Category: Thinking

Give it Up: Ten Charities that Need Your Cash

Remember this piece I wrote for The Morning News on cool organizations that need your money? They still do.

You are a good person. You feel bad when other people are sad; you try not to laugh when someone trips; you’re fond of puppies.

Now, maybe you’re not rolling in cash. Most of us have some debt, and we’re all trying to build our savings. But you’ve got 10 bucks to spare, and there’s some disturbing shit going down in the world. Perhaps you’ve heard.

The surprisingly good people—the ones who are feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and pulling small children out of harm’s way—they could probably use that 10 bucks more constructively than we could. Give it up, and bask in the warm glow of self-satisfaction.

Read the rest at Virtue: Ten Bucks? Ten Charities.

Indulge Yourself With Tampons

Did you know all but five U.S. states have a luxury tax on feminine hygiene products — tampons, pads, etc.?

On the above video’s YouTube page are links to various nations’ petitions to remove the tax, but I don’t see one for the U.S. where we’ll need to eliminate the tax state by state.

Here’s a map of all the states that tax feminine hygiene products as “non-essential.” Shall we go bleed all over the chairs in the waiting rooms at their state capitols?

United Nations Global Goals

UNglobalgoals

These are the seventeen goals the United Nations has for the world over the next fifteen years.

They fall under three umbrellas:

Ending extreme poverty.
Fighting inequality and injustice.
Fixing climate change.

The first obstacle is to promote the goals until everyone knows they exist, so it will be embarrassing for world leaders to fail to meet them. I am pro this, so I’m telling all of you. The world has goals! Comforting.

You can find more info GlobalGoals.org, and if you want to tell people too, #GlobalGoals is the tag. The organization and efforts already underway are inspiring. Go have a look.

Missed Connections

street-art-roadsworth-15

Me: Frazzled Mom, carrying a jumble of bags, a kid and baby in tow, buckling the carseat, folding the stroller into the trunk, passing out snacks. You: Eager Brunette, honking ardently as encouragement to leave my parking space at a pace better suited to your schedule.

We made long, meaningful eye contact while I climbed in my seat and loaded a map, again as I queued up a podcast, and several times as I answered some personal email, then drummed my fingers absentmindedly on the steering wheel. Then, so suddenly, you were gone.

Let’s grab drinks, restless stranger. I’d love to hear how the rest of your day went.

Parking lot dandelions street art by Roadsworth.

I Can Bring Home the Bacon, Why Are You So Interested in the Pan?

Margaret Stewart — who some of you many remember from the Mighty Closet feature I did with her one million years ago — has some solid suggestions for speakers, organizers, and interviewers about how to ease onstage sexism at conferences: What My Uterus Can Teach You About Being a Tech Leader. It’s a good read, have a look.

I’d also add, if you’re balancing genders in a speaker lineup, avoid having more than one woman at your conference speak to the issue of harassment (unless that’s the topic of your gathering of course). That interests me to a point, but taken too far, especially at tech conferences, it can be exhausting and disheartening. It puts women in the spotlight not for their accomplishments, but as the object of threats from a mostly male chorus.

Let’s Do Something Good: Vaccinations

This post is inspired by Shot@Life, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation dedicated to using vaccines as a cost-effective way to save children’s lives in developing countries.

Hi guys, I need your help. This post is part of an online relay through the United Nation’s Shot at Life program. The goal is to get vaccines for kids who wouldn’t otherwise get them. For the month of August:

One Comment, One Share, or One Like = One Vaccine

By literally pushing some buttons we can protect kids against measles, pneumonia, diarrhea, and polio. During Shot@Life’s Blogust, several bloggers have been helping to secure sponsor donations. I’ve also been asked to share a quote that inspires me, so I decided on one that reminds me of you guys:

With your help, I’d like us to secure 1,000 vaccines. This feels like a reach, so will you help? Any one of these simple actions equals a vaccine:

– Leave a comment on this post about a good deed someone has done for you. Can you comment twice? Yes, yes you can.
– Mr. T Baby on Instagram, click the heart.
– Facebook, like, comment, or share.
– Pinterest, repin the quote or heart it.
– Twitter Jedi Baby!, Fave, reply, or RT, the latter being the gold star.
– Your megaphone: If you use the hastag #blogust or include @shotatlife to spread the word on any of your social accounts, each of those actions counts towards a vaccine too. (If you do that, please cc me in whatever medium so I can say thanks. You are my people.)

The push of a button potentially saves a life. We live in the future, my friends. Shot@Life hopes to generate funds for 50,000 vaccines, and there’s a counter on the site that currently reads 37,902. Let’s move that needle. As it were.

Thanks so much you guys. You are kind ones.

***UPDATE: WE DID IT!!***

Wow. Thank you guys so much! Here and across social networks, we triggered over 1,000 donated vaccinations in a single day. Wow! Thank you, sweet people. You are pretty great.

There are more Blogust posts from friends over at The Spohrs are Multiplying, Petite Elefant, Justice Fergie Moma’s Gone City, Whiskey in My Sippy Cup, My Brown Baby, Cool Mom Picks, and Mom it Forward. We have until August 31. Thanks again.

Excerpts from I, Racist 

Brad and I were talking the other day about why some white people freak out when you talk about racism. My theory was defensiveness. This piece I, Racist outlines it perfectly:

What [white people] are affected by are attacks on their own character. To my [white] aunt, the suggestion that ‘people in The North are racist’ is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.

I also like this simple bit about the way violent crime is perceived:

There’s a headline from The Independent that sums this up quite nicely: “Charleston shooting: Black and Muslim killers are ‘terrorists’ and ‘thugs’. Why are white shooters called ‘mentally ill’?”