Beyond FINESSE: Paul Malmont and Operation Warrior Library

In an attempt to resurrect BEYOND Understanding on a manageable basis, I’m going to experiment with brief posts on resources that deserve recognition. For starters on this Veterans Day, I’d like to help spread the word about author Paul Malmont’s program for providing books (print and audio) to U.S. troops, including those who’ve been injured and hospitalized. Visit Operation Warrior Library to learn more, then check out Paul’s home page to see what he’s up to...beyond his notable, noble efforts to support American servicepeople when they need it most.

Beyond FICTION: SECRET SON by Laila Lalami

I’ve been reading Laila Lalami’s writings for a while now, first on her blog (originally called MoorishGirl), then via her short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, now in her first novel, Secret Son. And what strikes me every time—beyond her mastery of English, just one of the languages she speaks—is her lovely ability to make even the most melancholic characters memorable. Secret Son is full of men and women struggling with identity, entitlement and the price one pays for it, loss and the threat of loss…and their ties to each other make their individual stories all the more powerful.

While the men in Laila’s fiction are complex despite their sometimes straightforward class status and related goals, I am most captivated by her female characters. Despite adversity, it’s the women’s strength and wisdom that somehow resonate on the page. This excerpt is from a brief section in Secret Son regarding the main character’s half-sister, Amal:

“She knew the feeling well. After all, her race had been the biggest signifier about her in America. ‘Are there many Arabic women who go on to study in college?’ one of her TAs had asked. Amal did not know whether it would be too impolite to point out that Arabic was a language, not a people. ‘But you don’t look Arab,’ a middle-aged school registrar had said upon finding out that Amal was from Morocco—and she said it in a tone that suggested it was a compliment. … These words added up over time, like grains of sand in a glass jar, telling her she did not belong.”

While a reader never knows what drove a writer to pen a certain passage, I couldn’t help but hope after reading this that Laila—now an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside—has learned in all her many moves to navigate such subtle (and not-so-subtle) forms of contemporary prejudice. We Americans rarely even try to identify with fellow citizens who happen to be from different cultures. Maybe that’s why I consider Laila’s highly accessible and revealing writings so important—including her recent World Literature Today essay “So To Speak”—and why I’m already looking forward to her next book.

Beyond FICTION: THE ANNUNCIATION OF FRANCESCA DUNN by Janis Hallowell

Fellow Denver author Janis Hallowell debuted with The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn in 2004. Though I remember seeing this captivating cover in local Tattered Cover Book Stores and hearing about Janis via Denver writing institution Lighthouse Writers, for some reason I never picked this one up. Luckily I finally did.

Francesca, a 14-year-old cellist whose divorced mom is a busy paleobotanist and whose dad is busy courting his girlfriend in Italy, ultimately becomes house-bound while followers who believe she’s a saint gather in a park across the street and fasten offerings and requests for her blessings along her home’s front fence.

The story of how Francesca and her family and friends cope with attention that at times becomes threatening is chock full of intriguing characters and symbolism and points of view as well as a plot that kept me hanging on until the last word. But I was most fascinated by Chester.

An intelligent and kind but awkward homeless man, Chester has a highly unusual sense of smell that allows him to recognize elements not only of the environment that most don’t notice, but of other people’s personalities and moods. At one point, a friend clutches at his chest just after Chester has noticed he “smelled like an overloaded fuse.” A woman who befriends him has a smell “familiar and mild, like prairie grass in the rain.” When a journalist poses as a homeless person to try to gain insights into Francesca’s growing story, Chester smells “the tang of an imposter.” A friend with a severe earache triggers “the cold aluminum smell of pain.” At one point Chester smells “the burnt starch” of someone’s anger.

From the start, Francesca smells of roses, a fact that contributes to Chester experiencing a vision that launches the campaign to canonize her. Since he’s fully aware he’s to blame for all the attention she begins to receive, Chester assumes the role as her protector that will bring him to sleep outside her house and earn the trust of her tough, doubting, and just-as-protective mom.

