Think globally, act locally.
Up until this past Sunday's service at Eliot that motto had generally been tied to my more environmental interests - recycling, organic foods, local farming and local markets.  On Sunday, Reverend Daniel's sermon titled Bankers to the Poor gave me another way to experience it.  In his sermon he gave statistics about the severe poverty experienced by billions of people in developing countries around the world, and shared uplifting stories about how small sums of money that you an I might spend on a mocha and a magazine each month actually generate real wealth (all things being relative) and the potential for sustaining wealth creation for impoverished women and families.  This wasn't a Sally Struthers commercial for the Christian Children's Fund telling us that for the price of a cup of coffee per day we could sponsor a child.  Sure, it conjured those images a bit, merely because we're talking about the poorest of the poor and who in my generation hasn't seen those commercials?  The message and the call to action, however, was more than simply feeding and caring for the poor (though it's an important need that CCF fills admirably).

These uplifting stories centered around microfinancing, a concept I was only vaguely familiar with.  The gist is poor people with an entrepreneurial spirit can take out loans of relatively small sums of money to help them expand a modest business endeavor with the goal of expanding the business and earning more money.  The money then goes for more/better food, education for children, and hopefully, eventually, savings and increased family wealth.  The more successful endeavors might even employ others in the village, creating a rippling effect in other families. 

The call to action focused on an organization called FINCA (Foundation for International Community Assistance), a global foundation that promotes microfinancing in the poorest of the poor developing and war-ravaged countries around the world, and its village banking campaign.  Reverend Daniel tossed out the notion that the Eliot community might want to pull together to become a village bank sponsor - for $5,000 the church community could fully fund/sponsor a village bank in one of FINCA's partner countries.  The notion locked itself around my head and I decided right there that I wanted to learn more about microfinancing, FINCA and this village bank idea.  I also knew this was something I could easily and absolutely get behind.  I wanted to see us do this.

I spent much of the day yesterday devouring the FINCA website and reading other articles on microfinancing.  I am fascinated by the concept, and the approach FINCA (and others) takes to its village banking program.  They focus on micro-entrepreneurs, mostly women, who take the initiative and put in the hard work to carve out a living for their family, and who need the help of a small investment of funds to get them over the capital hump and on their way towards greater efficiency and productivity.  These women (about 70% of FINCA's clients are women) participate in a village bank structured around community and democracy.  Clients of the village bank vote on loan disbursements, support each other when issues arise that threaten repayment, and collectively cosign for the loans when collateral is scarce (which is often).  The women are empowered, leadership is fostered, and the village business community thrives on the success of each of its members.  And these are just the direct benefits to the women, not to mention the spin-off effects to their families, specifically the children, and the multiplier effect that can happen throughout the community as one business after another grows and succeeds.

After a lot of reading and thinking, I decided that this is definitely something I want to do, want to get behind, and decided to pledge 10% of my earnings from my moonlighting gig to the Eliot-village bank campaign.  I wrote my check for $100 and put it in the mail to Reverend Daniel this morning.  I hope we get some momentum around this, and that we can really make something of it.  I'd like to see a formal group formed to push this through, even if it takes a year or so to make it a reality (I'd hope for sooner rather than later, but I also just want to see this happen so it takes as long as it takes).  I'm mulling over who I can ask about contributing, to match my initial contribution, or who might be willing to go in with a few friends and pool together a match.  Fund raising has never been a personal strength of mine, but this is something new and unique and has very tangible benefits (albeit on the other side of the world), and it might just be something that I can get others excited about.  We'll see where this goes and I'll keep you posted.

This was our meditation yesterday:

A person will worship something,

have no doubt about that.

We may think our tribute is paid in secret

in the dark recesses of our hearts,

but it will out.

That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts

will determine our lives, and our character.

Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship,

for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

Wow.
Got woken up at 4:30-ish this morning by an earthquake in  Evansville, IN.  5.2 on the richter scale.  As someone who's never experience an earthquake before (not that I recall), it was pretty wild.  Bolted upright in bed when I heard the hanging closet doors making noise and felt the bed moving. As I became more conscious and sat on the edge of my bed I realized the pictures were rattling.  By now Rae was awake and sitting up, both of us silent.  "It's an earthquake," I said softly, and stood up.  "Either that or one hell of an explosion somewhere."  I put my finger on the nearest picture on the wall, stopped it from shaking, then took my finger off and it started shaking again.  That was trippy.  We could really hear the windows and doors and pictures rattling, and this ambient rumble all around, like the stereotypical train running by the apartment building.  I stood, Rae sat in silence until it ended.  Seemed like it lasted 20-30 seconds.

