for more than six years the invisible children organization has campaigned on behalf of the unseen war in africa between the government of uganda and the lord’s resistance army. much of that effort is culminating at a critical point right now, as there is a window of opportunity to permanently stop joseph kony and his LRA’s brutal one-sided war against innocent civilians that has raged for two decades.
the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act was introduced into both the u.s. senate and house of representatives in may. if passed by congress and signed into law by president obama, this legislation will be the most significant action ever taken by the u.s. government to end this crisis.
the LRA disarmament bill passed its first big test yesterday when the senate foreign relations committee affirmed the bill unanimously, moving the bill one step closer to the president’s desk. now we just need to show our support.
today, november 18th, there will be local meetings held all over the country as a part of a hometown shakedown. if you’re near downtown okc today, you can drop by the library at 3:00 (300 park ave, 4th floor) to show your support for this bill to senator coburn. you can also sign the petition online.
click here to see a short video of invisible children’s recent interview with international criminal court lead prosecutor luis moreno-ocampo talking about the significance of our role.
do yourself a favor a get started on your holiday shopping early this weekend. come to the grand opening of Shop Good and give a gift to great causes by buying gifts for the special people on your list.
every purchase impacts local and global communities for GOOD. this friday’s grand opening will feature live music by Gum and free chai from Joe’s Addiction. shop opens at 7pm in the historic plaza district in okc. (nw 16th & indiana)
keep up with Shop Good’s latest by becoming a fan at their fb page
i only had to read the first six words of this Weekend Edition on NPR to know that i would definitely be giving the entire segment my undivided attention. ginger is one of my absolute favorite flavors, and i find it so versatile. i use it (often!) in both sweet and savory recipes, as well as enjoying it in several of my preferred tea blends. the audio is perhaps not as interesting as the link below where you’ll find the finalists’ recipes.
If you’re a fan of ginger, then you’re in luck. We asked listeners to send us their best and most creative ginger-inspired recipes. After scouring through more than 200 submissions from all over the country, NPR food essayist Bonny Wolf picked three finalists.
The entire Weekend Edition staff descended on Wolf’s house to taste the three dishes, but suddenly a dark-horse candidate emerged. A fourth recipe, included originally just to accompany the finalists, took the spotlight. Host Liane Hansen declared the ginger candied martini her favorite, and so it became our winner.
it seems the winning recipe was victorious primarily because it had the most prominent ginger presence, which i’m sure would’ve won me over as well. but for anyone less than a ginger fanatic (like myself) a little bit goes a long way. But you can judge all four recipes — soup, salad, dessert and cocktail — for yourself.
don’t forget to drop by The Girlie Show this weekend! this is the funky show’s sixth year of bringing chick-designed creativity and craftmanship to okc. “it’s not stuffy like an art show or fluffy like a craft show.”
nov 6-7 (friday night 8p-midnight & saturday noon-5p) at the farmer’s public market bldg at 311 s. klein in okc.
a new place is now open in oklahoma city. a place for community, for tea, for local art. the world of tea is ancient and current, it is stimulating and calming, it is subtle and dramatic. tea tasting groups will be held at the teahouse to allow us to explore and enjoy tea together. t serves over 100 different loose leaf teas that can be savored at the teahouse or can be purchased by weight to take home. unique retail, including the accessories needed for tea making at home, are also available at t.
there are only two other teahouses in the okc area right now (edmond and bethany) and both are the frilly “high tea” style that lends itself more to special occasions than meet-ups or hanging around a la the local coffee shop. what’s up okc? first a teavana store in the mall, now this?! it’s a dream.
Doug Hesse, director of writing at the University of Denver, wrote in his Denver Post Guest Commentary, “Put Forth Our Best Writing Selves” (Oct. 17, 2009),
“We live in an age when more individuals are writing more words, read by more other people, than at any time in history. Almost every job demands writing, from nurses charting patients to workers taking inventory to managers logging sales. More remarkable, though, is that millions of people choose to write, because they want to, satisfying some deeply human urge to express thoughts in words.”
We Write Because We Want to, Not Just Because We Have to.
this look documentary looks fascinating, enlightening, and hysterical. i remember quizzing my black girl friends in middle school about their beauty routines, trying to understand how perms and plaits and products worked on their hair versus mine. while the topic was intriguing to me then, i didn’t realize the cultural intensity - or the massive industry - behind this subject until much later.
we are all aware of the social influences to have the “right” style of clothes, makeup, etc…. and so many people are concerned with skinny models skewing young girls’ self image and promoting damaging eating disorders… but no one talks about the pressures on african american women to work so hard against what nature gave them with harsh chemicals and even harsher blows to their self-esteem (not to mention pocketbooks).
i’m not sure if the judgments stem more from within or out, but i think “good hair” will be an important piece for both those whose lives are immersed in the obsession and those who are completely oblivious to it.
