Chicken soup to 15K!

What a great fall weekend! It was in the 80's but still filled with fall colors, foods and holiday festivities. A group from Big Peach toured the haunted barn and corn maize this weekend and I was VERY impressed with the fear factor. I felt like I was inside a horror movie!

I also took a nice long run on Sunday along the mountain trails, past the historical Marietta homes and around Marietta Square. I timed it perfectly with the farmer's market and got some granola samples to refuel me. I sure needed it since I basically went from chicken soup to 15K in a few days.

Sunday afternoon as I was doing my homework, I counted up my days left until my final exams and realized I hit the 50 day countdown. I am definitely full of mixed emotions. On the one hand (and probably the dominant hand), I can't wait to be back in Minnesota with Dan, family and friends but on the other hand...Georgia has been a great home to me over the last 1 1/2 years. I guess I just need to soak it all up these next few weeks and cherish all that this amazing state has to offer. Great people, amazing scenery and perfect weather!

I love everything mini

Marietta Square Farmer's Market

Marietta Square

Big Peach vs Corn Maize

Haunted Barn anticipation

More Big Peach fun at the farm

Protesting is in the air

Maybe its the whole Occupy Movement, my college lifestyle or the rise in peanut butter prices but today I was in the mood for a good protest. Usually I like to stand up for something rather than against something but this afternoon, Barnes and Noble forced me to revolt.

I usually go downtown early on Tuesdays to avoid traffic and then do some homework at the bookstore. Today I was feeling a bit sick and uninterested in homework so I wandered over to the magazine section. I was looking for the business section but the labels read: weddings, cooking, fitness, computers, women's interest and men's interest. And just when I was about to leave, I noticed my favorite Inc. magazine (magazine on growing businesses) under the title- Men's Interest.

WHAT?!? That must be a mistake? Nope, all business magazines were under Men's Interest. I stood there a moment and might have even gasped out loud. I couldn't help myself so I asked the woman next to me if she found that offensive.

She responded by saying, "Well, more men probably do read it than women." Now, she was an older woman with a strong southern accent reading a cooking magazine but still....how can you think thats ok!?!

I figured I just needed a larger sample and luckily the lady next to her jumped in and said, "Maybe men just need to be told what they should be interested in."

Then the guy next to her jumped in and said, "I am reading about Travel and that wasn't in my section... does that mean I shouldn't be interested?"
  
What a strange dialog! 

I of course couldn't stop there. I went to Customer Service (after all I am a frequent customer and it is their job to ensure customer satisfaction, right?!) to make them aware of their categorizing "mistake". The woman at the desk (without looking at me) said, "yes, we have heard that complaint before and its really the label for the top shelf not that shelf."  I told her either way it looked misleading and that if others have complained then maybe they should think about changing it. She replied annoyed again by saying, "I will tell management." I responded "and so will I."

Everyday we have to pick and chose what we stand for and what we won't stand for. In general, I believe we can be more effective by promoting rather than protesting and leading by example is the best way to start a movement. However...today I felt like standing up against a sexist (maybe!?!) unintentional but nevertheless mislabeled magazine rack. Yes, I do recognize it is a small and somewhat petty cause but I mean hey...

If you don't stand up for something, you end up standing for nothing...

Check out your local book store and see how they are doing on categorizing. And...in my opinion just label by topic not by who you think should be interested. That's for me to decide! 

Georgia trails are changing

How will you measure your life

I really like some of the take-away messages in this HBR article I read this morning.

How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen 

http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1

 In case you don't have time to read it, here are my favorite quotes:

• "Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success."

• "... it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

• "People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness."

This article fits the theme of my last weeks Family Office Forum conference. I was asked to take notes for the conference titled "How to manage family wealth". It was a conference full of multimillionaires but the end key note speaker, Rabbi Steve Leder, closed with a spectacular lesson that even I could identify with. Some of his main messages are listed below. I enjoyed hearing him speak so much that I think I might even invest in his book "More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul".