But when he’s eventually invited inside the house to get out of the cold or have a meal, the extent of Chester’s struggles become painfully evident. He’s been to a doctor for help, he admits, and offered pills designed to alleviate his fears that a ceiling will fall upon him while he sleeps or that “already-breathed” air in a house will suffocate him, pills that would lighten the weight on his shoulders and finally allow him to stand up straight “like a person free from doubt.” When doubt nearly consumes Chester, he finds himself back at the clinic once again, struggling with the choice of whether or not to accept such medication.

Insights into the struggles faced by the homeless are discussed throughout Annunciation. At one point Chester mentions the general belief among people on the streets that they are “valued by the medical community only as living junkers for spare parts” and that when admitted to a hospital, they’d only be treated after signing “a paper saying that if you died, you would donate your organs to science.” At another point, Chester rails inwardly after hearing a fellow homeless man has died “of natural causes.” “Was it natural for a man to be living in a wheelchair without a roof or food or family?” he asks. “Was it natural for somebody who lived on the sidewalk in front of a hospital to have an untreated infection?”

While Chester doesn’t ask these questions aloud, I can’t help but assume if they’d been voiced in 2004 they’d have been met with shrugs. With the current fever rising about universal healthcare, such questions now often lead to heated arguments. Should those who are making a living be forced to pay for the care of those who can’t?

And what about those who don’t want to be healed? One is forced to wonder about this when Chester says, “I thought of all the holy people throughout history, all the mystics and martyrs, artists and visionaries, and what the world would have been like if they’d all been given medication to make them ordinary. There would have been less suffering, no doubt about it, but I couldn’t imagine a world without saints and madmen.”

What follows in Chester’s world deserves to be discovered in a full reading of the novel so I won’t spoil it here. Suffice to say the decision of whether or not to go on medication for a mental condition is a decision with which many struggle. The high costs of treatment and meds represent a top concern and another significant reason why our current healthcare system must somehow be fixed. But other questions exist, too: Is such medication really good for me? Shouldn’t I be able to cope without it? Do I really want to support an industry that seems determined to put everyone on at least some sort of prescription drug?

As someone who’s been on a prescription antidepressant for two years now, I can attest to the fact that the answers to these questions can be impossible to fully reconcile. Yet, they need to be addressed when depression or anxiety impacts one’s ability to function. It took me years to realize my behavior as a stressed-out parent of young children was not just par for the course; that there was more going on in my brain than personality quirks that led to unreasonable and potentially dangerous outbursts; that my children deserved a mom who, while still easily irritated, isn’t so close to the boiling point most mornings that by mid-day someone in the house is going to be screaming at someone else. So I took the chance that a newer med with limited side effects would help me, and I’m still glad I did. But it certainly isn’t cheap, and I worry about the many whose lives…and families…would benefit even more from such help, if only they could afford it. As Chester would say, that’s just not natural. Frankly, I also think it’s just not right.

This post is dedicated to Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921-2009), whose life work not only helped millions of mentally and physically handicapped children and their families around the world (and will continue to do so far into the future), but dispelled significant age-old stigmas associated with disabilities of all kinds and advocated ongoing efforts to alleviate the suffering of those impacted by them.

Beyond FRUSTRATION: Post-Racial Society? Not Exactly.

The arrest of renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. last week in his Cambridge MA home has infuriated a lot of Americans. Though unfortunate, a U.S. case involving a black man accused of breaking into his own home and then arrested on a trumped-up charge is really not all that surprising, even in 2009. Tell me I’m playing the race card by instantly siding with a person of color and I’ll say you’re right. From what I’ve learned over the past few years of researching tolerance issues, every person who is not a tall, thin, white, perfectly proportioned, attractive, wealthy, heterosexual male (yes, this cuts a wide swath) deserves a card they can flash at any time to remind others their kind is traditionally mistreated and deserves special consideration.

I’ll not rehash the specifics of this case, though I’ve read with interest details regarding the actions of both main characters, Gates and the Cambridge Police sergeant who arrested him. A brief overview is presented in one of the latest articles on the topic, AP’s “Obama rushes to quell racial uproar he helped fire,” a glimpse at the media storm the president’s original reference to the case indeed fueled.