(after watching the “good hair” trailer on youtube, i found clips from a show tyra banks did on “what is good hair” a few months ago after chris rock approached her about his film. the segment in part 2 with the young girls is especially revealing.)
given my love of tea and motivation for missions, learning about this special project was like getting a gift, not giving one. my friend penni introduced this company on her blog last week, and i was thrilled to discover that i can get involved by doing what i love - sipping delicious infusions! visit the giving teas to learn more about the project and the teas.
the jonny lang concert last night started out good and just got better. i don’t care what he sings, i’m enamored with every note that reverberates from his distinctive, husky voice. and watching his fingers fly over the strings during his intense guitar solos was defintely a treat.
the element that i didn’t anticipate is the spin of a blues rocker on the extended jam session feel that you look forward to at a live show. in addition to playing varied arrangements of album favorites, the concert included periods traditional improvised blues verses and an urban gospel style drawn-out backup vocal solo answered back and forth with the organ. what a musical jackpot!
the half-hour encore was perhaps the most jaw-dropping and entertaining part of the show. as i’ve seen artists do before, jonny stepped back to showcase the talent of some of the band members who had not been spotlighted during the set. the difference was the was how the band acted while their mates rocked out. no one was absently taking advantage of the break to rest or sip water. in fact, every time the crowd would gasp and squeal at a particularly unbelievable display in instrumental mastery, jonny would throw his head back in amazement and delight as if he had never seen them kill it before. the evident passion on stage made the entire experience more fun.
recently i returned to my piano-lesson-teaching roots with a spontaneous tutorial with lee. it took less than a minute to realize that my husband really is as musically challenged as i feared. he put forth a good effort despite his lack of any training - and i mean no exposure to even the most basic principles. but just when i was thinking that i’d have to break out the markers and tape to label the keys - that is if he’ll even agree to lesson #2 - along comes virtual piano. this interactive website does it all for you, and even highlights the proper chord formations. now he can bang it out on the color-coded keyboard without me hovering…or cringing.
this is awesome - click the image for a larger view
(this actually came to my attention via peacoat via MelissLissLiss - via Koufukuron… but it’s certainly worth a bit of sharing - and if you click through to jeannr, you can see that it has been reblogged indeed, roughly 750 times. i’m not alone in my admiration)
after spending the weekend making fun of the new OSU Cowboys pregame song, which sadly bears striking resemblance to Geoff Moore and the Distance’s “Home Run” (especially during the “oh-oh” sequence!), and subsequently lamenting CCM’s well-earned stigma of being cheesy, and well, bad, i was reminded of one of my favorite Christian artists that undeniably defied that stereotype. Jennifer Knapp’s albums were among the few CCM discs that survived my late 90s purge (along with the early Jars of Clay and all David Crowder Band). but unlike JOC and DCB, jen just vanished after her third record. so i’m glad not only to be reminded of her excellent representation of Christian contemporary music, but to learn that she is planning a comeback.The track above was always one of my favorites - the live version of “Undo Me.”
bored and looking for some fun? gather your friends around the computer and prepare for plenty of irony, randomness, and laughter.
a recent post on Language Log highlighted an amusing example of computational linguistics at work - and in need of a more thorough programmer. healthBase, a semantic search engine that aggregates medical content from millions of authoritative health sites including WebMD, Wikipedia, and PubMed, has some major glitches. soon after Tech Crunch hailed it as the “ultimate medical content search engine,” users started to notice some bizarre, and occasionally offensive, results.
apparently, due to some Artificial Stupidity applied to Wikipedia, it is possible to discover not only that one of the causes of hemorrhoids is “bronco,” but also to research the complications of curiosity (kill cat), the treatments for patriotism(gold), and the causes of hookers (bourbon, scotch, and beer).
you can click on links for a citation, and the quoted paragraph indicates how the seemingly inexplicable connections are drawn by the search engine, but i think it’s more fun not to pull the curtain back. the laughs are limited only by your imagination. research a few *medical conditions* over at healthBase, and take advantage of the poorly-designed semantic engine for some cheap entertainment.
Eric D. Howell has just completed a movie of complex moral perfection. Ana’s Playground is a short 20 minute film… examining the horror of children in war including children as soldiers, is a stunning achievement for a first time filmmaker…
This is the sickening reality that drove Howell to take what began for him as a simple writing experiment and nurture it to become as bold a statement on children and armed conflict as we have seen…
We are honored that Eric Howell consented to our interview request. He is an emerging artist who has taken on as heavy a subject matter as the world has to offer…
as a huge fan of books, an avid reader, and believer in the importance of children’s literature, i was sad to learn that the beloved show and champion of literacy “Reading Rainbow” is being canceled after 26 years. what a huge loss for the cause of promoting of the joy of reading.
(audio clip from NPR’s Morning Edition. Ben Calhoun reports.)
