30 Bloggers, 30 Days
September 1, 2010
Times are tough here in western Virginia.
You can see it in the boarded up businesses and the long lines at the employment office. In the vehicles parked in front yards with FOR SALE signs in the windshields, right next to the same sort of sign for the house. The newspapers are full of layoffs, bankruptcies, and health care worries.
Hard times, no doubt about it.
But even in these hard times there are things we take for granted, those basic necessities we can’t live without but are in such abundance we forget their importance. Things like water. I have three bathtubs in my house. Five sinks. Two spigots outside. There’s a creek running alongside our house that give me fresh mountain water for the sprinkler. Water, water everywhere.
Not everyone is so fortunate:
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Bryan Allain (I use that term loosely, since he’s a Red Sox fan) sent me an email asking if I would join with him and some other bloggers in a campaign called 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000. The goal is to raise $30,000 in 30 days. Here’s the list of fine folks Tyler Stanton and Bryan Allain have assembled:
Bryan Allain, Matt Appling, Trey Boden, Jason Boyett, Everett Bracken, Stephen Brewster, Burnside Writers Collective, Tripp Crosby, Greg Darley, Sam Davidson, Rachel Held Evans, Evan Forester, Chad Gibbs, Susan Isaacs, Kevin Keigley, Lacey Keigley, Wes Molebash, Scott Moore, Eric Olsen, AJ Passman, Katdish, Brad Ruggles, Rob Shepherd, Jeff Shinabarger, Shawn Smucker, Tyler Stanton, Tyler Tarver, Tyler Thigpen, Karen Spears Zacharias
I’ve never asked anyone who reads my blog to dig into their pockets. Like I said above, times are tough. So what I’m going to do is provide you with the information and let your heart talk instead of me. The best part about this campaign is that all money donated will reach a specific group of needy people. Here’s where this money will go:
- Our goal is $30,000. This provides clean water to 1,500 people (300 families, 6 entire communities).
- 100% of the money donated goes towards water projects. Private donors take care of all the overhead.
- $20 provides 1 person clean water for 20 years.
- Our money will go towards building water projects in Central African Republic.
- If you give, charity: water will keep you up-to-date with the status of your project, provide you with GPS coordinates of exactly where the well you contributed to is being built, and take pictures and video along the way.
So, how can you help?
- GIVE. $20 provides clean water for one person for 20 years! Go to the 30 Bloggers, 30 Days, $30,000 site and make a donation.
- SHARE about it on Facebook and Twitter. Follow @charitywater here.
- Blog about it.30 bloggers is simply a starting point. We would love to have more people join in and help spread the word! And if you do blog about it, please let me know so I can link back to your post.
Last but not least, here’s a bunch of cool downloads, banners and twitter backgrounds you can use. Thanks for your time.
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Tagged: 30 bloggers, 30 days, charity water
Tolerating me
August 30, 2010
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I tend to shy away from politics and even culture in this space. Not because I’m not political or even cultural (which I am), but because I prefer to leave those things to people who are more capable and smarter than me.
That said, things do build up in me from time to time to the point where if I don’t say something, I feel like I’m going to bust. Which has been happening lately. There’s much talk about who stands for what and who only pretends to, talk of things like tolerance and equality and this freedom and that. While a lot of my friends who blog have taken it upon themselves to offer their thoughts, I’ve kept my mouth shut. Again, that’s not normally my thing.
But then last week I got an invitation from the ACLU to unzip my lip and fill out a survey. It felt good to finally get a few things off my chest. Initially, anyway.
To read all about it, stop by katdish’s website…
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Tagged: ACLU, agendas, freedom, tolerance
The key
August 27, 2010
image courtesy of A Simple Country Girl, used with permission. For info on available images, please click on the image.
I found it a while back in a dresser drawer I was cleaning out. It was stuck in the back corner behind some pens, a stack of old pay stubs, and my high school ring. There’s no telling how long it had sat there, but it must have been a while. A very long while. Because try as I might, I couldn’t remember what it unlocked.
I’ve checked all the locks in the house, including the one on the shed in the backyard and the diary my daughter keeps. I’ve asked my wife if it happens to go to anything school-related and called my father to ask if it was his.
No all the way around.
It’s too big for a key to a shed or a mailbox. Not enough teeth to unlock a door. Not fancy enough to start a vehicle. Too real to fit a child’s toy.
So…what?
I don’t know. I figure I have two options here, both obvious. I can throw the key away and be done with it, thinking that if I haven’t needed it for longer than my memory allows, I likely won’t need it again. Or I can keep it. I’m leaning toward keeping it. I can’t throw the key away. Doing that will all but guarantee I will find whatever lock it fits, and that on the other side of the lock will be something I will likely need very badly.
There are a lot of people who say it’s the big moments in our lives that show us who we really are, warts and all. I’m not one of them. I think it’s the little moments that do that. Moments like this one, with me and my key.
So I stare at it and wonder. Is this all about my tendency to hang onto things and not let them go? Or is it about my subtle distrust in the shaky maxim that “everything work out fine in the end”?
