liveglocal.

"Oh man, every time I hear about a new non-profit starting up, 25% of me just wants to tell the do-gooders to pull their heads out of their asses and link up to something that's already being done rather than reinventing the wheel every single time." -Anonymous dude, telling it like it is.

Usually, that's my first reaction to brand new non-profits too-- like, cool job guy, way to make it look like you are such a saint among men when really you could be more effective finding another fistula/illiteracy/gang/ingrown toenail prevention group and joining forces with them. Which is why I'm so excited that some cool people started LiveGLOCAL because it's not only an original setup, but something brand new in the areas they work in. Let me expound on how proud I am of these people by listing a few of my favorite things in the world, ever:

1. Books and being able to read them

2. Kiddos

3. Organic coffee
4. Documenting life via photography

LiveGLOCAL, in a nutshell, does the following: support local coffee growers in Laos by purchasing beans for resale, and the One Bag One Book campaign donates a book to schoolkids for every bag purchased. In turn, they are seeking to expand the base of non-profit involvement by using the coffee as a fundraiser base, so everyone wins: kiddos get books, more direct trade coffee gets sold, and talented people like Pavel* get to move to Laos to take pictures and keep the train moving.

I would highly recommend you go to the website and watch the video of Tyson explaining his vision and be inspired. It's incredibly moving to hear a teacher telling him how thankful she is for their help, and that she had never been helped by anyone like that before. The launch party last weekend was a beautiful collection of a couple hundred successful and passionate people, who are also some of my most favorite people alive, and I'm genuinely excited about the project because they aren't reinventing the wheel-- they're inventing a lot of it for the first time, and it's going to be so exciting to see how far this could go.

http://www.liveglocal.com/

*Photos courtesy of Pavel Verbovski, Esq.

quito greets the march morning.

"I'll tell you how the sun rose

a ribbon at a time."

-Donald Miller

bollywood calling!

Excuse me, I have to take this.

ATTENTION EVERYONE: I AM INVITED TO AN INDIAN WEDDING.

Hitha is getting married in Hyderabad in December (look, there she is at her engagement party, looking all pretty) and I'm invited. I've only seen Monsoon Wedding half a dozen times! I only rented the VHS copies of Lagaan from Blockbuster like, whenever possible because I thought it was the best story ever! It's like The Universe, by way of Hitha Palepu's engagement, has extended it's starry hand my way and beckoned me towards a real-life version of the weddings I'm obsessed with-- the kind where everyone wears saris and has henna on their hands and plays cricket and sings a lot with really beautiful voices and their cups overfloweth with joy and HOLY BRITISH IMPERIALISM ESCAPEE will I make it to that wedding if I have to scrape together the meager scraps of what's left of my bank account and live in a box in Belltown upon my return.

birfday!

The birthday came and went and unlike the big backyard bash for 25, this one was more wine-soaked, more personal, way more amusing and ended with a handful of my favorite people in the world sprawled out on every inch of my living room floor. I can think of at least 26 reasons why I'm so LUCKY to have this motley crew* for my best friendskis. They make everything so much more fun, ridiculous, and heavenly.
For those who were wondering, Dower and Ashton did indeed wrestle shirtless until 4 am.

*(crue? Which one is the phrase and which one references Tommy Lee?)