50 for 50 Day 2: Epic Change
Thanks for stopping by my 50th Birthday Celebration, Day 2. Because I have everything I need, I am asking people to donate to charities, if they are so inspired, in honor of my birthday. I will feature a different charity each day for 50 days to give you plenty of chances to get involved.
You don’t have to act every day, of course, or at all. But I wanted to give a voice to different good works around the globe. If you ARE inspired to take action, please leave me a comment and let me know that you did. This is all I want for my birthday – to spread some love and kindness. It is all about exploring different ways to give and opening to possibilities. Thanks for your love and support as I go through this project.
Epic Change is an organization that uses the power of storytelling to make positive change in the world. They say “Epic Change believes that people’s stories are assets that can be used as resources to improve their lives. We help people in need share their “epic” true stories in innovative, creative and profitable ways to help them acquire the financial resources they need to create positive “change” in their communities.”
Their first project is a school in Tanzania: 
From the Epic Change website:
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Our proof-of-concept project seeks to rebuild and expand Shepherds Junior, a small primary school in Arusha, Tanzania at which Monk and Patel volunteered in during their 2007 trip to Africa.
Mama Lucy Kamptoni, a savvy and passionate local woman, founded the school in 2003 on land she rented land next door to her home using the income from her poultry business. The school nearly closed in 2007 when a developer bought the rented land, and Kamptoni had no access to the capital required to relocate.
The school is entirely English medium, but includes courses in Swahili, the country’s primary language, and has clubs that celebrate the vibrant culture and history of Tanzania. In addition, the school focuses lessons on local social and cultural issues, including poverty, HIV/AIDS, gender equality, child labor, and more.
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Thanks for any and all donations to this great cause. Donate here. Or get your kids involved by making art, videos, or fundraising.
50 for 50: Day 1 Amnesty International
Thanks for stopping by my 50th Birthday Celebration on the very first day.
Because I have everything I need, I am asking people to get involved with charities, if they are so inspired, in honor of my birthday. And in honor of caring humanity and all that good stuff.
I will feature a different charity each day for 50 days to give you plenty of chances to get involved. You don’t have to donate or act every day, of course, or at all. But I wanted to give a voice to different good works around the globe. If you ARE inspired to take action, please leave me a comment and let me know that you did. This is all I want for my birthday – to spread some love and kindness. I’m hoping for at least 50 donations or actions over the course of this project. Thank you, my dear friends.
For day 1, I had to choose the organization that has been the closest to my heart for the longest, the first organization I got involved with, Amnesty International. I believe in Amnesty International because I believe in human rights. Basic human rights like the freedom of speech, belief, expression, assembly, freedom from violence – these are the things that give life meaning and richness, and my deepest belief is that everyone deserves them.
Here’s a great little video about the UN International Declaration of Human Rights, which is what Amnesty’s work is based on. It makes me cry every time, because that is the kind of sap I am. This stuff gets to me:
I have been an Amnesty International member, I have been a group leader, I have gone to conferences and written hundreds if not thousands of letters on behalf of people who have had their rights denied around the world. Doing this work, I have come to respect the organization for its rigor in investigating human rights violations and the amazing things it does. Over the years, I have seen governments release political prisoners and change policies because of the attention Amnesty International has brought, through the simple power of bringing light to abuses.
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Thanks for any and all help this great cause. Donate here. And here is an action you can take to help North Korean political prisoners.
My Big Birthday Party: 50 for 50
In 51 days, I will turn 50 years old. Holy cats, I’m old. But as they say in Lithuanian, “Senas bet dar gyvas!” or “Old, but still alive!”
Let’s face it, I have everything I need. I am blessed with a great family, health, a good job, a roof over my head, more food than I can eat, money in the bank. I even live in a gorgeous locale, so I am set with everything. Ok, maybe everything except a hot international soccer star boyfriend, but at 50, I’m afraid I may have to settle for a “hot former international soccer star that we kind of remember from a long time ago boyfriend.” I’ll get working on that.
ANYWAY…what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want presents. I don’t want cards. I don’t even want cake. What I want is for the world to be a little more of a kind and generous place, and if my birthday can be the catalyst for that, that would bring me so much joy.
SO. Here’s the plan: each day, for the next 50 days, I will feature one worthwhile organization that is doing good works. I want my gift to be to open up this space to these organizations and see what happens. I’d like for people to pick one or several and get involved, either by donating, volunteering or taking action. I’ll give information about the organization, a donation link, and, if I can, a way to take action other than through a monetary donation.