What concerns me most is the animosity voiced by so many participants of this debate in on-line chats and forums. How will we ever get to a place of real discussions about race in this country if the conversation is fueled by hate? Certainly people of all backgrounds have the right to voice their anger at unfair treatment, whether those being mistreated are private citizens in their own homes or police officers on duty. But the hatred that fuels so many pseudo-arguments on both sides and serves only to broaden the divide…how can we ever hope to overcome that?

Maybe each of us, including every perfect white male, needs a card to hold up when tensions run high for whatever reason, a card that requests special consideration simply because each of us is human, a card that reminds everyone in a tense situation that it makes more sense to stand down and think and breathe for a minute than it does to pursue an angry reaction until things get out of hand.

If you’re about to suggest we should all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya”…I’d agree that’s not such a bad idea, either.

Photo © Justin Ide, Harvard University Gazette

Beyond FICTION: CHILDREN OF THE WATERS by Carleen Brice

Book reviews on BEYOND Understanding are usually limited to titles that explore issues of prejudice or celebrate diversity in some way. Carleen Brice’s Children of the Waters does both. Carleen, a friend and fellow Denver author, debuted as a novelist last year with Orange Mint and Honey, a book that not only won awards but became a fast favorite among book clubs (including mine). Her newest, Children of the Waters deserves just as much attention, if not more.

I have to admit I was prepared to compare Children of the Waters to Orange Mint and Honey and find it lacking. Written under contract in much less time than OMH, Children of the Waters seems to reflect the sense of urgency Carleen must have felt while writing it. At times disjointed and abrupt, this story is strengthened by the often strained back and forth between its two main characters, Trish and Billie, long-lost sisters reunited as each reaches critical junctures in her life. Issues such as mixed-race heritage, identity crises, a widely unrecognized but potentially devastating chronic disease (lupus), high-risk pregnancy, adoption, single parenting, and duty and loyalty are woven throughout the novel in ways that threaten to drive Trish and Billie—and the people they love—apart. Carleen proved herself as focused and determined as her strongest character as she somehow plowed through such heady material in a novel that’s accessible and enjoyable while also layered with meaning.

Humor’s never far from the surface, especially with a character like Trish around. But neither are heartfelt and often painful elements inherent in so many lives exposed to regular doses of blunt as well as subtle forms of prejudice. The struggle to know yourself when you’re forced to see or experience injustices others pretend don’t exist impacts everything from mental health to the health of your personal relationships. Ready to dismiss this as baseless sensationalism? Then take the time to read this book, to consider for more than a dismissive moment the potential truths of Billie’s statements such as this one, made as she battled with her sister over one thing, only to realize her anger was fueled by another…the fact her white grandparents refused to raise her because she was biracial: “Their betrayal roared back from the place she had tried to hide it from herself, and with it came hurt from bone memory. She wondered how many millions of black folks had felt the same way she did every single day and tried to pretend like they didn’t.”

Billie, brought up in a black family, depends on her ancestors and listens for their guidance. While at times this urgent story includes the author’s voice, Carleen’s intercessions ring just as true as Billie’s ancestors’. There is so much Carleen has to offer all her readers, from notes about black historical figures and the long traditions of healing arts, to the complexities of mixed-race families from varied points of view. Still skeptical that prejudice persists in our world despite the fact we have a black president in the White House? Read just some of the racist comments that follow this Washington Post article by Carleen from earlier this year. Post-racist society? We’re not even close. Which is why the fact Carleen gives her characters free reign to discuss a wide range of painful issues—including but certainly not limited to contemporary forms of racism—makes Children of the Waters an important work for people of all races to read and contemplate.

Beyond FEEBLE: Book Publishing’s Pigeon-Hole Mentality

Writing about an event I attended weeks ago makes me realize how much of an impression this particular event made on me. Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s annual LitFest was a mid-June whirlwind of classes, salons, readings, and panels (and oh yes, a coupla nifty parties). One of those salons, In and Out of the Niche (or is it “neesh?”), featured Denver authors Carleen Brice, Mario Acevedo, and William Haywood (aka Bill) Henderson. Each of these authors has been categorized by the book publishing industry in ways that not only hurt sales of their books, but personally befuddled (and probably irritated the hell out of) her/him. While these three were too polite to truly rail against those who dictate where books are placed in bookstores, I left the event wishing more than a few publishing reps and booksellers had been in attendance.

