Baltimore highs and lows...

It was a very Baltimore weekend at the Ledyard house-- highlights and lowlights below:

High: the Charm City hits the big time, getting featured in the NY Times "36 hours in..." travel column. I must have been sleepwalking when I gave the author a tour-- he hit all our favorite spots! Blue Moon Cafe, Walters Art Museum, the Helmand, Charles Theater, Brewer's Art, and the Cross Street Market-- read the full article here.

Low: we finally jumped on "The Wire" bandwagon and started watching the first season. Excellent television yes, but the Baltimore crime scene hits a little close to home when those boarded up row houses are a familiar site and our friends love joking about the "ghetto" (aka our surrounding neighborhood) or the flashing blue police lights encountered on the ride to our house. We live on a beautiful tree lined street, filled with nice people, sturdy 1940s row houses, and azaleas...and were woken up a few weeks back by the sound of gun fire followed shortly by the police chopper circling with its spotlight glaring in the windows. I feel caught between wanting to defend and promote Bmore as my newly adopted hometown, while staying in touch with the reality of a city which (despite all the lovely redevelopment) still has its share of problems.

High: a gorgeous afternoon in Annapolis watching the NCAA lacrosse quarterfinals-- yummy seafood lunch with lots of Carolina friends and plenty of beer, sailboats, ice cream cones, and quaint shops.

Low: the Heels lost to the evil empire by about a hundred goals-- and now those bastards get to come to Baltimore for the final four next weekend. Blast.

High: filled up the old kegerator with a solid Maryland brew-- Backfin Pale Ale. To quote our neighbor Katie (one half of our Baltimore twin couple, Katie and Joe, who also lent us season one of the The Wire): "Yum! This makes me want to pick some crabs right now! I think they put Old Bay in it."

If anyone's up for more lacrosse, Backfin brews, or special time in Baltimore-- all will be available again this weekend chez Ledyard. Don't let the Wire (or my mention of gunfire) scare you off :)

I'm not a foodie, I just play one in my blog

Seeing as how I consider assembling prepared items from Whole Foods "cooking", and I'm surrounded by real foodies, I probably shouldn't attempt a food-related post-- but here goes.

First things first-- ice cream. I have to admit I've never seen a full episode of American Idol, and it only mildly piqued my interest when they did a big charity jamboree episode a few weeks back (though some sources slammed them for using pictures of African kids without intending to send any of the $987 quadrillion they raised to said kids), but they do have a new product I can really get behind: American Idol Ice Cream. So far I've tried two flavors and they both rock: Choc 'N Roll Caramel and Take the Cake (it helps that they were both on sale at my friendly Baltimore Giant). And, joy upon joy, they even have a website where you can vote for your favorite flavor!

I just voted for Take the Cake and it's currently in the lead with 33% of the votes! This might make my husband sad, as he nearly dry heaved in the kitchen when he saw me eating it. What's wrong with yellow cake flavored ice cream filled with sprinkles and neon blue frosting? I can trace my love for Take the Cake to two sources-- my wheat allergy as a child, which led my mom to feed me plates full of frosting (no cake allowed) at birthday parties until I was 9 or 10, and Uncle Wiggly's ice cream store in Baltimore that used to have a flavor called Party Cake but then stopped carrying it (I almost threw a tantrum in the store the day I found out). Thanks to American Idol, and the intelligent voters across America, it looks like Take the Cake is here to stay!

The next food bit is slightly more intellectual and much less delicious. Check out this link, which has a super interesting chart diagramming which huge corporations are behind your favorite organic food brands. Coca Cola and Odwalla, Kellogg and Morningstar, M & M Mars and Seeds of Change? It's enough to make me want to supplement my ice cream filled diet with only farmer's market produce...I'm pretty sure those guys haven't been bought out yet.

Calling all creative types...

If you love photos, video, music, animation, collages, montages, or just helping Dana with a fun project (and you all know my idea of creative is making an excel spreadsheet in something besides black) then check this out: www.globalgiving.phanfare.com

Over the past few weeks we've had amazing photos and videos submitted by over 20 of our project partners around the world. From planting trees in Haiti to motorcycle riding nurses in the Gambia, the images and videos are truly incredible-- and these are projects that I work with on a daily basis. Sometimes there just is no substitute for actually SEEING the children in Sudan attending school, rather than reading or hearing about it.

So if this gets you excited too, here's the part where you can get involved. We have the raw photos and video from the projects, and are now recruiting "filmmakers" to assemble the content into great short videos or montages. Submit a video by May 31 and you have a shot at the top prize of a $1000 scholarship (or $1000 donation to a project) not to mention my undying love and admiration for creative talents I missed acquiring in years of art class along the way.

To sign up (or read more about it) go to www.globalgiving.com/filmfest

And if creativity isn't your thing either, you can still earn the aforementioned love and affection by making a donation for Mother's Day and support women around the world. An e-card will still get there by Sunday!

Be Audacious

Last week I attended the Open Society Institute’s Annual Baltimore Fellows lunch to announce a new class of Fellows, awarding funding to social entrepreneurs in Baltimore creating innovative solutions to community problems. From educating children to rehabbing bicycles, the fellows are all doing amazing, inspirational work around Baltimore. While not local to Baltimore, Van Jones (the keynote speaker and last month’s guest editor of my favorite Baltimore mag, the Urbanite) continued the inspirational spirit with one of the more exciting speeches I’ve ever heard. An elderly man at the next table, who needed assistance just getting to his seat, literally pumped his fist at one point during Van’s speech and almost fell out of his chair. While I can’t do the speech justice, I’ll try to paraphrase from the notes I scribbled furiously in the truck after lunch.

