Last week, Brian Buchanan from Enter the Haggis lost his fiddle. Whether it was simple misadventure or a criminal act has yet and may never be determined. Last night, Brian posted an appeal on the ETH website for donations. He included special premiums for different donation levels up to a private concert for anyone who would donate $1,000. The appeal was picked up on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere and reposted throughout the night. I noticed this morning that friends of mine who aren’t even fans had picked up and reposted the appeal on Facebook.

It took just 15 hours to raise enough money to replace the fiddle.

Brian has spent a ton of time and effort establishing ETH on the social networks. ETH has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and a bunch more sites. He figured out a way to stream the majority of their shows live and generally has achieved a level of accessibility that far surpasses most bands.

Today, he reaped the benefits of that effort. It’s a testament not only to his fans and his music, but to the incredible power of social networking.

Have fun shopping, Brian!

p.s. Brian suggested this morning that those who didn’t get the chance to donate should consider donating to school music programs. The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation does fantastic work in this area, if you wish to donate.

So Mary Louise Parker just did a tasteful, if somewhat sexist, photo shoot for Esquire. The pictures are sweetly luscious (but Mary, wearing only an apron in the kitchen? Seriously?). What redeems this bit of fluff is a marvelous short essay she wrote, “A Thank-You Note to Men.” (As a web writing professor, I must note it’s a PITA to read, but worth it…). It’s below the photo shoot on the page linked above.

It will be interesting to see how many hits this post receives because as Julia Turner observed in Slate magazine’s Browbeat blog, no matter how highbrow Esquire might pretend to be, their “search optimization” tactics reveal the real truth. We’ll see if mine return the same results.

Want to know why I love Enter the Haggis so very much? Check out this video from last night’s performance at Jonathan’s in Ogunquit, Maine. There’s a lot to be said for guys that sound just as good spontaneous and acoustic as they do rehearsed and plugged in. A *lot*. So many acts do one thing and one thing only with just the slightest of variations in their style. Listen to a top 40 radio station for an hour and you’ll see what I mean. But Enter the Haggis draws from a wider range of styles and traditions than just about any artists I’ve yet seen. To say it’s impressive is a vast understatement.

So, yeah…check it out and let me know what you think.

It seems to me that the more loudly a person espouses a particular philosophy of life, the more pressure they’re going to be under to live up to their own credo. This applies not only to the treatment they *accept* from others, but to the treatment they *bestow* upon others. This is why I choose not to have a grand, sweeping, one size fits all philosophy. I try to take things as they come, judge them individually and react accordingly as the situation demands.

I also don’t believe in asking the universe or a higher power to manifest anything in my life. I prefer to ask the powers for guidance on how to manifest those things for myself. A fine distinction, I realize, but one that’s important to me because then if things go wrong I only have myself to blame. I have come to believe that it is only in looking inward, rather than casting outward, that true change can be manifested.

The threefold law, karma, etc. seem to me to involve some sort of expectation. “If I do this, I will get this…” I don’t believe that. I believe it’s incumbent upon each individual to act as their conscience directs and most importantly, accept, internalize and learn from the consequences of their actions. For me, that means striving to treat every individual with decency and respect, offering amends when I fail, speaking the truth both internally and to others, and most importantly, attempting to refrain from expecting the same behavior from others as my values may not be theirs.

Life is all about the journey. About the trying, the striving, the changing and the growing. I can be perfect when I’m dead.

That’s my two cents. As always, I respect that others may walk a path more suitable for them.

From Dave S. on Twitter who got it from Enter the Haggis comes this post on making new fans. How to do it right and how to screw it up…

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of metaphors for polyamory that are used to explain things to monogamous folks. One is that love is not a pizza. It’s not shared out into finite slices that are consumed and gone. The other is that you can have multiple children and still love them all. I think I’ve come up with another one.

Anyone who has ever been in a successful relationship with someone who has a passion for what they do understands polyamory, though they may not realize it. Artists, musicians, politicians, activists and actors immediately come to mind, but it could be any profession (or even hobby) that a person is deeply committed to doing. It’s so deeply entrenched in who they are that they would be a lesser person without it.

Being in a healthy relationship with such a person requires the acceptance that the passion will always share space with the relationship. Hopefully it will be on an equal footing most of the time. But likely there will be ebbs and flows, immersions and coming up for air. It requires being secure in the knowledge that the passion does not detract from the relationship, but stands alongside it sharing resources and time.

Another familiar adage in the poly world is that while love is infinite, time and resources are not. In the same way that some monogamous couples balance their personal relationship against the passion of one or both the partners, poly people do the same. Only for us, it’s balancing between partners.

