Our voices are finally being heard. Some more encouraging NYT articles:
WASHINGTON March 28, 2007 Senate Supports a Pullout Date in Iraq War Bill
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE
And a hip, hip, hooray for Oregon and Nebraska, represented in this article:
"The outcome of the Senate vote took both parties by surprise. Republicans were stung by the defection of Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has not supported a timetable for withdrawal before although he is his party’s most outspoken critic of the war in Congress.
“There will not be a military solution to Iraq,” Mr. Hagel declared. “Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. It doesn’t belong to the United States. Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost.”
The Democrats also gained the vote of Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, who voted against a withdrawal date just two weeks ago.
“People want our troops home,” Mr. Nelson said.
The two other senators who crossed party lines were Gordon H. Smith, an Oregon Republican, who supported the withdrawal date. . ."
BUSINESS March 28, 2007 Burger King Shifts Policy on Animals
By ANDREW MARTIN Animal welfare advocates called the chain’s shift to more humane egg and meat production a “historic advance.”
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
A way to help offset Global Poverty
March 27, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist www.nytimes.com
You, Too, Can Be a Banker to the Poor
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KABUL, Afghanistan
For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.
That’s what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through http://www.kiva.org/, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.
So on my arrival here in Afghanistan, I visited my new business partners to see how they were doing.
On a muddy street in Kabul, Abdul Satar, a bushy-bearded man of 64, was sitting in the window of his bakery selling loaves for 12 cents each. He was astonished when I introduced myself as his banker, but he allowed me to analyze his business plan by sampling his bread: It was delicious.
Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and “Emily’s family” in Santa Barbara, Calif.
With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. “If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,” he said.
Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn’t know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.
The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.
“Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,” Ms. Sadat said. “You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it’s good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.”
Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.
In poor countries, commercial money lenders routinely charge interest rates of several hundred percent per year. Thus people tend to borrow for health emergencies rather than to finance a new business. And partly because poor people tend to have no access to banks, they also often can’t save money securely.
Microfinance institutions typically focusing on lending to women, to give them more status and more opportunities. Ms. Sadat’s group does lend mostly to women, but it’s been difficult to connect some female borrowers with donors on Kiva — because many Afghans would be horrified at the thought of taking a woman’s photograph, let alone posting on the Internet.
My other partner in Kabul is Abdul Saboor, who runs a small TV repair business. He used the loan to open a second shop, employing two people, and to increase his inventory of spare parts. “I used to have to go to the market every day to buy parts,” he said, adding that it was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. “Now I go once every two weeks.”
Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is http://www.globalgiving.com/, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.
A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.
“I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn’t business or where it wasn’t efficient,” Mr. Flannery said. He added: “This doesn’t have to be charity. You can partner with someone who’s halfway around the world.”
Op-Ed Columnist www.nytimes.com
You, Too, Can Be a Banker to the Poor
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KABUL, Afghanistan
For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.
That’s what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through http://www.kiva.org/, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.
So on my arrival here in Afghanistan, I visited my new business partners to see how they were doing.
On a muddy street in Kabul, Abdul Satar, a bushy-bearded man of 64, was sitting in the window of his bakery selling loaves for 12 cents each. He was astonished when I introduced myself as his banker, but he allowed me to analyze his business plan by sampling his bread: It was delicious.
Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and “Emily’s family” in Santa Barbara, Calif.
With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. “If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,” he said.
Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn’t know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.
The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.
“Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,” Ms. Sadat said. “You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it’s good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.”
Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.
In poor countries, commercial money lenders routinely charge interest rates of several hundred percent per year. Thus people tend to borrow for health emergencies rather than to finance a new business. And partly because poor people tend to have no access to banks, they also often can’t save money securely.
Microfinance institutions typically focusing on lending to women, to give them more status and more opportunities. Ms. Sadat’s group does lend mostly to women, but it’s been difficult to connect some female borrowers with donors on Kiva — because many Afghans would be horrified at the thought of taking a woman’s photograph, let alone posting on the Internet.
My other partner in Kabul is Abdul Saboor, who runs a small TV repair business. He used the loan to open a second shop, employing two people, and to increase his inventory of spare parts. “I used to have to go to the market every day to buy parts,” he said, adding that it was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. “Now I go once every two weeks.”
Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is http://www.globalgiving.com/, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.
A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.
“I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn’t business or where it wasn’t efficient,” Mr. Flannery said. He added: “This doesn’t have to be charity. You can partner with someone who’s halfway around the world.”
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Fast Food Chain Seeks Papal Blessing to Forgo Killing Hormonal Poultry
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/16779099.htm
For you Catholics seeking a snack on Friday night. . . look no further.
And for those of you who care about the health of our planet (the birds, bees, fishies of the sea), here's a great website to help you make choices about what fish to eat (pollock) and what to avoid (tuna).
http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp
For you Catholics seeking a snack on Friday night. . . look no further.