As a debut novelist in 2008, Carleen heard from many readers who enjoyed the fact that while she and her characters were black, her story Orange Mint and Honey transcended race. The relationships, the impact of alcohol abuse, the personal histories and their interweavings as well as the struggles to put the past to rest and achieve new levels of mutual and self-understanding and forgiveness…all this occurred outside racial constraints and resonated with a wide variety of readers. Despite such feedback—and the selection of Orange Mint and Honey as a Target Breakout Book—in bookstores Carleen and her novel were relegated to the black books section. Terrific for readers who seek out writers of color, not so terrific for those seeking new books by a variety of writers. And definitely not so great for an author trying to make an industry-wide name for herself.

In response, Carleen produced a terrific tongue-in-cheek video welcoming white readers to the black books section; established National Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give it to Somebody Not Black Month; and launched her second blog, White Readers Meet Black Authors. Still, her newest novel, Children of the Waters (which features characters of white and mixed-race backgrounds) has been relegated to the black books section. That’s just not right.

A writer of vampire fiction, Mario Acevedo also happens to be a Latino writer. Despite his books’ determinedly un-Hispanic titles (including The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, a local favorite), some were originally published by a Latino publisher and—you guessed it—filed in the Latino section. Due to his determination to write accessible, fun, and now widely popular works of vampire fiction, his books were ultimately reclassified as urban fantasy and are now enjoyed by a much wider audience. (Check out his great “lego” trailer for just a glimpse of Mario’s unique creative vision!)

Not that there’s anything wrong with attracting Latino or black readers, of course. Bill Henderson noted he had no qualms about attracting gay readers when his first novel was published by a publisher of gay books because it featured a character who happened to be homosexual. Unfortunately, though, that meant Bill’s subsequent works would be considered potential material for the gay books section despite the fact he did not continue to write gay fiction. His next two books (read Augusta Locke and be amazed) instead established him as a writer of stunning character studies and landscapes that happened to be set in the West. How to categorize him now? Who knows. The point is, should that matter?

When I attended this salon I was in the middle of researching e-books for this piece on The Know Something Project site. And I couldn’t help but hope (and mention to Carleen at the end of the evening) that e-publishing will ultimately result in the demise of limited categorizations of published works. Search on-line for books by author and you’ll find all his or her titles; search by subject matter and you’ll find a slew of selections; search by a general keyword and you’ll find even more. Who cares at that point in what section of a bricks-and-mortar bookstore a particular work is filed—or if that book is even carried by a certain store? If you want to buy a print copy, you’ve already done your research and know what to ask for (or order for later pickup or delivery) when you walk in a store or go on a store’s site. If you prefer the immediacy of ordering an electronic copy, click away. Either way, you’re no longer relegated to an inefficient organizational system determined by the publishing industry’s antiquated marketing strategies—and neither are your favorite authors.

Beyond FUNDRAISING: Score Points with Gift Donations

So you forgot to send flowers to your mom for Mother’s Day, forgot to mail a card to Aunt Tilly for her birthday, and forgot to call your dad on Father’s Day. How can a well-meaning but not-exactly-organized person safe face in such situations? Tell them all you were shopping on-line for the perfect gift and only now discovered what you should have been giving them every year: a gift donation in their name.

Global Girlfriend, founded here in Denver by innovative advocate Stacey Edgar and now a part of the GreaterGood network, sells all sorts of beautiful fair-trade and eco-friendly items created by women all over the world. They also offer opportunities to support women through one-time donations starting at only $15. These Gifts That Give More include clean childbirth kits to ensure more safe births in impoverished countries such as Rwanda and Haiti. A donation of $15 pays for three of these kits.

