Peg Kerr's Journal

I have placed up for auction in the help_haiti auction autographed copies of my two books:

A copy of Emerald House Rising, mass market paperback. First printing. Opening bid $10.00. Bid here.

A copy of The Wild Swans, trade paperback. First printing. Opening bid $20.00. Bid here.

I believe the auction closes January 20 at noon Eastern time.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

I want to make a post about 2009, mostly to say good riddance. This was a very tough year, more so than I've actually admitted in this journal to my friend's list. For my own sanity, I need to remember the good along with the bad, because I very much need to hang on to that.

The bad: A year of Rob's continued unemployment, and the personal and family strain that resulted, not all of it merely financial. The Bad Thing That Happened in April of Which Elinor Dashwood Does Not Speak in Public, which was one of the hardest and most painful things I've ever experienced. Mental health problems for more than one family member, some of them severe. The theft of the girls' bikes. My knee injury that stopped the karate for awhile (and resultant weight gain), and all the hassle of dealing with it.

The good: The kindness of so many of our family and friends during this difficult year, including the generous gift that gave the girls their bikes again. I can't say it often enough: thank you, thank you. My family is really so grateful.

Even after a year and a half of unemployment, we are still paying all our bills. There are so many others who can not say that, whose situation is so much worse off than ours. I think I have the right to be proud of my careful stewardship of our family resources.

The trip to Mexico that the girls and I took to work at Casa Hogar Elim. That was a truly wonderful and life-altering experience.

The Decrease Worldsuck project and all the good that came of it. I've lost momentum over the past month, due to the reoccurrence of my depression, but I do intend to try to pick it up again. I can honestly say that I've made the world a better place this year, and that's a good thing to say about any year. Take a look at the entire list of what I accomplished here. Isn't it impressive?

alternity was OMG SO MUCH FUN!! (Are any of you still reading it? If so, what was your favorite thing about it this year?)

My girls are thriving, for the most part. They are busy and creative and beautiful and smart and compassionate and interesting and funny and they are turning into remarkable young women before my very eyes. I am so very proud of them.

There is something that makes Rob and I still reach for each other in spite of all our problems and pain. I'm trying to hang on to that.

Here's a wonderful blessing for the new year. Hat tip to commodorified.

Happy New Year's day, everyone. I hope my 2010 is 1000% better than 2009. I wish nothing but the best for you all in the coming year.




Let the Good Guys Win
Paul Hyde, Murray McLaughlin, Tom Cochrane

May I get what I want, not what I deserve
May the coming year not throw a single curve
May I hurt nobody, may I tell no lies
If I can't go on, give me strength to try

Chorus:

Ring the old year out, Ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, Let the good guys win

Ring the old year out, Ring the new year in
Bring us all good luck, Let the good guys win

May the one you love be the one you get
May you get some place, you haven't been to yet
May your friends surround you, never do you wrong
May your eyes be clear, may your heart be strong

Chorus

May the times to come be the best you've had
May peace rule the world and make us glad
When you see something wrong, make it right
Put a shadowed world into the bright sunlight

Chorus

TweetsGiving is a global celebration that aims to change the world through the power of gratitude. Follow these simple steps to bring your grateful heart to the party:

1. Share your Gratitude: Share whatever you're thankful for on Twitter, your blog, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, or blip.fm. Include the #tweetsgiving tag and a link to TweetsGiving so we can share your grateful heart with the world!

I do have a great deal to be thankful for this year. It's been a hard year in many ways, but I've been reminded time and time again that my family is supported by caring people, both our personal friends and family, and people like you, many of whom I've never even met, but who still care and reach out to us. I have a wonderful, loving husband, and two beautiful, smart, kind, creative, strong and funny girls who are growing more wonderful every day. The girls are doing well in school, and we're beginning the college search process for Fiona. I'm going back to karate! We're still managing to pay all of our bills on time, even after a year and a half of unemployment (with scrimping and saving and gifts and the food shelf and kind people like our orthodontist who allowed us to cut our monthly payment, etc.) Friends continue to send us job leads. My car still actually runs, which I'm pretty much convinced must be a miracle. And I've discovered the Decrease Worldsuck project this year, which has added so much joy to my life. And I'm having a blast with Alternity.

2. Give: Contribute in honor of whatever you're thankful for. Epic Change says: each $10 donation brings us 1 brick closer to a classroom, orphanage/ dormitory, library and cafeteria at the #twitterkids' school in Arusha, Tanzania, or helps us fund a future Epic Change project. I say, if you have another charity you'd like to contribute to instead, go for it.

