Strikes for Shelter - Bowling Event Tomorrow

I'm willing to bet it's been a good long while since you picked up a bowling ball and chucked it down the aisle...

I'm also willing to bet that in this cold Boston slump time we call winter, you've been brainstorming unique ways to get out of your house and keep your heart pumping until we see a little heat in these parts...

So, meet us at the Milky Way - a hip candle pin bowling alley in Jamaica Plain that's paired up with the tasty Bella Luna where I had a amazing Insalata di Amour not too long ago.

We'll be there 6:30-9pm this Thurs (feb.19th). Tickets are $20 and includes pizza, bowling, and shoes. Beverages will, of course, be available for purchase.

A little FYI, parking is free after 5 in the HiLo parking lot next door and taking the T to JP is not as daunting as you might think. I live out off the green line and have ventured to JP a number of times safely and easily and had a blast.

Some last tidbits:
A) This event will benefit Christopher's Haven, a place for children to live during cancer treatment.
2) The legendary Milky Way is actually moving after March. You're running out of time to get in before they move!

All were Uncorked! last night...

It’s hard to believe people could say no to a ticket advertising wine, food, music, and art for a measly $20. It’s a steal! But when you add torrential downpour, an event planner begins to worry that people may decide lounging on their couch sounds more appealing then fighting a battle against the weather—you just can’t outsmart good ol’ mother nature.

Nevertheless, I felt relief as courageous souls came up the ramp of Gallery XIV, umbrella in hand, cold and wet, yet surprisingly eager to participate in On Your Feet Project's 2^nd Annual wine-tasting event, Uncorked!

Erin O’Shea rocked the wine tasting. I mean, it’s hard not to be loved when you are offering samples of beautiful Italian wines, but Erin added so much flavor to the already delicious wines we were tasting. She was a treat, and entertained us all with her wit and charm--not to mention the wine she endlessly poured for us.

William Kerr, the director of Gallery XIV, must be thanked. The exhibit on display at his gallery, “a politic,” created an ideal setting for the event, with pieces like “Abraham Obama”—a fusion of the portrait of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama—raising eyebrows and making it easy to start conversations with strangers …always a plus!

Nicole Zuraitis’s soothing, flavorful jazz set the tone for evening, creating a wonderful atmosphere to drink, eat, and mingle. Her recently released CD, Spread the Word, was on sale for the event—a beautiful compilation of her jazz vocalist pieces.

But most importantly, must I say it, was the food--the glue that holds people together—and makes them feel like they have something to do when they feel nervous and don’t know a soul to talk to! Brie, grapes, and other assorted cheeses and crackers proved to be a hit. Sponsors like Johnnie's Market and Japonais Bakery and Cafe in Brookline contributed food for the evening. Also of note were the fabulous Italian Cookies baked by Katelyn Nadeau's mother. They were had by all, and in vast quantities. Patrons left full and satisfied.

With all of the great art, food, music and wine, Uncorked! was simply divine. We were able to raise approximately $1300 for the Italian Home for Children, and bring people together for a memorable evening. I'm looking forward to next year's wine tasting event—hopefully the weather will be more forgiving.

If you missed the event, check out the Uncorked! photos and stay tuned for an archived version of the gallery's live video feed from the evening. You never know who you'll catch doing what on there...

Myself (Lauren Head) and Krystle Petrie enjoying ourselves

Related Posts: Wine Tasting this Thursday; Cheaper wine can taste better; Sports Wine; Cocktails for a Cause; Help the Burmese by Eating

Wine Tasting this Thursday, July 24

Today's post is from two new OYFPers, Katelyn and Lauren, and we're all excited about what they have planned for us this Thursday, July 24.

On Your Feet Project is hosting its 2nd Annual wine tasting extravaganza, Uncorked!, on Thursday, July 24th in the South End at Gallery XIV. Director William Kerr has generously donated his beautiful gallery for the benefit, located at 37 Thayer Avenue in the South End.

