procrastinate: (v) to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost.
This is my absolute biggest struggle to date. Don't let it get you.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
cof-fee
coffee: (n) a beverage consisting of a decoction or infusion of the roasted ground or crushed seeds (coffee beans) of the two-seeded fruit (coffee berry) of certain coffee trees.
Last summer I spent 3 months living and working in La Union, Lempira, Honduras. This is a very small village in the mountains of Honduras. I worked as part of the 2009 Honduras Research Team. The research we did is now being applied to microfinance. Microfinance: a means of extending credit, usually in the form of small loans with no collateral, to nontraditional borrowers such as the poor in rural or undeveloped areas. 4 of the members of our team are now leaders and founders of Union MicroFinanza, a microfinance non-profit organization that serves the La Union municipality.
Some of the money for these loans is being raised through coffee. Why coffee? A large percentage of the residents of La Union are coffee farmers and depend on the sale of their coffee for income, however small. Union MicroFinanza also serves these farmers with loans so that farmers may buy fertilizer, land or seed to increase their yield. How it works: UMF buys coffee from the farmers, the coffee is sold in the US for a profit, all profit made is redistributed as loans to the farmers.
Patrick, director of operations, has written a guest blog post here about Micro Loan Coffee.
http://healthnut-em.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-post-coffee-revolution-giveaway.html
You can also visit their website for more information.
http://www.unionmicrofinanza.com/umf/
Last summer I spent 3 months living and working in La Union, Lempira, Honduras. This is a very small village in the mountains of Honduras. I worked as part of the 2009 Honduras Research Team. The research we did is now being applied to microfinance. Microfinance: a means of extending credit, usually in the form of small loans with no collateral, to nontraditional borrowers such as the poor in rural or undeveloped areas. 4 of the members of our team are now leaders and founders of Union MicroFinanza, a microfinance non-profit organization that serves the La Union municipality.
Some of the money for these loans is being raised through coffee. Why coffee? A large percentage of the residents of La Union are coffee farmers and depend on the sale of their coffee for income, however small. Union MicroFinanza also serves these farmers with loans so that farmers may buy fertilizer, land or seed to increase their yield. How it works: UMF buys coffee from the farmers, the coffee is sold in the US for a profit, all profit made is redistributed as loans to the farmers.
Patrick, director of operations, has written a guest blog post here about Micro Loan Coffee.
http://healthnut-em.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-post-coffee-revolution-giveaway.html
You can also visit their website for more information.
http://www.unionmicrofinanza.com/umf/
Sunday, March 28, 2010
man-go
mango: the oblong, sweet fruit of a tropical tree, Mangifera indica, of the cashew family, eaten ripe, or preserved or pickled.
Andrew brought a mango home from work the other night, I was thrilled! I had not had a mango since Honduras, where I had my first mango. I'm sure I had mango before, definitely mango flavored this and that, but nothing like what I had experienced last summer. We shared the fruit for dinner tonight. Though I'm sure this particular mango was not grown in Central America, it could not have tasted more like Honduras. Most of the mangoes I ate in Honduras were gifts. If people liked us when we came to their village, they gave us fruit as gifts. Sometimes bread or coffee, even soda or topeillos (not sure how that is spelled, but it is like a popsicle) if they owned a poparilla (again with the spelling, this is like a small general store). Mangoes were popular though, and so very delicious. There was a large mango tree on the compound where I lived. On days off, it was the popular place to read a book. The branches were too high to reach, but it bore mangoes like any other mango tree. Every once in a while a mango would fall out of the tree, too large and ripe for it to hang from the branches. A peaceful chapter in my book would be suddenly interrupted by a large splat of an over-ripe mango. The fallen mangoes were never salvaged, and I was never lucky enough for one to land in my lap, though many came close. As soon as the mango hit the stone beneath the tree it was broken and invaded by ants and other insects.
If you have not had the pleasure of eating a fresh ripe mango, I urge you to get in your car, find a market that carries mangoes and eat one, after paying for it of course.