3. Spread the love. Most importantly, repeat step #1 as often as possible until noon EST on Thursday, November 26th, 2009. Then:

4. Follow the Story on Facebook, Twitter, or by subscribing to a feed: epicchange_feed/epicchange. (Note: If you follow @1800Flowers on Twitter, they'll donate $1 per new follower to Epic Change.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

Here's a man who decided to decrease worldsuck in a BIG way, and who has achieved some remarkable results in just three years. I first learned about his campaign Charity:Water on Twitter (follow Scott Harrison)

Here's his personal story. An excerpt:

In 2004, I left the streets of New York City for the shores of West Africa. I'd made my living for years in the big Apple promoting top nightclubs and fashion events, for the most part living selfishly and arrogantly. Desperately unhappy, I needed to change. Faced with spiritual bankruptcy, I wanted desperately to revive a lost Christian faith with action and asked the question: What would the opposite of my life look like?

Scott is extremely gifted at understanding the harnessing of social media to promote his cause. I highly recommend following him on Twitter. You'll also find him on Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, and a ton of other places.

Here's one of their very effective ads:

Here's a cool thing I've discovered at the Do the Green Thing blog. Apparently, there's an initiative, sponsored by Volkswagon, called The Fun Theory. The idea is to change people's behavior by, obviously, making it fun. They are running a contest, deadline November 15, trying to get people to submit ideas. (The prize is €2500. It looks as though it's open to everyone, although you need a parent's permission if you're under the age of 18. After the contest is closed, they'll pick 10 finalists. The grand prize winner will be announced in December in Stockholm). Anyway, they've given three examples of the type of thing they're looking for, and they ARE fun:

1. Bottle Bank Arcade: Many of us return our plastic bottles and cans. Noticeably fewer recycle their glass. Maybe that's because we don't get any money in return, as we do for cans and plastic. Can we change this attitude by making recycling glass fun to do? So you are not just rewarded with a good conscience, you also get a smile. ( See the results here )

2. Piano Staircase: ”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? ( See the results here )

3. The World's Deepest Bin: To throw rubbish in the bin instead of onto the floor shouldn’t really be so hard. Many people still fail to do so. Can we get more people to throw rubbish into the bin, rather than onto the ground, by making it fun to do? ( See the results here )

I've mentioned being a Kiva lender. Just saw a link tonight to the website of Muhammad Yunus, one of the co-winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for developing the idea of microlending to the poor. He has a chapter of his book Banker to the Poor up on his website, and it's truly fascinating reading (not to mention inspiring).

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

I discovered a new group online this week, It Starts With Us, which is a new website that just began this month. Sign up at the site and you will be joining the "A-Team." Each week, the friendly webmaster Nate St. Pierre will send out an email with a mission, designed to take about fifteen minutes, which will help decrease worldsuck. This week's mission, my first, was as follows:

Has someone made a difference in your life recently? Think about what they did for you and how it made you feel, and then go and be that difference for someone else. Of course it doesn't have to be exactly the same, but the point is to reflect on ways that you have been impacted by someone, and then pass on a variation of that action to someone else, so they can experience the same benefit that you did.

Well, friendslist, this mission was obvious to me. YOU made that difference in my life this week. I was so unbelievably touched by your generosity and kindness, especially when so many of you have never met me or my girls before. How could I do the same for somebody else? So I went to Kiva.org and searched until I found a loan request that involved bicycles! I found a woman's entrepreneurial cooperative in Nicaragua that includes one woman, Jeny Cerrato, who sells bicycle parts out of her home, and I made a Kiva loan to the group, in YOUR honor. The loan has been credited to the Nerdfighters Kiva group, which, of course, is dedicated to decreasing worldsuck.

I hope some of you might sign up with It Starts With Us, to help me continue with the mission of decreasing worldsuck everyday. I've syndicated the blog at itstartswith_us and itstartswithus_feed. You can follow Nate St. Pierre's Twitter feed here. Thanks again!

I will be posting the girls' thank you notes to you soon, hopefully tonight.

With love and gratitude,
Peg

From change.org:



At the tender age of 9, Javier Fernández-Han found his calling: design for the other 90 percent - help the world's poor meet their basic needs sustainably.

Several years of research and design have led to an innovative solution: The VERSATILE System - a mashup of new and adapted technology that treats waste, produces methane and bio-oil as fuel, produces food for humans and livestock, sequesters greenhouse gases, and produces oxygen.

What drives this complete energy resource system? Algae - the little organism that could.