So next time you catch yourself saying, “I just can’t understand polyamory,” take a moment and imagine that the 4lb smallmouth your husband plotted to catch all winter is actually a woman. What compromises did you make to help him acheive his goal? How far were you willing to bend to accomodate his needs while ensuring your own were being met? Could you really ask him to stop fishing forever to be with you, knowing that would kill part of his spirit?

If you can imagine that, you know what it’s like to practice polyamory.

Some of you many not know that this blog is actually an experiment in preparation for a blog I plan to launch later this year. I’m using it to try out things like WordPress plugins, Google analytics, and various methods of formatting posts, etc. before I launch my “for profit” blog later this year.

I’ve registered the domain demetershearth.com and plan to offer my own brand of information and advice on homekeeping, cooking, shopping, and general life management. It will focus on doing these tasks with joy and intention, and viewing them as life-enriching rather than burdensome.

I will not be posting a lot of “you should feel guilty if you’re not doing this” or “be warned about the dangers of that.” My blog will be all about embracing the things that make sense in one’s life and not worrying about the rest. In my opinion, our society deals out way too much guilt and fear as it is. I’m thinking about subtitling it “the anti-Good Housekeeping.” (If you’ve read a women’s magazine lately, you know what I’m talking about!)

I’d love to hear comments in this space about what you all think about this idea.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately on cliques. You’d think a person wouldn’t have to think about this beyond high school, but I suppose it’s the nature of people to form tight-knit groups. The thing is, what makes a clique different from a close group of friends? I think the answer boils down to inclusion and acceptance.

When I moved to the Midwest in 2006, it took me awhile to find friends. I had some bad experiences, failed attempts, and false starts but eventually ended up with a circle of close friends that I mesh with like nobody’s business. Oddly, many of the folks in this group have known one another for years, some since high school.

Despite that, they’ve warmly welcomed several new people, including me, into their circle. I’ve noticed that each new person is accepted as their unique and authentic self and valued for what they bring to the group. There’s not really a hierarchy or pecking order. (I realize this might be a rare thing, but it is certainly a beautiful one, and much appreciated by me.)

So what makes a clique different? I think cliques are all about exclusion. Or at the least, acceptance with strings attached. Uniqueness is not something that’s appreciated in a clique. To join, you must accept the identity and labels they impose upon you rather than be accepted as an individual.

Deviate from that strict, often unspoken, social contract, and you run the risk of being summarily kicked out of the group. This can happen directly by shunning or snubbing or by more insidious methods like gossip, backbiting and drama until the person just gets fed up and leaves.

In a clique, there’s a distinct sense of “group identity.” There are rules, spoken and unspoken, and generally a leader of some kind who wields the power of ultimate acceptance. There is often little room for partial participation. Either you’re in or you’re out. There is also often a sense of moral, physical or mental superiority; the group perceives they are better or more important than others.

But most importantly, there’s a social contract with a clique. To join, you must accept the identity and labels they impose upon you rather than be accepted for the uniqueness only you can bring. Whether that’s worth it probably depends on an individual’s personality. Not everyone is as anti-authority and libertarian as I am.

Part two of this essay will discuss the flip side. Are people wrongly accused of being a clique simply because of jealousy or insecurity? Are the rules of a clique necessarily wrong, or are they just a different social construct of friendship?

Unlike MO State Rep Cynthia Davis, Will Allen has a positive attitude and real-world solutions to the problem of urban food deserts. The world needs more people like this guy.

Rep. Davis would do well to read this article and remediate some of her ignorance. For example, Mr. Allen mentions that, for one housing project in Milwaukee, the nearest grocery store is *three miles* away. For someone making minimum wage without a car, that’s a trip of near wagon-train proportions. Yet there are numerous fast-food restaurants within easy walking distance of the project. There’s something deeply classist about that. Access to wholesome food should be a baseline human right for every person.

I realize I’ve been on a rip about Rep. Davis lately, but it’s because I think the problem of urban hunger is incredibly important. Rep. Davis is probably no more ignorant than most middle- and upper-class Americans about the problem of urban hunger. She just happened to speak up about what she thought she knew. I’m constitutionally incapable of allowing that kind of ignorance to propagate.

In a follow up to my post last week about Missouri state rep Cynthia Davis and her “interesting” attitudes about childhood hunger, I offer Steven Colbert’s commentary from last night.

I would like to issue a public challenge to Ms. Davis to live on the equivalent of a food stamp budget for a month. Get back to me afterwards, Ms. Davis, and let me know if your attitudes have changed. If you would like to contact Ms. Davis you can do so at:

Cynthia.Davis@house.mo.gov
Phone: 573-751-9768
Post Office Mail: 201 W. Capitol Ave., Room 112, Jefferson City, MO 65101