Important Reminders for the Week

1) Tonight The Amazing Race 14 begins. I wish I could say this is the only reality show I watch, but I can say it's my favorite. And this season, Mike White is on one of the teams!

2) Monday, tickets for Street of Eames go on sale. They aren't cheap, $50, but all benefits go to support homeless children in Portland Public Schools.

Love One Another

What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than loving everyone. And what better way to love everyone than being nice. I have a friend who hates being called nice because she thinks it's too bland, too nondescript, too boring. That's one of the main reasons I love Operation Nice. I takes the term nice and makes it one of the best things ever, something I would aspire to be called. The site tells stories of nice people who do such simple things as sharing coupons with the person behind them in line and things coworkers do for one another. It also includes testimonials, assignments, and projects. It inspires me to be better and I really need to look at it more often.

I'm Thankful for Water

Living in the Pacific Northwest, it's so easy to forget that there are places that don't spend 6 months practically drowning in rain. I can take warm showers for as long as I want. This weekend I washed a new red shirt with only one other piece of clothing for fear of the colors running. All I have to do to get clean, safe drinking water is walk to the kitchen and turn on the tap.

H2O Africa states, "Our objective is to increase awareness of the African situation, empower people to action, and create sustainable alliances between people who want to help, the best organizations in the field to make it happen, and some of the amazing communities of Africa that have no clean water." Matt Damon has partnered with this organization to help raise awareness. He became interested when he was in Africa and met a young girl who, when asked what she wanted to be, smiled and said she wanted to move to the city and become a nurse. He realized the only reason she could even have this dream was because she didn't have to spend her days walking long distances to provide water for her family. Her village has a well.

H2O Africa partners with numerous NGOs and features over a hundred projects. You can donate in general or to a specific project. Even better, thanks to their partnerships, every donation is matched. And if your office has a matching donation program, it could be tripled.

I'm Thankful for Food

This Thursday I will sit down to a table so laden with food it's probably one casserole away from collapsing. That puts me in a very small minority.

Did you see the David Letterman interview with Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme? It was almost 2 months ago, but is still fresh on my mind.

The most alarming and yet hopeful thing she says it that it would cost $3 billion a year to say no kid goes hungry. And then David Letterman says that Wall Street bonuses were $36 billion.

• WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency
  
• In 2007, they provided 3.3 million tons of food for 86.1 million
  
• people
  
• This year they plan to feed around 90 million people in 80 countries
  
• At any moment WFP has 30 ships at sea, 70 aircraft in the sky and 5,000 trucks on the ground
  
• The agency relies entirely on voluntary contributions
  
• More than 90 percent of funding goes on food or delivery costs

Right now money is tight for everyone, the economy is bad, it's the holidays. But if you can, please consider helping.

Your Right To Read

I love reading. I got my new Multnomah library card this weekend. I thought it was a good way to celebrate Banned Books Week. Here's a little more info:

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW's 27th anniversary. BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

Wondering what to read? Here's a list including my favorite book of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird

Wondering what you can do? Here are some ideas.

And if you live in Portland, you can go to this event.

Saturday, October 4, 1–2:30 p.m. - Central Library, U.S. Bank Room
Please join us for Banned Books Week, an annual celebration that highlights the importance of intellectual freedom and reminds us to cherish this precious democratic right. Lawyer Steven T. Wax will be our guest speaker. As head of the Oregon Federal Public Defenders' Office, Mr. Wax was responsible for representing inmates at Guantánamo. He also represented Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer who was falsely linked to the Madrid train station bombing. His book, Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror — A Public Defender's Inside Account, examines this and other cases and the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of 9/11.

Oregon Food Bank Cans Film Festival

Since I've moved back to Portland and gotten on a more normal work schedule, I have started doing things I like to do such as volunteering.  I have volunteered at the Oregon Food Bank a few times and think it is such a worthwhile, well-run organization.  They always accept donations and you would be amazed how much they can buy with your monetary donation.  But next week there's a special event - The Cans Film Festival.  On Thursday September 25, you can see a movie and get popcorn for free by simply donating 3 cans or boxes of food at Regal cinemas in the Portland area.  Check out the site for more details.  

826 - Reading Fun for Everyone

Have you heard about the 826 program? Here's a little bit about it:

"826 National is a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations in seven cities across the country. Our goal is to assist students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills, and to help teachers get their classes excited about writing. Our work is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success."

If there isn't a program in your city, there are probably other literacy or writing programs. And if not, you can always support an 826 center by shopping at one of their online stores. They each have a unique theme and items you probably can't find anywhere else.

826 Valencia (San Francisco) - The Pirate Store - All sorts of treasures like Pirate Dice and Eye Patches
826 Chicago - The Boring Store - The name must be ironic, none of this stuff is boring. I want A Sunday Afternoon Hotdog Meal. It's a field guide to Chicago written by 200 elementary school students.

826 Michigan - The Liberty Street Robot Supply and Repair Store - How can you resist a CD called I'm Not a Philosopher, I am Just a Green Monster: Songs of Monster Protest.

826 NYC - The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. - They don't yet have an online shop but don't these capes, canned muscles, and bottled elastic fantastic make you want to stop in.
From 826 Seattle - The Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. - No online store yet but the promise of space travel is very enticing. And you can peek in to see what's going on.

