Chris Abraham » christians

Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers!

Chris Abraham — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:46:30 +0000

In December, we at Abraham Harrison helped the Fresh Air Fund reach out to bloggers and folks online in order to remind the online Fresh Air Fund friends and family that they both need donations during this time of year as well as needing families to host children for the summer. Since the holidays, over ninety bloggers have responded to Fresh Air Fund’s call to action with the placement of banners, with tweets, and with blog posts. We are much obliged to you, Fresh Air Fund bloggers! (via Marketing Conversation)

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009

Chris Abraham — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:54:50 +0000

This is the full text of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech, courtesy of NowPublic, KansasCity.com, thanks to a link from @Aisle7

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009
My fellow citizens:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.
And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort – even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”
America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Barack Obama is the Rabies Shot America Needs

Chris Abraham — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:11:38 +0000

I am sitting here in Berlin, Germany, listening to NPR on 104.1 FM (yes, we have National Public Radio on-tap in Berlin, it is true), and I am rooting for Barack Obama. I have to admit that I voted Republican in the last two elections, in 2000 and 2004, because I was appalled by both Gore and Kerry. I was passionate about Bill Clinton during his eight years in office and preferred anything to Gore or Kerry, to be honest. That said, I want Barack Obama to win because the world wants Barack Obama to win.

After church yesterday, I got to talking to my fellow parishioners and they want Barack Obama. These are not your traditional European communists you hear about, they’re devout Christians — born again — who are probably considered pretty conservative in the context of Europe. However, in the context of America, even a right wing wingnut European is still relatively liberal by American standards.

When Berliners look at Barack Obama, they don’t see someone who will set race riots afire, they don’t see someone who will turn America into a Marxist-Leninist stronghold, they see a man who is sophisticated, education, trained, has a brain in his head, went to the best schools, has explored the world, cares about civil rights, and who will most likely be willing to span the broken bridges across the Atlantic to Europe and Russia and try his best to rebuild them and begin to regain the trust, admiration, and even envy that much of the world had fifty-years ago.

To them and to me, Barack Obama will be able to return the United States to the hands of the rational. A United States with a better separation between Church and State. Maybe even a country in which Jesus Christ is the co-pilot and not the pilot any more. Where saner, more peaceful, minds prevail. A nation willing to put away its herald and sword, stop with the Christian Crusades, the preemptive strikes, the unilateral military conquests, and the obsession with being Exceptional. Exceptionalism is the most dangerous aspect of the George W Bush and Neocon White House.

“When the United States looks abroad, it does so from an assumed position of moral and spiritual strength. For as long as the United States has existed, a perceived sense of its exceptionalism has permeated the way that Americans view the rest of the world . . . this view has been reinforced by the material reality of US economic and military strength. The essence of American exceptionalism is a celebration of the uniqueness and special virtue of the United States. It rests on the belief that the United States has a special role to play in the world, and unique qualities to bring to this role . . . The roots of the concept stem from the Puritan vision of America as a ‘shining city upon a hill’, a society designed to serve as a moral example to mankind.”

The idea that America is any better-suited than any other nation to lead based on some sort of Divine Inheritance or Plan is ludicrous and very insane, especially when no one else in the entire world agrees. I am a big fan of Mike Signer’s concept of exemplarism:

“Exemplarism is the principle that the United States could best serve the spread of liberal democracy by being an enviable example to the world—the shining light on the hill, the beacon. Being a good example requires strengthening the institutions that assure individual liberties, the rule of law, and the prosperity born of industry and commerce. Adherents to exemplarism would find themselves in agreement with Kant’s principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations.”

Telling yourself and everybody around you how amazing, brilliant, noble, moral, and generous you are when you’re the biggest and meanest and best-armed and best-outfitted man in the room is hubristic and kind of pathetic. Delusional, actually, and certainly not the best way for a man — or a country — to be. America is kind of being an International douchebag.

I must admit that I have a special weakness for exemplarism’s belief in the “principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations” even if you don’t like the way other nations are running their households. There is a certain amount of independence and internal liberty associated with being sovereign. Sovereignty, to me, is holy. To me, exporting culture, policy, morals, or any concept of character or politick is poor form, especially when it is at the tip of a sword.

What scares me about American Exceptionalism is that it allows just about any behavior based on the premise that we can do no wrong. That any move we take to help is helpful, that any gift we have to give is welcome, that any feeling a foreign nation could feel is grateful.

When America thinks the entire world is so “insane” and “drunk” that only America cane make the important, sober, choices, then it is in fact that America is the Nation suffering from mental illness. You know what they say, right? If you think the entire world has gone mad, that the entire world is against you, that the entire world is violent and full of unrest, the unappealing truth might just be that you’re severely paranoid and might be the most mentally ill in the room. There is no way that the entire planet is conspiring again the United States — unless, of course, we have gone one step too far.

I am told that we have gone one step too far; however, Europe and most of the world is willing to let bygones be bygones because we’re loved by the world, at least mostly. Berliners no longer trust America but they’re willing to give Barack Obama a chance — they’re not willing to give John McCain a chance, sadly.