Gallery XIV’s current exhibit, “a politic,” features 40 American artists expressing notions of politics, which is particularily appropriate considering the upcoming elections. The gallery provides the perfect space for a night of wine tasting and jazz music sure to please all.

The event features Erin O’Shea, sommelier at Eastern Standard Kitchen and Drinks in Kenmore Square. Erin plans to showcase some special Italian wines, so all patrons should come ready to drink and learn about these fun finds. The wine tasting shall begin right at 6:00, so be sure to get there on time to experience these extraordinary selections.

After the wine tasting, jazz vocalist Nicole Zuraitis will take the stage to perform some selections from her new CD, “Spread the Word,” a compilation of her original works, newly released July 15th. And of course, there shall be more wine, food, and cookies—sure to please all as the fun continues through the rest of the night until 9:30 PM.

And in case you needed another reason to attend a wine tasting besides just the wine, music, and art, all proceeds from the event will support the Italian Home for Children in Jamaica Plain. The Italian Home provides resources and tools to help emotionally and financially at-risk children and families get back on their feet after being in times of crisis. This worthy organization shall be receiving all of the proceeds raised from OYFP’s 2nd Annual Uncorked! Benefit, so even if you can't attend consider making a donation.

Tickets are just $20 online, and $25 at the door (a steal!). Buy them quickly before they sell out! Don’t miss out on this fantastic line-up of art, music, and wine.

We’re looking forward to seeing you all there!!!

Lauren Head and Katelyn Nadeau, Event Organizers

Uncorked! Event Details

Date: Thursday, July 24

Wine Tasting: 6 to 7 PM

Art and Music, Wine, and Food: 7 to 9:30 pm

Location: Gallery XIV at 37 Thayer St

Closest T Stop: Broadway on the Redline

Tickets: $20 ahead of time, $25 at the door

A vineyard in Italy, from where our wines have traveled to grace your palettes

Related Posts: Cheaper wine can taste better; Sports Wine; Cocktails for a Cause; Help the Burmese by Eating
Photo of woman sipping wine is from OYFP's 2007 wine tasting. Photo of grape field courtesy of Giampalo Macorig.

What is This Credit Crisis You Speak Of? And Why Do I Care?

I thought it might be useful to follow up on Casey's post regarding the credit crisis and its recent impact on the student loan market. The events of the past nine months have been a sobering statement about what it means to be able to borrow money. From the most complex transactions at the largest banks in the world to your grad school loan or home mortgage, all the way down to the woman in rural Vietnam taking out $35 for a six month loan so that she can buy a pig, the wheels of economic mobility are greased by - better yet, completely stuck without - someone being there to lend you the money.

We borrow money every day: from the credit card company when we go to the grocery store or the mall, from Dell when we buy a computer, from the dealership when we buy a car... the list goes on. We also lend money every day.... to the banks where we keep our savings. They pay us a little interest on that money so that they can lend it out to other people for their home mortgages, cars, etc. Importantly, banks also raise money by selling off their loans to investors in packages (think of it as putting 1,000 loans in one box and shipping it to someone else), so that they can use that money make more loans.

What happened that messed everything up? Well, at its core, borrowing and lending money is not just a legal contract, it's a social contract, a chain where all the links in the chain must be solid in order for the system to work. If someone takes out a loan they can't afford; when lenders push inappropriate loans on borrowers in order to generate origination fees; when banks don't explain to borrowers that in two years their interest rates will increase and their mortgage payments could double, then the links in the chain start getting pulled pretty tight.

When you can't afford your mortgage, you can try to sell your house and bail yourself out, but what if it isn't enough to pay back the mortgage? What if this started happening to thousands of people? Well it did. And when enough people can't pay back their loans, then a link in the chain breaks. Housing prices start decreasing, the packages of loans the investors bought from the banks is worth much less, and somewhere, whoever the investors borrowed money from to buy that package of loans wants their money back yesterday. That's when things get really dicey.

