Swell Season

Swell Season Concert.

 

So.

effing.

good.

 

Highlights:

Glen stepped in front of the mic and did an acoustic version of Say It To Me Now. Halfway through the song, he told this story of meeting a 70-year-old woman from New York.  She told him she lost her son on September 11th.  She’d had a weird feeling about him going into work that day, and thought of calling him to warn him.  Instead, she just slept it off.  After that,  she told Glen that she learned, if you have a feeling about something, you should always say it.  Then Glen said, “So this song is dedicated to Lois from New York.”   He finished off the song  in all his roaring glory; his shadow cast on the right wall of the ballroom.  Glorious.

There was a TRIPLE encore.  There was the first, expected one.  Then, we wouldn’t stop cheering, so they played a Frames song.  Then we STILL wouldn’t stop cheering, so Glen looked around, laughing,  for a little while, then whispered something to all the bandmates, and they did a cover of the Pixies song, Where Is My Mind? SO GOOD!!

Road Trip Nation Movie Premiere!

Hey all!

You may remember me mentioning that my Road Trip would be turned into a movie to promote the great work of Road Trip Nation.

The premiere is on

NOVEMBER 10th

Noon

University of Oregon campus, Eugene, OR.
I’m going to get the day off work and carpool it down there.  There should be room for a few more people in the car.  Let me know if you’re interested in coming!

Just in case you ever wanted to see me on the silver screen…

…on November 10th, the PREMIERE of my Road Trip Nation movie will be happening at U of O.  Here is a sneak preview of the video, featuring yours truly.  Let me know if you’d like to come with me to go see it!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQfhkoMwOyM

What My Life’s About – 1 year later

One year ago, I looked like this:

One year ago, I lived at my parent’s house in Tigard.

One year ago, I had recently returned from a 6-week service trip to Thailand.

One year ago, I had recently began a job as a skills trainer at the Kerr Early Intervention Program.

One year ago, I wrote a blog post called What I Want My Life to be About.

One year later, I look like this:

I live in an intentional community house is SW Portland.  And I’m rereading my year-old blog post, wondering how I’ve done.

Have I made my life about the 9 things I listed one year ago?

Not entirely.

To start out, here are 4 of the 9 things I listed, and a brief synopsis of how I’ve done:

1. Simplicity – eh, a little bit.  But am I uncomfortable ever?  Rarely. Gregory and I discussed this yesterday, and it’s been decided that we’d like to attempt to live more simply.  More on this later…
2. Generosity – I have definitely done better about releasing the nagging feeling of “Ok, I bought that person coffee today, so now they owe me coffee next time.”  But I could definitely do better.
3. Staying Informed – heh heh.  I’ve done a terrible job at this.  I think the reason I did so well when I lived with the Simplici-tea girls, is because several of them were really good at staying informed.
4. Spontaneity– I’ve done OK with this.  I was going to do Portland Improv’s spontaneous dance at Clackamas Town Center… but it turned out to be LAME.

(To be continued…)

Road Trip

How It Ends

I hopped in a car with three friends, and we road tripped it to Washington, DC.  There we participated in a Invisible Children’s Lobby Days event called How It Ends.  From all over the United States, 2000 young people aged 16-30 met with their representatives and asked them to consider co-sponsoring a bill called The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.  This was the largest gathering at the Capital Building for an Africa issue in history.

Road Trip Nation

Our road trip was sponsored by an organization called Road Trip Nation (RTN), which offers grants to young people who want to go on a road trip with a purpose.    We applied for a grant and we got one –  the largest grant the organization gives out ($1000!).  Let me tell you, we were STOKED!  Part of this grant included being provided with video equipment, and the knowledge that when we returned from DC, RTN staff would be editing our footage into a film that they’ll show when they tour college campuses in the fall.

Trip Basics

• took us 3.5 days to get there.
• stayed with friends and family along the way.stayed in DC for 4 days.
• video-interviewed one of the founders of Invisible Children, Jason Russell for an hour.
• attended workshops and lectures featuring:

1. Tom Shadyac, the director of Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty
2. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
3. John Prendergast, co-chair of Resolve Uganda
4. The three film makers and faces of Invisible Children, INC: Bobby Bailey, Laren Poole, and Jason Russell
5. Others

• lobbied for our Oregon Representatives to co-sponsor the LRA Bill (all of whom have now signed on!)
• attended a huge concert/rally at the end of the event
• drove up to Philadelphia and hopped on a bus to  New York City.

