theparkerfamily.org

  • earth day 2008: done, done aaaaand done

    happy arbor day!

    well, i made my goal to plant 200 trees thanks in large part to a late flurry of my former hippie co-workers. (former => co-workers, they are all still hippies.)

    a big thank you to everyone who donated … you helped a great cause that i truly believe in, and have helped me do something (personal fund raising) i have never, ever done before.

    with that in mind, i gotta say … these last 3 weeks have really changed my world view on how to raise money.

    first, i have a new found respect for the people I know who raise lots of money for hikes, walks and such. it isn’t easy to sell your friends and family on a cause, even one you love … and I was only looking for $200. i can’t imagine fund raising for a $3,000 walk.

    second, as someone who does online fundraising for a living, i’ve been to tons of conferences where people sell this type of “friends-asking-friends” as the future of modern american online fundraising. all i can say is “hooey.” or “pthbthbthbthbt.” or some other onomatopoeia of your choice.

    to begin with, it’s *hard.* a lot of people (me!) don’t like to ask for money. writing just four blog entries pitching the cause was excruciating. also, there is a very vocal group who *really* don’t like to be asked for money, either. (granted i run with a snarky lot, but still …)

    imho, the benefit of doing this sort of campaign is the way it can energize an organization’s base, and as a great way to spread it’s message to new people. it’s hard to believe that some day organizations will get the bulk of their funding from a process that is so draining for half the personality-types on the planet.

    but all this is water under the bridge … 15 *great* people steped up and give their hard earned moolah to plant trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. hopefully, we’ve helped jump start the Plant a Billion campaign, which has — in just three weeks — raised enough to funds to plant 276,080 trees.

    p.s. the “chevy” widget above isn’t actually green-washing (entirely?) … the nature conservancy get $1 to plant a tree each time someone grabs the widget for their web site or social network page. you’d think that would be better highlighted somewhere …

    p.p.s. now, i return you to your regularly scheduled blog without substance.

  • this could be a post about earth day, but wait … it actually *IS* a post about earth day

    One dollar, one tree, one planet.

    it’s been a long run up to earth day — work, work, work — so, much like at the wedding, y’all are going to have to make due with the loosely-affiliated ramblings of a distracted man.

    (stream of conscious, #1)

    happy earth day! speaking of which …

    (stream of conscious, #2)

    i want to say a very special thank you to those who have donated to support my Plant a Billion Trees campaign so far. speaking of which …

    (stream of conscious, #3)

    i just realized i have no way of finding out who you are unless you tell me. so, if you donated feel free to toot your own horn in the comments. speaking of which …

    (stream of conscious, #4)

    easily my favorite comment so far:

    aight, aight, I planted some damn trees. ya happy now?

    this morning, i was a *weeeeee* bit down because i’m not likely to make my self imposed deadline of 200 trees by earth day, but this comment — and the obviously righteous and noble passion for conservation that pours from each syllable — has inspired me to push on. speaking of which …

    (stream of conscious, #5)

    great news! I have decided to extend my personal campaign for Plant a Billion Trees through Arbor Day. you obviously wanted more of my great posts on the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, and i obviously don’t want to fail horribly on my first attempt at direct fund raising. speaking of which …

    (stream of conscious, #6)

    arbor day is this Friday, so you have three more days to help me plant 200 trees. then, it’s a whole lot more snarkiness, and a whole lot less convincing you to support a worthy cause. speaking of which …

    (stream of conscious, #7)

    I love you guys … 🙂

  • This could be a post about Kathleen Edwards @ the Birchmere

    [Photo]
    0414082140.jpg, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

    … but, alas, i am still 139 trees short of my goal to plant 200 trees in brazil’s atlantic rainforest by earth day.

    so instead, let me show you a little clip about the rainforests of brazil. did you know that they are home to over 1/3rd of brazil’s plant and animal species?

    tropical birds, pink and gray river dolphins, manatees, spider monkeys and jaguars all find their home here, alongside brazil’s ancient indigenous communities who have lived in these forests for hundreds of years.

    donate $10 to the plant a billion trees campaign, and you can be a part of the solution for brazil *and* for climate change … people like you have raised almost 200,000 trees worth in just the last two weeks!