For his work, Javier, 15, won the top prize in this year's Invent Your World Challenge, sponsored by Ashoka's Youth Venture and the Lemelson Foundation.

We spoke to Javier about the VERSATILE System and the need for holistic thinking in the invention sector.

1. If your invention - VERSATILE System - is the answer, what is the question?

What system can improve the quality of life in a village by providing the basic necessities of food, sanitation, energy-fuel, and income in an environmentally sustainable and technologically appropriate fashion?

2. So how does VERSATILE System answer the question? What does it do?

The innovative VERSATILE System answers the question by tightly knitting together a dozen existing and new technologies to meet food, sanitation, energy, income and environmental needs (in a way that's affordable to the world's 90% of the world).

At the heart of this efficient system - the secret ingredient - is algae... salt-water loving algae powered by the sun.

Elegant interconnectedness makes the VERSATILE system unique. Waste from one part of system is nourishment for another, making the system extremely efficient. The VERSATILE system consists of six subsystems:

* Anaerobic digester (AD) - converts food scraps and sewage into "clean" products

* Bio-gas upgrader - takes harmful gases from digester and treats them, turns them into fuel and nourishment for algae

* Vented methane burning stoves - burns methane without polluting, resulting carbon dioxide is captured

* Algae bioreactors - use sunlight, saltwater, carbon dioxide and nutrients from digester to produce oxygen and algae biomass, which can be used as food for livestock and people

* Flush latrines

* PlayPump - turns human energy (from children playing) into stored energy that can be used to power VERSATILE system and other electronic devices

Click on presentation for details of the system.



The benefits of the VERSATILE energy system include better health for villagers due to cleaner burning methane stoves, less deforestation due to wood scavenging for fuel, possible income from the sale of algae biomass for pharmaceutical or nutraceutical products, easier livestock production because of more availability of feed, LED lighting powered by electricity generation from the PlayPump, and a source of fuel for machinery (from algae oil).

Javier says that the system can be scaled up to provide for populations of 200,000 or more people, or scaled down for small populations. He is currently working to develop a family-sized system that could fit in a small house, with a cost estimated at $300.

This kid is only fifteen. Wow. Talk about decreasing world suck. Awesome. Way to go, Javier!

This is a fabulously cool idea that I have sent to the Mexico mission team. If you remember, we built two little buildings to give to the people who lives in the colonias. With some of these installed in the ceiling, they could have solar lighting for absolutely free.




( What I did yesterday and today to make the world a better place )

Happy birthday, moony! I have moony to thank for introducing me to Luka Bloom. I've been playing this song today, which is all light in dark places, and perfect for this time of year. Read what he has to say about the song here, which includes this:

Since 1993, at the start of every February, I have watched large groups of men and women gather in my home county of Kildare. They come to welcome the beginning of spring. They come to Kildare because it is the home of Brigid, whose feast day is February 1st. Brigid is the goddess of love, poetry, justice in prechristian Ireland, and she is the patron saint of Kildare.

People also come to Kildare at this time, to speak about justice in the world, or lack of it.

There is reflection, talk, music and dance. It is not a big trendy festival, but a gathering of people who want to celebrate the coming of spring, and who want to call Brigids’ qualities into the world, to light a spark for change.

And every year we gather to welcome the light into our world; and to hope that more light will shine in the world; and that someday out of the darkness of war, hunger, greed, poverty, will come the light of community, sharing, justice, music, dance, peace and love.

I wanted to write a simple song to share with everyone in Kildare,and to honour this noble celebration. ...
Even at the point of recording the song in April 2008, I could never have foreseen the hurt that people are feeling around the world in a few short months.

At the end of 2008, everywhere is fear, insecurity, corruption, unemployment...
And yet, I feel this is the most exciting moment imaginable to be alive.

There is such a window opening in the world for goodness, for community, for sharing, for simplicity, for kindness.

And this song is a call to people, to reach inside and be aware of the power in each one of us to do good, for ourselves, for our families,for our friends, for our villages and towns, and ultimately, for our earth.

In these dark times, many people feel powerless, unimportant, un-needed, marginalised.

This song came from the power of a group of people who want to shine a bright light for the earth and for humanity. ... I know that many people need to hear and feelwhat is contained in this song, right now. I know that songs of themselves don’t change the world.

But songs can also be prayers, blessings, and they can be a spark to ignite something beautiful in anybody.. This song is my prayer for the world, and I send it out at the start of this exciting and dangerous year, with love and hope in my heart, for our shared future.