Today I had an experience with a homeless man that touched me profoundly. I am not sharing this story to boast or say what a great person that I am. In fact, daily I walk by panhandlers and beggers and don't even notice or even become annoyed at their persistence in asking for a handout. I have found plenty of reasons to justify not following King Benjamin's council to "succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish". However, today something happened reawakened my idealism and reminded me of the inequality that exists in our society today.
I was walking through Lafayette Park on my way to lunch when I saw an older man rummaging through the garbage. For those of you not in D.C. this park is right along the back side of the White House. It is beautiful and well-maintained and full of security so it seemed a little out of place. Then I noticed that he was taking leftover soup from bowls in the trash can and pouring them into a cup that he was holding. I could not bear to watch this. I opened my wallet and I only had a ten and a twenty. I walked over and offered him the ten dollars and he shook his head no. I asked him why and he asked if I had a dollar bill. I told him I didn't this was all that I had. He held out his hand, and I assumed that he wanted the money, but he wouldn't take it. Instead he took my hand and kissed it. I didn't know what to do, I felt tears coming and I walked quickly across the street to potbelly's. I wanted to buy him a sandwich and get change for my ten. However, by the time that I had returned he was gone and I walked around the park, but was disappointed that I couldn't find him.
I know that there are no easy answers to these kind of problems. I was reminded of an experience last year when I was meeting up with some friends for lunch and as my friend Staci was walking to meet us she ran into a good friend and neighbor from high school asking for money on the street. He was homeless and had been living on the streets of D.C. for a few months. Obviously we all wanted to help him and Staci used all her resources and connections to find him a job and housing and reconnect him with his family. However, he wouldn't accept the help and he was mentally ill, it was really difficult to know what to do to help. Until all of us became disillusioned and decided you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themselves.
These problems are difficult and they have been addressed for years by politicians, activists, non profits and religious groups. There are no easy answers. I studied international relations as an undergraduate and used to really want to work in international development. Now my view has turned more inward as I have realized that there is so much that needs to be done in my own community where I can be more effective. But I ask you, where and how do you feel that you can or have made the most difference in your life?
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Final(ly)
I know I haven't updated for awhile. But let's face it, I'm in finals, and my family came and visited a few weeks ago, which I will have to dedicate a post to as soon as I'm finished. I'm almost done and today, to get me excited for summer, I made a list of projects to begin next week while I'm at work with all my free time when the semester is over.
She is the kind of person that puts everyone else's needs and wants before her own, in fact she always put our wants before her needs. She would pull all nighters with me working on school projects, be my partner in crime for party planning, invite me on bike or ski trips with her fun friends, plant tulip bulbs in the neighbors yards at 6:00 a.m. before anyone in the neighborhood woke up, she still sends me packages just for fun, and she helped found the "shadowlight foundation" which has brought Christmas to hundreds of families. Pretty much whenever I call her she's taking someone to a doctor's appointment, visiting, helping my sister with her horses, or doing genealogy. She's seriously an angel, my inspiration and I love her so much.
Here's Steph and my parents just hanging out in Dubya's rose garden.
- Make a list of summer concerts I want to attend and invite interested friends
- Research a triathlon for August or September
- Plan a weekend beach trip to Rehoboth in June
- Plan my Costa Rica trip with Sarah and Courtney at the end of May
- Plan a Brazil foreign film night/screen on the green
- Research tennis tournaments
- Sign up to be on the event mailings and lunch seminars for think tanks and non profits close to work
- Expand my group project on greening Baltimore’s fleet and work with the city to present it
- Create a VA biking group
- Create an environmental group that looks at the issue from an LDS perspective
She is the kind of person that puts everyone else's needs and wants before her own, in fact she always put our wants before her needs. She would pull all nighters with me working on school projects, be my partner in crime for party planning, invite me on bike or ski trips with her fun friends, plant tulip bulbs in the neighbors yards at 6:00 a.m. before anyone in the neighborhood woke up, she still sends me packages just for fun, and she helped found the "shadowlight foundation" which has brought Christmas to hundreds of families. Pretty much whenever I call her she's taking someone to a doctor's appointment, visiting, helping my sister with her horses, or doing genealogy. She's seriously an angel, my inspiration and I love her so much.
Here's Steph and my parents just hanging out in Dubya's rose garden.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Excuse me Miss, but what exactly are you doing?
