A ballgame is a great place to get to know somebody. You talk sideways during the interludes of which baseball has many, and since the game itself is so orderly, you can converse in non sequiturs, and after I told him about my 10-year-old girl, who loves to swim, and we agreed on what a great age 10 is and what intense pleasure a kid is capable of, we got to the grim business of What Do You Do For A Living. He said he was a cop. I said I was unemployed. (You tell people you’re a writer and they tend to clam up.)

“Tough times,” he said. I nodded. We might’ve gotten onto politics then, but we got onto music and Ireland and so forth, but I thought, “Here is a guy the candidates have to talk to this summer.” A cop is a realist and he knows where Rockwell leaves off and surrealism begins, and here is his girl taking a big lead off third base and he loves her so beautifully and unabashedly and wants the world to be there for her when it comes her time to fly.

I’m 65 and have a good life and can’t claim that the Current Occupant has done me much harm at all. It’s when I think about 10-year-old girls I start to get hot under the collar. This clueless man has dug a deep hole for them and doesn’t seem vaguely aware of it. He has spent us deep in a hole, gotten us into a disastrous war, blithely ignored the long-term best interests of the country, and when you think of the 4,000 kids who now lie in cemeteries, and for what? — you start to grind your teeth. For the sake of the girl with the beautiful swing, I hope we get a better president than the disgusting incompetent we’ve wasted eight years of our national life on. Think twice about who you put your arm around, Sen. McCain.

Cheers,
Sam
“That’s the news from Lake Wobegon: where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
Garrison Keillor

One thing I have decided though, is that I’m going to catch up. My friend Adam says he’s about four (4) days ahead in posts. I’m about eight (8) days behind that. I haven’t even finished up writing about my DC trip, I have a really cool idea brewing about Doctors Without Borders, and then there’s all these current events. One way bloggers catch-up a bit is to do something called a “link dump.” This is where, instead of lengthy post of stuff they came up with themselves, they will just post a conglomeration of links they have stumbled across and are collecting dust on their bookmark bookshelf. Some of you might argue that most of my posts integrate this technique with my gratuitous linking. To you, I say, “::silence::.”

I have some dumping to do. And it’s Wednesday, also known as (aka) “hump day”, so I concocted a clever title.

The Hump Dump

Animated street art by Blu. It’s about a seven (7) minute video, but worth every second. Sent to me by my cousin Matt. Pretty fun stuff.

The big-cactus-bloom-in-the-sky has already won awards. Boston area artist Janet Echelman designed the thirty-eight (38) foot tall sculpture that will be part of the new Downtown Civic Space, which is part of the Downtown Phoenix Campus of Arizona State University. Authorities are already on the lookout for David Ortiz jerseys…

The Phoenix Suns Charity gave over $1 million last year to the community, including a $100,000 grant to Valley of the Sun YMCA to continue a $4.3 million renovation of its Chris-Town facility. Oh yeah, and we have a new coach, too.

Last year, the IRS received over 85,000 applications for new nonprofit organizations. I’m a big fan of minimalizing duplication, so that wasn’t a very exciting number for me. The good news, however, is that the ASU Lodestar Center is partnering with the Lodestar Foundation to offer a $250,000 Collaboration Prize. If you know of any two organization like have like-minded interests and could serve their communities better by joining forces, here is a great opportunity to fund that conversation.

The Morrison Institute will be holding another edition of Forum 411: Engaging Arizona’s Leaders today. The topic is Immigration: From Global to Local to Kids, and is produced in collaboration with Community Outreach & Advocacy for Refugees (COAR). The event is today at 4PM.

I’ve talked about it before, but I am a big fan of the responsible use of technology in the Nonprofit Sector. Things like embracing Web 2.0, using New Media to be more effective message-bearers, and exploring Open Source programs and operating systems to cut down on administrative costs and increase efficiency. Well, check this out. Oxford Archeology has recently switched all of its servers over to Ubuntu, and transitioned into using the Open Office software package. The effect? A 20% decrease in IT costs over the last two years…

Hump Dump, Out!