826 LA - Echo Park Time Travel Mart - This is the store that first caught my attention. Amy Martin's (blog, flickr) Time Travel Agency posters are so beautiful. I want them all but especially this one:

A Very Merry-Go-Round

Need a smile today? Read this story from my alma mater. A BYU professor and 5 students went to Ghana and built a merry-go-round for a school playground. As happy as that is, here's the best part, when the kids play on the merry-go-round, it generates electricity that then powers LED lights in the school. These LED lights are portable, so at the end of the day, the kids can take them home to light their houses. Now they have something to play on and lights. In Ghana, over 10,000 schools don't have electricity. I believe that ideas like this, ideas that seem so simple and small are really the way to change the world. Want more information? Go to the Empower Playgrounds website.

Water Water Everywhere

Coleridge knew the importance of fresh, clean water.

After I've worked a busy 12 hour shift without stopping enough to drink, I know it too.

So I'm really excited and happy to post about this event. The Tap Project is partnering with UNICEF to raise money to provide clean water to more children throughout the world. Did you know that lack of clean and accessible drinking water is the second largest worldwide killer of children under five.

Here's the info: Beginning Sunday, March 16 through Saturday, March 22, restaurants will invite their customers to donate a minimum of $1 for the tap water they would normally get for free. For every dollar raised, a child will have clean drinking water for 40 days. For a list of restaurants in your area, visit the website.

Drink Up!

Smiling About The Land of Smiles (That's Thailand)

One year ago today, after taking my finals early, cleaning my cute little studio apartment where I had lived for 3 years, and moving all my stuff into the garden shed of the lovely and generous Tamara, I got on a plane to Southern Thailand. After over 40 hours on planes and layovers, I reached my final destination, Khao Lak.

I know I have written about this before but not a day goes by that I don't remember that trip, think about the people there, the changes I hope are still happening, notice sunspots and freckles I got while there, wear some cute shoes from Thailand, or look at pictures I took. So here are a few pictures...

The view from my hotel room. How lucky was I?!

My first day, going to the worksite. The rainy season if you couldn't tell.

Mixing cement with some visiting monks

Yep, that's me, twirling fire on the beach

I'm posed like a dressed down Vanna White but I built this whole wall all by myself. My eyes are closed from fatigue, it's either that or the dust from sawing concrete blocks in half is in my eyes.

Jaime and me after a long, hard day of work

Thanking Linda the Elephant for the adventure

Smile Like You Mean It

Here are the things that made me smile today:

A sunny day with no school and no work

Waking up without an alarm clock

Spending part of the day washing my car

Almost reaching my fundraising goal for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life

Chocolate soymilk and banana in a blender

The new Mac ads with the guy who played Warren on Ed

My apartment's secret garden in full bloom

My nice landlord being sure I saw it since it is kinda secret even to me

Hanging new art on my walls

Listening to Tamara's master's thesis, a 35 minute radio spot about Mormon dating in NYC

That wonderful moment at the doctor's when your name is called and you get to leave the waiting room - then leaving with a clean bill of health

Making vacation plans for the end of school

Hope you had a day full of smiles too.

P.S. If you haven't heard about the Relay for Life, click for more info or to donate.

Thailand Memories and Volunteer Opportunities

Today I got an email from a friend I met while we were both in Thailand. She is back there working on a project to find honest wholesalers to sell the pearls directly to the artisans who create jewelry with the pearls. The goal is to cut out the middlemen so that ultimately the artisans would receive a fair profit from their work. A similar program is already underway in The Philippines.

Her email was short but brought back so many memories of the time I spent there last summer. As a nursing student, I had 4 months off during the summer and after searching for weeks for a humanitarian project to join, I heard about the Wave of Hope project. It is an NGO started by BYU students who were part of a social entrepreneur/global change agent program and was part of a larger group called Empowering Nations. I was blessed with the chance to spend 5 weeks in Thailand, 4 weeks working in Khao Lak and 1 as a tourist in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Khao Lak, where we stayed, is a small town about 60 km north of Phuket, in an area that was devasted by the tsunami in December 2004. I spent my days building houses out of concrete blocks in a small village, Tap Tawaan, about 20 km farther outside of Khao Lak.

I think about that trip almost everyday. I can't believe the impact this experience had on my life. I'm not even sure I realized it when I was there but it probably holds a place in my heart and mind equal to my mission. Yep, tearing up right now just thinking about it; it's hard to type when blurry-eyed.

I miss the wonderful hotel, The Baan Krating, where I was lucky enough to have air-conditioning and Jaime, a friend from home, as my roommate. I miss the restaurants with the best Thai food ever and so cheap. I miss being somewhere that the only time I was in a room with walls was either church or the hotel. But most of all, I miss the feelings I had while there. I miss the wonderful people I worked with. I loved helping and laughing and working so hard but feeling so good. I loved the Spirit that permeated my days spent surrounded by other socially-conscious people who love one another and act on their beliefs.

So if this sounds like something you would like to do, this same organization is planning another trip for Summer 2006. There are plans to go to Africa, South America, and back to Thailand. I got an email about it recently, however, I don't think all of the information is on the Empowering Nations website yet, so please check back if you might be able to help.