Andrew brought a mango home from work the other night, I was thrilled! I had not had a mango since Honduras, where I had my first mango. I'm sure I had mango before, definitely mango flavored this and that, but nothing like what I had experienced last summer. We shared the fruit for dinner tonight. Though I'm sure this particular mango was not grown in Central America, it could not have tasted more like Honduras. Most of the mangoes I ate in Honduras were gifts. If people liked us when we came to their village, they gave us fruit as gifts. Sometimes bread or coffee, even soda or topeillos (not sure how that is spelled, but it is like a popsicle) if they owned a poparilla (again with the spelling, this is like a small general store). Mangoes were popular though, and so very delicious. There was a large mango tree on the compound where I lived. On days off, it was the popular place to read a book. The branches were too high to reach, but it bore mangoes like any other mango tree. Every once in a while a mango would fall out of the tree, too large and ripe for it to hang from the branches. A peaceful chapter in my book would be suddenly interrupted by a large splat of an over-ripe mango. The fallen mangoes were never salvaged, and I was never lucky enough for one to land in my lap, though many came close. As soon as the mango hit the stone beneath the tree it was broken and invaded by ants and other insects.
If you have not had the pleasure of eating a fresh ripe mango, I urge you to get in your car, find a market that carries mangoes and eat one, after paying for it of course.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
hand-i-capped
hand-i-capped: (adj) physically or mentally disabled.
Last night, after weeks of no grocery shopping, I was left with nothing but a tub of butter and few condiments left on my side of the refrigerator. I had completely exhausted all of my alternative food sources (mac and cheese, cereal, frozen pizza, etc) and was left with little choice but to head to Meijer. Meijer because I am a West Michigan girl, the birthplace of Meijer. They also accept Bridge Card, my means of paying for food.
Upon arrival, I head to the back of the store to the milk/eggs/cheese aisle to start my aisle weaving. After choosing my carton of eggs and advancing toward the milk I noticed the man in the wheel chair sitting near the milk refrigerators. His 40 something year old face was smiling, his eyes looking around without purpose, his posture a little crooked. I generally tend not to make eye contact when passing people in public, especially when I am alone. But I kept him in my peripheral vision to make sure I would not run him over with my grocery cart, he was, after all, between me and my beloved milk. By the time I reached him, he had not moved, nor had the expression on his face seem to change. I smiled and said, "Hello." He returned the greeting, inquired about my well being which I also responded to and, as we all do, asked him the same. And then...
He asked if I would be willing to do him a favor. I answered, "Yes, of course!" The favor was to retrieve a half gallon of 1/2% milk for him. No problem. I opened the glass refrigerator door and brought out the milk he requested. He has a basket on his lap that looked almost full of groceries already. He cleared a small corner in the basket and asked me to set the milk in so that it would not fall out of the basket. He thanked me with the warmest of smiles. I asked if there was anything else he needed. He replied, "No, I believe I am all set. Thank you so much for your help."
"You are so welcome." I smiled and continued down the aisle to fetch my own milk.
It wasn't until much later in the evening that I realized what had just happened. I mean, I KNEW what happened, but it had yet to hit me. This man was in a wheelchair, by no choice of his own I'm sure. From what I could gather during our short interaction, it seemed as though his handicap was some sort of spinal injury or deformation, which often condemns one to a wheelchair. It seemed also that the wheelchair was nothing new and this man had been able to take care of himself enough to grocery shop unaccompanied. But he had to ask me to reach for his milk? Yes. The milk he wanted was on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and was pushed back about a foot from the front. He simply could not reach it. He was sitting at the end of that aisle WAITING for someone to come along so he could ask for their help. If no one had come? It was 10 at night, Meijer was not very busy. Then I thought about all of the groceries I had purchased that night and their whereabouts on the shelves. Some items high, some low, popular items at the back of the shelf, the good produce at the top/back of the stand. If this man desired to independently shop in Meijer, or any grocery store for that matter, he must limit his purchases to items within arms reach of wheelchair sitting position. Sit down in a chair, all the way to the back. Now, without leaning, reach as high as you can and as low as you can. That amount of shelf space is what this man is limited to when shopping. Unless of course he asks someone else to reach items for him. Now try this. Next time you're in a grocery store, do not get any items for yourself. Ask strangers to get them for you. You see? That is what this man goes through. And why? Not because he is in a wheelchair, because the designers and architects of such retailers have not taken into consideration clients who may be physically handicapped.
Telling this story to my boyfriend later that night when he came home from work, I started crying. "It really makes you count your blessings, doesn't it?" His words only added to my emotion. Counting my blessings was not what I had in mind. All I could see was how inconsiderate and ignorant the rest of us were for not designing with EVERYONE in mind. I was angry... at anyone and everyone who could have a roll in shelf design and product placement. Store managers, architects, designers, law makers. "Perhaps this is what I will do with my architecture degree," I said to Andrew (that is my boyfriend's name). "I will make a career out of designing buildings which cater to the needs of the physically handicapped."
