Blog Action Day: Poverty

I haven't been through my reader yet today (*twitch*) but I know from Twitter that many of my favorite bloggers are participating in Blog Action Day today. Magpie, PunditMom, and Ilina are making donations based on the number of comments they receive today, so go forth and comment, please! (If you're doing this too, let me know and I'll link you up.)

Last year I donated my BlogHer Ads earnings to Donors Choose. Any suggestions for a recipient for this year? I just read about Jewish World Watch's Solar Cooker Project in Darfur. A $30 donation provides a refugee family with solar cookers and training to use them. This helps curb deforestation and also saves women and girls from making dangerous trips to gather firewood (they risk getting raped every time they venture out). Thirty bucks!

I also want to help at home. My grocery store collects donations for our local food banks right at the checkout (the store prefills bags of supplies, I pay for it, then it goes straight the food bank). With food prices skyrocketing and everyone feeling squeezed, I remember how very lucky we are and I buy one of these bags each time I'm at the market.

The problems are so huge and diverse and intractable (how do we fix Darfur / Iraq / Afghanistan / Haiti? how do we fix health care? how do we fix crummy schools and evaporating jobs and foreclosed homes?). What I don't want to do is let this overwhelm me into inaction. One local project and one international one? That's doable. And every little bit helps.

What are you doing?

PS Don't forget FreeRice. I just donated 1000 grains and learned two new words ("vaticinate" means "prophesy" and "raddled" means "worn out").

The eleventh of never

Seven years later
I still cannot live today
Like every other.

I have a hard time knowing how to be today. It feels wrong to ignore the anniversary, but I don't know how to observe it meaningfully either. I've always found it odd that other cities around the country (including the small town that neighbors Mayberry) have 9/11 ceremonies and memorials. I guess everyone felt their country was under attack that day. But even though I was there that day, I didn't lose anyone close to me, so any remembrance, anything I could offer, feels false and disconnected, like those memorial observances hundreds of miles away.

Instead, today I'll choose to be grateful.

For the doctors and nurses who healed our daughter this summer, and for the insurance that paid for all but $500 of the nearly $100,000 cost.

For the men and women who teach and care for my children every day, who help them learn and grow.

For the sturdy old house that shelters my family and me.

For my own health and that of my husband and children and parents and siblings and mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law.

For my work and the colleagues with whom I share it.

For my friends online and off.

And I pray that those who don't have these blessings may one day know them.

Peace be with you

I just found out a few days ago that my uncle will not be coming to our family's Thanksgiving celebration this year. This is the uncle that I grew up with -- who is my godfather; who lived a block away; who could and did fix anything we needed; who told jokes with punchlines like "I left my harp in Sam Clam's disco" and "Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids!" and offered milk by asking if we'd like a glass of "Chateau le Meyer." (Mmm, Meyer Dairy ... but that's another story for another post.)

He can't come because he is under house arrest after his second DUI. He has an ankle bracelet and can't leave the house except to go to work, nor can he have any alcohol in the house. The good news is that the punishment seems to be working. He hasn't, as far as anyone can tell, had a drink in a few months and he is seeing a counselor for the first time in his life.

I'm hopeful. I had been very concerned about him. For several years he had been in a downward spiral, existing on little more than coffee and cigarettes during the day and alcohol in the evenings. He lost a part-time job, one he very much enjoyed, when he showed up drunk. In his regular work, he builds houses so I worried about injuries on top of the possibility of car wrecks and disease. His wife tried to help and got nowhere.

Of course there's no one reason why anyone becomes an alcoholic. In his case, I speculate that it was a complicated soup of genetics, unresolved grief at the loss of his parents, perhaps an undiagnosed learning disability that caused him to do poorly in school and lack self-esteem.

I also believe that post-traumatic stress from his time in Viet Nam was involved. His brother (another uncle, whom I barely knew) also served and also suffered in the years that followed: abandoning his family, bouncing from city to city and job to job; eventually dying of cirrhosis and cancer in a VA hospital.

This post was inspired by today's Blog Blast for Peace. Because in the same way that I worried, and still worry, about my uncles, I worry about those soldiers, sailors, and airmen serving today, and about the repercussions that they and their families will experience for decades to come. Just like those commercials that proclaim "Depression hurts everyone," so does war, and in so many hidden ways.

For today, I am thankful that my uncle may be, just may be, healing. I hope he finds peace and comfort, and I hope the same for all victims of war.

Another sunny Tuesday

My September 11 story is here. Six years seems like forever ago but I can recall every minute of that day in sharp detail. I can't let it pass without a moment of remembrance and a prayer for peace -- the peace that means "no more wars" and the peace that means grace and comfort too.

Add my small voice

This is one of those times where I want to acknowledge what's happening and yet I have nothing consoling or illuminating to add. Our family has a personal connection to Kent State University, where four students were killed and several others injured on May 4, 1970. While the circumstances were very different -- the KSU shootings occurred during a political protest and were government-sanctioned -- the event has shadowed the KSU community for decades. I wish the VTU students, families, friends, faculty, staff, alumni, and neighbors peace and comfort in the aftermath of their tragedy. Someway, somehow.