They see in John McCain an angry, malicious, foolish man — which is fine; however, in Sarah Palin, they don’t even seen some harmless vice presidential candidate, they see a very dangerous indicator that the McCain/Palin ticket will more assuredly take the United States to an even darker, more jingoistic, more conservative, descent into fascism.

When I tell people these things, especially on Twitter, I get the strangest response, even from the Democrats: “America is the best country on earth.” “America may not be perfect but there is no better country on earth.” “I am proud to be an American — I am patriotic, surely.” Alternately, I also get, “I think we have gone too far as a nation — we have descended into a self-centered feeding frenzy rife with elbows and short-sighted land-grabbing.”

To me, I am somewhere in the middle. I love the foundation of the Nation. I love the literature, the heart, the soul, the worlds, the music, the history, the compassion, the Faith, the persistence, the curiosity, and confidence, the optimism, and even the cocksureness! I love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. There is a reason why many nations worldwide have patterned and even plagiarized our Constitution, to be sure.

Hell, Europe loves the idea of America! Basically, we are a nation that, in its source code, has embraced all that is liberté, égalité, fraternité; however, the world had not been able to enjoy our uniquely American version of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all the foaming at the mouth and the bared fangs! There is a fear that this mad-dog may have gone too far into its rabies and is too far gone.

In Barack Obama, they see that maybe what America has been doing for the last eight years as been a sort of postpartum, post-911, depression. That the Nation, all big and clumsy, hung over, and feeling a little sick, is finally reemerging from darkness into light — luckily, just in time, when the world needs a leader in the community and not just a dangerous paranoiac who lives in the dilapidated house at the edge of town.

The rest of the world has not given up on us as Americans or as America. Have we as a nation give up on ourselves?

Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!

Chris Abraham — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:19:05 +0000

On behalf of the International Medical Corps and Abraham Harrison, thank you so much for all of your support over the last four weeks to get the vote out to help get the International Medical Corps into the top-five of the Members Project and then for securing the $100,000 from American Express, to be used to feed hungry children worldwide. Here’s a thank you video blog entry from Paige Strackman, who was the PaigeS who submitted IMC in the first place under the title, Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.

Here’s the official, final, press release you can read, directly from International Medical Corps:

International Medical Corps Wins $100,000 Grant from American Express to Save Malnourished Children
October 14, 2008, Los Angeles, Calif. –International Medical Corps (IMC) has been awarded $100,000 through the American Express Members Project. The grant will be used to treat malnourished children worldwide. IMC is one of five organizations to receive funding in the nationwide campaign where American Express Card members submit and vote for projects that are meant to bring people and organizations together for positive change.
The funding will be used to implement the project, ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.’ Submitted by American Express cardmember Paige Strackman, the project focuses on treating malnutrition through nutrient-rich, ready-to-eat food, which International Medical Corps provides to more than 35,000 children every month through a network of 215 supplementary and therapeutic feeding sites in some of the world’s most food-insecure environments, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. The project was selected by an elite panel out of 1,190 others and received more than 14,000 votes in the final round of competition.
“I submitted this project because, as a mother, I cannot ignore that five million children under five die every year due to malnutrition,” says Paige. “This funding will save thousands of malnourished children around the world who otherwise may not have been reached. I am so grateful to everyone who supported this project and helped make it a reality.”
While the project was submitted by one individual hoping to make a difference, it gathered public momentum. The project’s message was shared in the media from Los Angeles to New York, on nearly 200 blogs across the Internet, through thousands of emails and on social networking sites, including Facebook, My Space and Twitter.
The grant from American Express comes at an opportune time when rising food costs are driving millions deeper into poverty everyday while trying to afford basic staples. As a result, hunger and malnutrition kill more people each year than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
“We are incredibly grateful to Paige for not only submitting the project, but also for fueling it with the passion to make it so successful,” says Rebecca Milner, Vice President of Institutional Advancement. “There are approximately 178 million children around the world who are malnourished and only 3 percent get treatment. This funding makes it possible for International Medical Corps to reach more of those children who desperately need our help.”
In Democratic Republic of Congo alone, International Medical Corps’ supplementary feeding centers admitted 3,500 new children in the past two months. At one center for severely malnourished children, IMC has a 35-bed capacity, but is accommodating 82. Another 30 children await treatment. This trend is symptomatic of the food insecurity affecting East Africa and much of the developing world. The World Food Program estimates that 15.7 million of those in need are in East Africa, and another 8.6 million are in Afghanistan.
With a mission that focuses on training, International Medical Corps works to empower individuals and communities, providing education on how to treat malnutrition, identify warnings signs, and intervene before malnutrition worsens. Health care workers and parents are educated on proper diet and hygiene, and communities are equipped to grow their own food and reduce their vulnerability to rising prices.
*The ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children’ project can be viewed here: http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/OZH1P1
**Videos of children’s dramatic recoveries from malnutrition can be seen on International Medical Corps’ YouTube Channel: http://ca.youtube.com/user/IMCMembersProject
For more information visit our website at www.imcworldwide.org.

