Ohhhhhh, yes. Arguably one of the comfiest occasions of the year, National Hammock Day has got us all fiending for some good ol’ R&R beneath some shady leaves. To help you take advantage of this day to the fullest, we’ve curated some of the coolest hammocks, perfect for lounging with your loved ones.

1) The simple hammock.

First, we gotta start you off with the basics! This one is perfect for the hammock beginner. It’s super affordable at just under $19 bucks, and will surely pave your way to becoming a hammock aficionado.

2) The crocheted hammock.

This little crocheted number will have you laying in a lap of luxury. This hammock features a full crochet body with gorgeous frills and yarn work hanging off the edges for a bohemian vibe.

3) The hammock cocoon.

How amazing is this little teepee? This little hammock cocoon puts a whole new spin on hanging out. The built-in ceiling will give you a little more privacy, great if you’re trying to get some summer cuddles in. It’s big enough to fit a small family, and is perfect for warmer days when you may need to create your own shade. 

4) The hammock hot tub.

Have your hammock go double-duty! This one transforms from just a hanging bed to a hot tub too! You can fill it up with either cold or warm water, and have a National Hammock Day experience unlike any other.

5) The hammock hover-craft.

Wait. Is this an actual thing? That you can buy? What better way to celebrate hammock day than lounging around on a lazy lake in a floating hammock. This contraption fits up to four people. Are we in 3017?

No matter which one you choose, National Hammock Day is an impeccable excuse to take the day off and head outside with your friends and family to enjoy all that summer has to offer.

How are you celebrating? We’d love to know!

The post Happy National Hammock Day! appeared first on christopherkhoitran.

Today, Earth Day is a relatively innocuous phrase–it inspires, what? A park cleanup, a few speeches here and there, and maybe a hiking event complete with birdwatching and smores. We’ve completely forgotten the militancy of the first Earth Day, and how it was one of the most forceful expressions of democratic voice this country has ever seen. 

What do we do for Earth Day? We get out, we explore our national parks, we take in all the natural beauty that our states have to offer. And most likely, we forget about it tomorrow. Earth Day, through no one’s fault, is in danger of becoming another half-hearted celebration of ‘let’s-care-for-a-day.’ And so it would be useful now to remember: the first Earth Day was planted in rebellious and volatile ground. It took root in post-Vietnam War unrest and dissatisfaction, a time where in which the public was outraged at government expenditure on a fruitless war that diverted funds from other crucial public services. It was a time so like our current moment, and yet so different. One of these differences was that the word ‘environmentalism’ had yet to be invented.

In the 60s, America was barely becoming aware that the industrialization it was so proud of might be a cancer on the country. Against calls for restricted government spending, and a return to normalcy in the midst of student protests and demonstration, Wisconsin senator (and future Earth Day founder) Gaylord Nelson took the floor to voice concerns that had gone unreported and unacknowledged. Incensed by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, inspired by the anti-war protests, he delivered a speech that year to Americans for Democratic Action. He asked why we as Americans were able to win World Wars, develop weapons of mass destruction, and put a man on the moon, but we

1. Can’t get food to our hungry children in a nation with too much to eat.

2. Can’t get downtown in the morning or travel across country in an efficient mass transit system.

3. Can’t get medical care to the Ghetto, the elderly or the poor in rural America.

4. And with all our lavish spending, we can’t even create an educational system that capitalizes on one of the strongest drives a child has — the desire to learn.

5. And in a nation more abundantly endowed than any other we can’t quite get organized for a massive effort to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink or the beauty of our countryside. How could we organize to win a big war, create the nuclear weapons system and rocket to the moon — And still fall so short of our historic goal — The creation of a social structure founded on quality instead of quantity and moral might instead of military might.

He goes on to note that, up to that point, the public had depended on large companies to be as productive socially as they were materially, that they could “do our social planning for us too,” a view whose naivete he then attempts to express:

The challenges are open and obvious for all to see … That the most important measure of success in this system is power, affluence, abundance, bigness, gross national product, and profits. It is a challenge that says any system that becomes dominated by these forces is incapable of producing a society of quality.

Nelson’s concerns sound eerily similar to “revolutionary” ideals still propounded today, don’t they? Today, Earth Day is a global celebration, called the “biggest secular observance in the world,” and Nelson has since earned himself a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 for his efforts, the highest award that can be bestowed upon a civilian. But back then, it was just another scrappy grassroots protest that baffled the media and attracted the ire of civil authorities.

