John Spencer on the Seattle Sounders - Rivalry Builds

Seattle has the best atmosphere in MLS with amazing fans that have created the closest thing to the European soccer atmosphere in the league. They are probably my favorite team after my hometown Rapids, but I have to admit I agree with (and love) John Spencer's comments here. Probably because he is a Colorado Rapids Gallery of Honor member for his playing days there.

Bemused Spencer blasts Sounders as full of excuses | MLSsoccer.com

Here is a tribute to his time in Colorado.

Bicycle Dreams Trailer

"There is no way these people are normal. They are the seekers of the new realm, or plane."

Nike Better World

Love it!



http://www.nikebetterworld.com/

A History of the World in 100 Seconds on Vimeo

The images in the video are based on Wikipedia articles that have both dates and coordinates. Amazing visualization.

A History of the World in 100 Seconds on Vimeo

A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.

Civil Religion in Jordan - a Wordle of my Senior Paper

I found a copy of my Senior Paper, so I wordled it. I applied Robert Bellah's concept of Civil Religion to Habitat for Humanity Jordan, and their work building bridges (and homes) between Muslim and Christian communities there.

Philip, who was the executive director of Habitat then, was also the person I worked with at EGT on the R3 Recycling program.

Como Tu

Like You

By Roque Dalton
(Translated by Jack Hirschman)

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.

in the original Spanish

Como Tú 

Por Roque Dalton

Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.

También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mí,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.

This poem is by Roque Dalton, I copied this text from kasamaproject.org after finding them via a Google search.

OBUGs, Literacy for Environmental Justice, and Hands On Bay Area

I have been spending time volunteering for a variety of organizations over the last few months through a volunteer aggregator called Hands On Bay Area. I have two goals, to get a (brief) experience of many different organizations offering a variety of services and ultimately to focus on one and take on more substantive volunteer projects. Below are pictures from two recent projects:

Literacy for Environmental Justice:
LEJ work with youth to educate them on habitat restoration and sustainable food production. They have a full scale nursery where they prepare plants to be transplanted in areas like the one we were working on below. They collect the seeds for these plants locally and use them to push back invasive species like fennel.

The youth are teaching us about the grasses and shrubs we will be planting. The area we were working in is one of the more established sites, the native plants have started to take hold again.

Some local municipalities have started to contract with LEJ to provide local plants for open space projects, allowing them to hire some of the students who come through their program. 

Oakland Builds Urban Gardens:

OBUGs works with middle schools in Oakland to convert part of their parking lot or pavement into garden space which they incorporate into the school's curriculum. Much of the produce from the garden goes to the cafeteria. OBUGs teaches kids about how fresh food and activity are part of a healthy lifestyle. 

OBUGs staff staff teach students how to care for the garden. Volunteers also do a lot of garden maintenance on the weekends, including building new beds. 

Tom and Preston building individual boxes so students can decide what they want to grow. It's hard work, you have to rest too :)

You can't do much better than spending the morning working in the garden on a nice day. We also trimmed down a big Rosemary bush and we some home. It was spilling out of my backpack which made us very popular and we traded Rosemary for cookies and pie at lunch!

The parking lot is converted to a growing space by covering the ground with bark mulch and then building raised beds.