On this day, in the past five years

I try to see something beautiful every day; this is what I saw on 16 May in the past five years.

I try to see, hear, or create something beautiful every day. To give an impression of what I mean by that, I just looked at my photos of the past five years to see what I did on 16 May.

16 May 2016

I was in Arizona for a speech at the University of Arizona in Tucson. It was part of the One Young World Environment Conference, mostly in the desert, in Biosphere 2, a huge greenhouse-like structure that provided a closed environment. I met one of the ‘astronauts’ who lived there for two years in the early 1990s. The experiment to create a structure that you could, for instance, build on another planet failed when they literally had to open a window to get some fresh air from ‘Biosphere 1’, but they learned many useful lessons. For instance, that really high levels of CO2 are detrimental to tree growth. It is worth a visit if you are someday in Arizona.

I used my visit to add a week of travel in the American West. I always like to make a stop in Flagstaff, Arizona. I don’t really know why I like the city, but I do. I came here for the first time in the 1990s and have been back many times since. It is perhaps this Route 66 feel that you get when driving into the city. It is nice to hang out in the Old Town, and the magnificent Grand Canyon is not far away. It was here that I saw this mural and many others. Are there art-lovers that recognize all these characters? I would say Klimt and Toulouse-Lautrec on the left and Seurat on the right.

16 May 2017

A year later, I was in Hong Kong for a key-note speech on the circular economy. I remember this was the last day of my visit, and I was asked to speak to this smaller group just before I went back to the airport. Here is another picture; I am not sure what the graph on the screen is about.

16 May 2018

This was the next 16 May: speaking to Indonesian students near Lidingö, just outside Stockholm, Sweden. I tried to introduce myself in my rusty Indonesian that I still remembered from more than 30 years ago when I lived on the main island of Java.

16 May 2019

This is in the beautiful Old Town of Stockholm, very close to where I lived; I walked nearly every day in these streets.

16 May 2020

I was on the Dutch island Schouwen-Duiveland. This is close to home, where I walk and run. I described it today in a post on Twitter as the place in the world where I feel most at home.

Like every day in 2020, I also made an ‘alexnote.’ It was a project where I made one digital drawing every day that I posted on social media. This is the one I made a year ago on this day.

16 May 2021

Today, I was in Ottawa, where I saw this strange cloud formation; I see a man swimming out of the cloud. Do you see it too?

That’s it for this Sunday night. Have a wonderful start of your week.

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