And for those of you who care about the health of our planet (the birds, bees, fishies of the sea), here's a great website to help you make choices about what fish to eat (pollock) and what to avoid (tuna).
http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp
Friday, March 16, 2007
Be Aware of Your Surroundings
This past weekend my friend and I went on a grand adventure into the Columbia River Gorge to attend the 50th anniversary commemoration of the coverup of Celilo Falls. I'd previously visited the Bonneville Power Administration's museum, told from the perspective of the Army Corps of Engineers. I wanted another perspective.
Some info:
http://www.critfc.org/
"For centuries, the roar of the great waterfall Celilo Falls echoed from the canyon walls near the start of the Columbia Gorge. Celilo Falls made visible the power and majesty of the Columbia River. In these tumultuous waters, Indians caught the giant Chinook and other salmon that struggled to make their way upstream through the rocky barrier of tumbling waters and swift, narrow channels. The ancient ones left a record in the ashes of campfires and buried sanctuaries of their dead. They left tools and weapons, items of adornment, and samples of their art. Celilo Falls was one of the longest occupied sites in North America.
"That world came to an end on the morning of March 10, 1957. Massive steel and concrete gates of The Dalles Dam closed, choking back the unimaginable force of the mighty Columbia River. Six hours later and eight miles upstream, Celilo Falls, the age-old Indian salmon fishery was under water.
"That was 50 years ago. Most of the leaders have since passed on. But the spirit of Celilo still lives in the traditions and religions, indeed the very souls of Columbia River Indian people.
"Today the Columbia River flows silently past this ancient fishing site. The falls' rugged rock outcrops and turbulent waters are out of sight; its deafening roar silences, buried under the waters of Lake Celilo. But the memory of Celilo will always be held in solemnity by the Salmon People of the Columbia River."
http://www.ecotrust.org/community/recalling_celilo.html
http://www.ccrh.org/comm/river/celilo2.htm
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1172820329105940.xml&coll=7
"For centuries, the roar of the great waterfall Celilo Falls echoed from the canyon walls near the start of the Columbia Gorge. Celilo Falls made visible the power and majesty of the Columbia River. In these tumultuous waters, Indians caught the giant Chinook and other salmon that struggled to make their way upstream through the rocky barrier of tumbling waters and swift, narrow channels. The ancient ones left a record in the ashes of campfires and buried sanctuaries of their dead. They left tools and weapons, items of adornment, and samples of their art. Celilo Falls was one of the longest occupied sites in North America.
"That world came to an end on the morning of March 10, 1957. Massive steel and concrete gates of The Dalles Dam closed, choking back the unimaginable force of the mighty Columbia River. Six hours later and eight miles upstream, Celilo Falls, the age-old Indian salmon fishery was under water.
"That was 50 years ago. Most of the leaders have since passed on. But the spirit of Celilo still lives in the traditions and religions, indeed the very souls of Columbia River Indian people.
"Today the Columbia River flows silently past this ancient fishing site. The falls' rugged rock outcrops and turbulent waters are out of sight; its deafening roar silences, buried under the waters of Lake Celilo. But the memory of Celilo will always be held in solemnity by the Salmon People of the Columbia River."
http://www.ecotrust.org/community/recalling_celilo.html
http://www.ccrh.org/comm/river/celilo2.htm
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1172820329105940.xml&coll=7
So my grrl and I decided to attend some of the events on Saturday, and although it was a chore to haul ourselves out of town we're so glad we did. Most of the folks attending were Native American, despite the extensive coverage the event was given by the Oregonian prior to the weekend. Once we reached the salmon feast we became engaged in conversation with some folks who live on the Yakima reservation in Washington. They were fun and extremely hospitable, and gracious enough to hang out with us for the rest of the day.
My friend and I pondered: Why were were there? To learn another side to the history of the event? To gawk at the Indigenous people and their run-down village? To apologize for the Fed's mistreatment, on behalf of white people? To differentiate ourselves from so many uninterested, privileged white folks down river? Out of a desire to change our personal relationship with the mighty Columbia who gives us our region with food, commerce, energy, life?
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Something to consider: your language
I'm reading CUNT by Inga Musico. The title of the book raises a few eyebrows, but DO READ (all you men and womyn). The book is refreshing and beautiful and powerful; I feel awakend and renewed.
A related story: I recently had an argument at a restaurant. My good friend, an evolved and women-loving man, used the word 'pussy' to refer to someone who was weak, and I told him that word is offensive when used in that way.