Men on your gift list might appreciate a donation to the Family Violence Prevention Fund. Based in San Francisco with offices in D.C. and Boston, the FVPF works “to end violence against women and children around the world” by educating men and youth about violence prevention, “promoting leadership within communities to ensure that violence prevention efforts become self-sustaining, and transforming the way health care providers, police, judges, employers and others address violence.” Your donation can be made in memory or in honor of anyone you like.

So why not turn gift-giving opportunities into opportunities for much (much) more than typical gift-giving? Your family will be so proud of you.

Beyond THE FUTURE: E-Books for Everyone?

That’s certainly a hopeful possibility for the future of book publishing, though plenty of folks would rather stick to paperbacks and leave e-book bickering over formats, readers, and price points to Amazon and Google. But plenty of other industry players have entered the race to profit from the blossoming e-book market. As I state in a new KnowSomethingProject.com article “E-Books: Where Literature and Technology Meet,” there’s plenty to learn about the past, present, and future of e-books, regardless of what—or how—you prefer to read. Enjoy!

Beyond FRUSTRATION: The Choices We Make

I just walked in the house with blinders on, bee-lining to the computer so I could get all this down. The potential diversions are many, with laundry at the top of the list. But here’s what I thought about on the drive home from dropping off my girls at a theatre camp; here’s what I need to talk about:

I’m going crazy. I’m driven to take on too many projects, I welcome them into my life and brain, yet I have a hard time reconciling my inability to complete each one to a perfectly satisfactory degree with the fact that they don’t all need to be completed to any degree. Once you start something, you’re supposed to finish it, right?

This attitude has led to me having a hard time allowing one of my girls to quit theatre camp, which is supposed to run through a second week and finish with a musical review-type of performance next Friday. Of my two girls, the older one has complained about camp non-stop this week and decided this morning, when given the choice, to go today and not return next week. The younger one, not altogether thrilled with camp either, opted to return next week because she really wants to be in the show.

Probably because I just finished reading The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development by Richard Weissbourd, I’m especially sensitive to the fact I’m allowing my one child to quit a project in progress, especially since it’s a team project she insisted she wanted to take on. Furthermore, this same child was just the other day given the choice by me and her art teacher to continue with her weekly art classes only when she feels up to it. Stress takes its toll on this child in an emotional way, but am I being too easy on her? Shouldn’t I continue to insist (which I have for a while with these art classes) that if she says she wants to sign up for something, she MUST follow through?

My first instinct is to let it all go, to lighten up. But then I think about all the writing projects I’m dying to get to. I’m anxious to rework my second novel, have started sketching ideas for a third, and would love to get back to poetry and short stories. I’ve got assignments from current classes that need to be finished asap, “real” work that needs attending, and yet here I am journaling. And this is also supposed to be a post about The Parents We Mean to Be, a book of tremendous importance for anyone who works with children, and I’m feeling guilty on that front for a variety of reasons: I’d agreed to post on this at the same time as other bloggers (but am jumping the gun), the book is overdue at the library and I want to return it today so the next person on the wait list can read it, and I’m anxious to get this project checked off the to-do list. (Which doesn’t make it less important, it’s just one that’s been hanging over my head for a few weeks. Ack, can’t have that!) The bigger question, though: Am I teaching my child, through my wishy-washy sign-her-up-but-don’t-hold-her-responsible-for-making-it-work attitude, that it’s ok to take on a project and not finish it just because you don’t feel like it? What if other people are involved, like her friend at theatre camp who gave me a look as though she’s utterly disappointed in me because I won’t insist my daughter return next week, or the camp’s director, or the other kids? Shouldn’t they be considered in all this?

Richard Weissbourd seems to think so. His book includes a timely chapter on the Morally Mature Sports Parent that not only discourages parents from promoting only their kid to the expense of their kid’s team (much like the over-achiever parents will do any cutthroat thing to advance their child’s chances for academic success; that’s covered in The Real Danger in the Achievement Craze chapter) but encourages parents to remind their children that their teams and coaches really do depend on them, just as one’s larger community depends on each of us to be civil, law-abiding citizens who vote and clean up after our pets in the park. But in a show, my daughter argues, anyone in the “crowd”—her designated group—can drop out and no one would notice. It’s not like she has a solo or anything. (Another reason for her disenchantment with theatre camp? If she were a cutthroat kind of overachiever I’d call her on it, but she’s not. I honestly think there are other emotional things at play here, which is why I don’t want to force her to endure it all for another week. Not that the experience has been altogether horrid, though she has used that word to describe it.)