Also, thank you to every single blogger and social media maven who was so generous as to help us spread the word out and get as much attention as possible for both the Members Project as well as for International Medical Corps as well. You were all more than generous and all of us at IMC and AHLLC would love to thank you for being so generous and selfless.

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posted widget via Albtranslator.
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Thursday, September 25, 2008 via Island In the Pacific.
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The Least of These via Paravanes: Christian Meditations .
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widget via Psychiatryforpublic.
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We get letters via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Just a Note via Code Yellow Mom.
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Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Contented Woman.
Beyond THE FUTURE: International Medical Corps via Beyond Understanding .
Beyond THE FUTURE: International Medical Corps via Publishers Marketplace.
Banner via Arwin Soelaksono .
Vote to Help Feed a Hungry Child! via Three P’s in a Pod.
I get mail — worthy causes via The Reaction.
I get mail — worthy causes via Newshoggers.
I get mail — worthy causes via The Impolitic .
Vote to Help Hungry Children via Dad Talk.
Social Media News Release via Nandigram United.
IMC project: Saving the lives of malnourished children via Motherscribe.
Nobody likes to go hungry – especially kiddos. via Jelly Mom.
HELP FEED CHILDREN via Smart Christian.
International Medical Corps via Mama Speaks.
International Medical Corps–Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via This Mom.
I don’t usually do this, but… via Non-Essential Equipment.
Before I Forget (Again) via Drye Portents.
Haiti Update via Gonna Make a Change.
Vote to save hungry children! via Make it Happen.
Please vote via All 4 My Gals.
Att: American Express Card holders via Writers Bloc.
Hey..Vote Again via ZenZine.
Vote For These Guys and Save Some Children via Intuittech.
Widget via The Disenchanted Forest.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via understanding the effects of unresolved abandonment issues.
Help the International Medical Corps Feed Hungry Children via Danny Fisher.
Help Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Progressiveu.
Saving the Lives of malnourished children via The French Mountain Dweller.
Last chance to Save The Lives of Malnourished Children via Simple Green World.
International Medical Corps’s Good Deeds Triumph!! via Three P’s in a Pod.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children – NEWS FACTS via Ontario.
$1.5 Million For Malnourished Children Around The World Possible – Your Vote In The American Express Members Project Could Help This Happen via Medical News Today.
International Medical Corp Vote Now! via Holly’s Fight for Justice.
International Medical Corp Vote Now! via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
International Medical Corp via Jakartass.
widget via Andres V.
widget via Que es El Testamento Del Paisa?.
Part II Vote to Help Hungry Children via Dad Talk.
Continue Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via What’s Delmer Look Like?.
Sharing Saturday – Bloggers Rule! via My Life as a Hot Professional.
Banner via Earnest Parenting.
International Medical Corps needs your help via Sociolingo’s Africa.
Food Charities via Grasshopper New Media Presents….
That good deed that some of you did …. via My Boyfriend is a twat.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Paravanes: Christian Meditations .
Giving back to Africa via Africa Safari Blog.
Can Social Media Make the World A Better Place? via Digital Podcast.
Vote to Feed Hungry Children via South Africa.
Members Project Submissions Due 8/19 via The Drew Blog.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via International Medical Corps.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Chris Abraham.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Marketing Conversation.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Chris Abraham: Because the Medium is the Message.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Chris Abraham: Internet Analyst and Web Strategist.
Vote AGAIN!!! for “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” via finding joy in Liberia .
International Medical Corps needs your vote ! 4 days left “ via Ben Heine.
International Medical Corps via Worldfoodvision.com.
Calling All American Express Cardholders via Everything Finance.
American Express Members Projects 08 via Ground.
Its Easy to Make a Difference via Baer This In Mind.
Hello guys! via Halo Scan.
Help Feed Hungry Children! via Friends of the World Food Organization.
International Medical Corps now in American Express Members Project Top 5, Vote Today via Yubanet.
American Express Members Project Contest: Support the International Medical Corps via The Human Trafficking Project.

Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers Part II

Chris Abraham — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:48:06 +0000

First off, if you haven’t voted yet, please vote. Secondly, as recently as Wednesday, September 24th, 2008, I posted a thank you for blogging about International Medical Corps as a thank you for all of the bloggers who were so generous as to blog about the current voting contest going on — 73 earned media posts — called the Members Project. International Medical Corps is being represented by the Member Project called Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children. Well, three days later, we have been lavished with another 30 earned media mentions, listed below:

