I'll be attending the National Outreach Convention for the next day or more. A post on it might follow, though I have no particular plans to comment on it. ChristianAudio has exhibited the last two years. That has been fine. This year we are not and I'm looking forward to getting around a bit and connecting with some people away from a booth.
In September of 2006 I took my first trip to Mineral King. For the next year I was sure I needed to get back there. A week ago I spent a couple of days camping in the Cold Spring campground, hiking around the Mineral King Valley and surrounding mountains. This year I went alone. None of my buddies could make the trip this year. It was a little lonely. But sometimes that’s not bad.
My plan had been to drive up very early on Friday morning, spend the day setting up and light hiking around the Mineral King Valley. Then on Saturday, I planned to make my way up to Franklin Lakes and perhaps to the pass, maybe even onto 12,000 foot Rainbow Mountain to take pictures of the eastern side of Great Western Divide. Plans changed.
I listened a bit to the weather radio on the six-hour drive from San Diego. The first winter storm watch of the season repeated over-and-over. The possibility of lots of snow above 7,000 feet. Hmm...
Aside from my neck, does a picture of a couple at Wheaton get any better than this? (Uh, feel free not to answer.)
We spent the weekend at Wheaton College where we celebrated my wife's 10 year reunion with friends. Technically it was my 5 year reunion for my MA, but grad students at Wheaton are a different breed and don't really celebrate. So we just hung around with our friends from the class of '97 and enjoyed a vacation. There are so many great people that we know. If any of you Wheaton-friends are reading this, we think you all are amazing! Thanks for being great friends.
One story that was especially eye-opening to me went like this. We have some friends about our age who work in residence life at Wheaton. And the wife was talking to a student whose parents recently the divorced. The student felt weird because his mother was starting to date again. Turns out the mother is younger than our friend (and the mother is just a couple years older than me). So our friend asks the student, "What? Your mother is younger than me. Well, do you think of me kind of like the same age as your mom?" To which the student said, "Well, yeah." looking as if that would be obvious. Yikes! It's now a reality. We're old folks. College freshman have parents who are only a couple years older than me. Pretty soon I'll start appreciating the lines on the new Infinity models and wearing those thin-soled slip on dress shoes with tassels. I'll probably get a Blackberry in a matter of months.
A trip report and some photos of my recent trip to Mineral King in the south-western Sierras. Before that, however, my wonderful wife deserves accolades! She was kind enough to let me sneak away for a few days by myself. None of my buddies could make the trip to Mineral King this year. But I had been planning and looking forward to it for, well, a whole year. Despite worry for my safety and the effort required to parent all three children by herself, she let me go. What a dream-wife I have!
The picture, by the way, is of your's truly. I'm on the Aspen Flat trail looking south into the Mineral King Valley toward Farewell Gap, the pass that leads to the Golden Trout Wilderness. I could be wrong, but I believe that is Vandever Mountain on the right and on the far left is an unnamed 12,000+ peak (I think Florence Peak is out of the right side of the frame).
I'm always on the lookout for good things to do. Here's a round up of some sites that might help you do good with your money and time. I have not spent a ton of time on any of these sites but all seem reputable. Let me know your thoughts!
IJM Institute I've been a fan of International Justice Mission (usually pronounced "I JAM") for a while now. And I'm very excited about their new IJM Institute. IJM does amazing work around the world helping those in need. They have a four-fold purpose. The IJM Institute is a way to educate yourself, others, and even begin to contribute to the thinking required to bring justice to those in need. Becoming an IJM Institute associate is pretty straight forward. And I've spoken to someone at IJM who told me that they are planning to launch a new website as well as grow the IJM Institute resources in the near future.
Razoo Currently in beta, Razoo is a website/community that empowers groups of people to help make a positive difference in the world. I was excited when I first heard about Razoo. Then when I saw that Sebastian Traeger founded it, I got more enthusiastic. That's sort of personal. I'm not sure I ever chatting with Sebastian, but I did talk a bit with his partner at Christianity.com before they sold to Salem. What gets me thinking is that if one of my companies - ChristianAudio.com or LetterPop.com or TopSecretLinklessBetaCorp - ever sells, maybe I'll be able to do something along these lines. It's kind of an incentive for me in business. Don't try to retire early and rich, but try to become empowered to give more time to doing good things for those in need.