I immediately hopped onto the USGS site, but I think I was too fast for it, they didn't have anything up, or I was just too out of it to really know where to look.  Even the news sites didn't have anything in that first 10 minutes.  I checked on M, who slept through the whole thing, and by then the cats were out and about and crabby.  Miles was very upset and followed me around the house, and Chloe sat motionless right in front of M's door.  I finally came off the adrenaline enough to get back to bed around 5am, and my alarm went off a half-hour later.  By then the news was already covering the big story.

Fast forward about five and a half hours and I'm sitting in my department library, having a meeting with a couple of colleagues on a park master plan project.  Just as we were wrapping up along came an aftershock, 4.6 magnitude.  At first, one colleague thought I was being funny and moving the table with my foot, but then I put both feet on the ground and scooted my chair back.  It kept going, maybe 10-20 seconds?  I could feel the tremble, feel the building sway (I'm on the fifth floor of a 10-story building), and we could hear the library stacks sway and creak.  The sway of the building and the creaking of the stacks was a bit disconcerting.  The three of us stood up, just the slightest edge of uh-oh to our body language as we moved to the hallway, but then it stopped.  We looked at each other as if reassuring ourselves that yes we'd all just felt it and yes it was over and no we didn't need to leave.  Then we started laughing and talking about it, as I guess that's the natural reaction.  I got back to my office and called Rae.  She's out running errands today, and said she didn't feel it, but her brother had just called to say he felt it up in Peoria.  Pretty wild.  I have to say the aftershock was 'worse' than the one this morning because I was up in the building and I think because it was only 5 or so hours removed from the first one.  Now my internal senses are wound up waiting for the next one.

Here's the map/link to the USGS site for info on the 2 earthquakes from this morning.

One of my kickboxing instructors at the Y is shaving her head today for pediatric cancer research.  I'm guessing she's probably already done it, but she's taking donations for the cause through this next week.  She doesn't have a personal cancer story, but her son discovered the cause last year and wanted to do it again this year and wanted his mom to do it with him.  I think it's great that her young son has found a cause that he wants to give to, and I think it's great that she's doing it with him ("this year").  So I don't know if giving to this sort of thing is something you're inclined to do, but if it is, check out her donation page and the foundation she's doing it through and think about supporting her, and ultimately supporting kids who are fighting and surviving cancer.

modern suburban strip commercial development.

(The scene: M and I on our way to Circuit City after church this morning)

M: Poppa!  Are we going to school?
Me: Nope, sweetie, we're on our way to Circuit City.
M: But it looks like we're going to school.  See, there's a McDonald's, a Stake & Shake, a Walgreens, even a Jack in the Box! 
Me: You're right, sweetie, but we're on a different road than school.
M: We see all of those things when we go to school.  But we're on a different road. It just looks the same.  And it looks like when we go to gymnastics too!  That's too silly!

Yep, urban development commentary from my almost 4-year old.  Must run in the genes.

It's only been four nights, but it's been four glorious sleep nights!  In the past four nights I have had the four best consecutive nights of sleep I've had in months, maybe even years.

With the old mattress I woke up at least 2 times every night, say 12:30 and 3:30 in the morning, or 1:30 and 4:30 in the morning (this was the worst, as by the time I got back to sleep at 5a it was less than an hour before my alarm would go off).  I would toss and turn, sleeping on my back wasn't comfortable so I'd try my side, only toss and turn to my back again and hope I fell asleep.  And every morning I'd wake up with the same tweak in my lower back, and stretch and massage the knot away before groggily climbing out of bed.

With this new bed I have had 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep for the past 4 days.  I read a bit, turn off the light and slip right into sleep, not waking until my alarm goes off.  When I wake up I felt like I've actually gotten sleep, I'm refreshed, and have been getting out of bed after just one snooze (except for Wednesday, when I was just being lazy).  Now mind you, these are regular nights, regular routines, regular days at work.  I'm not dead tired going to bed, I'm not so exhausted that I just crash.  These are just normal nights after normal days, reading in bed before I fall asleep.  And it's been incredible.  Rae's had nearly the same experience as me, though I was the one with the real trouble sleeping, so she's just noticing that she doesn't sleep on her side as much.  I notice that she doesn't snore as much (but then she says she doesn't snore, so ...).

