Archive for 2010
LGBTQ Spirit Day: Wear Purple and Say No to Hate
Today, October 20th has been designated as LGBTQ Spirit Day in remembrance of the six young boys who committed suicide in recent weeks because of gay bullying.
There are several Facebook groups related to the event including Wear Purple Day and R.I.P.: In memory of the recent suicides due to gay abuse, wear purple, but even if you don’t wear purple or join any FB groups, please watch this video:
From the Human Rights Campaign:
In just the last few weeks since school started again, too many teenagers have taken their own lives following bullying and harassment because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
How many more young lives will be lost before schools act?
Ask Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: Include gender identity and sexual orientation in anti-bullying programs. Sign the petition now.
Also consider becoming involved with The Trevor Project, the leading national organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.
1. embrace the purple, 2. I Heart Flickr Pink Purple Nail Polish in Heart Bottle Creative Commons, 3. Purple Fabric, 4. Purple Aster Macro, 5. Purple Rose, 6. A Purple Spring Flower, 7. Purple Hole, 8. Purple Saran, 9. Purple Daisy Supper Cropped, 10. purple lippie, 11. Purple Field, 12. Australian purple agapanthus Canberra, 13. Purple Peace Seamless Tile, 14. Purple door, 15. Purple Flowers, 16. purple base, 17. macro green eye with purple m.a.c. and ben nye eyeshadow, 18. Purple Grove, 19. Purple Flowers, 20. Free Purple Lilac Flowers and Converse All Stars Creative Commons
Thinking Pink for My Birthday
Yes, today is the big 3-4 for me, and what better way to celebrate than with a gorgeous pink cupcake and a reminder that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month?
Chocolate cupcakes with rose water meringue buttercream by seelensturm on Flickr
Carolina of Semplicmente Pepe Rosa and Chiara of Ma che davvero? have organized Italian bloggers to post about the Nastro Rosa (Pink Ribbon) campaign today in a concerted effort to raise breast cancer awareness in the Italian blogsophere. I am honored to take part, and I thank Rosa of Bell’Avventura for letting me know of this opportunity.
You can see the full list of participating bloggers at Mamma Felice.
My fellow Eye on Italy podcast hosts and I recently talked about some things Italy is doing to recognize breast cancer awareness month, including turning the Frecciarosa trains pink and offering deals for women passengers; you can also read more about the Promo Rosa and thinking pink at Moscerina.
E come sempre per ulteriori informazioni visitare il sito NastroRosa.it.
For those looking for more information on breast cancer awareness in English, here are some great links from BreastCancer.org:
- Symptoms & Diagnosis
- Treatment & Side Effects
- Day to Day Matters & Tips
- Lower Your Risk
- Discussion Boards, Chat Rooms, Fundraisers, and More
And remember our friend jewelry designer Angela Moore? Well she also does a breast cancer awareness collection, which you can find right alongside her ovarian cancer awareness collection:
Angela Moore Breast and Ovarian Cancer Awareness Collections
And finally, two years ago I did a pink Flickr mosaic to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month — here’s the 2010 version:
1. Pink, Pink, Sunshine…, 2. i love pink BASICS, 3. My pink wall, 4. Happy Pink Curled Party Ribbon On Aqua, 5. Starring PINK, 6. Free Pink Polkadot Bokeh Creative Commons, 7. Pink and Blue, 8. Pink Vanilla Cupcake, 9. Swamp Pink, 10. pink tulips, 11. Free Girl Holding Fun Pink Happy Birthday Balloons Creative Commons, 12. Pink, 13. Feet and Pink Blossoms, 14. Capitol Dome in Pink & Blue, 15. Pink Vanilla Cupcake with Heart, 16. pink roses
Remember, keep thinking pink and teal year round!
21 Easy Ways to Conserve Water: Blog Action Day 2010
A while back I shared 21 Ways to Reuse Coffee Grounds, so I thought I’d recycle (hah!) that theme for this year’s Blog Action Day 2010.
If you don’t know about Blog Action Day, you can learn more about it and related charities at the main site; see my past Blog Action Day posts from 2007 (the environment), 2008 (poverty), and 2009 (climate change); and also check out this video:
If you watched the video, you already know that this year’s theme is water and the reasons why. But for those who didn’t watch the video, from the Blog Action Day website:
Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.
Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.
Are you using more water than you need to? You can find out by using the handy dandy H2O Conserve Water Footprint Calculator (US residents) or the equally handy dandy Water Footprint Network Water Footprint Calculator (international).
The good news is that there are lots of really small, simple things you can do in your everyday life that could end up making a big difference in the long run.
21 Easy Ways to Conserve Water
1. Never have a dripping faucet or leaking toilet. Not only will you save money, you’ll also save water.
2. Install low-flow faucets, showerheads, taps, and toilets.
3. Turn off the water while brushing your teeth, washing your face, shaving, etc.
4. Don’t use the toilet as a rubbish bin — tissues, cigarette butts, etc., can be thrown away instead of flushed.
5. Take quick showers, five minutes or less.
6. Put a bucket in the shower to catch water while you’re waiting for it to wait up; use that water for watering plants or gardens.
7. Don’t discard water until you think about how else you might use it, e.g., to water plants.
8. Wash only full loads in the washing machine and dishwasher.
9. If you drink water from the tap, fill a bottle and keep it in the fridge instead of letting the water run until it gets cold.
