theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Long Reads

  • 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.

  • 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

  • travel: cricket in 3,482 simple steps

    [Photo]
    IMG_0739, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    Australia (Special Edition) — I never thought I would say that the U.S. needed yet another professional sport, but we are missing out on one: Cricket. Sure, the rules are obtuse, the matches long, the fields required enormous, but the lady sparkler and I must have watched parts of half a dozen matches or more, and loved every minute of it.

    The sport is nothing like American baseball, but the easiest way to explain it is through that terminology. (A new Aussie friend of ours explained that you can tell when an American understands Cricket because they start getting offended when the baseball analogy is made.)

    Basically, there are two batters (batsmen) who don’t bat as much as they protect the wicket (three croquet mallet handles stuck in the ground behind each of two home plates) from pitchers (bowlers) who hurl wooden balls trying to knock the wickets over.

    There are “outs,” which comes if the bowler knocks down the aforementioned wicket, or the batsman makes a batting error (hits the ball to one of the outfielders, or uses something other than his bat to strike the ball). Two batsmen are on the field at once, and each stays until he is out once, scoring as many runs are possible. All members of one team bat before the other has their go.

    Runs are scored when the ball is hit well enough that the two batsmen can exchange places. There are even two types of home runs (6 runs if the struck ball clears the park without touching the ground, and 4 runs if it just dribbles over the boundary). Good batsmen can score one hundred — or more — runs in a match.

    There really isn’t the downtime here that you have in baseball, with nearly constant action through the whole match (except for when they break for tea, of course). Because each player does their batting all at once, there is a better opportunity for a “dual” to develop between batsman and bowler. Also, when the batsman or bowler is having a good go of it, there is a sort of “king-of-the-mountain” tension that develops as well.

    The greatest thing about the game is that it is watched here by all kinds, though women do seem to roll their eyes when it is discussed at the dinner table.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Melbourne, Australia

  • melbourne olympic stadium

    [Melbourne Olympic Stadium]
    with an apparent genetic predisposition to sneaking into sports venues, the lady sparkler and I talked our way into the Melbourne Olympic Stadium today.

    being an Olympiphile (sounds dirty, huh?) I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to checkout a venue, and so I led us on a walk around the city that “conveniently” went past the stadium.

    unfortunately, it’s now a private training venue.

    not to be denied, I marched right up to the security gate and proceeded to barrage the (60+, toothless) lady with how honored i was to be at the Stadium, how incredible the 1956 games were, how I reveared Australian national icon (and three time Melbourne gold medalist) Betty Cuthbert, and how important the games became when they were the first to allow all the atheletes enter the closing ceremonies together (as opposed to marching in by country).

    needless-to-say, she was confused by my knowledge and excitement which it became obvious that, as she stammered to keep up, she didn’t share.

    (what I neglected to tell her was that I had watched a two hour documentary on the Melbourne Olympics on the flight over … details, details.)

    finally, I assume out of boredom or desparation, she waved us through and asked us not to wander too far.

    and while the stadium itself doesn’t look too different from the track at my college, seeing the same venue from the documentary (only less scratchy, and less black-and-white) was incredible.

    not that i need an excuse to Become more obsessed with the Olympics, but it’s nice to have one regardless.

    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    melbourne olympic stadium

  • Travel: Cape Otway Centre for Conservation Ecology (a.k.a. Cape Otway School for Orphaned ‘Roos)

    [Photo]
    IMG_0209, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    Austalia (Day Eight) — Perhaps the place that the lady sparkler and I were the most psyched to stay during our trip was the Great Ocean Ecolodge, which is a small bed & breakfast type accommodation (5 rooms) attached to the Cape Otway Center for Conservation Ecology. The lodging came ridiculously highly recommended — especalially by TNCers — and the experience was even better.

    Shortly after arrival they took us on a “dusk” walk around the properties, and within the first 20 minutes we had seen three koalas, were explained the entire regional ecosystem and were firmly behind their site management plan. On our way back it was all down hill, only tripping on three parrots, two dozen kangaroos, two wallabies and a magpie that enjoyed attacking human’s shoes.

    The owners are a zoologist and a natural resources manager in their mid-twenties, who have overcome some pretty long odds to launch this, their dream project. Besides using the property to test a range of ecological hypotheses — including the best ways to revegetate portions of Australia that have been over-cleared — they take in injured / abandoned animals such as a baby kangeroo who flopped around the house while we ate dinner that night. If you have the chance, we highly recommend making the trip.

    We had quite a great crew of fellow quests, including a retired couple from Sheffield, England and a couple of small business owners from somewhere along the Gold Coast of Australia. Much of the convesation that night was predictable (“how in &^%$ sake did *he* get elected?!?) but everyone was most generous to keep it amicable and gave us the widest possible recognizing that the lady sparkler and I weren’t unilaterally responsible for the current geo-political situation.

    Ah, imagine that … two cultures who don’t assume the worst about their contemporaries.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Cape Otway Center for Conservation Ecology, Australia

  • Travel: Discovery Bay National Park, Victoria

    [Photo]
    IMG_9584, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    Austalia (Day Seven) — Today we had two of the best hikes of the trip so far, both through Discovery Bay National Park, which runs along the Southern Ocean on the western edge of Victoria.

