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Charities and Giving – Want to Join Me?

So I’ve been meaning to work on my charity donations for a while now, and I’m only just getting around to it, because sometimes I’m easily-distracted.

But really, this stuff is important. And normally, this isn’t the kind of thing I’d publicize. We don’t do good for the praise of others, and that’s even Biblical (“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them,” Matthew 6:1). So I wasn’t sure I should share this at all. But it occurred to me that if I did, others might be inspired to donate too, or even just become aware of some issues and needs that they weren’t previously aware of. So please read this post in that light.

Charities and Giving – Want to Join Me?

How Do I Love Chocolate? Let Me Count the Ways….

(I wanted to be blogging this week about the Midwest Writers Workshop and the coolness thereof, but I’ve been considerably distracted. So please accept this pre-written post about chocolate in the meanwhile.)

What does dark chocolate do for me?

Well, it provides the caffeine which I don’t get from coffee. (Yeah, I’m one of the maybe four writers in the hemisphere who don’t drink coffee. Makes me the odd one out at conferences and workshops, where I have to find my own soft drink or something.)

How Do I Love Chocolate? Let Me Count the Ways….

Speedy Chocolate!

Endangered Species - Coexist All-Natural Dark Chocolate Covered Hazelnut Toffee 72% Cocoa
Endangered Species – Coexist All-Natural Dark Chocolate Covered Hazelnut Toffee 72% Cocoa

This post will have to go live a few days later, since I ordered some gifts I don’t want to telegraph, but here’s the deal: I ordered from Endangered Species Chocolate and found my order at my driveway about 24 hours later.

Let us count the ways this went right:

Speedy Chocolate!

Earth Day, and I’m off to the Northern Colorado Writers Conference

Grass
(Photo credit: DBduo Photography)

So for Earth Day today, I didn’t mow my grass.

Okay, so I probably wasn’t going to mow today, anyway. I have real grass, the grass that was here when the bison were still eating it, and it don’t need no stinking fertilizer and it don’t need no stinking water — during last year’s record-setting drought, it stayed green long past the time when most grass and many trees in central Indiana were dead or dying — and it’s tougher than most mowers. So it takes a bit of mental gearing up to challenge this grass.

Earth Day, and I’m off to the Northern Colorado Writers Conference
International Justice Mission charity run

I Ran for Freedom. And I Didn’t Collapse.

So this morning was the 5K run to benefit International Justice Mission, combating modern slavery. (Yes, real slavery still exists today. In higher numbers than ever, in fact, but thankfully also as a smaller percentage than ever.)

International Justice Mission charity run
Yes, that’s a six-year-old. Ahead of me. Shuddup.

What you have to know is that I don’t run. Really. So this was a really good cause for me to even sign up. I had planned to do at least a bit of training beforehand, but a rotated pelvis nixed that. And that’s my best excuse for why I was able to take a photo of a six-year-old in front of me in the pack.

I Ran for Freedom. And I Didn’t Collapse.

Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Disaster

I didn’t hear about the explosions at the Boston Marathon right away. It wasn’t until my sister and I were on our way home from a library, where we’d been running a simple jewelry workshop for kids, that she checked Twitter and asked, “What happened at the Boston Marathon? Why would they need blood drives?”

And she read back, and she told me. And my first words were, “Why? What is WRONG with people?!?!”Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Disaster

Rape in Life and Fiction

Tarquinius and Lucretia
Tarquinius and Lucretia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now that’s not a pretentious blog post title or anything…..

As I write this, society (or at least social media) is still reeling with the verdict from the Stuebenville rape case, in which two high school athletes (illegally drinking) sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl (illegally drinking) and were convicted with minor sentences, possibly never carrying the sex offender label, with a warning from the judge to be careful “how you record things on social media that are so prevalent today.” That’s right, kids, if you’re going to rape, just be sure your friends don’t post incriminating evidence on YouTube.

My opinion’s clear enough in the above paragraph on that case, so I won’t spend any more time on that. But the trial prompted me to review a topic I’d been mulling occasionally already, on rape in fiction.

Rape in Life and Fiction