  • kathleen edwards @ the birchmere

    kathleen-edwards-live-041408
    great concert. favorite parts? hard to pick them out, but:

    1. at one point, she was rocking her guitar so hard, it came unplugged, and she didn’t notice until her husband plugged it back in after a couple minutes;
    2. she forgot to pee before the show started, so darted off during a guitar solo, took care of business, and ran back;
    3. she confessed a celebrity crush on hockey enforcer Marty McSorley, and described all the things she would do to him if he agreed to help her with the video of one of her songs.

    SET LIST: mercury · in state · what are you waiting for · asking for flowers · run · copied keys · i make the dough, you get the glory · 12 bellvue · alicia ross · i can’t give you up · buffalo · six oclock news · summer long · good things · oil man’s war · the cheapest key · goodnight, california · back to me

  • This could be a post about the Sakura Matsuri Street Festival

    [Photo]
    0412081159.jpg, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

    This would normally be a post about the “experience” the lady sparkler and I just had wandering around the Sakura Matsuri Street Festival in downtown D.C.. The place was ripe with bloggable points — including scores of women in those oh-so-authentic-komono-tops you buy at oh-so-japanese stores like Kmart; not to mention 800 lb. boys in anime costumes and 800 lb. girls with green and purple hair in Japanese school girl outfits …

    But alas, I haven’t raised enough money to plant 200 trees.

    So, instead, let me tell you more about the Atlantic forest of Brazil which is where The Nature Conservancy is working to Plant a Billion trees.

    Five hundred years ago, the Atlantic Forest of Brazil covered approximately 330 million acres (about twice the size of Texas), but today more than 93% of this forest has been cleared and what remains is highly fragmented. The remaining 7% of the Atlantic Forest is still among the biologically richest and diverse forests in the world and exhibits a high number of species that can be found nowhere else on Earth.

    Help me restore 2.5 million acres of forest in some of the most beautiful and pristine rainforests left on earth. If that isn’t convincing, help me restore this blog to the substance-less place of wit and snarky-ness that you love so much.

  • earth day 2008: help me plant a billion trees

    I’m not a big fan of asking people for money (It’s ironic, given my line of work) but this year is a little different, because …The Nature Conservancy just launched a campaign to Plant a Billion Trees.

    This campaign is big — that was billion with a “b” — but replanting tropical forests can have an even bigger effect on climate change.

    Together, our trees will remove 10 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, which is like taking 2 million cars off the road.

    So, here is where you come in:

    1. Donate $10 — I’ve set a goal of raising $200 from the dozen or so people who know this blog exists (click here to donate to my campaign). That’s a mighty big goal from such a modest audience, but I have faith that you guys won’t let me embarrass myself. It’s the cost of two lattes, one movie ticket, half of a parking ticket … heck, you probably have more loose change in your couch.
    2. Plant a Widget — Planting a billion trees is going to take a lot of help, so let your friends know by downloading the Plant a Billion widget. It’s flash, looks wicked cool, and you can drop it painlessly onto your blog, facebook page, or any other place you hang your hat on the web.

    If step two is confusing, feel free to just do step one twice. 😉

    And, just like NPR, this is all I am going to talk about between now and Earth Day — that’s April 22, 2008 for the uninitiated — so the quicker you we get this over with, the quicker we return to the regular wit and candor you have come to know and love.

    I love you guys.