Of course this revelation of a possible future career was not enough to stop my crying. I continued on a short rant about how unaccommodating this college campus, the entire city for that matter, and the campus of the college I previously attended is to handicapped people. Evidence in the form of stories I had to back up my argument, so on and so forth.
I'm not sure who was more exhausted, me or Andrew, after all of that. In any case, it was time to sleep. At the end of the day, the man in the milk aisle touched my heart and opened my eyes.
Last night, after weeks of no grocery shopping, I was left with nothing but a tub of butter and few condiments left on my side of the refrigerator. I had completely exhausted all of my alternative food sources (mac and cheese, cereal, frozen pizza, etc) and was left with little choice but to head to Meijer. Meijer because I am a West Michigan girl, the birthplace of Meijer. They also accept Bridge Card, my means of paying for food.
Upon arrival, I head to the back of the store to the milk/eggs/cheese aisle to start my aisle weaving. After choosing my carton of eggs and advancing toward the milk I noticed the man in the wheel chair sitting near the milk refrigerators. His 40 something year old face was smiling, his eyes looking around without purpose, his posture a little crooked. I generally tend not to make eye contact when passing people in public, especially when I am alone. But I kept him in my peripheral vision to make sure I would not run him over with my grocery cart, he was, after all, between me and my beloved milk. By the time I reached him, he had not moved, nor had the expression on his face seem to change. I smiled and said, "Hello." He returned the greeting, inquired about my well being which I also responded to and, as we all do, asked him the same. And then...
He asked if I would be willing to do him a favor. I answered, "Yes, of course!" The favor was to retrieve a half gallon of 1/2% milk for him. No problem. I opened the glass refrigerator door and brought out the milk he requested. He has a basket on his lap that looked almost full of groceries already. He cleared a small corner in the basket and asked me to set the milk in so that it would not fall out of the basket. He thanked me with the warmest of smiles. I asked if there was anything else he needed. He replied, "No, I believe I am all set. Thank you so much for your help."
"You are so welcome." I smiled and continued down the aisle to fetch my own milk.
It wasn't until much later in the evening that I realized what had just happened. I mean, I KNEW what happened, but it had yet to hit me. This man was in a wheelchair, by no choice of his own I'm sure. From what I could gather during our short interaction, it seemed as though his handicap was some sort of spinal injury or deformation, which often condemns one to a wheelchair. It seemed also that the wheelchair was nothing new and this man had been able to take care of himself enough to grocery shop unaccompanied. But he had to ask me to reach for his milk? Yes. The milk he wanted was on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and was pushed back about a foot from the front. He simply could not reach it. He was sitting at the end of that aisle WAITING for someone to come along so he could ask for their help. If no one had come? It was 10 at night, Meijer was not very busy. Then I thought about all of the groceries I had purchased that night and their whereabouts on the shelves. Some items high, some low, popular items at the back of the shelf, the good produce at the top/back of the stand. If this man desired to independently shop in Meijer, or any grocery store for that matter, he must limit his purchases to items within arms reach of wheelchair sitting position. Sit down in a chair, all the way to the back. Now, without leaning, reach as high as you can and as low as you can. That amount of shelf space is what this man is limited to when shopping. Unless of course he asks someone else to reach items for him. Now try this. Next time you're in a grocery store, do not get any items for yourself. Ask strangers to get them for you. You see? That is what this man goes through. And why? Not because he is in a wheelchair, because the designers and architects of such retailers have not taken into consideration clients who may be physically handicapped.
Telling this story to my boyfriend later that night when he came home from work, I started crying. "It really makes you count your blessings, doesn't it?" His words only added to my emotion. Counting my blessings was not what I had in mind. All I could see was how inconsiderate and ignorant the rest of us were for not designing with EVERYONE in mind. I was angry... at anyone and everyone who could have a roll in shelf design and product placement. Store managers, architects, designers, law makers. "Perhaps this is what I will do with my architecture degree," I said to Andrew (that is my boyfriend's name). "I will make a career out of designing buildings which cater to the needs of the physically handicapped."
Of course this revelation of a possible future career was not enough to stop my crying. I continued on a short rant about how unaccommodating this college campus, the entire city for that matter, and the campus of the college I previously attended is to handicapped people. Evidence in the form of stories I had to back up my argument, so on and so forth.
I'm not sure who was more exhausted, me or Andrew, after all of that. In any case, it was time to sleep. At the end of the day, the man in the milk aisle touched my heart and opened my eyes.
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