blogger profile

Nikki Hardin

Founder and Publisher of Skirt!. A native of Kentucky, I left home at 17 to elope with my high-school boyfriend. Twelve years later, divorced with three children and unskilled at almost everything, I started college at the age of 29. Earned a B.A. in literature from American University in 1976 and a...

READ MORE

TED is My Man

Nikki, skirt! publisher

I hanker for TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design), an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. That’s right, I haven’t been invited, nor have I won that MacArthur Genius Award, but I lurk around the blog and imagine myself hobnobbing with all those Big Giant Heads. I’m assuming the venues have to be extra large to accommodate the egos on the prowl, so I know I’m better off being a TED groupie. One of my favorite videos on the site is an inspiring talk given by Wade Davis, a National Geographic explorer in residence, about preserving vanishing ethnospheres -- "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness." (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/69) It made me realize how impoverished our modern world view can be. I wish I believed in a living enchanted cosmos, really believed in a way that isn’t just about hybrid technology, recycling, carbon offsets, or bringing your own bags to the grocery. Jaguar shamans, visions, the music of the spheres, prayer wheels, the primacy of the Great Mother--it sounds like the ingredients of fairy tales, wonderful to read but the province of vanishing indigenous cultures. Wade Davis just might make a believer out of me.