When Weissbourd, a child and family psychologist, discusses children and moral issues, he tries to stay pretty grounded. “I am talking about children who grow up to be alert to signs of distress in other people (and) feel compelled to give to the world in some way,” he states in his concluding chapter. Should it always be convenient to pitch in? I don’t think so, and neither does he. But should it be painful? It’s hard to force your child to endure anything she insists is “torture,” but sometimes it seems that’s necessary for them to learn the toughest lessons.

The sections of this book that most resonate with me are the chapters on Cultivating Mature Idealism in Young People (my son will be a junior in high school this fall) and Key Moral Strengths of Children Across Race and Culture. Both these chapters I look forward to revisiting in future posts. What’s most immediate for me at this time and with my current questions regarding my older daughter is found in the chapter on Promoting Happiness and Morality. Weissbourd discusses at length empathy, the basis of appreciation, as well as appreciation, “the ability to know and value other people,” an ability that is “at the heart of almost every quality we think of as moral.”

In his discussion of developing empathy and then appreciation, Weissbourd addresses the happiness epidemic so common among contemporary parents in the U.S., the attitude that their child’s self-esteem is of utmost importance. Whether making oneself happy then leads to the ability to help others or whether often painful self-sacrifice and helping others leads to making oneself happy is one widely debated aspect of this issue. What strikes me at the moment, however, is this quote by one mom:

“The principle of being a mother of a child who is a good person is more important than how much my kids like me or how happy they are in the moment. I couldn’t go to them all the time if they cried or always be a fixer or problem solver…I had to make real demands on them.”

As someone who’s much more comfortable making demands on herself (and continues to struggle with managing those demands in a sane, productive manner), this is one of my toughest challenges as a parent. While my one daughter may be quitting a project I think she should see through to the end, I want to teach her to be empathetic and kind by giving her an out. She made it through the first week, but if she really doesn’t want to invest her time and energy and emotions in this project (and complain to her weary mother about it) for another week, that’s ok. I was impressed she took the initiative to go to the director this morning at drop-off and give her a heads up that one less person may be singing in the “crowd” next week. The director’s answer: “Let’s see how today goes,” which is also what I suggested (though with a lot less enthusiasm) this morning. Maybe I’m not too far off track after all.

Photo by Ned Matura posted with Parenting.com article 7 Ways to Fix Rude Tween Behavior. :)

Beyond 'FAX: SAME Café Delivers

The goods, that is. Whether you’ve never driven down East Colfax in Denver or driven through the neighborhood a million times, make it a point to visit SAME Café next time you have a few minutes for lunch. That’s all it takes to enjoy the relaxing ambience and delicious food served up by Brad and Libby Birky...and pitch in a little extra to help local folks when you pay for your own delicious (and organic) cup of soup, slice of pizza, or salad. Somehow I missed the lemon cookies, but local poet extraordinaire Joy Roulier Sawyer says they’re fantastic. Yet another reason for me to return soon!

A few other photos from last week’s visit:


Lisa and Carleen waiting for me to hurry up and take the photo already...and allowing a peek at the serving side of the restaurant...SAME Café features outdoor seating (which we thoroughly enjoyed) and a larger-than-expected, open and peaceful indoor dining area.


The hat next door. I couldn’t resist after seeing so many store window shots on Tara’s blog. Denver and Paris...close enough, right?


Here’s Larry! Larry, another Colfax merchant, saw me taking photos and posed for a cameo.

Beyond FANTASTIC: SAME Café Post Rated #2 of 10,000!

The folks at BlogCatalog have rated their favorite posts from the 10,000 (!) written April 29 for the BloggersUnite for Hunger and Hope challenge. I’m very pleased to see my post on SAME Café here in Denver (where fellow bloggers Carleen and Lisa and I are meeting for lunch today!) listed as one of the top posts reviewed! See the entire list and read much more about world hunger and efforts to ease the suffering here.