• 
  

  

On The Road Hi/Lo Lights

• Dinosaur, Colorado (which was laaaame)
• one nasty breakfast from IHOP
• beautiful scenery (namely Utah and the East Coast)
• boring scenery (namely Kansas and Nebraska)
• running into a convenience store when the wind was blowing really hard and it was pouring down rain and there were funnel cloud warnings (!!!)
• reading aloud an entire Donald Miller book
• someone leaving a stroller in the middle of 1-84
• me hitting that stroller at 2am on the final leg of our journey

What’s Happening Now
The trip was epic.  The results of the Lobby Days event, even more so: Support for the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act has continued to increase, well after the How it Ends event in June. The bill is now cosponsored by over one hundred members of the House of Representatives and nearly a quarter of the Senate. The African Affairs Subcommittees are expected to determine whether the bill should be presented for a vote within the House and Senate in the fall. Such wide, bi-partisan support greatly increases the likelihood of the bill being passed.

Joseph Kony is still in power and has moved his reign of terror to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  He is abducting children to be used as sex slaves, soldiers, and has been trafficking children out of the country.  Those nearer to the situation in the DR Congo guess that he is trading these children as slaves in exchange for weapons.  He continues to use his 90%-child army to attack and massacre innocent civilians.

If you want more info on what is going on and how you can be involved in the movement to rescue these children, go to www.invisiblechildren.com, www.resolveuganda.org , www.enoughproject.org, or talk to me!

What’s Next?

So, after reading my last post about The Rescue, you may be thinking:

So, what?  Thousands of people pretending to be abducted got pretend-rescued?  Big deal.

Well, let me tell you about the next step.  I’m going to Washington, D.C.

The Next Step

I’m road trippin’ it with a few friends (one from George Fox, and three that I met at The Rescue), and we’re going to be presenting our leaders with all the letters and artwork made by the thousands of people who attended The Rescue around the country.

Questions??  Talk to me.  I like to talk about what I care about.  And by that, I mean I like talking about myself.  And by that, I mean I like talking.  Period. 

The Rescue

As some of you know, I was involved in an event last Saturday called “The Rescue of Joseph Kony’s Child Soldiers,” or in short: “The Rescue,” through the organization Invisible Children. (http://nightof.therescue.invisiblechildren.com).

In 100 cities all over the globe, thousands of people symbolically abducted themselves to their respective city centers in solidarity with the thousands of child soldiers who have been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony in Northern Uganda.  These child soldiers make up 90% of the LRA, and this army has massacred hundreds of thousands of people.

The "Abducted" in Pioneer Courthouse Square

To be “rescued” from this figurative abduction, participants tried to gain the attention of a mogul (a person of cultural/political influence), aka a politician or a celebrity throughout the month of April.  Participants stayed in a designated area (Portland’s was Pioneer Courthouse Square), until we were “rescued” by this mogul.

The point of having a mogul come, was to raise the banner of this cause, and gain more media attention for it.  These moguls didn’t just come and say, “Poof!  You’re rescued!” but talked about why they (1) want to support this cause, and (2) make it a priority in foreign policy.

That night,  a representative of Oregon Senator, Jeff Merkely, and reality show, Little People, Big World star, Amy Roloff, came at 9:30pm and rescued Portland.

The point?

To stop Joseph Kony from abducting more children. To rescue the already abducted child soldiers and rehabilitate them.

To end the 23-year-long war that has been going on in Northern Uganda.

Interesting  Occurences:

Wichita, Kansas wasn’t rescued for about four days.  And there were tornado warnings!!

Chicago wasn’t rescued for SIX days, and the participants stayed out in “extreme rain.”

Bill Boyd, aka Pippin from the Lord of the Rings movies, rescued Edinburgh, Scotland.