  • wii would like to play (a.k.a. geek nirvana)

    miimage.jpg
    photo courtesy of [ecpark]
    yup. kind of creepy.

    so, the family bought me a wii for my birthday this year … the vermont parkers have one, the virginia parkers have one, and there was this notion that we might be able to play together if i got one too (and then quietly explain to everyone how to hook them up together via the interweb).

    i think this is the first time in recorded history that i have been the last adopter of new technology in my family. what’s even more strange is that the lady sparkler (a) comes home from work and wants to play wii as soon as she walks through the door, and (b) invites other people to come over to play with my video game console … and they are (gasp!) even female.

    truly, i have entered some strange parallel universe where geeks get the hot chicks, everyone speaks Klingon, and the varsity a/v club slams the basketball team into the lockers everyday after gym. oh, and everyone in this magical land of dork-dom speaks only in movie quotes, uses their windows computer as a doorstop, and tina fey was just elected president.

    ahhhh, it’s good to be home.

  • wall photos: australia

    [Great Ocean Ecolodge]
    [Cape Dombey]

  • Duke Wins (barely), Baylor Loses (badly), Planet continues spinning unimpressed

    [Photo]
    0320081650.jpg by [ecpark]
    it’s that time of the year again, when a young man’s fancy turns to basketball.i bought tickets to the first round games in D.C. for my brother’s birthday gift last year, so he came down for the games this weekend. out of shear luck, his favorite team (duke) got seeded into the d.c. bracket, so he is in 27th heaven (which also means that i can give him crappy presents for the next couple of years with impunity.) it also turns out that the lady sparkler’s alma mater (baylor) is playing in the d.c. part of the tourney, too … so everyone has someone to root for but me.

    my alma mater (william & mary) has not appeared in the ncaa tourney yet despite 80 years of trying, and my favorite team (maryland) just crashed out of the tourney-wannabe (N.I.T.) this afternoon. in a purely sociological experiment, i decided early on to root for the teams with the best looking cheer/dance squad. i am sad to report that this turned out *not* to be the way to go as my teams went 1 for 4. (although i must say i was *much* less stressed about the games’ outcomes then the rest of my Baylor-, Georgia- and Arizona-rooting friends.)

    baylor actually played quite well. they took good shots, and held their own defensively, but the ball simply never bounced their way. their opponent, purdue, were chucking balls at the basket without looking and scoring left and right. not much you can do when you are up against a team having that kind of a day, unfortunately.

    duke, on the other hand, nearly screwed the pooch (pardon my french, of course) and ended up just one point shy of losing to the 6th worst team in the tourney. they shot 28% from three-point range, and their regular-season leader in points had just one field goal in 29 minutes. only guard gerald henderson saved duke from the abyss — with 21 points, seven rebounds and five steals.

    anyway, in the end … duke won, baylor lost, and evan embarrassed himself by picking the losers better than the winners. all is as it should be.

  • last photo in australia

    [Photo]
    ECPA20080314_4965 by [ecpark]
    Austalia (Day Twenty) — Well, this trip didn’t quite end how I expected. Everything I read, and everything I knew, pointed to Melbourne being my type of city … certainly when compared to the yet-another-big-city in Sydney.

    I can count on exactly one finger the number of “first” cities I like (New York) and wasn’t planning on this being any different. So, I was a bit surprised when I found myself picking out curtains in Sydney after being decidedly ho-hum about Melbourne.

    Granted, I crammed a LOT into my 30-hour Sydney experience, including the Bridge, a tour of the Opera House, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Observatory Hill, a beach (Manley), two ferry rides and one of the best opera performances I have seen in the last five years (La Boheme at said Opera House).

    In the end, the Sydney / Melbourne question went a lot like the rest of the trip: all the greatest stuff came when we weren’t expecting it, and for entirely different reasons than we expected.

    The best city was the afterthought (Sydney). The most time was needed at the place we had the least (Tasmania). The best part of the Great Ocean Road wasn’t actually part of the Great Ocean Road (Adelaide to Port Fairy). The best part of my Australian vacation was the work. Even with all the spectacular vistas, the best part wasn’t the parks but the people.

    In the next couple of weeks, I will pull my thoughts together on the trip as a whole … and try and distill all the best bits. But until then, I think it is a fair say that this was far and away the best three weeks of travel in *my* short lifetime, and while Belize was paradise on earth, Australia is where I will be packing my bags for if I ever get the means.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Sydney, Australia