The Year of Giving Dangerously
I’ve noticed a change this holiday season and I think it’s significant.
People are making the decision to forego presents for themselves and instead are asking friends and family to donate to charities who distribute aid to the poor.
I have no idea what the numbers are, but based on my own experience it seems significant.
The first time I learned of this type of giving was the English organization Send a Cow. I had been staying in England for a few months while working on the book and in the run-up to Christmas I noticed the charity’s solicitations. To me it was the most radical charity I’d ever encountered, a truly mind-expanding organization.
There is a reason cows are sacred in Hindu mythology — their life and health-giving properties are almost unmatched (with the possible exception of their meat, but I’m talking about living cows here, not dead ones.) From their manure to their milk — all are profoundly life-giving, as biodynamic farmers in the West know first-hand. If you’re curious about how far this can be taken, check out the ayurvedic practice of panchakavya (also known as panchagavya).
This was an charity approach that made profound sense to me. The usual model of aid in the West is only to give if much of the aid can come back home. This broke that pattern and gave families a tool — a living, breathing tool — which offered the very real hope of a better life through better nutrition and self-sustainability.
And this is what makes these charities dangerous. This is freedom at it’s most basic.
And this isn’t the Red Cross or United Way — enormous organizations with massive overhead diluting the effects of donations. These are lean operations harnessing the power of the web for positive change.
Somehow in my return to the States and the rush to finish the book, Send A Cow had slipped out of my mind. Being a British charity, I never investigated the possibility of myself contributing as an American.
But now, at the tail end of 2007, the year that micro-finance has hit the big time, I’m seeing not only a huge increase in the numbers of these sorts of charities, but also in the people donating to them (again, anecdotally).
Mohammed Unis winning the nobel prize may have kick-started it, cluing people in to what micro-finance was and the benefits that it — and other similar direct-action charities — could bring. But the momentum is picking up and I think this holiday season could very well be the watershed.
Websites like kiva.org have hit the mainstream, and now I’m seeing a flurry of them: ChangingThePresent.org and GlobalGiving.org as the two most prominent examples. If you want to give, there is no better time to directly affect another’s life, no matter how far away.
The internet’s blessings never cease to amaze me.
Where would we be without it? It’s unthinkable, even if one wanted to.
I don’t.
If you know of more charities like this, please share!
Eleven random suburban name generators — and counting!
I was driving in the ‘burbs the other day and realized that somewhere there had to be a massive supercomputer churning out subdivision names day and night for the crème de la crème to be scraped off by developers in the morning. The names I was witnessing were simply too good… too clean… too *professional* to be left up to mere mortals.
Well, that massive supercomputer turns out to be the web, and I’m not the only guy to have thought of it. In fact, cyburbia.org has come up with what appears to be the definitive list of eleven suburban name generators, many of which just could be the developers secret weapon (though at least one seems to have been retired or is undergoing routine maintenance.)
Enjoy!
The New Farm profiles Heartland Mill
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how radical Organic Agriculture can be in the Midwest. Reactions to the topic still often vary from bemusement, to disbelief, to something bordering on pity, to outright hostility. It’s odd.
My favorite bakeries here in Kansas City (Fervere and Whole Foods) use Heartland Mill flour. I had noticed it, registered it, but from the nondescript white bags and hinterland origins (Marienthal, KS), I had never even bothered to investigate.
Shameful, really, considering my mantra for the past few years has been the infamous, “Know Your Farmer!”
Why didn’t I know my miller?
This wonderful New Farm article set me straight. It’s heartening to see farmers in the belly of the beast rely on common sense and their own instincts to solve the soil’s problems — not just turning to corporate ag and dumping chemicals the way so many of their neighbors do.
Heartland Mill also has a website and accepts online orders. I know where my next batch of Steel Cut Oats is coming from. I’ll let you know how they are.
The Espresso Book Machine
Born in Missouri, nonetheless
I don’t recall exactly when I first heard of Print-On-Demand, but the first time I remember it sticking was before I had decided to write DisasterLand. An acquaintance (a long-time publishing professional) and I had just eaten lunch and we were taking a walk along the Hudson River. He knew many of my favorite authors were out of print, and he brought up the topic of PoD (I think this was in ‘99 or ‘00). From all perspectives, it was a dream — for readers, it allowed titles to remain in-print and accessible. It allowed authors to build audiences over time and collect royalties seemingly in perpetuity, and allowed publishers to eliminate the costs and hassles of warehousing.
All of which made complete sense to me. I had spent much of my spare afternoons and evenings trawling Manhattan’s used book stores looking for out-of-print gems. Though I truly loved it, it did take time. Wouldn’t it be great just to pull up that Masanubu Fukuoka book and have it printed right there while I waited?
With recent thoughts on eBooks and the future, I found something else that’s certainly intriguing. 2007 marks the year that the first-non beta Espresso Book Machine enters the world, at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library (shout out to Good Magazine for turning me on to this.)
Though books are limited to 300 pages, this is truly print-on-demand. Copies are printed on-site, while-you-wait. If POD truly takes off — and I think it must — this will certainly give Brick-and-Mortar stores a way to fight back against Amazon and other web-based booksellers, for whom POD has surely been a blessing.
Check out the video at the inventors’ website , which is oddly reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001. I wonder when (and how) it was shot? Seriously… are they being serious?
The other links are excellent as well…
The Readius
I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve still been thinking of Amazon’s Kindle.
And another one: I’ve never actually held an e-reader in my hands.
But it’s not because I’ve never wanted to. It’s because I’ve never even imagined wanting to. Like I said, I just didn’t get it. But now, suddenly, a few days later, maybe, just maybe, I am.
I was researching Kindle’s screen technology, thinking that maybe I’ve been a bit too quick in saying I wouldn’t ever read anything of length electronically, when I made a significant discovery.
Imagine my surprise when I found this. It’s exactly what I had imagined — a device small enough that you can shove it in your pocket with your cellphone, but that unrolls to become something much larger.
So where is it?
Despite endless prototypes with nothing reaching the market, this little device, now a couple of years old, already makes the Kindle look out-dated.
With a device like this, something born out of intelligent design and an understanding of its place in our world (not a wanna-be book which I think the Kindle suffers from), I think I could be won over.
Amazon may have the distribution and content side of the equation locked up, but they look pretty seriously behind the curve on the technology side of this one. Why couldn’t they have partnered with someone? I’d love to get an answer to this question.
Props to the iLiad too.