OPRAH ended up rescuing Chicago!  On her Live in Chicago show on Friday, she featured the founders of Invisible Children, and about 500 people who were still sticking it out in the streets of the city–for EIGHT minutes!  Oprah, being such a huge celebrity, really raised the public’s awareness of the issue.

Links:

Check out photos from the Portland Event, as well as other cities.

Portland

The Rescue’s main site

ew, sick!

After a few months of working at my job, I realized something most disturbing.

I get sick once a month.

Every month.

Since starting at my job in July, I’ve been sick 7 times.  SEVEN TIMES!!

Now, this hasn’t always been the case.  This is a new development.  In college, I can remember two times getting sick:  The first time was when I was on Juniors Abroad in India — I puked one day.  The next time was  on a winter serve trip in Portland my senior year — I got a cold.  Ever since starting my job with snot-nosed, uncovered sneezin’, potty in their pants preschoolers, I’ve realized I get sick EVERY month.

My monthly sickness is usually quite predictable.  Usually it’s a cold.  Usually it lasts for 1-2 weeks.  And it ALWAYS sucks.

Remember that crazy cold virus that was going around early this year?  Yeah, I got it, and it lasted 3 weeks.  Remember that holiday called Christmas?  Yeah, I was lying in front of the fireplace at my parent’s house in sweats and a blanket, and was shivering in all my queasy glory.  Once I even lost my voice — which, I realized is one of my most valuable assets when working with kids with behavior problems.  On that occassion, I called in to request the day off, and didn’t even have to fake a tired/sick-sounding voice.  My Satan-like, lack-of-a-voice was convincing in and of itself.

For months, I had been taking Emergen-C powder every day to combat all the germs and stuff.  Then I realized something very important:  that shit don’t work!  I don’t care if you “swear by it,” use it “all the time,” or whatever.  It’s vitamin C infused fizzy water.  Do you know how easy it is to get one’s daily vitamin C intake? So easy.  I feel like one dose of Emergen-C has 2000% of a human’s daily vitamin C needs in it.  TWO-THOUSAND PERCENT!!

So, I thought, Hey, I’ll just stop taking Emergen-C all together.  Maybe then I’ll get better. Nope.  That didn’t work either.

Finally, the lovely Dominique of the greater Canby House community, suggested a Neti Pot to me.   Long story short, it’s this weird little tea pot looking thing that cleans out your sinuses and promotes totally body wellness.  I got a Neti Pot last month in the midst of snotty- and coughyness, and I haven’t been sick yet.  BUT I’m not swearing by it yet.  April is far from being over.

cool, huh?!

This is the test to see if the Neti Pot is as awesome as it claims to be.  If I don’t get sick in April two things will be true:

1) I will be happier

2) Neti Pots RULE!

APRIL FOOLS!

Oh, how I love lying to the masses.  Unfortunately, everyone now thinks less of me for NOT doing something amazing.  Joke’s on me, friends.

I’m going to Cambodia!

The rumors are true, folks!  I didn’t tell anyone, but last December I applied for the Peace Corps to SE Asia and S America.  I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to get my hopes up–holy crap!–that was the hardest secret I’ve ever had to keep (as most of you know, I’m TERRIBLE at keeping secrets, especially my own.)  So, I got my acceptance letter whilst away in Minneapolis visiting my brother.  And I just found it this morning!

So, I got accepted to the Cambodia project.  It’s a one-year+ program, in that you commit to one year initially, but can choose to stay longer.  I’ll be located in Central Cambodia, working on a team of 12.  I’m not exactly sure at this point what my specific role will be, but past and current projects have included: teaching English and running workshops for locals to promote conflict resolution.  I’m really hoping to help out with a program where kids of all ages can come and play and just be kids.  That is what attracted me to the program in the first place.  I feel like too many kids in the world are forced to grow up way too quickly.

So, more details will be posted as I find them out.  I’m going to be going to bi-weekly trainings with other Peace Corps people in the area, and then on September 4th, I ship out!  BAH!  So excited.

I haven’t told anyone at work yet, and that’ll be an interesting conversation to have, as I feel like I’m an asset to my job and the kids I work with.  Luckily, I’ll leave right at the end of the school year.  So, it’ll be a good transition time.

Map of Cambodia

Cambodia Kids Coalition Project