10. If you water your lawn, don’t overwater. If you step on the grass and it springs back up, it doesn’t need water yet.
11. Water deeply and use mulch to help retain water in gardens; mulch also reduces weeds.
12. Water in the early morning to prevent too much evaporation.
13. Don’t let the hose run while washing your car.
14. Don’t hose down driveways and sidewalks; sweep away dirt and leaves instead.
15. Insulate your hot water pipes.
16. Don’t let the water run at full blast while rinsing dishes; use a separate basin if possible.
17. Scrape dishes clean of food as best as possible before putting them under water for rinsing.
18. Collect any water in gutters and use for plant or garden watering.
19. Use only the amount of water in cooking (making pasta or tea for example) that you need.
20. Avoid using the garbage disposal; compost your scraps instead or simply throw them away.
21. Practice these water saving tips even when you’re away from home, including when you’re traveling and staying in hotels.
There’s still time to take part in Blog Action Day 2010, but of course your daily, year-round actions are what will make the biggest difference.
Lemon blossom after the rain
Have you been trying to change your water use habits? How?
7 Questions with Indie Chick Lit Author Holly Christine + Book Giveaway
Check out Tuesday Tells It Slant by Holly Christine
Today I’m welcoming author Holly Christine (@hollyrambles) to Bleeding Espresso, and the first thing I must do is apologize; her interview was supposed to have been featured here a *long* time ago, but things kept coming up in my editorial calendar that pushed it back, and I’m truly sorry. But here we are finally, so without further ado…
Holly Christine is an indie author from Pittsburgh; her third book is called Tuesday Tells it Slant and is about a girl who goes back and changes her diary, thereby changing her life. Holly is self-published, and I thought her experiences with writing and self-publishing might interest some of my readers, so let’s get started! See the end of the post for contest details.
1. Tell us a bit about Tuesday Tells it Slant.
Tuesday Tells it Slant is about one girl, one diary and one past. At the age of 23, Tuesday decides that she is tired of her past. She wants to make it into something more desirable. To do this she uses her diary. She packs away her old diary entries and transforms a new past. She becomes enviable, skinny and popular. In doing this, she loses a bit of herself with each new entry. The books flows like puzzle pieces, each narrative, poem and diary entry fitting into the larger picture of Tuesday’s real identity.
2. Where did you get the idea?
The concept itself came about, alarmingly enough, during the drive into work. John Mayer’s Who Says was playing on the radio and I was intrigued by one part of the song: Who says I can’t be free/ from all of the things that I used to be/ Rewrite my history/ Who says I can’t be free? I was thinking of a way for a character to actually rewrite their history and a diary struck me. I have always kept a diary or journal of some sort and have fought the temptation to lie in an entry or two, trying to make up a day that I wanted instead of a day that I actually had.
3. Where did you get the title?
The title came up from an Emily Dickinson poem: Tell all the truth but tell it Slant/Success in Circuit lies. It seemed fitting for the concept of the story. During my senior year of college, I studied Dickinson for an entire semester. Each chapter is divided by a Dickinson poem that relates to memory, hope and fleeing from the past.
Tuesday Tells It Slant on Amazon.com
4. As a writer myself, this is the obligatory question: What is your writing process like?
It’s disturbing. My office becomes a sort of campground; filled with ashes, post it notes and gigantic pieces of paper, all taped together to allow me to fill in the plot holes as I go along. I sit for hours, but never begin before the voice of the narrative hits my head. From there, the muse takes hold of my brain and I don’t stop until the voice stops. She’s very demanding of my time. I also write in silence, but many of my characters’ traits are inspired by music.
5. Why did you choose to self-publish?
With Tuesday Tells it Slant, I never questioned whether to self-publish or not. After I finished cleaning up the prose and editing, I almost immediately made the story available for Kindle. I wanted to know what readers thought of the tale and because it did well with Kindle sales, I made it available in paperback. Self-publishing opens many doors. It isn’t a dead end street. Major publishers later picked up many self-published authors who made their works available for Kindle: Boyd Morrison and John Rector to name two.
6. What or who inspires you as a writer?
I’m inspired by relationships and oddities. I always find mannerisms interesting and often become inspired to write when I am around crowds. It’s very interesting to sit back and observe. I’m also inspired when I’m around other writers or chatting about the writing process.
7. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
I think that many will agree that in order to advance your writing skills, you have to be a comprehensive reader. I also believe in writing every day, even if it’s a bit about what happened during the day that made you happy or angry or something that someone said that stuck with you. It’s like recording life. When you think about it that way, you will develop an arsenal of writing material.
BOOK GIVEAWAY:
Holly has offered to give away a copy of Tuesday Tells It Slant to one lucky Bleeding Espresso reader. Just comment on this post to be eligible; follow @hollyrambles on Twitter and leave me another comment here telling me you’ve done so for an extra entry. The contest is open only to those with U.S. shipping addresses and ends on Sunday, October 17 at 11:59 p.m. CET.
Good luck!
Love Is All Around You
Love is knocking outside your door.
Hearts over the Ionian Sea
Waiting for you…
Love will find a way.
Love on, amici.
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
Calabria Guidebook
Recipes
