The wonders of technology - a response to the Eyjafjallajökull smoke screen

Around 1906 `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote: "...all the members of the human family, whether peoples or governments, cities or villages, have become increasingly interdependent. For none is self-sufficiency any longer possible..."
(Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá
(Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978), pp. 31-32))

And in 1936, Shoghi Effendi discussed this theme in reference to "A mechanism of world inter-communication..."
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 203)

Screenshot taken this morning >>
on the website: www.flightradar24.com which shows real-time flights in Europe. The yellow dots are planes flying or landing.
The pink R + E indicate, Reykavik + Eyjafjallajökull

Last Friday morning, messages via my Facebook friends indicated that planes were not running and then I saw the pictures of the cloud and smoke!
Now a few U.K. papers are wondering if the 6 day no-flight ban was over-cautious, but I think, thanks to the wonders of technology a disaster was avoided. Sure people had to stay longer or find trains or buses, or be creative or flexible. It was clear from some of the messages I read, that some travellers had never slept in an airport before. Welcome to my world!
And others complained of having to make train changes, which meant carrying their luggage themselves. Welcome to my world again.
Others complained that information in their non-English speaking country was not in English and I smiled, they could send messages to facebook but didn't know how to use babblefish or communicate by adlibing. We English-speakers are the laziest people :)
Then I thought of these facebook messages that were coming in and how people were using this technology to share their stories. A lot of it seemed to be about uncertainty and frustration and I thought, hang on, a catastrophe has been averted.

Yes, I wasn't travelling and my experiences have taught me to travel light, but still I found it kinda of nice to have a sky free of planes for a few days. To be looking at the sky more often for signs of volcanic ash and glad that the red sunsets were a reminder of the wonder of nature, rather than pollution.

new 2 minute video by Sen and myself

This is our submission for a call for videos to celebrate Europe where at least 50% of the video utilizes EU archival material.

We decided to contrast stills from our own travels with that of their footage, on theme of Europe as a place for exploration into new territorities - a Europe as a compass or clock, a place without borders or with changing borders.



You can also view this on their website in a larger size




A compass tells us that every direction has its possibilites.
We have taken the theme of a 'compass-clock' as a way of showing our personal experiences with diverse European cultures. The video starts at zero for us, the Netherlands our home for the past 20 years and then turning clockwise, snapshots of us and our children flash by against various modes of documentation to create a dance between the personal and the public record.

The music is a remix of music by friends of ours: Sandy Hoover (U.S./U.K, with credit to Los de Abjo (Mexico), and Kath Tait, U.K. www.kathtait.com) who like us were born outside of Europe but have spent decades enjoying the opportunities of living and working in Europe.

"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends."
wrote Maya Angelou.

The footage we have selected from the European Commission audiovisual archive contrasts fleeting moving images of Europe in various ways to show aspects of European life-worlds, such as shots of cities, institutions, some projects supported by the European Social Fund (ESF), as well as historical events, with still images of our family in locations such as the Hague Peace Palace, Legoland in Denmark, Oulu + Helsinki in winter, Estonian, Latvian + Lithuanian towns, Polish + Czech mountain tops, German streets, Italian waterways, the Spanish sea, Luxemburg, Belgian, French + Irish churches and views, and ancient Scottish stones.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
Marcel Proust.