Life is stranger than fiction. Our fantastic, brilliant new Executive Director is leaving PPF for the wild of Montana. I was pissed off that she could abandon us after only 2 months, but finally understood after I learned about her new job. Protecting Yellowstone Park is her dream job and I guess I can see why.
The good news is that our new ED is David Selberg, who created half of our programs at PPF including starting the food pantry. The staff loves him, the community loves him, and he's totally committed to our work. We've gotten to know each other a bit over the past 7 months and I think we will work great together.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Friday, December 09, 2005
Home for the Holidays
Jim & I are coming to Ohio for the holidays. We fly on 12/22/05 and return on 12/31/05. We don't have many plans yet. Here are the days we are busy though. We will be in Indiana with his brother-in-law's family through Xmas, plus we have dinner plans on both 12/27 and 12/29.
See you soon!
See you soon!
Merry Christmas
Here's a column written by Joel Stein published in this week's LA Times
Oy to the world
THERE IS A grave concern, on news shows and Op-Ed pages, that we are about to lose Christmas. Though no one outside the media is at all interested, I figure jumping in will make my editors think I'm smart.
The debate began with the printing of Fox News anchor John Gibson's book, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought," which is ranked 285th on Amazon.com Although I did not actually read the book, I can gather from the pithy title that it must be quite a read. Seriously, the guy couldn't even afford an editor for the title?
Gibson is upset that people are afraid to express true Christmas spirit because of unrelenting liberal pressure to take religion out of government, politics and public places. In fact, Gibson and fellow Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly are so upset that they have organized a boycott of Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears and Costco for using the phrase "Happy Holidays" in their ads instead of "Merry Christmas." I'm guessing those places also stopped selling Brylcreem.
Jerry Falwell is supporting the catchy-named "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" that has lawyers ready to sue anyone who won't let them do Christmas wherever they want. The Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign newspaper ads tell you to call "if you are facing persecution for celebrating Christmas." I'm thinking too much time spent studying Jesus can give you a persecution complex.
As a Jew, I don't care that much about Christmas. It's hard to celebrate someone's birth when you supposedly killed the guy. It would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger giving gifts for Tookie Day.
We Jews find it a little embarrassing that adults can still make such a big fuss over Christmas. To us, Jesus was just a cool guy everyone liked because he died young. And even 16-year-old girls eventually take down their James Dean posters.
Still, I agree with Gibson to this extent: Christmas is a Christian holiday, and trying to eliminate the religious aspect is insulting.
There's nothing more annoying than people telling me I should get a tree and string lights in front of my house because these aren't religious symbols. Or telling me that kids get off school for "winter break," presumably so they can worship winter. It's an infuriating inability to see through the eyes of the other.
TELLING ME to enjoy "season's greetings" is a condescending way of trying to pressure me into something I'm not part of. It's one thing to be subjected to someone's metaphysics. It's another to be wordy about it.
I get that I live in a Christian nation. And I'm fine with it. I like you guys. I think it's adorable that you ring giant, white pipe cleaners around streetlights and make everything taste like peppermint and thought the world was going to end when the calendar went to three zeros in a row. It's like living with children.
I'm grateful that our Constitution separates religion from our law and our non-Kansas schools. But that doesn't mean the culture of a country with a higher percentage of Christians than Israel has Jews isn't going to be all into the Jesus thing. That's why Christmas is a national holiday and Yom Kippur isn't. And that's why Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand put out Christmas albums.
Last Thursday, a group called Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, where founding member Jackie Mason spoke out against the war on Christmas. He basically argued that if people can't say "Merry Christmas," then he won't be allowed to wish people an "Exceptional Purim." That one doesn't translate from Yiddish well.
So please, go nuts with your celebration, with your lying to children about where presents come from and your beverages made from raw eggs and your desperate use of greenery to get women to kiss you.
No, there's no war on Christmas. But this attempt to be inclusive by tamping down on the Christ birth stuff, while well intentioned, is just making us non-Christians feel worse. All I want from you is to admit — whether you're religious or not — that these customs are inexorably tied in to the birth of your savior. Then I'll be happy to celebrate your culture with you, if you want me to. Because it beats my people trying to persuade me to whoop it up over a story about an extra-long-lasting candle and a toy that's so obviously just a badly made top.
Oy to the world
THERE IS A grave concern, on news shows and Op-Ed pages, that we are about to lose Christmas. Though no one outside the media is at all interested, I figure jumping in will make my editors think I'm smart.