[As a detour, I would like to point out one market that has not failed: The microfinance market. In developing countries around the world, women (and a few men) are borrowing small amounts of money in numbers unimagined even a decade ago...and paying it back! When five women get together and say to each other, "if one of us fails, we're all responsible," that means something. There are many microfinance organizations to which you can donate, or even lend, money, but I will save that for another time.]

The social contract of borrower and lender in the U.S. has faltered, and as a result the trust we depend on that makes lending money possible has been severely impaired. And that is where we are today, an accelerating lack of trust: no trust for home mortgages, no trust for student borrowers, for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or the U.S. dollar. What is the U.S. dollar backed by? Not gold. Not diamonds. Not Warren Buffet. Our currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.

Take note, because those words, "faith and credit," they go hand in hand. In order to believe in our economy, we must believe in our government. So, Government, pretty please, give us something to believe in.

Will the credit crisis reduce people to laundering money?

Related Posts: It's the economy, stupid; Don't forget about your pet; An economic recovery plan, in a cup; The R-Word; Penny Pinchin' Times

Super Tuesday Preview: Who's the Decider? You Are.

This Tuesday is going to be fun. And it is going to be a big-ish day for recent American democracy, which has been mostly marked by indifference, itself a product of things in America being, well, too good for us to need to care too much what our leaders are doing besides lunching with lobbyists.

Fortunately for those of us who rejoice when voter turnout increases (and really this should be everybody), we are starting to be given reasons to care more. It might never be the same as back in the days when anyone of a certain age held a lottery ticket to could send them to war, but those days may yet return. That said, in lieu of reviewing the positions of the candidates on issues that they have chosen to highlight, I thought it might be useful to note what I think is going to be at stake in November:

• America's place in the world (politically): No one can be the dominant power in the world forever; the mark of a declining power is when you can't see it staring at you in the mirror. If you think national security is an issue now, wait until one of those countries with one billion people and/or with nuclear capabilities decides that they don't want to take our petulant attitude toward them anymore. Who will put us on a track to prevent that day from coming? Who will have the judgement to correctly answer the question: "What is an imminent threat?" Or, if it's inevitable, who will make sure that there are some other countries that still like us enough to stand with us on that day? I think that it will be the individual who best appreciates the value of human life (not in the family planning sense, let's set that issue aside for the moment).
• America's place in the world (economically): First, the dollar is falling. And most of us don't have the foggiest idea of how to pick it up. It's like our paychecks are all getting smaller. I'll tell you what doesn't help: spiralling national debt. Forget policy: mathematically, you just can't collect less taxes and spend more money and expect everything to be cool. Not too mention folks around the world worrying that America is not a creditworthy place (or a welcome place, for that matter) to invest their money. Second, globalization. It is inevitable. And when people in poor places get jobs, that's good for the globe. But someone needs to invest in American innovation too.
• The "O" word. Oil is a consumer issue (it's making everything more expensive here, and even more so because the dollar is worth less); a jobs issue--if we invest heavily in long-term, leap-frog alternative energy initiatives, you can bet we will generate lots of jobs here; an environmental issue--I don't know much about CO2, but it seems like the downside of doing nothing about our emissions issues could be a lot worse than the upside; and, by the way, it's also a national security issue--if we don't need oil then we don't need to fight about it, and we don't need to be nice to shady-ish governments just because they have a lot of it.
• The Supreme Court. Stevens, 87 years old. Ginsburg, 74. Scalia, 71. Kennedy, 71. Breyer, 69. Souter, 68. Thomas, 59. Alito, 57. Roberts, 53. Four members to the right, four to the left, and a swing vote. This was touted as an issue in the last election but ended up being swallowed by other matters, and sure enough, we got two new judges. Looking ahead, we will have at least one new judge in the next four years, and we might have as many as four new judges in the next eight years. Aside from amendments to the constitution itself, the Supreme court has made the most influential decisions in the history of American policy. The President gets to pick these folks, almost at will. So let's choose our President very carefully.
• The future of Africa: If you're under 40, you probably recognize the hook, "mo' money, mo' problems." Well this is true in some places in Africa. What is even more true in Africa is the lesser known hook, "no money, mo' problems." That's right. No money, no education, no food, no electricity, no running water, no political stability, and perhaps most importantly, no healthcare. I know how hard it is to compare a problem down the block to a problem 7,000 miles away, but the magnitude and immediacy of Africa's problems are gi-normous and rather harrowing. Can you imagine dying from a cavity? Can you imagine if all your friends had HIV at the same time...and no medical care? And, incidentally, unstable countries are more prone to influence from bad guys. So this is a national security issue, too.

