From this blog to God's ears

So roughly 10 hours since my last post, it's dropped to 65 degrees and a steady rain is falling, convincing me that my blog is basically a direct hotline to the (wo)man upstairs. I'll take requests for future posts via email, so send me all your most important requests ;)

Fall. And rain. Stat.

It's hovering near 80 degrees as we approach 10pm the last week in October. I'm sweating, contemplating turning the air conditioning on just so I can fall asleep in peace. Brian is hiding out in the basement with his dad so I can't even sedate myself with bad reality television, my uber cute jack-o-lantern has shriveled and molded on the front porch, and California is going up in flames before I even have a chance to get turned down by those fancy grad schools I think about applying to.

To steal a phrase from Alan, where the eff is fall? Cool, crisp, beautiful leaves? Maybe some rain while we're at it? Jeebus.

If you're looking for a wicked smaaaaht blog post (and not just me complaining about being hot) check out Eli's take on my take on Triple Crown Winners. Not only does her post beat the crap out of mine, her BoSox beat the crap out of my Indians too :(

How many more weeks til basketball season???

Summer camp, but with more gin and tonics

I spent a blissful weekend out on the eastern shore of Maryland (Chestertown) with four wonderful college girlfriends (and yes I know it's Tuesday night, and I'm no longer in weekend bliss mode because I've worked two days and am now stressed). But back to happy Chestertown...

We gathered for a birthday celebration (Happy birthday to Ann!) but quickly found many more things to celebrate-- new jobs, recent engagements, successes at work, completed tests, new cities, and finally (finally!) that crisp, cool fall weather I've been waiting for. Although we were in Chestertown for just a little over a day, it felt more like summer camp than a weekend escape. Amidst all the serious grad schooling, wedding planning, re-locating, social impacting, and Big Life Decision Making, we also filled our days with bike rides (no hands!), candy corn, pumpkin patches, delicious meals, giggling at the Office, and lazing on the porch looking out at the Chester River. Time slowed down and it felt like Canada, complete with cocktail hour on the deck courtesy of Dr. Collier and his famous g and t's.

Although we all kept apologizing for not keeping in better touch, getting back together made me realize how lucky I am to have these fabulous ladies in my life in the first place-- and that we are the kind of friends that don't need to talk on the phone every day to stay close. I was inspired (between the Sikh wedding planning and the UNC friendships) to dig up this blog post from a few months back-- one of my favorites from a Carolina blogger I stalk and a much more beautifully written ode to college friends than I could ever write!

Video from Nepal

Thanks to the Global Fund for Women's fall newsletter, I found this video about Lucky Chetri and the Three Sisters Trekking Company in Nepal (I blogged about them after having lunch with Lucky this summer). It's short, sweet, and sure it give you mountain envy...



Prior to receiving the newsletter I wasn't aware that Lucky was a GFW grantee and it reminded me of what we call "triple crown" syndrome around the GG office-- individuals or organizations who are Ashoka fellows, and Skoll grantees, and Tech Laureates, and Schwab fellows, etc. While I don't want to begrudge awards and funding to amazing organizations, it can feel a bit like a fraternity or country club-- once you cross a certain threshold, the privileges and riches just keep piling on and it's the same folks at the award galas and grantee conventions and featured in newsletters.

At the same time, I spent a few days in September at a Guidestar International conference talking about sharing due diligence, building systems that feed off each other, and reducing workloads for NGOs as well as foundations. How can we create scalable systems that drive more resources to high impact organizations, while also extending our reach into grassroots community organizations and surfacing the best new ideas to reward alongside the pedigreed triple crowners?

Life, by the numbers

It's been a head-spinning six weeks or so, and besides the most obvious number (0, that would be blog posts) I filled some time on a flight counting various aspects of recent life.

6: countries visited...yes, I'm counting the layover in Ireland :)
13: airplane flights
2: weekends with my grandparents, who retained their spots as the funniest people I know. After a particularly funny dinner in Canada Brian and I decided we would have paid at least $15 or $20 just to listen to them talk for a few hours. I think they should take their show on the road.
8 and 1: sandwiches and jars, respectively, of pimiento cheese fed to us by the aforementioned grandmother (see the almost empty plate on the deck). Yes, she still hand cranks it, no, it's not just a southern food, and yes, it's awesome.
1: shoe theft witnessed on the overnight train from Paris to San Sebastian. I watched this old guy putting on a pair of shoes in the next row and walking off...turns out they weren't his! And he stayed on the train, wearing the stolen shoes! Even the not so swift French train police could crack that case, and our train neighbor got his shoes back.

3: tapas bars in one night in San Sebastian, Spain.
We thought that was pretty good until we saw the Spanish grandmothers and toddlers staying out late into the night while we stumbled back exhausted to the hotel. I blame the 1 L of sangria consumed at tapas bar #1.
2: weddings. Congrats to Mary and John Pitts and Kate and Peter Devlin!
25: relatives, roughly, at Koopers Tavern for a post-wedding brunch in Baltimore. My ukelele playing uncle put on a show which was great, until Brian and I realized after singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm with the dancing little cousins we might not be able to show our faces at Koopers anymore...so long, favorite crab dip. You haven't been the same since they stopped serving you in a bread bowl anyways.