Maybe it’s neither. Maybe all this proves is that I tend to think about some things a little more than I should. Regardless, it’s all very discombobulating. I feel like I have an answer to a question I don’t know how to ask.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe I need to consider this as something I’ve found something that I don’t really need right now but might need later. I think that alone is reason enough to hang onto it. I know this from experience.
I’ve often found some truth, some answer, only to lose it and have to go searching again. Most of the mistakes I make are ones I’ve made before and never learned from or, worse, thought I learned from but really didn’t. And there have been a lot of times I’ve been left wondering “Why in the world did I have to go through that?” only to say later on “Oh, now I understand. It was so I could handle this.” We find the keys to a lot of life’s problems long before we come across the locks.
That’s why we have to hang onto them and keep them safe. Why the struggles we have now can grow into future blessings. Because often the key to life lies more in remembering than learning.
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Tagged: key, lost and found, small moments
Into the world
August 24, 2010
image courtesy of A Simple Country Girl, used with permission. For info on available images, please click on the image.
I took the day off from everything—work, writing, and the computer. “It’s your day,” I told the kids. “We’ll do whatever you want.”
Their smiles were genuine and laced with only the slightest bit of mischief, just enough for me to start to worry about a day of alternating wrestling matches and tea parties.
“Don’t worry,” my son said. “We’ll have an adventure.”
Okay.
The day began as every day for the past week had, with the three of us staring through tiny holes of mesh around the butterfly cage. Mommy had ordered caterpillars the week before, which had arrived in little plastic containers of mud and goo. According to the directions, the caterpillars would find their way to the top of the containers and form cocoons, at which point we would transfer them to the cage and stand guard. We watched for three days until the butterflies emerged. Then we had a birthday party—brownies for us, sugar water sprinkled on purple flowers from the backyard for them.
They were fed and loved, oohed and ahhed. They got the prime seat in front of the television so they could watch cartoons. My daughter sang lullabies to them at night. “They’re like my kids,” my daughter said. That was true; she cared for them as such. And the butterflies grew. Their wings grew and changed from a dull gray to bright orange, and they began flittering about the cage. It was time to let them go.
That was one item on the list for that day.
There were also plenty of others.
There was wrestling, yes. Much. And I drank so much imaginary tea that my stomach imaginarily sloshed.
We readied knapsacks for school and checked off their needed supplies.
We took in a matinee movie. Not at the fancy theater down at the mall with the noisy video games and the fancy seats, but the cool one downtown with the creaky wooden floors and the old movie posters.
We visited the school on the way home to say hello to teachers and pitch in to help mommy.
We took a walk around the neighborhood and chased imaginary pirates.
Summer had died. I think we all knew that. And I think we all knew that last day was also its funeral of sorts, a way of saying thanks and goodbye and see you again some day. But rather than mourning summer’s passing, we toasted it. We spent out day eating food we shouldn’t, laughing uncontrollably, pondering the mysteries of the world, and trying to suck the marrow out of every minute.
That’s how every funeral should be, I think. A celebration. A see-you-again-some-day.
I don’t mind bragging—they had fun. Much fun. In my son’s words, “The funnest day ever.” I like to think I had a part in that.
But the truth is that I had fun, too. I like having my kids around. I like the fact they’re nestled in a life that is stable and loving and good. I like knowing where they are, and I like knowing that place is safe.
That night after dinner, the four of us took the butterfly cage outside. My son unzipped the top and pulled it back, while my daughter clothes-pinned it to hold it open. We sat for a few minutes and watched as the butterflies crawled to the top and perched themselves there, slowly opening and closing their wings.
“It’s okay,” my son whispered. “Go!”
We all watched as one by one they did just that, leaving the home they loved for another, bigger one. One full of wonder and delight mixed with danger and darkness.
My daughter sidled up to me and put her head on my shoulder. “I wish my kids could stay here,” she said. “I know they have to go into the world, but I wish they could stay here. Does that make sense, Daddy?”
“More than you know,” I said.
This post is part of the blog carnival on Children, hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more, please visit her site.
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Filed under: blog carnival
Tagged: butterflies, children, letting go, safety
Hit the redneck
August 23, 2010
photo of Radivoje Lajic from telegraph.co.uk
God picks on me sometimes.
I know that sounds a little odd. Maybe even a little whiny. I’m good with that. I’m willing to concede that this is likely a misconception on my part, that instead of picking on me, God’s doing something else. He’s loving me or blessing me or preparing me, but not picking on me. I can understand that in my head, where the rational part of me lives. In my heart though, in that place where rationality often gives way to pure emotion, that’s not always true. God’s not loving me or blessing me or preparing me, He’s just playing Hit the Redneck.
I don’t think I’m alone here. Chances are there are one or two other people in the world who tend to think God sometimes messes with them, too.
Radivoje Lajic isn’t one of them, though he would be sympathetic to me. God might not be picking on him, but the aliens are. Not kidding. To read his story, hop on over to katdish’s site. Radivoje has certainly put my feelings into perspective. That God picks on me sometimes doesn’t really sound odd or whiny to me anymore. It just sounds wrong.
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I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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