Voices of Courage

For those of you who helped out with the Imagining Ourselves project (and that's a lot of you), you'll be pleased to know it won another award...the Voices of Courage award.

You'll note from the link that it appears to be an award for an individual. But what I said in my acceptance speech (which I actually had team members read as I was unable to fly to SF for the ceremony) is that I was accepting the award on behalf of the literally thousands of people in more than 100 countries whose acts of generosity made the project's success possible. It's extremely humbling when we step back and think about how profoundly dependent we all are on one another, and how the little things we do (that we don't even take seriously ourselves, usually) add up to huge impact. If you even spent a second forwarding the website to friends, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. You helped. We depended on that kind of thing.

Thank you.

Dunkin Donuts pulls Keffiyah ads

Loyal blog readers (of which there are clearly millions for my blog) will remember a key previous post on keffiyahs and the seeming oddness of them popping up as a purely commercial fashion symbol across Europe.

So particularly bizarre today to see (thanks, Lee) that Duncan Donuts has pulled an ad showing Rachael Ray in a keffiyah because conservative commentators said it was "too Arab."

There are too many bizarre things to point out here. So I'll let you discern them all for yourselves.

body language and home

Okay, so the real reason I haven't written in a few months is that... I admit it... I've fallen for London.

Is it home? I don't know. (Probably not, although you never know.) Do I love it here? Yes. I love the long spring days, the feeling of being at the world's doorstep, the unbelievable plethora of amazing art to see and watch and hear, the level of debate and concern about what's going on in the world, the stained-glassed windows on the buildings on my street, the open-air markets in Hackney, the wonderfully creative programs on the radio right now, nearly midnight on a Monday...

And when you feel at home and comfortable, you tend to notice things just a little bit less, and feel less of a need to comment on (or criticize) your surroundings.

I realized this when, the other day at the office, a new American volunteer walked in and introduced herself. She entered the room chest held slightly high, a big beaming smile, a sort of here-i-am body language, and gave everyone a big wave.

And my own body, involuntary, recoiled. Not in horror or shock, but a kind of confusion. It was a moment of cognitive dissonance. I've adjusted, physically, to being here-- or so this moment taught me. More loud, typically American, body language was momentarily unfamiliar to me. And in a split second, I realized it shouldn't be unfamiliar, and placed it. But there was this moment where I couldn't tell whether the culture she was coming from was my culture-- and then somehow the memory kicked in that it indeed was.

Amazing how adaptable human beings are.

(And amazing how much of a simultaneous blessing and burden it is to keep moving from place to place and culture to culture... and keep readjusting. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this routine up.)

FT piece on petitions

From two weekends ago-- click here.