While the BloggersUnite challenges are a project of BlogCatalog.com and BloggersUnite.org, the April 29 campaign was also spearheaded by Heifer International and Copywrite, Inc.

Since 1944, Heifer International has helped communities learn to become self-sufficient by raising animals that provide benefits beyond food to increase family incomes for better housing, nutrition, health care, and schools. In this post, Rich at Copywrite, Inc. features stories of students in Nevada, Kentucky, and Nebraska who conducted innovative fundraisers in April to benefit Heifer International, as well as more details about the impact of the Hunger and Hope challenge.

To see the complete list of upcoming BloggersUnite challenges, go here. Then plan to write a post, comment on your favorite to give a fellow blogger a boost, or support a new charity; as Rich notes, “Who’s to say what contribution is too small or how far it might go?”

Beyond FINESSE: One Dad’s Mother’s Day Tribute

One of my sisters-in-law recently passed along this tribute written by one of her cousins for the Utica (NY) Daily News:

On July 4th, 2007 I was admitted to University Hospital in Syracuse for bacterial encephalitis; a few days passed and my condition only seemed to worsen. Shortly thereafter, I fell into a coma for what would be a total of five days, during which I had emergency brain surgery, stopped breathing on my own, and subsequently wound up on life support. In what seemed like an instant, I was in a fight for my life. Eventually with great care and amazing physicians I woke up, but the world as I knew it had changed a great deal in those five days. It seems the bacteria that had attacked my brain had done a significant amount of damage. The left side of my body was paralyzed, my vision was like that of a video camera being shook, I couldn’t swallow, breathe unassisted or even sit up or roll over on my own in bed. Everything as I knew it was now different…well, all but one thing. That one thing was my wife. She was the first person I saw when I woke up and I remember her showing me pictures of my three little boys and asking me questions about them that I could only answer with hand signals. You see for all the medicine, and equipment, and talent that I had to take care of me, I had the one thing that was better than all of those things combined.

Somehow, my wife knew that if my family was in the front of my mind, I would be okay. I would have reason to hope, and hold on, and eventually get out of a wheelchair and become me again. That night, my wife explained everything that had happened while I was asleep, but she also kept repeating and repeating how much my boys loved and missed me. It hurt; I was scared, confused, angry, you name the emotion and I probably felt it at some point. But I didn't care, because there were those boys of mine and I was not ready to leave them. She talked about them all the time, as much as she could, knowing full well that hearing about them would only make me fight harder to get home to them. For obvious reasons, talking about certain parts of my illness is not all that fun. But this week, this week when we honor mothers is different. It’s funny how we think of a mother as one who guides young children through life, teaching them right from wrong, and so many other things. But for me, I think of the mother of my children as the glue that kept our family together. I think of her as the one who managed the house, the bills, the kids, absolutely everything, when all I could manage to do was lie in bed and recuperate. And yet she never complained, she never said it was too much, or too hard, or even unfair.

At times, I wondered if my wife would eventually throw in the towel, as I know I would have. But her answer was simple and to the point. I made a promise, a promise to you and to God that I would love you no matter what. Talk about commitment. I talk to my three boys often and we talk of all the things that matter in life, and the importance of becoming a good man. Truth be told, I tell them about their mother, about what it means to be a friend even when you wind up getting the short end of the stick. We talk about words like dedication, commitment, faith, loyalty, responsibility, and somehow the conversation always ends up where it started, with their mother. A lot of men say they live for their wives; I can honestly say I live because of my wife. [L]ucky for me I have a public forum in which I get to tell the world how much I love my wife, and just what an amazing mother she is.

…I have no political or social points to make. Not even a cage to rattle….. Instead, a request: that we realize all mothers are working mothers and undoubtedly the best way to love your children is to love their mother. Live well, love well, regards.