38: points in touch football scored in our first Baltimore Sports and Social Club game for a dominating victory. Brian is the QB and I'm the "hiker" which I much prefer to being called the center.
34: points scored by Appalachian State to beat Michigan in the Big House! Although I've talked plenty of trash about NC football being weak, I'll take that victory any day. Buckeyes are still undefeated.
20%: historically low voter turnout in the primary race for Baltimore mayor, which Sheila Dixon won. She did re-pave our street (conveniently 5 days before election day), but we're also on track to hit 300 murders for the year so not so sure she was my first choice...
1: angry cab driver chastising me for not voting. I am a bad person...or just a person who works in a city 50 miles away, gets on a train at 7:15 and returns on the train at 7:40 and shares a car with her husband and can't get to the polls. I am still feeling the civic duty shame spiral, which I might try to make up for by reporting for jury duty Nov. 17.

Numbers are an easy way to explain the exhaustion, lack of communication, and multiple bouts of illness over the past six weeks, and they are also easier to calculate and process than all the emotional highs and lows that I'm still wrapping my head around. The idea of staying put for the next 6 weeks (well, except for that pesky daily commute) is pretty appealing right now-- an unusual thing to feel as I'm usually game for any kind of travel, anywhere, to do anything.

Lately I'm also feeling more acutely the seemingly quickening pace of life and time passing...maybe it's being married to a schoolteacher and all the flurry of activity that back to school time brings, or maybe it's working at an organization where 40% of our business can happen in the last month of the year due to holiday donations. Staring these next few months in the face feels exciting but daunting at the same time! Brian and I were running errands a few weekends ago and walked past a young couple pulling a stroller out of the trunk, re-assembling it, pulling the baby out of a car seat along with all the gear...we looked at each other and laughed thinking the exact same thing-- it's at least a few more years before we're ready to tackle that challenge. As B said, sometimes getting the dishes done every day feels like a big deal, so how on earth do you add another human (or hell, even a dog) into this crazy mix and survive? Then again, I did get sucked into watching 3 episodes of Beauty and the Geek (that would be my reality TV shame spiral to accompany my voting failure shame spiral) so something tells me I have more free time than I think I do...

From the Wire to the Walters (and Hampden in between...)

I should probably turn over authorship of this blog to the lovely Collier sisters-- both because they might be more diligent about updating it frequently, and they've also inspired the past two posts.

Last weekend I was invited to an art exhibit at the Antreasian gallery in Hampden where Katherine has a painting in the "Summer Nudes" exhibit. It was a great summer night, with lots of folks spilling out onto the sidewalk on the Avenue and many beautiful paintings, photos, and sculptures to admire. Go check out the exhibit if you're near 36th, and if you go in the morning have breakfast at Golden West Cafe next door and order the most amazing french toast I've ever tasted!

On Saturday we continued our arty adventures at the Walters Art Museum in Mount Vernon to see the Gee's Bend Quilts. I'd never heard of these quilts before last weekend, but it was probably one of the most exciting experiences I've had at an art museum. The quilts of Gee's Bend (an African American town in rural Alabama) were discovered a few years ago and have been amazing audiences at the Whitney and museums around the country ever since, and the women quilters are now heralded as masters of modern art. The colors, patterns, and use of unusual fabrics (denim work pants, fuzzy knees and all!) are truly stunning. The civil rights story of Gee's Bend is equally interesting-- after Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Gees Bend in the 60's and residents began taking the ferry to the county seat to vote, the ferry was shut down, effectively closing off the town's access to the outside world. Luckily the ferry service was reinstated (wait for it, wait for it)...in 2006, FORTY YEARS later!!

The quilts are only at the Walters through August 26 (admission is free) so get over there while you can. Apologies for the awkward exhibit poster photo-- pictures weren't allowed of the actual quilts.

As for me, I'm naturally blogging to delay packing for a trip-- the hubby and I are off to chase Hemingway (Hemingway's ghosts?) around France and Spain, so I'll be in Europe til end of August. Au revoir!

Real life Omar!

Check out today's article in the New York Times about the real man who inspired the character Omar (aka my all time favorite) on The Wire-- an amazing story. Thanks to Miss Collier for the tip!


BALTIMORE, Aug. 2 — Donnie Andrews was a stickup man with a .44 Magnum who robbed drug dealers and was sentenced to life in prison for murdering one of them.

Fran Boyd was a heroin addict who shoplifted to get from fix to fix, passing her stupors in the shooting gallery and stash house that once was her middle-class home.

Their separate stories of decline into drugs and violence are nationally known: Mr. Andrews was the inspiration for the character Omar Little, a ruthless thug who stalks dealers on the HBO series “The Wire.” Ms. Boyd was the protagonist of “The Corner,” an HBO miniseries that chronicled her fall into addiction.

But the story of their shared redemption is less widely known. On Aug. 11, they are getting married after a lengthy courtship that was as much about turning their lives around as it was about finding each other. Over a decade in the making, their union is a source of inspiration for the grittier parts of West Baltimore, where few people who end up on the corner using and selling drugs manage to break free, and even fewer return to make a difference.

Click here for full story...