The debate began with the printing of Fox News anchor John Gibson's book, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought," which is ranked 285th on Amazon.com Although I did not actually read the book, I can gather from the pithy title that it must be quite a read. Seriously, the guy couldn't even afford an editor for the title?
Gibson is upset that people are afraid to express true Christmas spirit because of unrelenting liberal pressure to take religion out of government, politics and public places. In fact, Gibson and fellow Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly are so upset that they have organized a boycott of Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears and Costco for using the phrase "Happy Holidays" in their ads instead of "Merry Christmas." I'm guessing those places also stopped selling Brylcreem.
Jerry Falwell is supporting the catchy-named "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" that has lawyers ready to sue anyone who won't let them do Christmas wherever they want. The Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign newspaper ads tell you to call "if you are facing persecution for celebrating Christmas." I'm thinking too much time spent studying Jesus can give you a persecution complex.
As a Jew, I don't care that much about Christmas. It's hard to celebrate someone's birth when you supposedly killed the guy. It would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger giving gifts for Tookie Day.
We Jews find it a little embarrassing that adults can still make such a big fuss over Christmas. To us, Jesus was just a cool guy everyone liked because he died young. And even 16-year-old girls eventually take down their James Dean posters.
Still, I agree with Gibson to this extent: Christmas is a Christian holiday, and trying to eliminate the religious aspect is insulting.
There's nothing more annoying than people telling me I should get a tree and string lights in front of my house because these aren't religious symbols. Or telling me that kids get off school for "winter break," presumably so they can worship winter. It's an infuriating inability to see through the eyes of the other.
TELLING ME to enjoy "season's greetings" is a condescending way of trying to pressure me into something I'm not part of. It's one thing to be subjected to someone's metaphysics. It's another to be wordy about it.
I get that I live in a Christian nation. And I'm fine with it. I like you guys. I think it's adorable that you ring giant, white pipe cleaners around streetlights and make everything taste like peppermint and thought the world was going to end when the calendar went to three zeros in a row. It's like living with children.
I'm grateful that our Constitution separates religion from our law and our non-Kansas schools. But that doesn't mean the culture of a country with a higher percentage of Christians than Israel has Jews isn't going to be all into the Jesus thing. That's why Christmas is a national holiday and Yom Kippur isn't. And that's why Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand put out Christmas albums.
Last Thursday, a group called Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, where founding member Jackie Mason spoke out against the war on Christmas. He basically argued that if people can't say "Merry Christmas," then he won't be allowed to wish people an "Exceptional Purim." That one doesn't translate from Yiddish well.
So please, go nuts with your celebration, with your lying to children about where presents come from and your beverages made from raw eggs and your desperate use of greenery to get women to kiss you.
No, there's no war on Christmas. But this attempt to be inclusive by tamping down on the Christ birth stuff, while well intentioned, is just making us non-Christians feel worse. All I want from you is to admit — whether you're religious or not — that these customs are inexorably tied in to the birth of your savior. Then I'll be happy to celebrate your culture with you, if you want me to. Because it beats my people trying to persuade me to whoop it up over a story about an extra-long-lasting candle and a toy that's so obviously just a badly made top.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Thanksgiving
Jim & I went to Mammoth for Thanksgiving. Fortunately for me (and nobody else in the region), it was warm. All that the locals could talk about was when it was going to snow, how much it was going to snow, how much it snowed last year... It did actually snow the night before we left and the temperature dropped from the 60s to the 20s. Jim kept trying to convince me to try snowboarding, not knowing the depths of my resistence. Foiled again!
We stayed with his college friend Rena and her boyfriend (now fiancee) Robert. She made a huge spread including a divine, sugar-free chocolate rasberry mousse. Yes, it was both delicious and sugar-free. It had plenty of fat to make up the difference. Yum!
Probably the most interesting part of the whole trip was the ride through the Central Valley. That's the wasteland running down most of the middle of the state where the bulk of the nation's produce comes from. It is nestled between 2 mountain ranges making it the perfect cesspool of pollution from LA and industrial farms. You can't see very far because of the brown smog and the air smells horrible. Then you are treated to a bad taste in your mouth followed by a sore throat. All of this in a matter of 30 minutes exposure. It gives me another huge reason to buy local produce. That way I don't get food that feeds off the pollution and don't contribute to the transportation emissions.
We also learned that if you look at a map BEFORE the trip, instead of listening to your friends, you can shave a good 5 hours off the roundtrip drive. Luckily we learned this before we started our return journey.