These are some of the issues where we find ourselves at a fork in the road, but there are plenty of others. What is at stake for you this November?

What we don't know may kill us. Or not.

I'm glad John brought up the recession. It may actually have started already and we just don't know. Or it may never start, though the way things are going it's hard to imagine a big turnaround just around the corner.

The news topic of the week seems to be "what is the federal government going to do about the recession?" There will be much debate and perhaps some action, and later people will claim "this worked" and will be rebutted by "no, you're wrong, that worked." Meanwhile, many believe that congressional action can't work at all, and that these things are best left to the Federal Reserve, which can fix the problem more cleanly by simply cutting interest rates.

The funny thing about economics, though, is that no one really knows for sure what will work, or how quickly. Frankly, its status as a science can be a little on the murky side sometimes. It makes me sad because I really like economics, and I gravitate to the straight forward logic of (i) identify problem, (ii) find solution, (iii) implement solution, (iv) magic! But we have seen periods in which tax cuts were followed by economic growth and periods where tax increases were also followed by economic growth, as just one example. Go figure. Of course, that doesn't mean that nothing should be done. In fact, our quasi-ignorance probably means that a belt and suspenders approach is probably most appropriate.

But it's not just economics that's the problem. So many important public policy decisions are presented to us as clear imperatives (do this, don't do that)--war, health care, foreign aid, environmental issues--while meanwhile their vast ramifications are, more often than not, largely unknowable. I just wish we could all recognize how much we don't know, and that our civic leaders would consider more deeply what would happen if their plans for us, well, just didn't work out quite right.

World AIDS Day

There was a World AIDS Day?

World AIDS Day was this past Saturday, December 1st. A number of events happened around the Boston area to help raise awareness of the pandemic, and hopefully you were able to particpate in some of them!

World Vision sponsored the Boston World AIDS Day: 6,000 Campaign at City Hall Plaza. The Global Health Initiative at Boston University partnered with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra for a symposium on campus of music, film, and performance dedicated to spreading awareness.

For-profit organizations were also in the mix – a number of Boston area restaurants designated proceeds from a portion of their menu to the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts.

It really is inspiring to see organizations throughout the community come together for a given cause. I just wish their collective voices were louder. World AIDS Day was barely promoted in the Boston area - OYFP Boston didn't know it was going on until it was over! Aside from "Red" Campaign ads plastered in local GAP stores, the issue receives very little media attention in the area. While AIDs and HIV infection rates have decreased in the U.S. and in many countries across the world, about 33 million people worldwide are currently living with HIV/AIDS.*

I think, no -- I know that there is more we can do to spread awareness and to enhance our understanding of what is being done to fight against HIV/AIDS.

An upcoming opportunity to learn about the issue and ways to potentially affect change is a World AIDS Day discussion featuring Diveena Cooppan from South Africa Partners that will take place at the NonProfit Center in Boston on December 13. It's also not too early to sign up for the annual AIDS Walk Boston, scheduled for June 1, 2008. The earlier you sign up, the more time you'll have to raise funds that will go to research, preventing new infections and optimizing the health of those already infected.

What are you waiting for? Get up and go - show HIV/AIDS that the battle will not be over until a cure is found.

*According to the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.