This was the greeting I got from a D.C. cop yesterday when I was driving downtown looking for parking after I had picked up my family. He knocked on my window so politely I thought he was going to help me find a parking spot. No, he was knocking on my window to ask me why I had been driving on the left side of the road. I looked at him confused and said "but I thought this was a one way road." I looked to my right and saw a long line of cars being entertained by my mishap and confirmed that there was a double yellow line. I definitely put the car in reverse and backed up half a block to the end of the line my head bowed in shame. Arguably putting myself more at risk than driving on the wrong side of the road.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
GRRRRRR
This weekend a couple of things happened that made me feel like I could justifiably be in a bad mood, and I tried hard to be grumpy and here's why:
- Taxes - as if the sucker punch of finding out that I owe the IRS a significant amount of money wasn't enough, technology decided to go ahead and kick me while I was trying to recover and my e-file was rejected twice and I can't figure out why. I just want to give them my money, why won't they take my money. I'm beginning to question the quote Jeanette showed me by Emerson: "The state is a poor, good beast who means best, It is a poor cow that means well by you, do not begrudge it its hay."
- New Laptop - I purchased a new dell laptop one month ago, and apparently I should have heeded Grayden's doomsday prophecy because sure enough the operating system failed on Friday and I lost all my data. The good news is that I did only have the laptop for a month so I didn't lose that much and most everything is backed up. The bad news is I only had the laptop a month and it makes me fearful of what is yet to come and of course the warranty is only 21 days. Dell's customer and technical support has been less than accommodating as well.
- Dogs - two of them, I don't really need to say anymore on this.
- Losing to Peter at tennis - it was the only thing I could hold over his head in our rivalry, that I had beat him, now I have nothing and he is the most competitive person I know.
- The Corry's (Mom, Dad and Steph) are coming to D.C. this week
- I got an A on my midterm and school is over in four weeks
- Serendipitously running into several friends randomly in downtown D.C. the mall and Kabob Palace this weekend
- Roommates who offer to take me for a ride in the bug with the top down and buy me ice cream (but wait I was off sugar this week, it really was the perfect storm of bad events)
- Spring blossoms and warm weather
- This song that Kristjan introduced me to
- Haircut and a new dress
- I have a week in Costa Rica to look forward to next month with Sarah and Courtney.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The world as my class room...
Recently I've been trying to take advantage of my downtown office location and attend more of the ubiquitous free lunch and dinner seminars and events that are held at different organizations downtown. There are opportunities for education, entertainment and networking in pretty much any field you're interested in. Here are some of the perks: you get to rub shoulders with people who you can name drop later (that's a joke, no one outside of small policy circles would know who these speakers are), yummy free food, learning new, albeit generally useless, facts that may impress your friends later, avoid homework and put myself in uncomfortable social situations.
The uncomfortable social situation one has been a good way to push myself out of my mini-BYU world that I live in because some of these events I have attended alone. I soon realized that it's really hard for me to talk to guys that aren't Mormon. I need to work on building a small talk repertoire that works better for a general crowd. This is how the last couple of conversations with guys I've met at these events has gone: Names, jobs, where we're from, if they're from the west we talk about how we miss the west and differences between east and west, school and then there is two seconds of silence, I freak out and say I've got to go. And by go, I mean go get a mini-quiche and stand alone in the corner and try to avoid further eye contact. Yes I am 26 not 16, but I'm working on this.
Last week I attended a movie and reception for the movie Illicit: The Dark Side of Trade. It was a fascinating film at National Geographic about the illegal trade, which is estimated to total one trillion dollars a year. No small sum, but it talks about the effects on us as consumers of sometimes tainted products and on innovation and creativity if intellectual property cannot be protected. Here's the trailer:
Last night I attended The Human Footprint. This visually showed how much an American will consume in a lifetime. The presentation was creative, but the dramatic effect faded a little after the first twenty minutes, we ended up leaving early. It definitely helps to reinforce the fact that Americans consume a ridiculous amount of energy and goods, but at the same time it can be a little depressing because there's not a whole lot you can do to change the fact that we have to shower, eat and cloth ourselves. But I think we can all take steps to decrease our consumption without negatively affecting our standard of living. Here's the trailer and a few visuals for this film.
I have also been attending lunch events at different think tanks and non profit groups in the district. I will not bore you with anymore details, but I will put in a plug for those of you living in D.C., come learn with me!