News coverage of the first Earth Day did the event little justice. To be fair, this was partially the fault of the event’s organizers, who asked journalists and major news outlets to turn their cameras towards events in major cities and open air demonstrations. The first Earth Day was meant to be peaceful, and by and large, it was so. But news networks were able to capture the handful of events that turned violent, and these are absolutely fascinating to observe through the lens of current protest movements.

In this CBS news segment from 1970, anchor Robert Shakne comments on a non-violent protest in Boston, Massachusettes, spearheaded by student demonstrators. He notes:

It wasn’t clear why the state police ordered the demonstrators out, but they were leaving when for no visible reason–trouble. The police charging the crowd, seizing the coffins, pushing those who moved too slowly, and arresting 13. There had been talk in advance of crowds of thousands, in attempts to disrupt the airport, but that didn’t happen. This crowd, just a few hundred, had seemed orderly and non-violent.

The first Earth Day was a proud projection of the public voice, against domineering networks of power, that struggled to make a cause known. We have the historical hindsight today to say that this was a brilliantly successful revolution. Don’t do it injustice, don’t make it a fad. Do you know why Earth Day is on April 22? Nelson chose that day because it was between Spring Break and Finals Week. Earth Day was created with students in mind, with protests in mind; the first conception of Earth Day was a “national teach-in event” to instruct the world.

In the decade following the first Earth Day, this is what we accomplished: the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the passing of the Clean Air, Clean Water, Endangered Species, Toxic Substances Control, and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Acts. So what does Earth Day mean? That protest works. That revolution enacts change. That if you care about a thing, you can save it. The proof is in Earth Day, the historical fact that its proponents did win the day, and the fact that you do know what environmentalism means. Now go forth and give a damn.

The post The First Earth Day Was A Protest, A Revolution appeared first on christopherkhoitran.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we compiled a list of five women explorers who made travel and exploration their business, regardless of resources, social taboos, or experience. This is for the ladies, and for anyone who ever made an excuse not to travel–it can always be done. 

It’s amazing that even though these are five women explorers from vastly different backgrounds, they all overcame basically the same sexist challenges. That, my friend, is why Women’s History Month matters–you don’t see the history, you don’t see the pattern. Nearly every person on this list endured the constraints of motherhood and marriage to pursue what they loved. All of them attained their experiences and expertise against the antagonism of male peers. But nonetheless, they found themselves backpacking in fabulous lands. They witnessed panoramas of nature and culture that the world would’ve rather barred from their sex entirely.

Gertrude Bell

T.E. Lawrence gets all the credit as the great ambassador and ethnographer of the Middle East during World War I. However, a review of Gertrude Bell’s exploits could change your mind in a hurry. Like most would-be women explorers who wanted a higher education, Bell fought tooth and nail to pursue her intellectual interests. While studying history at Oxford, her tutor was so distressed by her presence that he forced her to sit facing the back of the room during class. Of course, Bell went on to master six languages, scale some of the tallest peaks in Europe, and drew the borders of modern-day Iraq. Let me explain.

Bell began her archaeological exploits in a tour spanning Syria, Damascus, Jerusalem, and other sites. Her writings on these locales opened up the Western world to their geographical beauty and rich history. Aside from her intellectual pursuits, she is perhaps the most athletically accomplished of this list’s women explorers. Her mountaineering accomplishments included La Meije, and Mont Blanc, the avalanche-prone jewel of the French Alps. She did concede to the great Finsterraarhorn in Switzerland, but not without a fight: it took two days of clinging to a cliff face, in the middle of a thunderstorm, to chase her down. Bell’s best known for her work as liaison and consultant during World War I. Her expertise in the area’s terrain and endemic cultures proved indispensible during the Arab Revolt, as well as the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. According to historians, she was “one of the few representatives of His Majesty’s Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection.” She was passionate regarding Arab independence and culture, and well-known for her expertise. After the war, she was asked by Winston Churchill to draw up the borders of the region we know today as Iraq. Yes, Bell quite literally shaped the modern world we know today.

Nellie Bly

Nelly Bly’s career began with a newspaper op-ed written by famed English surgeon Erasmus Wilson. His piece stated the usual misogynist smut: that women belong in the home, etc. etc., and that a working women (much women explorers) are nothing short of a “monstrosity.” Bly did not take his insults sitting down, and devoted the rest of her life towards progressive journalism. And along the way, she accomplished the simple feat of rounding the world in (less than) 80 days.