I think we all need to take responsibility for our words, even if historically they were considered socially acceptable. Some words are no longer are ok. For example, I'm really trying to break the habit of using the word 'lame', in consideration of less-able-bodied people. It is painful to challenge myself in this way. It also takes courage to identify and admit how the negative aspects of our culture penetrate even the most open-minded, women-loving of people. It takes courage to be responsible for the words that come out of MY mouth, whether or not others acknowledge them as oppressive.
Soapbox: It is not okay to insult someone by calling them a girl, or saying that they have bad girl parts. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it right.
That being said, I'm wondering how I can challenge my friends, my culture, in ways that inspire (rather than forcibly insist upon) positive change. I like that I am opinionated and intentional with my words/actions; at the same time I don't want my expression of opinions to be oppressive to those around me. Judge not!
A related story: I recently had an argument at a restaurant. My good friend, an evolved and women-loving man, used the word 'pussy' to refer to someone who was weak, and I told him that word is offensive when used in that way.
I think we all need to take responsibility for our words, even if historically they were considered socially acceptable. Some words are no longer are ok. For example, I'm really trying to break the habit of using the word 'lame', in consideration of less-able-bodied people. It is painful to challenge myself in this way. It also takes courage to identify and admit how the negative aspects of our culture penetrate even the most open-minded, women-loving of people. It takes courage to be responsible for the words that come out of MY mouth, whether or not others acknowledge them as oppressive.
Soapbox: It is not okay to insult someone by calling them a girl, or saying that they have bad girl parts. Just because everybody does it doesn't make it right.
That being said, I'm wondering how I can challenge my friends, my culture, in ways that inspire (rather than forcibly insist upon) positive change. I like that I am opinionated and intentional with my words/actions; at the same time I don't want my expression of opinions to be oppressive to those around me. Judge not!
On the Journey
My time, my mind is filled with the possibilities of my journey. This year will be remarkable; whether it will be *good* is yet to be seen. I'm applying for schools in the Netherlands, in order to possibly live with/near my best grrl Amber and her beefy/smartypants husband Adam. We're also applying to multiple programs and schools to teach English: Japan, Thailand, Middle-East, who-knows-where. Nick (my beefy/smartypants boyfriend) and I are busy each day in communication with various schools or teachers in Asia. Some days I feel drunk, my head swimming with the possibilities.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch, I'm busy resigning from my Portland activities: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee http://www.uusc.org/, UU Connections Committee, UU Chamber Choir, my little folk music group 'Mo Mack & the Peacemakers', Hands to Hearts International http://www.handstohearts.org/, TND, and my job http://www.edgelink.com/. Goodbyes are exhausting and sad. Just over 2 months till take-off!
And oh! The trees are glorious this week. Each a goddess, dressed in her pink or white ballgown, her lovely perfume wafting down to those who pause to smell her gift. Spring is such a joy. First come daphne bushes with their unassuming blossoms and their sweet orange-ginger scent. Daphne is my favorite flower to give me Hope in this long grey Pacific winter. Next are crocuses, which in the Midwest can be seen poking through snowdrifts at the end of a long winter. Shortly after are the daffodils, cherry blossoms, green grasses, blue skies, suntans. . .
I've been intending to get on the bandwagon and blog for some time now. Lord knows I have some soapboxing (is that a verb?) to do. My goals for this blog: 1) to be in communication with friends/family while we travel. 2) to reflect what it means to be Woman - Midwestern - American - Western, while I explore other ways of being. 3) to improve my writing voice. Yikes. 4) this one tagged on at the end: to be more tech-savvy. How the hell do I post the photos so they are in the right spot on the page?!
Meanwhile, back on the ranch, I'm busy resigning from my Portland activities: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee http://www.uusc.org/, UU Connections Committee, UU Chamber Choir, my little folk music group 'Mo Mack & the Peacemakers', Hands to Hearts International http://www.handstohearts.org/, TND, and my job http://www.edgelink.com/. Goodbyes are exhausting and sad. Just over 2 months till take-off!
And oh! The trees are glorious this week. Each a goddess, dressed in her pink or white ballgown, her lovely perfume wafting down to those who pause to smell her gift. Spring is such a joy. First come daphne bushes with their unassuming blossoms and their sweet orange-ginger scent. Daphne is my favorite flower to give me Hope in this long grey Pacific winter. Next are crocuses, which in the Midwest can be seen poking through snowdrifts at the end of a long winter. Shortly after are the daffodils, cherry blossoms, green grasses, blue skies, suntans. . .
I've been intending to get on the bandwagon and blog for some time now. Lord knows I have some soapboxing (is that a verb?) to do. My goals for this blog: 1) to be in communication with friends/family while we travel. 2) to reflect what it means to be Woman - Midwestern - American - Western, while I explore other ways of being. 3) to improve my writing voice. Yikes. 4) this one tagged on at the end: to be more tech-savvy. How the hell do I post the photos so they are in the right spot on the page?!
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