AN EXPERIMENTAL LIFE
One way of giving on behalf of colleagues and other professionals during the Holidays, is to give something related to their field of endeavour. For instance, for a training and education professional, you might give on their behalf to a school in Cambodia. Organizations like globalgiving.org and givemeaning.org make it easy to target a sector of charity (medicine, education, justice and human … [Read more...]
This is an excerpted letter of response I wrote to the COO of globalgiving.org -- she'd written to thank me for participation, mention some web traffic coming from my site, and ask how I'd learned of their organization. I responded to explain how, personally, I select the charities that suit my interests. Hi Donna, Here's the deal: It was a process. Like many people, I've gone years wanting … [Read more...]
I'm not political. But recently, I sent letters to each of my senators, and the representative for my district. This is an example of one such letter: Representative Fallin, I've lived in your district for about three years, but I'm less familiar with your work than I'd like to be; I'm writing to find out what you're doing about two things in particular - Sudan and Burma. And I'd like to urge … [Read more...]
For now, anyway. They fixed the power on my street this evening, so we're finally off the generator and can turn on all the lights. We took quite a hit - this area lost so many old trees, literally ripped out of the ground in some cases, by the ice storm - it was a mini Tunguska. Oklahoma gets hit with an ice storm usually every December and February, because it's not cold enough for the water … [Read more...]
I bought a memory foam mattress and built a platform bed. Instead of getting one of those expensive mattresses, I got one on ebay - instead of the 3 parts (memory foam, medium foam rubber, firm foam rubber) being fused, we just put them in a mattress cover. Savings over $1000. I paid less than $300 for the queen. The nice thing about this stuff is it's exactly the same stuff in the high end … [Read more...]
Instead of gift cards this year, consider giving a charitable donation in the name of each recipient to kiva.org or oxfam.org. With kiva, you can print the photo and information about the recipient (and it will indeed be that exact person who receives your help) - it makes a wonderful card insert, and they will actually see your profile next to the person you helped when they go to the site. With … [Read more...]
Kiva is one of my new charities. [Global Giving], Give Meaning, and Oxfam are the others. Except Kiva is not a charity, not really. It's a way each of us can loan a small amount - $25 - and the amounts are pooled into a microloan to someone trying to pull themselves out of poverty or improve their situation by entrepreneurship. A lot of these businesses are already solid, growing concerns, that … [Read more...]