    On our way back from the second, we ran into three billy goats (“gruff” presumably) in the middle of the path. Don’t know where they came from — they weren’t anywhere to be seen on the way out — but they were sure enough there on the way back. Initially, things didn’t look particularly good … the biggest one of the bunch approached slowly, dipped its head, and started pawing the ground.

    Perhaps, now is a good time to pause for some back-story:

    Last year when the lady sparkler and I were in Tucson, we mis-timed one of our hikes and found ourselves out in the desert after dark. As we were scurrying back, we had not one but two rattlesnakes try and kill us. The second of the two actually rattled across the path between the lady sparkler (who stopped) and myself (who sped up).

    Yesterday, we were hiking around Mount Richmond in the middle of the day, when I noticed a large tree branch that was down across the path began to move. We’d find out later that it was actually a copperhead, one of the 14 breeds of snakes in Australia that can kill you. Now, when you think copperhead, you think of a normal-sized snake that just happens to be poisonous. This, however, was the size of the basilisk from that Harry Potter movie. It looked like it had recently eaten a moose. Or an auto.

    Anyway, back to the goats. The only thing that kept me from running around like a blithering idiot around the snakes — other than the whole “being paralyzed with fear” thing — was that I keep being told that they are just as scared of us as we are of them. The goats? Not afraid of us, though, this turned out to be a good thing.

    Momma goat DID dip her head, and pawed the ground, but was just looking to soften up the dirt before she laid down to completely block the path. Her two chil’en quickly followed suit. We gingerly chose about a 6 inch path between the goats and the 200-foot cliff, and resisted the urge to pet the (now) cute little goats. Didn’t want to open ourselves up to *that* conversation with Customs.

    Turns out that not everything in Australia is trying to kill you.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Travel: Discovery Bay National Park, Victoria, Australia

  • Travel: More reasons to hate Californians, and everything is NOT bigger in Texas

    [Photo]
    IMG_8562, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    AUSTRALIA (DAY THREE) — Well, my luggage mysteriously appeared in our hotel room last night, and the sudden appearance (which occurred without any apparent human intervention) gave the lady sparkler quite a start when she got up to use the ‘loo.’

    Still no word on her bag though, other than the knowledge that it never made it through LAX. Interestingly, when we were talking to one of the Qantas baggage service people about what happened, she rolled her eyes and said, ‘LAX happened.’ Not that we needed another reason to dislike Californians, but apparently their baggage handling skills are world renowned for all the wrong reasons.

    We spend the day driving 200 kilometers south through what is widely considered as the most beautiful portions of Tasmania. We knew we were in trouble when I had taken over a hundred pictures *before* we even entered the first of three national parks for the day. (The final tally included two full memory cards for over 350 images.)

    Today was less about rainforests, and more about landscapes. We passed though mountain ranges, savannah grasslands, scrubland/hill country, reeded marshlands, both rocky and sandy beaches, before finishing up in rolling prairie-land. All this in little more than one hundred miles driven.

    Which brings us to our first conclusion of the trip: everything is decidedly *not* bigger in Texas.

    The roads here never end. We could spend four weeks on an island the size of West Virginia, and never see the same thing twice. The trees here would take half a dozen adults to surround holding hands. The animals are bigger (they even have longhorns). The land is more diverse. The mountains are higher. The beer is larger. So are the hats. Even the hubris is bigger (they have routed an entire river through pipes for use in hydro-electric plants.)

    And we haven’t even reached the mainland.

    Near the end of today, we were wincing as we drove around corners because the impossibly beautiful just kept getting more beautiful … it was actually more than a bit overwhelming. Words honestly can’t describe this place. The photos we posted do a pretty good job of showing the beauty, but really can’t give a hint to the scale … so, while you are looking think ‘vast’ and then triple it.

    UPDATE: the lady sparkler’s luggage was waiting for us at the hotel in Hobart, which is great as we fly back to the mainland tomorrow morning. t.l.s. has never been so excited about the possibility of shaving her legs.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Travel: Lake St. Claire National Park, Tasmania

  • wren cross

    the college of william and mary — my alma mater — has become the latest bauble in the rhetorical culture wars that have been consuming our society.

    in october 2006, the school’s president removed a cross from permanent display on the altar of the college’s Wren Chapel saying it was important for people of all faiths to feel welcomed in the college’s buildings.

    that cross is still available (and actively used) for christian services, but would not be displayed by default.

    a frenzy of opposition arose, largely from outside the college community. one petition collected 10,000 signatures demanding the “return” of the cross, but less than 30% of the signers had ever been affiliated with the school.

    what few people know is that the cross isn’t actually property of the school — it has been loaned by bruton parish church (and caterbury, the parish’s college community) in 1931.

    and, for the two hundred and fifty odd years before that loan in 1931, the chapel was without a cross of any kind — as no Anglican Virginia church displayed a cross during the colonial period.

