Turn Off Your ‘Shift’ Key, America by Danial Orange

A friend of mine, Dan Orange, wrote a note titled Turn Off Your ‘Shift’ Key, America and posted it for all of his friends to read over on a social networking site. It is so well done and truly embodies the spirit of what we stand for here at GLR that I immediately asked permission to repost it in its entirety here. Dan said he would be honored so without further ado, here is something we should all keep in mind every day!

This is reposted just as it was originally written**

Dear poets and poetically-minded friends,

I conjured this up on my commute to work this morning. I'd love to get some feedback.

Turn off your ‘Shift’ key, America
by Danial Orange

if we turn off our ‘shift’ key, america
instead of talking @ people, we’d have to talk 2 them.

we’d be forced to see that hatred, fear and ignorance
are problems that exist within the US
because they really exist within us.

people in our nation’s capitals
would have to pay attention to our nation’s lowercases
living in lowerplaces, earning lowerwages,
with children exposed to risk at lowerages.

we’d place more value on =
and less on having +
if we turn off our shift key, america.

with ‘shift’ on, our thoughts are all $!
switch it off and we could be all 4 1
and maybe 1 4 all.

there’d be less emphasis on “I”
if we turn off our shift key, america.

**Photo taken my moi!

Oxfam Is A Renowned Organization Partnered with Great Music

Recently while attending a concert for one of my favorite performers, Jason Mraz, I came across a gal hanging out at a very small round table with no one around talking to her. The bright lime color sprinkled about the area she was in attracted my attention immediately so I figured why not go and see what she was up to.

That was the moment I met Clara Herrero, an Outreach Training Program Assistant with Oxfam America. Clara is a volunteer based out of the Boston branch of Oxfam and she was totally excited to chat with my Mom and me about exactly what they were doing there and why.

Turns out this organization has been around since the first European activists took action against Famine back in 1942. The organization grew, expanded, began a United States branch in 1970 in Washington DC which relocated to Boston in 1973. Fast for a World Harvest is a campaign that began in 1974 and to this day is still one of the largest anti hunger campaigns in the United States and it helped to spawn Oxfam America; a separate entity from the originating organization in Great Brittan.

The focus of the mission of the organization as a whole is to battle against poverty and injustice toward all humans and they have grown to house locations in over 100 countries worldwide.

Oxfam has partnered with a slew of musicians such as Crowded House, O.A.R., Mraz, Coldplay and R.E.M. (among many others) to promote the campaign Rock the World. The organization volunteers reach out to concert goers to spread the word and I for one was so excited to have been able to chat with Clara! She provided me with information on what they are doing to help women specifically as well as how the poorest countries are the most at risk from climate change.

In addition to their official website these folks are all over social media:

They have a blog
Facebook page
MySpace account
Follow them on Twitter
Watch their videos on YouTube
Check out photos on Flickr

For those of you who will be heading out to a concert this summer please look for the Oxfam table and chat with the very friendly volunteers about their mission and goals. Then when you get back home, I strongly encourage everyone to check them out in one or all of the above locations. Why not consider donating time or money to this worthwhile organization today?

Save the Earth with Facebook

A while ago I joined Facebook as a fun way to keep up with my real life and virtual friends and as I have dug deeper into this social networking site I have discovered they have partnered with some amazing environmental and humanitarian organizations through the use of applications that can be added to a user profile. I have a few of these applications attached to my own profile and enjoy the fun of sending items back and forth, knowing that each time I do it is helping to make a real difference.

African Safari will donate a life saving net to a family in Africa for each animal sent between friends. The organization donated to is called Nothing But nets and can save a child from malaria related death through each $10 donated.

The Lil Green Patch allows flowers and fruit to be planted in a virtual garden and through the sharing of these items over 96,000,000 square feet of rainforest have already been saved.

I also have a Sea Garden which allows friends and I to share creatures back and forth to help oceanic causes such as the Surfrider Foundation; Sea Garden is the number one donor to this cause out of over 50,000 supporters.

In addition to these fantastic applications Facebook is also chock full of pages for so many wonderful organizations I already belong to such as We Can Solve It, 1Sky, Focus the Nation and Eco Etsy. The ability to keep up with the latest news and events with each of these organizations in just one place is extremely convenient.