First of all, Van Jones is an absolute rock star in the world of human rights, social justice, and environmental activism. Almost any award you can think of, he’s won—Reebok human rights, Ashoka fellowships, Rockefeller Foundation, etc etc. He founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and has been working in Oakland for over 15 years. Being very familiar with the experience of receiving prestigious fellowships, he told the new OSI fellows that it can be the best and worst thing that ever happens to you—because now you’re expected to live up to all those plans you’ve been making and take on the challenging and scary work that needs to be done. He encouraged the fellows, and the rest of us in the room, to “be audacious”. Take the leap and go a little farther than others will or you think you can, and the community will be there to support you.

Van spoke about first starting out, when he and a few friends started an organization to fight against police brutality and improve police-community relations. Friends and family told them their idea was a little crazy, it might not work, and they should definitely not quit their “real” jobs. But they took the leap and literally worked in a closet (probably an ego-bruising experience for a brilliant Yale law school grad), and created a database logging information about instances of police brutality. Through collecting detailed information via their community hotline and rigorously mapping incidents, they found that close to 90% of the brutality cases were linked to ONE officer on the police force. But, just as they found the root of the problem and were ready to take action, they ran out of funding and faced the possibility of closing up shop. Van announced their predicament on the local radio station to let folks know the hotline would be temporarily closed, but they were planning to regroup and make a comeback. A few days later they received an anonymous $50,000 donation and a note that said “Keep going. Keep going.” And they did, and “three smart kids with heart in a closet” drastically reduced police brutality in the San Francisco PD.

Van shared a few other similarly amazing stories from his work, including halting construction of a massive youth “superjail” planned outside Oakland and feeling old watching the next generation of audacious youth leaders take over (“You can’t just launch a campaign! You have to have…have…meetings!).

His most recent work links environmentalism with social justice and poverty eradication, and he spoke with conviction about the power of a new green economy to lift marginalized communities into the middle class. The society that creates disposable products and throwaway resources is the same society that allows throwaway neighborhoods and throwaway children. You can not save the polar bears without also saving the poor, black children in this country! Who do you think will install all of these solar panels? Who will retrofit the old buildings to meet new environmental regulations? The green economy will require labor, and with training and education, a former McDonald’s fry cook could become an engineer earning union wages and meeting demand for new, clean sources of power.

I got chills sitting there listening to him, and I had to agree when he said that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” I hope we can use this crisis as motivation to truly be audacious and not just stop climate change, but maybe tackle public education and poverty too.

Sweet, sweet hypocrisy

A blog I read has a regular post called "Charity Criminal of the Week"-- although I can't promise this will be a regular component of my blog, I'd like to call this one "The Biggest Hypocrites I've Ever Heard of that Are in Positions of Massive Power." Or maybe "Top Two Reasons the Rest of the World Should Hate and/or Distrust America."

My head nearly exploded this morning when I got an email describing the recent resignation of Randall Tobias, who until last week was the head of USAID and director of US foreign assistance. Citing the ever popular "personal reasons", he actually resigned because his cell phone number turned up on the list of clients made public by the DC Madam...yes boys and girls, he was frequenting a call girl service. Although Mr. Tobias claims he was only getting massages (who pays $300 an hour for a massage?), federal prosecutors allege the DC Madam was running a prostitution ring.

Here comes the hypocrisy part--as the top US official responsible for development aid, he was responsible for implementing an ANTI PROSTITUTION PLEDGE preventing organizations working with prostitutes from getting any USAID funding, and requiring organizations getting funding to sign a statement that they opposed prostition. The pledge was opposed by numerous health, human rights, and advocacy groups as sex workers are often vulnerable groups most in need of assistance and are often keys to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. While Mr Tobias was spending thousands of dollars on "call girls" in our nation's capital, groups promoting health and economic empowerment for vulnerable women around the world were cut off from funding necessary to do their work. Incredible.

This story comes hot on the heels of the Wolfowitz debacle at the World Bank...taking over as head of the bank with a pledge to fight corruption, he temporarily stopped loans to countries plagued by bribery or mismanagement in an effort to promote transparency and accountability. Yet at the same time, it seems he was involved in securing pay raises, promotions, and cushy trips for his girlfriend (also a bank employee)!! Girlfriend issues aside, he's not been a popular figure at the bank for his reliance on a small circle of aides he brought over from the department of defense, who have taken a liking to striking out phrases like "climate change" and "family planning" from aid proposals. Perhaps Wolfowitz should take a lesson from Tobias and resign rather than fight for a job that no one seems to think he should keep. Or maybe we should just let his girlfriend decide his title and salary.

Where do these people come from? How on earth have they been running the 2 most important official aid institutions in the country? Totally, completely, unbelieveable.

For a more coherent and only slightly less incredulous summary of the situation, check out the "Sex, Lies, and Development" post over at CGD.

UPDATE: I should have known Tobias was a Dookie-- chairman of the board from 1997-2000.