·         My favorite message of Steve Leder was "You cannot be great at more than one thing.  You can be good at a lot of thing. You have to choose what you want to be great at and make peace with the things you want to be just good at.

He closed with an activity of writing an ethical will that bequeaths our non-material value and assets to our children and grandchildren and the theme of "thinking about how to live now like a good ancestor". It made me think a lot about how I want to be remembered and the things that we remember people for- not their credentials or net worth but their self worth and contribution.

The speaker then played the song " My old man" by Steve and Bud Goodman and we discussed the line “To hear what he said when I wasn’t listening”. The song made me think of my poppy who passed away and all of the brilliant wisdom he shared through his everyday life's actions. 

Maya Health Toolkit Video on Diabetes

I just spent 8 hours working on this video. Matching the Q'anjob'al Maya language with photos, adding transitions and captions was NOT as easy as I thought. Then at the end I tried to "save to publish" it and it saved as an un-readable media player version. I could not recover the original and had to redo it! Errrr.

Now I have a published streaming draft that has a few caption edit errors. I went back to correct them but was unable to publish my edited version due to the complicated media, audio and caption files! 

So, I guess I will hand this over to the IT people from here. 

However, here is a sneak peak draft. We will be putting it into 4 Maya languages and have both Diabetes and Prenatal education information.

Our Maya Toolkit team (Dr. Lebaron, Mandy McGrew and I) hope to keep driving our12,000 downloads(in only 4 Months).

Check out our Toolkit on the website and the video below that we will be adding soon. And, yes, it is in a Maya language.

Thanks to Gilberto for his translation and voice, the Maya families and community for modeling for pictures, Jennifer Carter (clinic pictures: http://www.jwanderlust.com/), Chris Smith (outdoor family pictures), Shane Peden (tortillas picture), Sarah Anne Guagliardo (beer picture) and Sara Schaefer (toilet picture) and the rest were taken by me randomly.

http://www.brycs.org/maya-toolkit.cfm

National Geographic Traveler

Your Food Photos -- National Geographic Traveler

Months ago I submitted a photo to National Geographic's call for "Taste of Travel" pictures. I submitted multiple but I guess they liked the one below since it made the October issue. 

Its not a spectacular shot but it sure is exotic. It is called boxbol and was served to us in the highlands of Guatemala during our social entrepreneur study abroad trip. It is green leaves boiled and wrapped around a corn mixture with a peanut sauce drizzled on top. It was interesting and all part of the adventures of travel!

October issue on global tastes!

 

 

My Boxbol picture in the October issue

Look for it in this months issue!

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/international-foods/food-photos-traveler/#/19-food-snaps-greens_38757_600x450.jpg

Field of Flags

After work on Saturday a few of us ran to Kennesaw Mountain to check out the memorial for September 11th. It was part of a week-long tribute that began with a parade, ceremony and field of flags memorial. Each flag placed on the base of the battle field represents a life lost during 9.11. It was overwhelming to see the enormous field I run by every day painted patriotic.  I thought we should have mixed in a few peace signs and symbols of tolerance considering our nationalism is often misunderstood and wrongfully presented to the world.  

We took some pictures and talked about that day 10 years ago. I was a freshman in college, still sound asleep before class and remember waking up to screaming in the halls and my roommate running in from the shower to turn on the TV where most of us remained for hours.

Throughout the weekend I thought about the orphaned children, the widowed, the friends and the family. It created a knot in my stomach and that nauseous feeling. 


I kept hoping and praying our country would be peaceful this 9/11. I thought about my friends in high risk target areas, pilots, travelers, and people in the service. 

I empathized with all those who might be wrongfully judged, harassed or looked upon with suspicion and fear this weekend due to their ethnicity or color of their skin. 

I also thought about the evil, the brainwashed, the desperate and the weak...how did you get there and how can our world prevent such evil from exploding ever again?

Kennesaw Mountain GA