The work update is that we laid off another person, our Financial Administrator. It all works out for the best because he didn't like the job and we were able to convince the old Financial Administrator to come back to run the now one-person department. He's awesome & we are lucky to have someone so knowlegable, trustworthy, and darn funny as we emerge from our brokeness.
Finally, we are venturing to Columbus for the holidays. We will be landing late on 12/22, going to Indiana for a couple of days then hanging in Columbus until New Year's Eve. So far the only other plans we have are on 12/27 so send in your Jodi/Jim requests now!
We stayed with his college friend Rena and her boyfriend (now fiancee) Robert. She made a huge spread including a divine, sugar-free chocolate rasberry mousse. Yes, it was both delicious and sugar-free. It had plenty of fat to make up the difference. Yum!
Probably the most interesting part of the whole trip was the ride through the Central Valley. That's the wasteland running down most of the middle of the state where the bulk of the nation's produce comes from. It is nestled between 2 mountain ranges making it the perfect cesspool of pollution from LA and industrial farms. You can't see very far because of the brown smog and the air smells horrible. Then you are treated to a bad taste in your mouth followed by a sore throat. All of this in a matter of 30 minutes exposure. It gives me another huge reason to buy local produce. That way I don't get food that feeds off the pollution and don't contribute to the transportation emissions.
We also learned that if you look at a map BEFORE the trip, instead of listening to your friends, you can shave a good 5 hours off the roundtrip drive. Luckily we learned this before we started our return journey.
The work update is that we laid off another person, our Financial Administrator. It all works out for the best because he didn't like the job and we were able to convince the old Financial Administrator to come back to run the now one-person department. He's awesome & we are lucky to have someone so knowlegable, trustworthy, and darn funny as we emerge from our brokeness.
Finally, we are venturing to Columbus for the holidays. We will be landing late on 12/22, going to Indiana for a couple of days then hanging in Columbus until New Year's Eve. So far the only other plans we have are on 12/27 so send in your Jodi/Jim requests now!
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Lay Offs
Money is still very hard to come by at Pacific Pride. This week we layed off 2 more staff - our director of LGBT programs and our office manager. We are closing everying that we don't have contract $ to pay for because of short cash flow. It's a huge loss for PPF and the community. Hopefully in about a year we will have recovered financially and can start refilling these positions.
This is all a result of past problems before I got there, but I am still the fundraiser, so onward and upward!
This is all a result of past problems before I got there, but I am still the fundraiser, so onward and upward!
Friday, November 04, 2005
Memphis
Jim & I just got back from a long weekend in Memphis. We were supposed to to to New Orleans for the Voodoo Music Experience, but you can guess what happened. The concert thing is actually really frustrating because after they moved it to Memphis they decided to split the concert between the 2 cities and only accept our 2 day concert tickets for one day in New Orleans. The show was amazing - we got to see Cake & Nine Inch Nails. What more could you want? The best part is that Jim's sister and brother-in-law, Suzie & Matt, live in Memphis. We got to hang out with them and stay for free. Former PIRGer Alex Kaplan is also in Memphis so we got to spend time with my dear friend. The return flight was very bumpy, but Adavan saved the day.
Our next trips are to Mammoth (I will not be skiing) and Yosemite for Thanksgiving to see Rena & Robert and Jim McKenzie, and then to Ohio for Xmas (dates TBD).
Our next trips are to Mammoth (I will not be skiing) and Yosemite for Thanksgiving to see Rena & Robert and Jim McKenzie, and then to Ohio for Xmas (dates TBD).
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Monday, October 17, 2005
New Boss
Today I got my 4th boss in 4 months. That doesn't sound exciting, but it is. We had one director leave, 2 interims, and now we finally have our new Executive Director. We are off to a good start already. The best part is she doesn't like her really cool, huge, wrap around desk ... so I get it! Woo hoo!
11/3/05 update - we don't have the $ to buy the boss a new desk so we are all stuck with the old ones. Oh well.
11/3/05 update - we don't have the $ to buy the boss a new desk so we are all stuck with the old ones. Oh well.
Monday, October 10, 2005
AIDS Walk
The AIDS Walk was 9 days ago, but it was so sureal that it's taken me this long to put my thoughts together. It was a rollercoaster, but turned out great. Now, I'm really excited for next year and starting to plan already. Mark you calendars: 10/06/06!When I took the job at PPF, I was asked to be on 2 committees. Through a series of unfortunate events, we lost 3 key staff, and 3 people who were supposed to be running the thing. I stepped up to run the event since we had no one better. Even though I've never run a major event or been to the walk, I was still the most qualified person in the room. That should tell you a lot.