Thank You for Blogging About International Medical Corps! via Chris Abraham Because the Medium is the Message.
Dora the sheep droppings explorer via The French Mountain Dweller.
Int’l NGO Needs Our Help To Win $1.5 M For Starving Children via Daily Kos.
Thank You Bloggers for Blogging about International Medical Corps via Memes.org.
Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers via Abraham Harrison.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via Ben Heine.
Feeding Hungry Children via Kuru Lounge.
Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world via Pirate Pappa.
One Click to Save Lives via So a Blonde Walks Into a Review.
Members Projects via OBVI.
With One Click You Can Save Thousands Of Malnourished Children via Blogher.
Help International Medical Corps Feed Hungry Children via Chrisfernando.net.
Thursday September 25 2008 via Island In the Pacific.
Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world. via Fresh Motivation.
Click for $1.5 million – A win-win-win situation via Stet.
Vote to make a difference via Onlinefundraisingblog.
Something About Saving Lives? via NDAGHA.
Click to Donate via More Than An Army Wife.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via The Existential Lip.
International Medical Corps via Backyard Missionary.
International Medical Corps Matched with Top 25 American Express Members Project, ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children’ via Bio-Medicine.
Time is Running Out!!! via Pre School Mama.
The International Medical Corps Please Consider This Good Cause via Working With Word.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via javajive.
Things I should have avoided whilst pregnant via Whitterer on Autism.
American Express Members Project: Join me in voting for the project Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Make College Pay Off.
Interested in Saving a Child From Malnutrition? via Reservoir.
Go Vote for the International Medical Corps via Christian Spirituality w/ Edges.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via Understanding The Psychology and Effects of Abandonment Issues.

Anyway, bloggers and everyone else who has supported, thank you very much from both the IMC and AHLLC!

If you want more information, please check out the informational page we made for the project — the SMNR — and you can learn a lot more and see all the various and sundry assets the organization has provided for this noble campaign.

Finally, please let me know if I missed your post in the Chris Abraham comment area — and if you want to post about the contest and the issue, please feel free and pop the URL into the Chris Abraham comment section and I will add you and thanks in advance!

Sarah Palin is New Feminism According to Camille Paglia

Chris Abraham — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:01:32 +0000

I would have never guessed that Camille Paglia would be in awe of Sara Palin or perceive her as follows, “Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.” Whoa. (Via Salon.com)

Fresh blood for the vampire
Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?
It’s heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain — that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won’t die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.
Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain’s imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain’s credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain’s sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let’s turn the damned page.We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision — which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation — typified by the narcissistic Clintons — peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about “country above all” coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?
Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama’s lunch. McCain’s weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama’s easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.
As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin’ his g’s like there’s no tomorrow. It’s analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes — be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.
The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.
After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.
Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.
In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation — a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.
As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women’s studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me — and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).
Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.
Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.
One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they’re sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along — poor dears!
It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin’s boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.
Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.
Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”
Now that’s the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism — a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.
Here’s another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:
Abigail Becker Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830
A tall, handsome woman “who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all,” she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper’s cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.
Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today’s pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.
But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God’s plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.
Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women’s movement — leading to feminists’ McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women — an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.
But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.
On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?
What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.
The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.
If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society’s acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.
It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.
But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.
Camille Paglia’s column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

52″ & 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TVs Already Coughed Up By the Life Changing Box

Chris Abraham — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:41:40 +0000

I don’t know where you have been, but if you’re not touching the Life Changing Box, you’re missing out on all sorts of opportunities to win killer televisions, rocking trips to Japan and New York, lots and lots of consumer electronics and prizes valued from $400-$14,000. Add the Life Changing Box game to your Facebook profile and then touch the Life Changing Box up to 24-times-a-day! That’s it! Oh, and check out the Life Changing Box Group and Life Changing Box Page. Here’s our winners so far — there are 8 more boxes that are still closed and will be opening soon!

Congratulations to Christian Jolicoeur of Farmington Senior High School who has won our second prize, a 52″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!
Congratulations to Marcus Baskerville of Sacramento, California, who has won our first prize, a 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!

On Survivor Corps’ Blogger Outreach

Chris Abraham — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:50:32 +0000

Norman Birnbach just posted the first part in a series of articles about a recent blogger PR outreach that my company, Abraham Harrison, did on behalf of Survivor Corps. It is a very generous article and everyone here is very pleased.

Our goal for the Survivor Corps campaign was to promote both the introduction of Survivor Corps, formerly Landmine Survivors Network, and Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken. Jerry, the co-founder of LSN and Survivor Corps, has been the perfect client and we are so lucky that they have allowed us carte blanche. Of course, the products sell themselves.

Another part of our campaign that Mr. Birnbach didn’t mention is social media outreach. We have created over 40 profiles on behalf of Survivor Corps, including very popular Facebook Groups for both I Will Not Be Broken and Survivor Corps, MySpace profiles for Survivor Corps and I Will Not Be Broken, as well as videos on YouTube. Please check out Norman Birnbach’s article, How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take a page from the campaign for Jerry White’s book:

[...] I got an email from Jerry White’s organization, the nonprofit Survivor Corps., asking whether I would review his book, “I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.” It provides a terrific perspective that has a number of different elements to it — and that’s one of the first lessons I took away, after talking with Chris Abraham, who is handling the outreach to bloggers.
According to Chris, the book appeals to many segments, including cancer survivors, veterans and their families, Christians and leadership. They’ve developed outreach for each segment. While that makes sense, too often organizations do a one-size fits all approach, and miss out working with individual segments.
What they’ve also done is make it really easy for bloggers to write and post about the book with a download page that provides:

Facts about the books’ publication schedule (including availability as an audiobook).
A synopsis of the book.
Sample chapter downloads.
Reviews and testimonials.
About Jerry White.
An overview of The Five Steps.
Various Excerpts.
About Survivor Corps.
Contacts.
Multimedia Elements.
Additional Resources.

