Edition No. 56
Arts and Culture
NPR’s Tool Kit episode provides expert advice on how to rejuvenate creativity when it is difficult to find new inspiration.
Community and Family
This winter’s go-to Detroit Riverfront hot spot, Valade Park, kicks off Fire and Ice weekend this Friday!
American Democracy
Remarks on the 1-year anniversary of the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Creativity can't be forced. Take breaks and zone out to find new inspiration
Do you ever try to be creative but despite all your efforts, struggle to access that creative voice in your head? NPR shares an episode from its Life Kit series explaining how to escape a creative rut — and it all starts with taking intentional breaks.
Sarah Urist Green points out that this concept might be easier said than done. Green is a curator, an arts educator and the producer behind the PBS series The Art Assignment. She is also the author of You Are an Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation.
"I would get intimidated if creativity and making art was something where you had to have this great inspiration," she says. "For me and for most artists who I know, it doesn't work like that."
Overcoming a creative rut isn't easy. But it isn't at all impossible — and it doesn't require a eureka moment. This episode is filled with tips from NPR experts to help you recharge your creativity.
Winter at Valade Park
Looking for something exciting to do on the weekends with the whole family? Valade Park is the go-to destination on the Detroit Riverfront for a bit of winter fun! Each weekend, visitors can warm up by outdoor fires, enjoy hot seasonal drinks, make s'mores on a custom marshmallow roaster, play synthetic ice curling and more!
This weekend, all are invited to enjoy Winter at Valade Park’s Fire and Ice weekend – Friday, January 14 through Sunday, January 16, and indulge in a bit of medieval fun! Guests will enjoy oversized fires, turkey legs and a chance to take a photo with a 6-foot-tall iron throne made of ice!
Fire and Ice weekend will feature some Renaissance Fair favorites including:
Roaming characters
A LARP (live action role-playing) meet up
Blacksmith demos
Medieval music
Additionally, the weekend will also have an ice carving competition, a 7-foot ice tower that will incase a giant bonfire, and warm up with a techno dance party on Saturday night.
The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy is committed to helping visitors embrace winter by extending riverfront programming year-round. Click the button below for additional details.
“Both at home and abroad, we’re engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few, between the people’s right of self-determination and self- — the self-seeking autocrat…”
Remarks By President Biden To Mark One Year Since The January 6th Deadly Assault On The U.S. Capitol
January 06, 2022
Selecting an American Democracy item for this first edition of Inspired Thoughts prepared after the 1-year anniversary of the attack on Congress was an especially difficult task. There was an enormous amount of material from which to choose – speeches, retrospectives, timelines, status reports on investigations and prosecutions, and commentaries from all parts of the political spectrum.
Ultimately, we chose to put just one item in front of you – the written text of a speech by a person who has previously said little about the events of that day – the President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden. We chose to point you to the written text, rather than to an audio or video recording, to lower the temperature a little and get people to focus on the specific content of the speech – the information presented, the President’s message, and his word choices.
At roughly 25-minutes, President Biden’s speech is brief for a Presidential address. It is, however, still about seven times as long as Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to which some commentators have compared it. Such comparisons are perhaps inevitable given the President’s reference to Lincoln early in the speech and because President Biden used his speech to honor those who died after defending democracy on January 6, 2022, just as Lincoln honored the Union dead at Gettysburg.
The official White House transcript of the President’s remarks is available at the link below.
Inspired Thoughts is a collection of highly curated content that embraces the spirit and purpose of The War Memorial: arts and culture, community enrichment, leadership, and patriotism.
Derived from the notion that learning from others is the key to success, Inspired Thoughts is meant to shine a light on those making a difference in the world around them. This collection features artists, poets, writers, architects, and every thought leader in-between. Inspired Thoughts is the strongest reflection of what The War Memorial stands for, and what we aim to be.
The content featured on Inspired Thoughts is curated by War Memorial leadership — we also look forward to featuring special guest curators in the near future. If you are interested in providing content for Inspired Thoughts, please email our Communications team at dmurphy@warmemorial.org.