So far, after only four days, I can say this is looking to be one of the best investments we have ever made.  If this sort of sleep keeps up, and I have no reason to think that it won't, I will tell this story to everyone I know.

(my sleep number is 55)

Haven't had my coffee for the first two days of the week.  Today, Rae and I went to our local coffee place after dropping M off at school.  We got our ground coffee for home and picked up a cup of one of their drip coffees for the day - Fair Trade Organic Shade Grown Birds and Bees . It's very very yummy, and I'm soooo glad to have my coffee this morning.  Despite all the computer glitches and talking with the IT guy and reboots (8 of them) I've had to deal with this morning, it's been a good morning.  Coffee = teh awesomesauce.

...for the US economy.  GW did it.  He threw money at me, told me to spend it like a patriotic Red Blooded American should, to keep this great economy of ours strong and resilient.  I told him "no", I was either going to save it or use it to pay off some credit card debt (how much more Red Blooded American can you get than paying on credit card dept? Other than not paying in it, I mean).  Instead, Rae and I decided to use the "free" money and get a new bed.  Not just a new bed, but one of those Sleep Number beds.  Yeah, the s'pensive kind.

Y'see, my bed had been bothering my back for the past 2-3 months, and we were on our third mattress set in the past 10 years, so we decided to stop buying what we thought were decent mattresses and just go with something that should do the trick for the next 10 years, something that my chiropractor recommended, and something that, after a fair bit of research, seemed like exactly what we needed so we could both get the beds we want/need.  So yes, our free money from the gov'ment will be going towards paying off the new bed we just bought.

Cool thing, we ordered it last Sunday, and it arrived on Friday, and I put it together last night (with help from M, might get some pictures of that up soon too) after we got home from my folks, and I slept straight through the night for the first time in weeks if not months.  So worth it?  After night one, definitely worth it, and I suspect (hope) it will be for years to come.  And if anyone is wondering, my sleep number is 55, same as the CEO of Select Comfort :)

... are just slightly bigger than I remember them being last week.  I needed my belt not just to complete the business attire, but to actually hold my pants up (as well as hold my cell phone clip).  This confirmed that the 1/2" I lost around my middle last week wasn't an illusion.  This pleases me, but I'm going to have to buy a whole bunch of new pants by the end of the summer (if not before).  But I mustn't count my chickens just yet; one week at a time, one week at a time.

... I might try doing some daily observation posts here. Not sure why. And don't expect much. Not sure if I'll have time to keep up with it, or if it'll be daily, or simply random observations.  I'd like to think I have the discipline to make it daily.  We'll see.  I'm also not committing to having a point, I think sometimes they'll simply be observations without much commentary.  We'll see.  I don't really know what I want, what I expect, or why I'm doing this (I've said that already, haven't I?), so I'm just going with the flow and doing what feels right at the moment.

So, today's observations (yes, there are two from this morning) come via the train ride into work this morning.  The first was while looking out the window and watching the landscape whoosh by (as much as lightrail will whoosh), and seeing all the gray and drab everywhere.  The zoysia grass (and I'm sure many other grasses I couldn't guess) are still yellow, dead, spotted with patches of green from water grass or fescue grasses that have taken hold here and there in the yards.  The trees are dark, look bare, made more drab by the dark, cloudy, rainy morning.  But the lifeless looking trees are an illusion.  They aren't bare.

Yesterday, M and I were out playing in the yard - practicing t-ball, playing frisbee chase, hide-n-seek.  At one point in the middle of the play M stopped quick and knelt down and found several empty wallnut shells.  She was fascinated, wanting to know what they were, and actually guessing that the squirrels ate them and left the shells in our yard (the nearest wallnut tree is three houses down from us).  She started collecting all she could see, along with broken acorn shells, and we made a pile near the base of one of our trees.  As we were searching for more, she exclaimed, "Poppa! I found a tiny flower!"  Sure enough, she'd found some early buds that had just started to sprout and had blown out of our trees with the last recent storm.  "What are they? Where'd they come from?"  I explained to her that they were buds from the trees, tiny almost flowers that will bloom into bigger flowers and then turn into the leaves that fill out the trees.  I lifted her up and pulled down a low branch for her to see all the tiny buds along one tiny branch, some were still closed up tight, others were just opening and showing hints of the tiny flowers they would become.  She thought that was cool enough, then hopped down and collected more wallnut and acorn shells and tiny buds and added them to the pile.  After a time of that, we were back playing.

