephant whose mother was killed by poachers, whether an old man struggling to breathe in China or an aging sea lion snagged and tangled in a fishing net. Our real collective Flesh is not that of “humankind” as an autonomous abstraction, but is the living Body of this biosphere, breathing. That’s us.

Still, there’s the rising tide of human happenings reaching us through the media, much of it sad beyond reckoning. One massive matter that this virus is abruptly making visible, for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t see it before is the dumbfounding injustice—the outrageous coldheartedness—of the way our societies are currently structured, such that some persons seem always able to avail themselves of protection from the devastation of illness (having ready access to tests, and fine doctors, and all the necessary machinic support) while crowds of others are tossed aside or treated grotesquely. Like the undocumented immigrants currently crammed into overcrowded detention centers here in the US: how can we keep the virus from running rampant in such spaces? Or overseas: how can we protect, from the spreading contagion and death, countless half-starved Syrian refugees now stranded and stateless? Or the laid off workers in India now trying to make their way back to their rural villages in overstuffed buses or on foot through a gauntlet of regulations and club-wielding police? And here at home: how can we protect our brothers and sisters doing time in private, for-profit prisons without even minimally adequate sanitation? Or the many who are homeless and destitute, usually through no fault of their own?

Healthcare, as both Sanders and Warren proclaimed over and over, ain’t a privilege: it’s a basic human right. We instinctively feel that everyone deserves respect and the right to live out their days, that no human should have to forfeit their life simply because they’ve only ever earned minimum wage, or due to their skin color, or their age, or their refugee status. But as this pandemic swells and breaks like a colossal tsunami across the land, it strips away the flimsy facades, exposing all the god-awful structural violence of this winner-take-all society, leaving most of us feeling astonished and ashamed that we could have allowed such hideous disparities to grow and grow without struggling steadily to rectify them.

I reckon we’ll no longer be able to easily hide or paper over much of this structural violence after the virus has had its way with us. At least I pray that we won’t. We will have to change. In ever so many ways, we’ll have to change. (Dear Gaia, let us PLEASE not go back to fucking “normal.”) But what shape, what mode will the changes take? Will we simply go back to the rickety Rube Goldberg contraption of “Obamacare” and just extend it to cover a few more people? Might we begin to notice that a person’s health depends on having a range of real relationships, on face-to-face community, on reciprocity with a robust and flourishing ecology? Or will we strive now to make our lives ever more antiseptic, engaging not only our social interactions but more and more of our education online, so we’ll not have to risk contamination through physical contact—so we’ll not have to tangle with the always unpredictable muck of the real? Will we all be so desperate to have everything go back to “normal” that we’ll rev and rev and ramp back up our overly addicted fossil-fueled economy, injecting gobs of crude oil back into our veins like strung out junkies, throwing the megamachine into overdrive? And in this way consign our own and every other remaining species—those we’ve not already crowded and kicked over the brink of extinction—to the irreversible hell of runaway climate change?

Or will we recognize the coronavirus as a fierce but relatively gentle harbinger of something far more calamitous, a teacher kindly sent to slap us awake to our actual circumstances?

Much that influences the future shape of our societies will ride on how we emerge from this crisis—assuming we do emerge—how we transition out of the strangely suspended dreamscape in which we suddenly find ourselves adrift. Governments and their administrative agencies will play their roles as best they can, each trying to claw or engineer its way back into the daylit realm. But the textures and tastes that eventually come to predominate, the rhythms of community in our bioregion, the generosity and convivial ethos of the larger body politic—or the robotic and bureaucratic rigidity of that body politic—will to a large extent be determined by the choices each of us makes in this cocoon-like, shape-shifting moment. The future will be sculpted, that is, by the elemental friendships and alliances that we choose to sustain us, by our full-bodied capacity for earthly compassion and dark wonder, by our ability to listen, attentive and at ease, within the forest of our unknowing.

Listen to an Interview with David Abram

In this interview, cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram discusses the animism, power, and potency of the living world. In our current moment of ecological and societal instability, he calls on us to remember our inherent participation in the collective, embodied flesh of the Earth.

• Writer

  David Abram

  David Abram, PhD, is a cultural ecologist and philosopher. He is the founder and creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics. His books include Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World.
• Artist

  Lina Müller

  Lina Müller is an illustrator based in Central Switzerland. She studied at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Zurich University of the Arts, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She is the recipient of numerous awards and was nominated for the 2017 Swiss Design Awards.
• Artist

  Luca Schenardi

  Luca Schenardi is a Swiss-based illustrator and artist. He studied at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. His illustrations have appeared in international newspapers and magazines, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, and Rolling Stone Magazine.