If you are so inspired, take action and leave me a comment letting me know you did it. Even if you don’t act now, please keep some of these organizations in mind for when your ship comes in (and I know it will. I can see it on the horizon right now) or for when you have time.
And don’t worry – regular posts will be sprinkled in too, so don’t give up. You’ll get your usual dose of fine, high-quality Suebobian blather and bluster.
You honor me by stopping by to read this blog. Thank you for your time and attention over the past few years. And thanks for sharing my birthday celebration with me. The party starts tomorrow. Be there!
Adventures in Dogwalking #417
My dog is a scientist. Not a badass honey badger scientist, but a scientist nevertheless. Let me explain.
When we walk by the beach, we always take the same path – down the trail, then out onto this ledge of asphalt that has been partially sea-eaten, then jump down onto the sand and continue onward.
The other night the surf was good and the good surfers were out, so I decided I wanted to watch. When I jumped off the ledge, I sat down. Goldie continued out to the end of the 16-foot Flexi leash, which then yanked her neck.
She pulled forward again. Yanked. Again. Yanked. She repeated this about 10 times. It was like she was thinking “We usually proceed forward here – WHAT is holding me back?”
She came back toward me a bit, then took off again. And again. At this point, I was done watching surfers and was just laughing at my dog.
Finally she came back over, jumped up on the ledge, jumped down and kept walking til the leash jerked her again. I realized what she was doing though – she was testing variables, trying something different to see what worked. “I don’t know why I’m stopped, but maybe if I retrace my steps…”
I so admired her persistence that I gave her her wish and got up to continue our walk. But I’m getting her a job in a laboratory tomorrow.
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Speaking of dogwalking, remember when it was ok to leave your dog poop anywhere? I guess because back in the bad old days, people had never figured out that steaming piles of dog crap were the responsibility of the owner.
Now the pendulum has swung, and our parks departments are eager to help owners take care of their dog messes. There are plastic bag holders conveniently located in our parks and they are stocked with “Mutt MItts,” plastic bags printed with instructions on how to dispose of dog crap.
One would think that people wouldn’t NEED actual instructions, because the process seems pretty dang intuitive to me. How creative can you get with dog poop and a plastic bag?
Well.
Appparently even the printed instructions aren’t enough, because every day I come along several Mutt Mitts that have been used and deposited right there along the trail, not taken to the conveniently located trash bins.
What the hell are people thinking? “I need to clean this crap up by putting it in a plastic bag and leaving it here for some other person to find”? Or is it because the bags say “Biodegradable” on them, they think they should leave them out to biodegrade? Lord help us.
Maybe the next step should be some kind of mandatory Mutt Mitt classes. I think an 8-hour session should about cover it.
Scientists are like honey badgers
Warning: video had lots of swearing and disgusting cobra-eating, but it is funny as hell.
It always cracks me up when people claim that there is some vast scientist conspiracy against their beliefs, like evolution or global climate change. I always wonder “So scientists are getting together and conspiring WHY? What benefit is there for them to lying?”
You know what? Scientists are like honey badgers. They just don’t care about beliefs. They’re badass that way.
Scientists care about FACTS. If you show up with good evidence for something, scientists won’t freak out and try to defend any beliefs they have – at least not if they’re GOOD scientists. They’ll say “Hm! That IS some compelling evidence. Let’s see what that means when we consider [insert variable here].” And off they go, doing their science thing. They’re not trying to support their beliefs – they’re trying to find the truth. They’re just as happy when they find out that a hypothesis isn’t true as when they find that it is. As Randall said about the honey badger “They really don’t give a shit.”
If your religion or political philosophy isn’t as badass as a honey badger, I’m not wasting my time listening to it.
Planting Dandelions
My local branch library is tiny, about 700 square feet, and close to my house. I went over the other day to pick up a book on hold and they had the latest issue of People magazine on display behind the counter.
While the librarian was checking out my book, I said “Can I see that issue of People?”
She told me I could go sit down and read it, but I said, “Oh, no, I just wanted to see the book reviews – one of my friends has a book that is mentioned in this issue.”
Together we found the book, Kyran Pittman’s “Planting Dandelions,” which People had loved as much as I had (they called it “fearless” and gave it four stars).