Social Media and Tags.
They even made it easy for people to join Survivor Corps’ mailing list.
I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week.
I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week. [...]

Blog Posts in Support of I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White

Chris Abraham — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:54:01 +0000

A big part of what my firm, Abraham Harrison LLC, does is online outreach and blogger relations. We’re doing our first book promotion campaign for our client, Survivor Corps, and Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis, and we have been having a lot of fun and plenty of success. We are very proud and excited by our work on this campaign. Here are a bunch of the blog posts that we have been able to collect over the last few weeks of active campaigning of people and bloggers who have chosen to be responsive to our blogger promotion in the form of blog and forum posts:

Carey from Parenting Tales is planning to write a review of I Will Not Be Broken, according to the post Just Call Me Critic:

I will also be reviewing a book from Survivor Corps co-founder as he writes about what he has learned from his personal struggles in life and how he was able to turn his tragedy into triumph.

Jennifer, The Army Wife blogs about Survivor Corps, Jerry White’s organization, in a post titled Survivor Corps:

One of their founders, Jerry White, has recently written a book entitled I will Not Be Broken. I’m lucky enough to be receiving a copy of it from Survivor Corps, and I’ll be posting a review of it when I’m finished. It talks about how to deal with adversity, and the ups and downs that life throws us all too often, and I know we can ALL benefit from some advice on that subject!

Ilori Olalekan revived a blog partially based on excitement over I Will Not Be Broken over on Parenting Cares in the post Dealing With Life Crises:

Life crises are unavoidable experiences which everyone of us must pass through. It is not to be bargained. These experiences though differing from one person to another is at the same time very similar in nature. This is why sharing ones experiences with another is of great help during these critical times, cause it infuses the courage and strength to bear the crises. Based on this truth mentioned above, I will like to introduce a book written by Jerry White, co-founder of Survivor Corps;”I will Not Be Broken Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis“. This book is aimed at helping us overcome life crises.

Outwitting crisis is a blog post about the interview that Guy Kawasaki did with Jerry White of Survivor Corps over on Angel 4 Angels:

We may have all faced or are facing crisis in our lives, in varying degrees. Some of us may have survived it, others may have given in. But there is always a lot to learn from those who have suffered unimaginably but triumphed by sheer grit and self will. Excerpts from an interview Guy Kawasaki had with Jerry White, whose life changed in 1984 after he lost one leg to that lethal litter called landmine. He later co-founded Survivor Corps and went on to share the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

Stephen Hershey of Reality Sandwich covered Survivor Corps and I Will Not Be Broken in the blog post Reframing Survival:

Jerry White, landmine survivor and cofounder of Survivor Corps, shares his own healing process while advising those who are suffering from tragedy in I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. White seeks to turn “tragedy into triumph,” encouraging victims and their families to face facts, choose life, reach out, get moving, and give back. Voices include Lance Armstrong, Princess Diana, and Elie Weisel. The first chapter is available for download.

Deborah Evens over at Paravanes: Christian Meditations writes about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, in a post called No Middle Ground: I Will Not Be Broken:

After reading White’s five steps to overcoming, I realized there is no middle ground in recovery and reclaiming. Either you forever live as a shadow of your former self, or you emerge to become greater, more lovingly creative, and stronger. If you think you’re on the middle ground, you’re in shadow land. Perhaps this is what the Apostle Paul referred to when he asserted “…in all these things, we are more than conquerors…” (Romans 8:37). Properly understood (meaning from God’s point of view), we can not only survive our LAEs, we can “more than conquer” them.

Victor Kaonga of the blog NDAGHA writes about survivorship and Jerry White’s 5 Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis:

Jerry White, a cofounder of Survivor Corps, an organization that helps victims of war and terror. Our mission, and my passion, is to help survivors heal and get on with their lives. Sounds simple, but in many places where we work, the idea of overcoming doesn’t always resonate.
This sounds to be a very promising book. I should admit that though I have not read the whole book (I am under extreme pressure to survive writing…-will disclose later), I sense the book has inspiring stories that would give someone some needed strength or perspective on life as we survive.
Of course for me I wish the book clearly advocated for God’s help in life because human strength alone is not adequate. I strongly believe that survivorship is not complete without God and in any case our simple survivorship is simply a foretaste of what we really need to be. We need to be thriving and not surviving.