It's really easy to pull of the basics. We had (meager) files from past years plus some institutional memory to help out. The key was using the one major technique I learned at PIRG. You guessed it, phone banking. I put together a list of past sponsors and then called them until I reached them. This yielded $29,000 in sponsorship - half of what we raised on the entire walk in 04. Then I put together a list of past walkers and called them. Nearly 600 people agreed to walk and we got about 400 to show up. With the grassroots fundraising we did, plus the board pitching in we raised close to $125,000 (so far). Last year we raised half of that.
Next year is going to be great!
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Kat
She's only temporary. I promise. We are fostering a cat who was rescued from Hurricane Katrina only a week ago. I get to name her, so she's Katrina. "Kat" for short. Now we have a Kat, a Kitty, and a Sweetie. However, I repeat, she's only here for a month. She's skinny, but not starving, and amazingly well adjusted. She's more chill than any other cat I've introduced to my 2 little monsters. Again, she's only here for a month.
Kat update: She's ADORABLE! And ADOPTABLE! She's having a great time playing with anything she can find, ignoring my cats' hissing, snuggling... I'm guessing that she's only a year old because she's so small and so playful. Who wants her?
Kat update: She's ADORABLE! And ADOPTABLE! She's having a great time playing with anything she can find, ignoring my cats' hissing, snuggling... I'm guessing that she's only a year old because she's so small and so playful. Who wants her?
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Babies!
I have SO many friends who are pregnant or just had babies in the past few months. I guess it's the age. Here's the list:Lee Anne in AustraliaI hope it's not contagious!
Jessica in Palo Alto
Rebecca & Michael in Washington
Chris & Kirk in Denver
Rachel in Ohio
Kris & Chris in Ohio
Mike in Ohio
Teri in SF
Doug & Faye in SB - due January 1
Dave & Terra in SB - due in January
Cory in SB - due in March
Heather & Deb in SB - due in May
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Oaxaca
My friend Juliette moved to Oaxaca (for you gringos, that's "wuh-hah-cuh") 9 months ago. I don't think she misses Santa Barbara very much because she keeps sending me photos like this.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Goggle head
Before the 9/04 Endless Summer Vespa Ride. 100 Vespas take over Santa Barbara, amusing the locals and tourists alike. Endless Summer 05 is this weekend 9/24-9/25.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
The job, the man, and the life
I got a new job in the city... 4 months ago I naively took a job that I thought would be a piece of cake. Who doesn't want to give money to the local gay group? It's the only game in town! Well, lo and behold, the only game in town is fraught (sp?) with financial problems, management problems, and PR problems. Let the drama commence! I'm running the AIDS Walk (I'm in charge, I'm not literally running. Who does that?) which is my first major event, plus I've never even been to the walk before. It's only 10 days away and it's going really well. We already have 50k in the bank, which is half of our goal, and we haven't even gotten the money from walkers yet!
I can't think of another good song line for the love life part... 1 month ago Jim moved in! I thought it would be the same as when we were spending every night together and paying double rent, but I'm pleasantly surprised that it's even more fun. We are making plans to stay in my old rental house, rip up the carpet and sand the hardwood floors, plus replace the overgrown rats nest of a hedge in the back to create a yard. For those of you not living in SB who think I'm crazy to do all of this work to a rental, it's near impossible to find affordable housing in the region. I have below market rent in an adorable house in an amazing location. It's totally worth the 2 weekends of work.
I'm not sure what to say about life, since the above pretty much encomasses it. I guess I could say that the flight of the 30 something crowd continues out of luxurious SB. I think there are 8 of us left. If you know someone between the ages of 22 and 60 in SB, let me know!
I can't think of another good song line for the love life part... 1 month ago Jim moved in! I thought it would be the same as when we were spending every night together and paying double rent, but I'm pleasantly surprised that it's even more fun. We are making plans to stay in my old rental house, rip up the carpet and sand the hardwood floors, plus replace the overgrown rats nest of a hedge in the back to create a yard. For those of you not living in SB who think I'm crazy to do all of this work to a rental, it's near impossible to find affordable housing in the region. I have below market rent in an adorable house in an amazing location. It's totally worth the 2 weekends of work.
I'm not sure what to say about life, since the above pretty much encomasses it. I guess I could say that the flight of the 30 something crowd continues out of luxurious SB. I think there are 8 of us left. If you know someone between the ages of 22 and 60 in SB, let me know!
testing 123
My brother sent me an email announcing his new "blog" http://www.segalsaga.blogspot.com so I thought I'd have to do it, too. I have a lot of very important things that everyone must know, so why not!
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