The uncomfortable social situation one has been a good way to push myself out of my mini-BYU world that I live in because some of these events I have attended alone. I soon realized that it's really hard for me to talk to guys that aren't Mormon. I need to work on building a small talk repertoire that works better for a general crowd. This is how the last couple of conversations with guys I've met at these events has gone: Names, jobs, where we're from, if they're from the west we talk about how we miss the west and differences between east and west, school and then there is two seconds of silence, I freak out and say I've got to go. And by go, I mean go get a mini-quiche and stand alone in the corner and try to avoid further eye contact. Yes I am 26 not 16, but I'm working on this.
Last week I attended a movie and reception for the movie Illicit: The Dark Side of Trade. It was a fascinating film at National Geographic about the illegal trade, which is estimated to total one trillion dollars a year. No small sum, but it talks about the effects on us as consumers of sometimes tainted products and on innovation and creativity if intellectual property cannot be protected. Here's the trailer:
Last night I attended The Human Footprint. This visually showed how much an American will consume in a lifetime. The presentation was creative, but the dramatic effect faded a little after the first twenty minutes, we ended up leaving early. It definitely helps to reinforce the fact that Americans consume a ridiculous amount of energy and goods, but at the same time it can be a little depressing because there's not a whole lot you can do to change the fact that we have to shower, eat and cloth ourselves. But I think we can all take steps to decrease our consumption without negatively affecting our standard of living. Here's the trailer and a few visuals for this film.
I have also been attending lunch events at different think tanks and non profit groups in the district. I will not bore you with anymore details, but I will put in a plug for those of you living in D.C., come learn with me!
Monday, March 31, 2008
Best practices week
Right now I should be asleep. But I realized due to bad sleeping habits I tend to get into over the weekend (staying up until 2 and sleeping in until 10) I can't sleep. So naturally I started thinking about goals and improving my life, okay I wish it were more naturally, but tonight I actually was thinking about this. I thought about how I'll get an idea of how to improve my life and I'll resolve to implement this everyday for the rest of my life. I try and it lasts maybe two days until I realize that this is totally impractical. It hasn't worked yet and I don't know why I expect that it will start working now. So I decided I need to not make five huge lifestyle goal changes at once, and I need to not expect that I can make goals that are all or nothing.
My new goal is to implement one "best practice" a week. This would be something that I wish I would do everyday for the rest of my life, but call me a pessimist, but I realize I won't. I hope that by following these best practices for a week, I can realize the effect it has on my life and at least make it somewhat of a more regular habit. Here is the beginning of my list, some are definitely easier than others, I figure I'll do easy, hard, easy, hard. What are some of your ideas?
My new goal is to implement one "best practice" a week. This would be something that I wish I would do everyday for the rest of my life, but call me a pessimist, but I realize I won't. I hope that by following these best practices for a week, I can realize the effect it has on my life and at least make it somewhat of a more regular habit. Here is the beginning of my list, some are definitely easier than others, I figure I'll do easy, hard, easy, hard. What are some of your ideas?
- Pack lunch everyday for work
- Work out one hour a day
- No desserts
- Sleep eight hours every night
- Wake up at 7:00 a.m. each morning
- No internet after work (unless it's homework related)
- Scripture study one half hour a day
- No money spent on conspicuous consumption (only food other daily necessities)
- Eat Vegetarian
- Don't drive a car
- No gchat
- Call or email one friend I haven't talked to in the last three months each day
- Ten minute prayers night and day
- Listen to only classical music or church talks on my ipod
- One sincere, thought out act of service each day
- Don't go to bed until my room is completely clean
- Don't leave work until my desk is completely cleared off
- Don't leave a dish in the sink
- Invite one person that I don't normally hang out with to every activity I go to that week
Monday, March 24, 2008
Adventures with interns
Since I started my job almost (gasp) a year and a half ago, I have worked with the same four people, but occasionally we get an intern, it's fun to mix things up and add a little youth to the office, since the rest of my co-workers are all older than my parents. This last week we had a one week intern from Georgia, and she was a treat, for so many reasons. Thanks to gchat I was able to give my friends instant updates and ask for tips on what to do with my intern.
First I try to validate my need for an intern:
RKB: Since when did you have enough work to need/deserve an intern?
me: Ouch Ryan. I have been doing very important things today...ok not really.