Scott Goodson write about the Interview that Jerry White did over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog on his blog, Scott Goodson’s Writings in his post, Five Steps For Overcoming a Life Crisis:

Jerry White has recently published an extraordinary book (entitled “I will not be broken”) which I have ordered on Amazon tonight. He is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jody Williams for his efforts. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. Guy Kawasaki has a wonderful posting with an interview with Jerry today.

Kathi mentions I Will Not Be Broken over on her blog in a post entitled Monday Potpourri of Things to Pass On:

I received an email about a book that looked interesting, if you want to find out more about it, it’s called I Will Not Be Broken : Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White. I’m looking forward to reading it and will let you know what I think when I finish my copy.

Karine found I Will Not Be Broken over at Guy Kawasaki’s blog and mapped it to surviving entrepreneurial failure — and how to take that feeling of being a failure and the victimhood associated and turn it around and realize that just because you have a failed experience doesn’t — and shouldn’t — paint you as a failure — in a post called Surviving a failed project:

I read an excellent post from Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to change the world. The post was an interview with Jerry White, the co-founder of Survivor Corps. The interview focused on the art of survival. How do you go on after a tragedy, how do you move away from that event?
It made me think about the aura that failure can give you. When you project fails, you can surrender to the failure or move on, determined to make the next project a success. You can also choose to become a victim of that failure, a let it taint the next project with defeatism.

The Interview that Jerry White did over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog on his blog really resonated with Shane over at What Leadership Demands in a post called Survival:

Of all the articles and stories I read this week this one stuck with me. I am fascinated by how much of what Jerry White has learned through is own personal tragedy translates to all of us and how we go through life.
At some point we are all confronted with a “life crisis”. This crisis will ultimately test our faith… the question for each of us is where, or in who, will our faith be placed? Pay specific attention to question #3. The five steps Mr. White identifies as essential to overcoming a crisis in this world looks a lot like the stages anyone would go through as they accept Christ and begin to follow him to get beyond their past without him.
Mr. White does not speak to his own personal faith journey so I can not offer an opinion on his source for his survival process. Truth, though, has only One source regardless how we think we arrive at it. He does quote the Dalia Lama but that does not necessarily point us to where Mr. White’s ultimate faith lies.

Jim and Brenda Johnson wrote a wonderful post about I Will Not Be Broken on their blog, Straight, Not Narrow, in the post “I Will Not Be Broken”:

That’s the title of a new book which, while it is not specifically about the LGBT community, it does cover some topics that are of value to everyone, perhaps every particularly LGBT people. The information below is from the official website for the book. I was contacted and asked if I would post something here about the book, and I am happy to do so.

Bruce Tomaso of the The Religion Blog of the Dallas News wrote a very lovely post about I Will Not Be Broken entitled Landmine Survivor Writes About Coping with Crisis

Jerry White, who lost a leg when he stepped on a landmine in Israel in 1984, is a co-founder of Survivor Corps, a group dedicated to helping the victims of violent conflicts around the world. He’s been active in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
White has written a book, “I Will Not Be Broken: 5 Steps To Overcoming a Life Crisis,” in which he offers his advice on how to get through tough times — the loss of a loved one, a painful divorce, a serious injury, and so forth.

Jill Army of her eponymous blog, Jill Army, plans to review I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White — in fact, she was inspired to revive her blog partially in order to do the review! We really appreciate it (via I’m un-jinxing myself!):

I intend to begin blogging again…right after I scrub the residual sticker goo off my computer. I will be reviewing a book : “I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis,” by Jerry White, the co-founder of Survivor Corps http://iwillnotbebroken.org. I’ve already read the intro and first two chapters (thanks to the free download) and it’s going to be inspirational and help so many people. I know it is something all my readers (yes all two of them …hi dad!) will enjoy and pass on to those around them that need to hear the message and take the steps. I know I will. Looking forward to blogging again.

At 8 Hours & A Lunch, Deb Owen wrote a review of the Interview that Jerry White did over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog:

There’s a must-read interview with Jerry White on Guy Kawasaki’s how to change the world blog today that he is calling “The Art of Survival.” [...] I began to look for my “favorite snippet” in the interview, but the whole interview is worth the few minutes to read. It’s a great perspective with applications many of us could use in multiple areas of our daily lives. Check it out.

Heidi blogs about Jerry White’s book in a post called, “I Will Not Be Broken”: The Book by Jerry White, Survivor Corps, on here blog, Mommy Monsters:

I have not read this book … but this looks like a worthwhile read for those who are struggling to rise above circumstances from their past or present. So I wanted to pass it on to you!

