Weekend Wrapup - Sunday (serious post)

This is a slightly more serious post than the last one, so I broke them up.

Sunday could have been an important day. I walked over and had breakfast at the local coney place, and as I was eating (corned beef hash and eggs - ummm), I was reading this months Technology Review (Sept/Oct 2006), and the cover story was the TR35 - 35 technologists and scientists under 35. There are some fascinating things going on out there, and it got me thinking, I am 35, and I haven't done a whole lot. One article is about the Humanitarian of the Year - Christina Galitsky. Her main job is to find ways for companies to identify and reduce energy inefficiencies, which is cool enough, but she is working on building a new stove for refugees in Darfur so they don't have to use as much wood. This is really important since the women of the camp frequently have to wander for hours to find wood and are at the mercy of roving gangs and are frequently brutally raped. Galitsky went there and met with the women of the camps and found out what their needs really are, and used that information to modify the design of an existing stove that could be produced cheaply and used in this situation and be a significant improvement over open fire pits. Designing more efficient stoves is a very interesting approach, and not the first one that might come to mind, but it will make a significant difference in these women's lives and was accomplished by non-governmental ogranizations with small resources, big thoughts and grander aspirations. (Wow, the language of that statement makes me kind of sick ). That seems like enough to be considered a great person, but she is also working on a low cost method to filter arsenic out of ground water in Bangladesh. This is being solved by a completely different concept, figuring out a new way to bind iron particles to filter mechanisms.

So why did I talk about this woman? She is truly doing great things, in a method I like, i.e. bringing together concepts from different disciplines to solve problems. But it made me think more about what I have never done, which would be everything, and I thought about my friend Rochelle who went to Hounduras to help build a church and is now leading the office drive to raise money for breast cancer. It's also time to donate to United Way.

I think I need to start helping something - people or something. I am not sure yet, not sure what I want to do, how I can do it. I used to give money to environmental causes, but ran out of money, so I had to stop doing that. I need to find something. Follow me as I find some way to help someone or something.

What are some of your favorite organizations and how do you help them?

When I find something I want to do to help - then Sunday will have been an important day.

Sean

(btw, don't bother to mention the spelling errors, didn't feel like proofing and the spell check is not working)

(upon rereading this post - it seems like a desparate cry for approval)