I found myself saying to the librarian, “Whenever one of my friends has a book published, I always hope it is going to be very good, and this time, it really was.”
She gave me kind of a funny look, and then I realized that my comment made me sound like a pretentious git. Whenever one of my friends has a book published…
It is true, though! One of the best things blogging has brought me is the proximity to good writers, to people who do indeed have books published. And who appear on the Today Show and in the New York Times and in the Wall Street Journal… And blogging has also brought my friends in proximity to people who want to publish books by good writers. Hooray.
Kyran’s book is a memoir of her family life, of ordinary moments and dreams and struggles chronicled so beautifully and honestly that I wanted it never to end. I remember when I read Anne Lamott’s book “Operating Instructions” about having her son, and how its raw honesty was so breathtakingly groundbreaking. “Planting Dandelions” is just as honest, but in a quieter, less manic way. It is well worth reading. Check it out.
Happy May Day
Since I can’t leave a basket of flowers on your front porch for May Day, I’m sending you a virtual bouquet:
Irises, Smithsonian, Washington DC
Wildflower, Sespe Mountains, Ventura County, California
Flower barrel, Main Street, Santa Paula, California
Iris, California Poppies and Peonies, Midpines, California
Indian Hawthorn in full bloom
Pink Jasmine
Have a great spring!
When is the puppyhood over?
I didn’t get home last night til 8 pm, so I heated up the vegetarian version of beanie weenie (vegetarian baked beans and a tofu dog, in case you wanted the recipe) for dinner and was at long last sitting down to eat.
Goldie was outside doing whatever she does out there. Lately, she has been trenching the yard, searching for non-existent gophers. (What gopher would be stupid enough to move into a yard where Goldie lives? No gopher, that’s who). Does not stop her.
Then I heard a noise from under the floorboards. Not a mouse, not a rat…a wagging tail noise. Huffing and puffing noise. I said about 43 swear words. The dog had gotten under the house. I do not have a basement. I live in a one-story bungalow with two big steps up to the front door.
There is only one way to get under there and it is usually blocked off, but the landlord had been over trying to fix the plumbing (that’s a whole ‘nother blog post) and had left the screen off. The hole is only about a foot high but that was apparently enough for Little Miss Spelunker Hound.
Which is how I found myself at dark-thirty on a Thursday night lying on my side on the concrete, my head halfway through a spider-webby hole, shining a flashlight under my house, listening to my dog rampage around.
Let me remind you that this dog is, according to her paperwork from the dog pound, 15 years old. Way too old for this nonsense, in other words.
I couldn’t see her but I could hear her. She didn’t sound hurt or stuck, just excited. She could apparently move about fairly freely, even though she is a good foot taller than the highest part of the under-house space. What she wouldn’t do is come near me.
I couldn’t call her because she is deaf. I couldn’t tempt her with food because 1) I’m a vegetarian who is also completely out of cheese and 2) When she is hunting, you could put a raw juicy steak in front of her and she wouldn’t even give it a sniff. Dog is busy.
So I lay there, pointing my flashlight around the dark, occasionally catching a glimpse of tail or a flash of shining eyeball, completely unable to help the dog or to pull myself away in case she needed the light to see by or in case she got stuck…in which case, I don’t know WHAT I could have done – take an axe to the floorboards in the general area where I thought she might be? I truly do not know.
After about 45 minutes, when my hips were good and sore from lying on concrete, she came commando-crawling out, panting so hard she sounded like a steam train. I greeted her and…she immediately turned around and headed back into the hole.
I lunged and grabbed her collar and pulled her away. I put the grate over the hole and blocked that side of the house with some yard junk so she couldn’t get back there again. I brought her into the house, where she drank about a gallon of water and then scratched at the door, trying madly to get back out. No. No, dog, no.
It occurred to me that Goldie wants to hunt more than I have ever wanted anything in my life, ever. Am I doing something wrong, or will that kind of desire just leave me crawling into dark scary spaces, too?
When the student is ready, the teacher appears
When I was 24, I walked into Mary Hill’s afternoon A Course in Miracles class. It was a warm sunny afternoon. A group of about 8 people sat around a table in a church classroom, taking turns reading paragraphs from a big fat book. There wasn’t much discussion and the reading felt endless. My mind started wandering and I fought my droopy eyelids to stay awake and I tried to do that thing where you yawn with your mouth shut. When the 90 minutes was up, I walked out and thought I would never go back. It just wasn’t for me.
