Uh Oh, Christmas Is Coming
Dec 3rd, 2007 by Eats Wombats
Google’s blog has a nice story about how the tradition of NORAD tracking Santa began. It’s created a Google software gadget that will allow you to track Santa’s progress on your desktop. I’m trying to imagine a child of the future recalling the magic of seeing Santa’s progress tracked electronically and I just can’t see it.
I recall, in the magic department, that we left Santa a wee dram and a piece of Christmas cake, and a carrot for the reindeer. Their disappearance was wonderful and convincing and, no doubt, fun for my parents.
Christmas has now officially started in our house. The Christmas cake was made yesterday, the first Christmas card arrived on Saturday (Already? It’s mildly irritating how some people show off their superior organization skills every year!), and I have done my first ever serious Christmas shopping on the web. This year we will watch The Snowman melt on a new, flat screen TV, joining millions guiltily contributing a bit more to the melting of icecaps.
You can watch the video on YouTube, if you can spare 27 minutes.
I was happy to hear The Snowman’s author, Raymond Briggs, say in a radio interview this week that he had declined to agree to the making of a sequel and that he deplored the practice. A small bit of magic thus remains, undiluted.
But not for all. Even in the UK there are 3.8m children living in poverty.
I will do some Christmas shopping here.
A goat perhaps? But, dammit, I’d like to see the goat! If more people could see more goats perhaps they would they give more? I will also invest here.
In addition, I would like to give to an organization that supports the education of women in Afghanistan. I agree with this analysis, that it is “everyone’s problem” and it seems that we are failing that country, and in the long run ourselves, badly. If we could spend even 1% of what is spent on arms on the education of poor women instead, the world would change in a generation.
Of course, I am not going to give my family gifts of child vaccines, goats or anti-malarial mosquito nets! I just want to feel that we gave back.
All of us in the developed world are millionaires, comparatively speaking, thanks to our good fortune in having chosen our parents carefully. Most of us would find tears running down our face if we could see first hand what a difference we could make to the life of someone truly poor, in a place like Bangladesh for example.
Matt Mullenweg, the dot dom wunderkind developer of Wordpress, the free software used for this blog, is giving back; via an interesting organization too.
Which reminds me: there’s a series on philanthropy Channel 4 television here at the moment called The Secret Millionaire.
Each week, a millionaire goes undercover to live anonymously as part of a community and then he or she decides who to give their hard-earned cash to.
I’ve only seen one episode though I have recorded a few for later. It was uplifting tear-jerker that made everybody feel better. I liked these comments from the Channel 4 web site
I just love this show – the goodness in it makes me cry and realise how lucky I am and how I, in my small way, can help those less fortunate than myself
and, from a single mother of modest means
…I could help other people so much and make a real difference to their lives which is an amazing thing to be able to do. I feel I need to do something more – not for myself but so I can help other people in the same way the people featured on this fabulous documentary do. I have a new goal, and for that, channel 4, I thank you.
You can see on Kiva’s website that they are now only taking donations of $25… because they are SO SUCCESSFUL they have more potential donors than they can handle. I’m sure they’ll catch up with more programs linked in and so more people needing loans. I think it’s the cleverest thing I ever saw. I originally heard about it in a Nick Kristoff column in the NYTimes… which linked to a video of him getting a haircut in Kabul from a barber he’d loaned to, and buying bread from the baker he’d invested in — both through Kiva.
Kiva also has a program where volunteers can go visit the businesspeople and file stories/updates/photos about how it’s going for them… again, a very clever twist. One more step in making-the-world-smaller-and-more-connected in these horrible times.
By the way, when I discovered that there were several would-be borrowers with my daughter’s name I decided to make that my criteria for lending — which was kind of fun. But later I branched out…
I’m going to give Kiva another try, but almost a year ago, when I was looking to make my own microloan, the web site was so bad it made me ferocious with frustration. More recently people have been saying better things about it, this being the latest. Perhaps it is time to try again. Or to try looking harder for alternatives.
Jeremy,
Best of luck to you with Kiva. I’ve found it works great but it hasn’t been more than about 6 months or so that I’ve been trying it.
Here’s another one that’s a straight gift (with Kiva you get your money back… if you want it… and if you don’t you can lend it out again).
http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.204586/
I give all my “hard to buy for” people goats and geese and sheep and bees through Heifer.org… it’s a lot of fun and people really like it.