RKB: just be sure to use and abuse him/her
me: of course send them to the copy machine to copy a 1000 page book
RKB: yes, and make sure it is a bound book so they will have to do it one page at a time
PK: I wouldn't really call your job work
me: whatever, I have an intern, I have arrived
PK: ooohh an intern, send em out to get you food
me: she did bring me back a cookie the other day
PK: How sweet
me: I'm a good boss
PK: so not a male thing to do
Then the intern comes...but I don't really know what to do with her. She just sits there and stares at me blankly (I know, I do have the tendency to cause people to become awestruck)
Luckily Grayden was full of ideas
G: just use for entertainment, make her stand on one leg, out in the middle of the office. Or sing "come sail away with me" when anyone says a secret word.
How I wished I worked the friends....
Then the fun really began when I related stories from my intern, who it turns out was a college freshman. We walked to lunch one day and she told me that she had thought about law school, but she was worried that she would be convict someone of a crime then they would escape from prison and murder her...right that happens all the time.
G: you should tell your intern that she's right to fear becoming a lawyer, I have to avoid death squads almost daily
me: but is that because you're a lawyer, or your mysterious/shady past
G: oh, well yeah, I guess you are right, but I always thought it was the lawyer thing
you should tell your intern that you have a friend who is a lawyer and who was almost kidnapped by the taliban and survived attempts on his life by the Fedayeed Saddam and who has a wicked scar on his chest from a knife attack
DJN: I love your intern, assassinated? WTF
me: and she was dead serious
DJN: Did you laugh
me: best intern moments from today
a) she brought me back a cookie from her lunch at potbelly's, I could really get used to this
b) she asked me if on a white house tour you get to meet the president
c) she told me that office supply stores smell better than any other store
DJN: spectacular on all fronts
Note: To those who I quoted, there have been some minor edits and combining of multiple chats.
And on an unrelated note. Happy Easter. Easter is fast becoming one of my favorite holidays and a tradition has begun for Sarah and I to play Easter Bunny. I think that was actually one of my very first blog posts. So we did it again this year followed by an easter dinner for 25, eggceptional! And nothing says spring like a picture of us posed among daffodils.
First I try to validate my need for an intern:
RKB: Since when did you have enough work to need/deserve an intern?
me: Ouch Ryan. I have been doing very important things today...ok not really.
RKB: just be sure to use and abuse him/her
me: of course send them to the copy machine to copy a 1000 page book
RKB: yes, and make sure it is a bound book so they will have to do it one page at a time
PK: I wouldn't really call your job work
me: whatever, I have an intern, I have arrived
PK: ooohh an intern, send em out to get you food
me: she did bring me back a cookie the other day
PK: How sweet
me: I'm a good boss
PK: so not a male thing to do
Then the intern comes...but I don't really know what to do with her. She just sits there and stares at me blankly (I know, I do have the tendency to cause people to become awestruck)
Luckily Grayden was full of ideas
G: just use for entertainment, make her stand on one leg, out in the middle of the office. Or sing "come sail away with me" when anyone says a secret word.
How I wished I worked the friends....
Then the fun really began when I related stories from my intern, who it turns out was a college freshman. We walked to lunch one day and she told me that she had thought about law school, but she was worried that she would be convict someone of a crime then they would escape from prison and murder her...right that happens all the time.
G: you should tell your intern that she's right to fear becoming a lawyer, I have to avoid death squads almost daily
me: but is that because you're a lawyer, or your mysterious/shady past
G: oh, well yeah, I guess you are right, but I always thought it was the lawyer thing
you should tell your intern that you have a friend who is a lawyer and who was almost kidnapped by the taliban and survived attempts on his life by the Fedayeed Saddam and who has a wicked scar on his chest from a knife attack
me: and she was dead serious
DJN: Did you laugh
me: best intern moments from today
a) she brought me back a cookie from her lunch at potbelly's, I could really get used to this
b) she asked me if on a white house tour you get to meet the president
c) she told me that office supply stores smell better than any other store
DJN: spectacular on all fronts
Note: To those who I quoted, there have been some minor edits and combining of multiple chats.
And on an unrelated note. Happy Easter. Easter is fast becoming one of my favorite holidays and a tradition has begun for Sarah and I to play Easter Bunny. I think that was actually one of my very first blog posts. So we did it again this year followed by an easter dinner for 25, eggceptional! And nothing says spring like a picture of us posed among daffodils.
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