Fast forward 11 years. I was hurting so bad from emotional wounds that I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think, struggled to get a breath. Once again, I stumbled into Mary Hill’s A Course in Miracles class, which was still going on, all those years later. She had been holding class, week after week, all those years.
This time it was like someone plugged me into The Power and The Glory. The thick text about love and forgiveness was like a deep-tissue massage for my soul. That class became one of several strands in my unravelled life that led me up the path back to sanity and happiness.
It wasn’t just the massive 600-page text, either. Mary Hill sat at the end of the table like an elderly, lightly perfumed 90-pound guru. She didn’t talk a lot, but she was a great listener. You could say as much or as little as you wanted, as long as you stuck to the general subject matter, and she would always listen with gentleness and good humor.
Mary Hill was a retired school teacher, but she never quit teaching. She just transferred her abilities to a new group of students, a motley bunch of dropouts from other religions, seekers on the path. We all had our own sufferings – mental illness, a recent divorce, a terminally ill spouse. We shared those pains and held each other up with Mary at the lead.
She was the first person I met who seemed to have her ego firmly under control. She offered the class with an open heart, but she didn’t mind if people stayed or left – she was only interested in how much it helped people, and she knew it wasn’t for everyone. She didn’t fret about much. She sailed through each day as calm and happy as anyone I have ever met.
It was her example as much as the book she taught (and she encouraged us not to get attached to the book either, telling us “There will come a day when you can set the book aside”) that led me along the path toward a peaceful heart. She taught me important lessons, mainly 1) show up and 2) pay attention, two things that have served me exceedingly well. When I met her, I felt like a shell of a human being. She filled me up and put me back on the road to life with her calm, patient love.
She passed away at 90 about 10 years ago. I still miss her all the time, but I know she is doing just fine. She often said “You don’t know how many times we have laid down our bodies and risen up, laughing.”
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Clever Girls Collective asked me to write about a woman who helped me as part of their promotion for the Shop for a Better World/Heart of Haiti collection from Macy’s. These handcrafted items help support artisans in Haiti and Rwanda. There are some beautiful items:
They’re offering a special discount for Mother’s Day
Promocode: CLEVERGIRLS
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Timeframe: 5/3 – 5/8
– To view the Shop for a Better World / Heart Of Haiti collection in its entirety (including just added items for Spring), visit: Shop for A Better World.
I was not paid for this post, but I will receive a nice gift from the Heart of Haiti collection.
I was selected for this very special “CleverHaiti” opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity. All opinions are my own.
Talking to Mom
Note: my mom is not religious. She doesn’t want to hear about religion and has made that abundantly clear to everyone. She asked me to pick her up some Easter cards, and I complied, picking out cards that said “Happy Easter” and had spring flowers, bunnies and chicks, but no mention of Jesus or resurrection.
Mom: I noticed those cards you got me didn’t have anything to do with Easter.
Suebob: I got you the non-religious ones on purpose.
Mom: Oh, that’s what I wanted. But they really don’t have anything to do with the holiday.
Suebob: They did have ones that said things about Jesus, but I thought you wouldn’t like them.
Mom: No, these are fine. They just don’t have anything to do with Easter.
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Suebob: I’m going to Target, do you need anything?
Mom: There was one thing, but I can’t remember.
Suebob: Was it a bathmat for the shower? I could get you one of those.
Mom: No, get that when you have more time. But when would that be? You’re always so busy.
Suebob: Well, I’ll be there, so if you want one, I will get it.
Mom: No, do it when you have time.
Suebob: It would actually be more convenient for me to get it since I am going today, rather than some time when I am not going there.
Mom: (hurt) Well, I wouldn’t ask you to make a special trip!
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Please do not try to figure these conversations out. It will just make your brain hurt. Trust me, I know. But then there’s this, which I understand perfectly:
Me: Did you hear about that politician in Michigan who wants to have foster children get their clothes from Goodwill instead of new?
Mom: Why would they do that to children who have so little already?
Me: I dunno.
Mom: I just don’t understand people.
Me: Me neither. I had a friend whose foster parents would buy lots of presents for their own children at Christmas, and he would get nothing.”
Mom: (her face collapses and tears fill her eyes). That…makes me cry. I mean, why not just have everyone get by with a little less?