Beyond FEEDING THE HUNGRY: SAME Café of Denver

SAME is an acronym for So All May Eat, the philosophy behind SAME Café of Denver. Located in a store front a short distance east of the gold-domed Colorado State Capitol building, SAME Café and owners Brad and Libby Birky have been profiled by nearly every print publication in Denver as well as national outlets like NBC Nightly News and Cooking Light magazine. While such exposure has helped with recent outpourings of donations and support for this unique business venture, Brad and Libby continue to depend on their Denver customers to keep the doors of SAME Café open. Such dependence—coupled with a desire to serve those most in need in the community—contribute not only to the emotional appeal of the SAME Café business model, but to its booming success.

Simply put, anyone is invited to walk into SAME Café and order a meal, whether or not he or she can afford to pay a penny for it. Those who can afford to pay are encouraged to donate a little extra to help cover the cost of feeding those who can’t. Those who can’t pay are asked to donate an hour of service (e.g., sweeping the floor or wiping tables) per meal.

Either way, SAME Café patrons enjoy a rotating selection of fresh soups, salads, pizzas or wraps, and desserts made from seasonal and primarily organic ingredients. Tempted by the smells of such great food, some passersby stop in and are surprised to see no prices on the posted menu, and no cash register. The honor system is alive and well at SAME Café; so is hope for those who come in with nothing and leave not only with their hunger sated, but their dignity intact.

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Look for other Unite for Hunger and Hope posts on more than 500 blogs April 29 during the BloggersUnite campaign to raise awareness of world hunger. Right here at home, people go hungry every day. According to the Food Bank of the Rockies, at least 200,000 individuals in the metro Denver area live in poverty. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, a person in the U.S. lives in poverty when he or she earns less than $11,000 annually; a family of four lives in poverty when its wage earners earn $22,000 or less a year. The latest figures state that in 2007, 37 million Americans lived below the poverty line. According to a January article from Reuters (In a recession, poverty strikes middle class), that number is rising at an alarming rate. Thankfully people like Brad and Libby Birky and those who support SAME Café are doing more than simply wringing their hands about the growing hunger crisis. As Brad was quoted in Cooking Light, “We’re just out to quietly change the world, one meal at a time.”

Beyond PHENOMENAL: Playing For Change

Playing For Change began as a celebration of street musicians in the U.S. that focused on performers in NYC, LA, and New Orleans. Consider this June 2006 PFC blog post about a trip PFC folks took to New Orleans as the city struggled to recover from the humiliation and devastation of Hurricane Katrina. One of the staff wrote of a singular moment during a performance by “Grandpa,” who’s sung “on the same corner for some 20 plus years…sending his formidable tenor and bellowing bass to greet loyal passer-byers and all those who’d listen.”:

“I was standing kitty-corner to Grandpa while [other PFC staffers] were recording a song about Louisiana, and I was taking some still shots. I stopped to take in a moment where everything around us just seemed to stop…all I could hear was his beautiful voice, when suddenly I was startled by a man standing right behind me practically breathing over my shoulder. He said to me softly, ‘His voice has made me smile for so many years. I thought we had lost him. But he’s back and so are we.’ The man was not there to converse, just to listen, chime in, and be on his way. I stood breathless as Grandpa sang, ‘They’re trying to wash us away…’ and he sang the words again, and then one more time.”

Within the next year, Playing For Change had expanded its focus to include performers from across the globe. In 2008, its documentary/“global concert film” Playing for Change: Peace Through Music debuted at the Tribecca Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the Woodstock Film Festival.

Watch the remarkable, impossible-to-ever-forget “Stand By Me” music video featured on the PFC site; Grandpa’s voice truly is beautiful, even moreso when it’s woven into a tapestry of voices and instrumentals from around the world. Talk about performances fueled by passion and purpose. As PFC founder, co-director and producer Mark Johnson wrote in a blog post last November:

“This act of playing music with different cultures, religions, economics, and politics is a powerful statement. It…illustrates that we can find ways of working together and sharing our experiences with one another in a positive way. Before we were ever different, we were all human beings.”

Later this month the Playing For Change CD/DVD Songs Around the World will be released and yes, I’ve preordered it. Thanks (once again!) to Lisa Kenney for such an inspiring link. I am so looking forward to enjoying Songs Around the World and learning more about Playing For Change in the future. Oh yeah, they build schools too. Wow.