Guy Kawasaki wrote a stellar blog post about his interview with Jerry White on the Art of Survival, about Survivor Corps, and about Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis:

Jerry White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His life changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jody Williams for his efforts. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis

Erin Burke of Liquid Heat wrote a forum post about the book, I Will Not Be Broken over on the forum SL Exchange:

I will be the first to admit that I am not a book reviewer or even a professional blogger for that matter. Recently a book was brought to my attention that I felt compelled to let everyone know about. The book is titled “I Will Not Be Broken” and the author is Jerry White.
It’s funny how life works sometime, the person that told me about this book thought I would be interested because I work with Relay for Life in Second Life. I work with Relay for Life because on June 21, 1996 I lost my mother to cancer and it makes me feel as if I am honouring her life by hopefully helping raise money to find cures for cancer, so that someone else will be saved the pain and fear she went through and the pain and fear I have continued to go through by losing her.
I Will Not Be Broken is not a book about cancer survivors specifically, it is a book about survivors period. Survivors of any crisis that enters their life and how to live with it and overcome it. There was a line in Jerry’s book that although very simple, really struck me
“They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s not quite that simple. I believe you have to decide it will make you stronger.”

There is a very thoughtful and Buddhism-focused blog post about Jerry White’s book over at Transparent Eye, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White:

I don’t usually respond to press releases, but the one announcing I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White interested me enough that I checked out the intro and first chapter, which are available online.
White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps who lost his leg to a land mine. The book sounds like it has a self-help orientation, and is chock full of anecdotes. He distills it into a five-point program
o Face facts
o Choose life
o Reach out
o Get moving
o Give back
My sense is that it is compatible with Buddhist notions of compassion, though oriented more toward international humanitarianism.
Speaking now from my own knowledge, studies of human happiness have shown that it has little to do with actual circumstance, and more to do with predispositions are are either genetic or developmental. People can come back from tragedy, but a key step is to loosen attachment to the way things were but no longer are(Buddha’s Four Noble Truths). Once that block is overcome, finding new life goals and working toward them can provide a path to achieving satisfaction.

Sharon of The Reservoir wrote a very complete review post entitled Book Review: About I Will Not Be Broken, a Book by Jerry White:

From a leader of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning movement to ban landmines and founder of Survivor Corps comes an astoundingly effective guide to recreating a happy and fulfilling life after catastrophe strikes—a book that Bob and Lee Woodruff call “a road map for the individual and their family to re-enter the land of the living.” In I WILL NOT BE BROKEN, Jerry White reframes the question “why do bad things happen to good people?” and asks, given that bad things do happen, how do people absorb the blows and move through them?

Sharon also wrote a touching and insightful personal testimonial in a post called Dealing with loss (my experience):

In November of 2006 I lost my cousin to a fatal road accident. It was even more harrowing because I had known him for little over 10 years; both families had recently become reconciled. He was also one of my favorite cousins.
It was like most deaths of that sort, a needless one. I remember when I first heard the news, the question I kept asking was why? I needed to know why it happened. He was only 24 years old, he hadn’t even begun to really live life. How could he just be snuffed out like that?
I’d just been called to bar (in fact, he was buried on the same day I was called to the bar). So I just buried it deep down inside me and didn’t think about it.
Then less than a year later, I met my husband to be. In telling him about my family, I started to tell him about this cousin when I felt a deep flood of emotion threaten to drown me. I started crying and just couldn’t seem to stop. I cried so hard, I wanted to die. I was still asking why?
I finally dried my tears. I still don’t understand why. I became a lawyer and he wasn’t there to rejoice with me. I’m getting married soon and he never even met my fiance. I still haven’t deleted his email address from my inbox. Many times I think I’m over it and then I feel the grief well up again; and the tears start to trickle down unobtrusively.
But I have refused to allow the grief incapacitate me. Instead I tap into it and it makes me stronger. It gives me more compassion for others, keeps me in touch with my feelings. It reminds me of my own immortality and helps me keep my priorities straight.
In my own way, I have assimilated the 5 steps to dealing with crisis in Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken and made them work for me.
I know my cousin is gone and nothing I do will bring him back; not all the grieving in the world. I can’t shut down because of that (he wouldn’t want me to). So I have chosen instead to live and not merely exist. I get together with my brothers and his brother every now and then to reminisce about him. It keeps him alive in our hearts and we offer strength to each other. I live my life in a way I know will make him proud but more than that, the experience has made me more compassionate to others who are also grieving.
These steps are time tested and have been proven (especially in my own life). We can’t stop tragedy form happening but we can overcome tragedy. However it is a personal choice. But it is a choice that can be made if the steps in I Will Not Be Broken are diligently applied.

Sandy Carlson writes about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White, in the post Review: I Will Not Be Broken:

The book outlines a program of five steps for coping with disaster. He draws on his experiences as well as those of famous persons such as Lance Armstrong; Diana, Princess of Wales; Christopher Reeve, the American Psychological Association, and the not so famous–his college roommate, his mom, Bosnians who survived the warn in their country, a little Cambodian girl who also lost a leg to a landmine. His drawing on the wisdom of persons from all walks of life underscores he beliefs that wisdom is a collective resource as well as an individual one and that all life is interconnected. White’s book approaches the challenge of trauma positively by focusing on individual strengths rather than dwelling on what went wrong and why.
I Will Not Be Broken is an earthy, conversational, and real testament of the beauty and wonder of all life.