Bly made a name for herself as a fearless writer who bent all her powers towards dispelling the myths surrounding her sex in the early 20th century. She went so far as to disguise herself as a madwoman to gain entrance into Blackwell’s Island mental institution. The resulting exposé raised outcry against the deplorable treatment of not only female patients, but the mentally infirm nation-wide. She took a break from journalism to take on a side project: to best the fictional record set forth in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, which she soundly did. By ship, on the backs of burros, by rickshaw, she completed her journey with her progressive values close by her side. She dared anyone to bar passage to women explorers on the basis of gender, and expressed disgust at the Port of Said, where travelers going landside regularly carried parasols and sticks with which to beat back crowds of beggars. It’s one thing to travel the world carrying luggage, and another entirely to carry a sense of right in a morally askew world.

Ynes Mexia

Hitting your ‘midlife crisis’ at the age of 30 is all the rage today; hence, Ynes Mexia should be a lesson to all such aging millenials. At the age of 50, Mexia had undergone two divorces and a ruined business (by the fault of her second husband). Rather than folding to life’s disappointments, she pursued an education in sociology, then botany, and went on to collect hundreds of thousands of plant samples, 50 of them new and named after her.

The elderly Mexia initially pursued a sociology degree in San Francisco, but, perhaps recognizing by now that life was short, she abandoned her degree midway to pursue botany. She joined the environmentalist Sierra Club, and undertook a journey into Mexico. On this single trip, she collected 33,000 samples, and likely would’ve kept going, had a fall from a cliff not halted her trip. After recuperating, she took several more expeditions into Argentina, Chile, Mt. McKinley, and the Amazon, accompanied by a minimal staff of guides. She was able to fund all of these trips by selling specimens to private collectors and museums, making her passions work for her, and then some.

Ida Pfeiffer

The cliche is that travel is supposed to broaden your horizons, and no story dramatizes that adage like Ida Pfeiffer’s. After a small inheritance freed her from the burdens of marriage and motherhood, the 45-year old Pfeiffer decided to travel the world alone. She’s yet another of those women explorers for whom age was just another obstacle to smash. Knowing well that she’d likely perish in her solo travels, she drew up her will and departed. The resulting journey into hostile and strange territories would soften her decidedly Western-centric worldviews considerably.

On a shoestring budget, she made her way from the Danube Riber to the Black Sea, into the Middle East and Egypt. Everywhere she turned, she found the local cultures ‘uncivilized’ and ‘unkempt,’ an opinion which would soon shift unexpectedly. After returning home, she sold her memoirs and used the proceeds to fund more travels, of course. The next phase of her journeys cut into Rio de Janeiro and the South American rainforests, then into Indochina. Throughout her career, Pfeiffer relied mostly on the kindness of locals for which she apparently had no love or respect. On Christian soil in Russia, however, Pfeiffer was detained and accused of being a spy. Understandably, she began to suspect that western ‘civilization’ didn’t necessarily entail civility. Among the women explorers I found, Pfeiffer holds the distinction of being one of the most outwardly xenophobic, making her change of heart all the more remarkable. During her travels, the only group to garner her admiration were, of all things, a headhunting tribe from Borneo called the Dyaks, whom she found good-natured and soft-mannered. Her evolving attitude is maybe best summarized in her own words: “I shuddered, but I could not help asking myself whether, after all, we Europeans are not really just as bad or worse than these despised savages?”

Alexandra David-Neel

Behind every great man lies a woman, right? In Alexandra David-Neel’s case, these men included diverse personalities from Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts, to Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal, crown prince of the Chogyal Kingdom of India. All of them respected David-Neel’s profound intellect and dedication to her own passions.

Perhaps the most multifaceted of our women explorers, David-Neel was a traveler, an accomplished Tibetan buddhist, an opera singer, and 30th degree Freemason. From an early age she took an interest in radical ideas, and befriended anarchists and feminists alike. Her passion for Eastern philosophy led her to abandon marriage to study at the feet of masters, in the shrines of her chosen beliefs. On her travels into India, her charm and intellect made a friend of Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal, eldest son of the current Maharaja of the Chogyal Kingdom. He would later call upon her to aid in the reformation of Buddhism in his own lands. She counted among her tutors the 13th Dalai Lama in exile, and the renowned monastery leader Lachen Gomchen Rinpoche. David-Neel pursued even the most esoteric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, undertaking isolation and fasting, and studying with cave-dwelling shamans without hesitation. She pursued her passions even into the forbidden city of Lhasa, disguised as a beggar monk. Like all the women explorers on our list, she never met a barrier she couldn’t dismantle by effort and willppower.

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