Kiva This site looks really interesting. Kiva allows you to make micro loans to people in developing countries. They use that money for entrepreneurial pursuits to help them make a living and help improve their communities. As an entrepreneur that has gone through the process of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, it came as a bit of a shock to learn how little entrepreneurs removed from western-web-mania need in order to start up or expand a business. I'll definitely be looking into this one more and exploring how to get involved in micro loans.
A buddy of mine (who might have one of the better blogs on the web if he blogged) emailed me about Walk Score, a website that helps you determine how walkable your neighborhood is. My family lives in a master-planned community wonderland that won best master-planned community of the universe a couple years back. But our home's Walk Score is 22 out of 100. I felt better when my other buddy's house scored 3 out of 100.
I am a little bit skeptical about the calculation. For example, we have two daughters in elementary school and the school is half a mile away. We walk. And the park is not 3 miles away, like Walk Score claims, it is about three quarters of a mile away. For us, a "walkable" neighborhood includes a close school and park. We have young children in school who like to play outside. (Eventually a close grocery store would be nice, but master-planned or not, our snail-like community planners are dragging their heals on our supermarket.)
Also I plugged in our old house address in Wheaton, IL and the score came up as 37 out of 100. But we walked everywhere in Wheaton. We could walk to Jack Straws for broccoli and sausage thin crust pizza (my favorite). We could walk to Jewel, the used bookstores, the train station (500 feet from our door), the dry cleaners, etc. etc.
Anyway, the idea of a walkable neighborhood is appealing enough to waste a few minutes. I'd be interested to hear what your neighborhood's Walk Score is.
Stuck In Stuff has hit its first hiccup. Money. Oh, I’m not saying that Stuck In Stuff is broke or, em, not broke. It’s just that this whole blogging thing takes time and effort. And there are all those titillating stories about bloggers getting rich merely by blogging. And well frankly, I was kind of hoping SIS might fund a dinner date every month.
The proven formula for making blog money is R + G = C, where R stands for Readers and G stands for AdSense and C stands for Money. But something just doesn’t feel right about running shopping ads on a blog with the URL StuckInStuff.com.
There is always sponsorship. I originally had this knuckle head idea of “personal blog sponsorship” for $12.00 a year. That did not feel right either. In principle I don’t think it is wrong. But honestly, if you like SIS and I like your blog then I’d rather just link to you instead of broker a transaction. Down the road, perhaps, organizational sponsorship might be doable. Like two or three or four years down the road.
Coffee mugs seem antithetical. We all have too many as it is. T-shirts are a consideration, though I’m not sure there is much margin in t-shirts. Unless people start growing more arms, wristbands seem likely to fail.
Ah, hell. For now I’m not going to bother with money. I’ve got enough stuff to worry about.
I'll never forget the week my former employer purchased Blackberries for the Management Team and within a day the COO emailed me while he was taking a dump. And Luddites bemoan technology is a barrier to intimacy. Barrier to hygiene maybe. Who would have thought back in 1999 that email might cause you to pause the next time you go to shake your boss's hand?
If you believe there will be a common-sense correction away from mobile email addition, checkout the post at GigaOM on the subject.
The New York Times article "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age" by Louis Uchitelle with the reporting contribution of Amanda Cox is a fascinating read. Light on opinion, Uchitelle presents the case for the extraordinary wealth of the richest of the rich, who mostly happen to be American chief executives with philanthropic dispositions. Philanthropy is, however, distinct from charity in that its good works can be much more compartmentalized by its practitioners. And maybe that provokes the concern expressed by the critics of the wealth of the richest Americans, which to many observers looks like unjustifiable affluence. Can opulence and philanthropy mix? Certainly in practice they do. The possessions as well as the philanthropic deeds of the richest of the rich are visible to all. Their souls we cannot see.
Are you positively cautious about stuff? Let SIS know about it. Would love to link to you.
Have something to say about stuff? Consider writing for SIS. Email inquiries to Stuck In Stuff.
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