So this morning, as I'm looking at the drab landscape, I know that things aren't as barren as they appear, that the lifelessness is only an illusion, and that there are buds on the trees, and it'll only be a matter of time before those buds pop open to tiny flowers.  Only a matter of time before we forget the gray of winter, and relish the sights and smells (and yes, the allergies) of spring.

(#2)
I was pulled out of my thoughts on the coming spring by a woman stumbling down the aisle as the train took off, settling her 3 bags and large umbrella into an empty seat and sitting down on the edge of the aisle seat.  She starts cooing and oohing at a baby in a pumpkin seat in a stroller just ahead of me.  She's talking kind of loud, everyone around can hear her, and it's jarring the silence we all shared moments before.  She's talking to the mother, telling how cute the boy is, asking his age, commenting on his big brown alert eyes.  The woman is forty-something (if I had to guess) white, skinny but not frail.  She has a very down home, working class manner about her - friendly, but somewhat direct, like she doesn't realize she might be intruding on the mother's personal space, personal time. The mother is a young black woman, mid-to-late twenties (at least she didn't seem too young to me), looking straight ahead, seemingly aware that the 3 bags and stroller were very out of context for the rest of the passengers on the train on their way to work.  As the woman talks to her, or coos at her son, the mother hardly turns as she speaks, only turning if the woman is unable to hear her and asks her to repeat herself.

As I said, the woman seemed a bit loud, intrusive, prying herself into a conversation that the young mother didn't seem to want and disrupting the quiet commute the rest in the car was enjoying only moments before.  But as I listen, I notice something, perhaps something only a parent might notice (or someone 'in the field').  The questions evolve from how old he is, to if he's got teeth, if he's eating finger foods, if he's crawling, if he babbles.   She asks questions about where they're headed (babysitter, family actually, so the mother can go to a job interview),  whether the family usually watch him, and if he's familiar with them.  Interspersed with the questions are statements about the types of foods he could be eating, that he'll have teeth soon enough, that he'll be crawling in no time especially if he's getting enough tummy time, and jovial quips about how his babbles will turn to talking soon enough and she won't be able to shut him up; about how wonderful it is she's got family that can care for the kid, and how nice it will be if she gets the job, and how it's good that the mom visits with a parent as teacher representative once a month. 

The progression of questions, her responses of encouragement and suggestions that sounded like encouragement, her attention to both the baby boy and the mother were more than a simple stranger might do. It was more than simply a parent (the woman actually didn't wear a wedding band, if that means anything) sharing the common bond of parenthood with another.  It was more than interest in sharing the delight of the (admittedly very cute) child.  There was something about the pacing of the questions, that they hit on several key developmental milestones, that they were interspersed with very appropriate statements or suggestions that told me this woman was more than just a slightly intrusive train rider.  My intuition screamed social worker, or some sort of child care/family advocate. From what I heard of the conversation (everything) and the reaction of the woman to the mother's answers and the woman's body language, I think she seemed satisfied with her inquiry.  She wished the young mother well as all three of us got off at my stop, and rushed on saying something about catching her bus.  The Family Court building is about a mile from the train station.  Who knows.

I'm still trying to figure out if I think the woman was out of line or not.  I don't really think so.  I think she was certainly friendly, not rude or pushy in the least, and that while she might have been prying, it seemed for the sake of the child, making sure that he was doing well and in a good situation.  If she was with some sort of family services, and the conversation had gone the opposite direction, I would like to think that she would have offered a business card, or otherwise pointed the woman (with deftly dropped 'suggestions', as she was good at) in the direction of services she could tap into to get assistance.  I don't know.  I wonder what the mother thought.  If she felt her personal space had been violated, or if it was just a friendly conversation with a friendly stranger who got pulled in by her son's big, dark, expressive eyes (believe me, M has attracted more attention that way, and my response to it is always mixed).  The mother was friendly if not totally engaged, but with a job interview looming, I wouldn't devote full attention to a stranger either.  I know how hard it is to separate oneself from one's profession, especially something like family services (or teaching, or hell even community planning at times), so if the woman was who I suspect, I don't begrudge her actions.  It's been interesting thinking about it.