Burkitt wrote a post about I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White in the the British Cancer Survivors forum:

I received an email from somebody recommending this book: I will Not be broken. I had a look at the website and I think the book is worth recommending to others, even though it was not written by somebody affected by cancer.

Carl Wilton wrote, in May 12, 2008 – Unbroken, on his blog, A Pastor’s Cancer Diary, how the experience of a man who has lost his leg to a Landmine in Israel has a lot in common with someone suffering and surviving cancer. That illness and tragedy is transforming and always immensely difficult to overcome — to survive and then thrive:

I think White’s conclusions can be generalized to include the experience of being diagnosed with a slowly-progressing disease like cancer. In the book, he recalls a conversation he had with Princess Diana, with whom he worked as an anti-landmine activist. Touring Bosnia and speaking with survivors, they observed that everyone seemed to have “their date.” They could all state precisely on which date they had been injured or bereaved.
Many of us cancer survivors can do the same with our dates of diagnosis (mine was December 2, 2005). Before that date, we may have a suspicion something is wrong, but we still have the luxury of hoping it’s nothing serious. After that date, we can never return to such naiveté. We will, forever after, be cancer survivors.

Mommy blogger, Robin, wrote a powerful post on her blog, Around the Island, Rebuilding a better world, one survivor at a time:

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Jerry White, let alone known that he is a leader in the international fight against landmines. I didn’t know that he has this calling because he himself lost his leg to a landmine when he entered an unmarked minefield in the north of Israel, my own country, in 1984. I didn’t know about his struggle to redefine his life after his accident, to choose survival, and I didn’t know that he had taken it one step further, going on to found the Nobel Peace Price-winning Landmine Survivors Network (LSN), the same organization that Princess Diana was involved with.
I didn’t know that he had recently expanded LSN’s mission from aiding those injured by landmines to aiding all those who are victims of the worst epidemic of all – the very preventable epidemic of war and violence. The new mission bears a new name as well – Survivor Corps – which reflects both its calling and its philosophy.
Now I know, and I am proud to help spread the word.

If you’re interested in blogging about either Survivor Corps or the book, I Will Not Be Broken, pop me an email and I can hook you up.

Let’s Go Check out the Clärchens Ballhaus!

Chris Abraham — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:16:05 +0000

Mark pointed me to this article in the NY Times with this simple comment, “Berlin really is the best city in the world.” Anybody game to checking this place out? I have yet to go out dancing at all in Berlin. For me, it has been 100% dinner parties, lounges, bars, restaurants, and homes. It looks like my first Berlin nightclub experience will surely need to be this democratic, egalitarian, Prenzlauer Berg night spot, Clärchen’s Ballhaus.

There is no door policy at the nearly 100-year-old Clärchen’s Ballhaus, no bored-looking blond Berlin fashion design student dressed like an American Apparel ad surveying the late-night crowd. There is a coat check, run by the same nattily dressed mustached gentleman who’s been running it since the 1960s, when Clärchen’s was a dance hall in Communist East Berlin. His colleague Klaus Schliebs, dressed in a tuxedo every weekend night, takes your ticket after you’ve paid the cover charge of 3 euros, about $5 at $1.60 to the euro.
All come all served.
“As long as you don’t look like you have a seriously high blood-alcohol level, we’ll let you in,” says the owner Christian Schulz.
The democracy at the door is immediately evident inside, where couples of varying ages and sartorial styles dance with abandon to songs from Jimi Hendrix to Abba to the schlager singer Udo Jürgens played by a cover band. Mothers from the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, ignoring the baby sitter’s calls for just a few minutes longer, groove with Italian foreign-exchange students and older men dressed in their Sunday suits. Cellophane streamers contributed by a stage designer from the nearby Volksbühne theater lend the place an “Enchantment Under the Sea” vibe. The atmosphere is flirtatious, uninhibited and eclectic.
“You’re there, and you think, you’re in an Austrian film of the late 1980s,” says Thomas Demand, a Berlin-based photographer and installation artist. Like most Clärchen’s regulars, Mr. Demand is an after-midnight guest, when dinner has been cleared from the white cloths of the restaurant tables, leaving only empty coffee cups and half-full bottles of prosecco.
“People come here with the hope that they will find the love of their life,” said Mr. Schulz, who took over Clärchen’s (Auguststrasse, 24; 49-30-282-92-95; www.ballhaus.de) in 2005 with his partner, David Regehr, and transformed it from a faltering restaurant to a wildly successful dinner and late-night dance club.
A veteran of the theater, Mr. Schulz sees Clärchen’s as the stage on which a night’s adventures are improvised. There are some star players as well: Willem Defoe, Bjork, the artist Matthew Barney, Charlotte Rampling and other names Mr. Schulz is too tired to tick off, have come to Clärchen’s. But they come because they can, unperturbed, perform elegant tangos, grind to James Brown or drink wine upstairs amid the cracked mirrors and haunted atmosphere of the Mirror Salon. No longer the main attractions, they dance on parquet made sticky by spilled alcohol and become bit players in the late-night show.