    but, just as in the pledge of allegiance — in which the divisive “under god” phrase wasn’t added until the mccarthy fueled 1950s but is seen by some elements as being core to the pledge itself — historical fact has little to bear on modern controversy.

    during the late 1990s, i was the liturgist for caterbury (the “owners” of the wren cross) and was the person responsible for both the only regular service in which the was used and (in as much as anyone) for the cross itself.

    while i didn’t threaten to revoke a $12 million donation to the school over the issue, you could argue i’d be one of the people most emotionally outraged by the wren cross controversy.

    but i’m not.

    why? because i’m comfortable in my Christianity, and as such I don’t need to cling to iconography to support my religious beliefs. i also feel like we all paid tuition to this great college without regard of our religion — and as such, we should all feel equally welcome in the college’s buildings.

    unfortunately, the school’s president Gene Nichol resigned this morning — under pressure from alumni withdrawing donations from the school — for having these very same constitutionally guided views.

    and while i know that the College won’t even notice, after much deliberation i have decided that I can no longer financially support a school that succumbs to such petty partisanship and radically exclusive views — even though i’ve been supporting the school financially every year since 1995.

    i can only hope that someone comes along to right this ship, but that won’t happen so long as the campus remains obsessed with the views of fringe elements from outside it’s walls.

  • musings: obama

    the lady sparkler and i have a house rule, that you can’t discuss an election until it’s the year *of* said election. while the media may want us to obsess, there is no reason to even pay attention until it’s time for your local primary.

    either way, it’s open season now.

    as of january 1, i thought i had this whole election this worked out. obama & edwards: guardians of the working class populous; clinton: guardian of the north-east elite. and then new hampshire happened … for reasons i am still struggling to comprehend, clinton carried the $50k and under, high school educated crowd, and obama carried those who make over $100k and have post graduate degrees.

    clinton … blue collar? obama … white elite?

    some order was brought to my internal chaos with super tuesday. obama carried the heartland (montana, kansas, north dakota) and clinton carried the coasts (california, new york, massachuesettes). but even with that, there were enough outliers (obama in connecticut, clinton in oklahoma) that i came to a startling realization: even with four years on the hill and another four years at a political consulting firm, i have no clue about politics.

    my biggest complaint about politics (and politicians) is the seeming endless partisanship that has settled on d.c. since the republican “revolution” of 1994. and it has (inarguably) gotten worse since Bush II took office. my point is that, while truly believe that clinton would make a solid leader of the free world, i just can’t face the idea that we will have another 8 years where 49.5% of the electorate utterly despises the sitting president.

    so, over the last two weeks i basically ruled out everyone else, and was left with obama for (admittedly) all the wrong reasons. and then i heard him speak for the first time. and then i was hooked.

    now, i am a *sucker* for obama’s message. i hate fear mongering. the best president of my lifetime was played by martin sheen. i need oration, and hope. i want my politician to tell me why to love him, and not why to hate everyone else. i want someone to dream big, and challenge those around him to keep up. i want to vote for *someone*, and not just for who-ever is running against the neo-con of the cycle.

    obama gives the best stump speech i have heard … easily since the “other” clinton in ’92, but probably since the kennedy brothers in ’60 and ’68 (of which i heard recordings, obviously). i find it fascinating how well he is doing in places that have heard him speak.

    now, if you are already on-board, God bless you. but if you aren’t, watch the video clip above of him speaking in New Hampshire — if you are short on time, skip ahead and watch the last half — and tell me that’s not what you really want in a candidate.

    unless, of course, you are christy rome … in which case don’t tell me, because i prefer living in denial.

  • musings: a tale of twenty-two parties

    [Photo]

    Ah, ’tis the season of love, joy, and parties. This year, we have two work parties each, two more parties at our house, a couple trips to the theater, and about half a dozen happy hours between us.

    Not that I am complaining, but I actually had to stop commuting to work via bicycle in mid-December, because we have something just about every day after work for the last two weeks before Christmas. Thank God we finished up our Christmas shopping in late November, or a lot of people would be getting a whole-lotta nothing.

    The highlight so far — for us, at least — was the Christmas Cartoon Extravaganza. Each year we collect as many television Christmas specials as we can, and throw a party where they are playing in the background. Our place is a bit small, but we managed to cram in twelve people to watch three and a half hours of pure animated Christmas goodness, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty Returns, Robbie the Reindeer, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends christmas special, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

    I think this is only the second or third time the lady sparkler and I have thrown the Extravaganza, but I have done something similar on and off for the last decade. I wish I could take credit for the notion, but the idea originally came from a Theatre Department tradition at the College of William and Mary where people gathered each year and managed to turn How the Grinch Stole Christmas into a drinking game.

    The basic premise of the College version was to drink each time you hear the word “Who” — as in “All the Who’s down in Whoville” and “Cindy Lou Who who was no more than two.” As you can imagine, the “winner” was essentially declared by the first commercial break by looking around at whomever was still standing.

    Fortunately, the thirty-something version entailed just sitting on the couch and thinking warm thoughts of friends and family, though we did “go crazy” by slipping some peppermint schnapps into the cocoa.