Anne of Carversville

A 21st Century Smart Sensuality Meaning Maker in Action

Navigation

RSS Feeds

Bookstore In Process

Best Articles: Thumbnail Photos in Process

CC Reads

Friday

05Feb2010

Update | Laura Silsby's Very Big Vision for Haitian Orphans

Friday, February 5, 2010 at 7:21AM

31 de Janeiro, 2010 - AFPLaura Silsby’s parents are standing firmly behind her, telling the Wall Street Journal that Silsby’s desire to help in Haiti was genuine, but she used bad judgment in some of her financial dealings.

The following details fill in background from our extensive story written yesterday:

Silsby’s interest in Haiti is connected to her father, who did missionary dental work there.

Standing in his living room, which is decorated with portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln praying, John Sander said his daughter’s motives shouldn’t be misconstrued because her group’s efforts went awry. “In their intent to do something good they may have been a touch naive about what was required. You can be blinded by your ambition.” He added: “We’re hoping and praying the judge will see the intent of her heart was not to do anything wrong.” via WSJ

Silsby’s charity New Life Children’s Refuge began buying land in Magante, on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, with the intention of building ann orphanage for as many as 200 chidlren. The vision included a school, a chapel and seaside villas for adopting parents.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

Post a Comment |

Christianity,

Global Development,

Philanthropy

Thursday

04Feb2010

Laura Silsby | The Art of Doing God's Work in Haiti

Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 10:55AM

‘Who is Charisa Coulter?’ I asked myself. ‘Does she run an orphanage in the US? What are her credentials? Who is this church? Does Charisa Coulter travel the world, as a flying-squad Mother Theresa for chidlren in trouble?’

Two Haitian police officers sit next to Charisa Coulter as she rests Monday on a cot at the University of Miami’s field hospital near the Port-au-Prince airport. Coulter, who is diabetic, initially thought her insulin had gone bad in the heat, but now she believes she suffered either severe dehydration or the flu.It’s been well over a decade since I headed north out of Boulder towards Laramie, Wyoming. Without an iPod, I relied on radio for entertainment and sense of ‘place’, heading out into God’s country. On that day, I was stunned to see just how much America changes in the course of an hour, based on talk radio.

We think of the bible belt as being in the southern part of America. But I quickly understood that memories of family vacations in Yellowstone Park needed some redefining. The recent death of Matthew Wayne Shepard — tortured to death near Laramie, Wyoming because he was gay — was fresh in my mind.

Forget my being a New Yorker, parking my winterized, rented SUV in front of a small-town cafe. An hour out of Boulder, I might as well have entered a foreign country.

Reading about kidnapped orphans in Haiti, concerned Christians in jail, and a giant misunderstanding over paperwork, I decided to dig into the subject via Idaho, not Haiti.

Learning about Charisa Coulter, who lives in Boise, Idaho and nowhere in Wyoming, my impressions of that north to Laramie day returned vividly. Especially the AM talk radio stations reminded me that America is a vast, complex country, and its citizens disagree on many subjects.

Charisa Coulter

When Mel Coulter says that his daughter Charisa was in no way kidnapping 33 children out of Haiti, there’s no doubt in my mind that he means it.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

8 Comments |

1 Reference |

Values,

Sunday

24Jan2010

11 Free Tuition Colleges | One Online

Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 10:41AM

Bloomberg BusinessWeek features 11 colleges that offer students free education. Some are highly specialized. Two caught my eye as opposite ends of the spectrum.

Deep Springs College is an all-male liberal arts college located in a remote desert area of Big Pine, Calif with a focus on academics, labor, and self-governance. Reading their alumni news page is a fascinating look at Cultural Creatives values. If your vision of Deep Springs College grads is newly-minted hippies doing yoga in the desert, read on.

The big story is the BusinessWeek story is progress at Israeli Shai Rashef’s University of the People, the world’s first global tuition-free online university.

Backed by the UN and top academics from Columbia University and New York University, the online university is fully operational, with 300 students, an expanding curriculum and an evolving relationship with Yale University.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

1 Comment |

Digital Life

Wednesday

20Jan2010

Katie Couric | Deeply Personal Reporting in Haiti

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 10:46AM

We’re covering most of the Haiti events from Cultural Creatives HopeTracker posts on our new Daily News blog. This footage of Katie Couric working with a group of Belgian doctors in Haiti is so moving and thought-provoking, that we want to share it here.

Katie has also written a personal reflection on her three days in Haiti, posted on Huff Po. The evolution of an anchor speaking in an almost literary voice reflects new directions for big media. CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs (to a fault, in my opinion), and Christiane Amanpour (less so) employ this more personal approach in their reporting.

Generally, though, mainstream journalists are under strict rules not to cross the line, inserting poetry and personal style into reporting.

This old-school fault-line that reputed journalists could not cross — the facts and nothing but the facts, ma’am — approach is changing for good and perhaps not so. We must remember that journalism during the Vietnam War years did gradually take on a much more human voice.

Katie Couric writes: The Human Face of Haitian Tragedy

via Huffington Post

A few drops of water on acres and acres of parched land - that’s how I woke up thinking of the massive relief effort that’s been orchestrated to help the Haitian people.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

Post a Comment |

Media

Thursday

07Jan2010

Saudi Religious Officials Say Ikhtilat Not Part of Islamic Law

Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 10:21PM

We have a very important story out of Saudi Arabia, a profoundly relevant story for women living in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is known for its vice-squad Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the men who patrol Saudi Arabia for any intermixing of the sexes.

Old souq at Gizan via Flickr’s retlaw snellacThe Economist writes that perhaps the separation of the sexes has been a mistake. In the past few months top religious officials, including the minister of justice and the head of the religious police in the Mecca region, which includes Jeddah, have declared ikhtilat a modern term not proscribed by Islamic law. Saudi jurisprudence has erred, they say, by confusing conservative tribal custom with the rules of sharia, thus lumping the innocent mingling of the sexes with the true sin of khulwa, meaning an unmarried, unrelated couple’s “seclusion” in a setting that could tempt devilishness. In support of this argument, they note that wives in the Prophet Muhammad’s time are known to have served male guests and that even today, Saudis rely on maids and drivers in a practical form of daily ikhtilat.

Ultra Conservative voices have been oddly muted, the Economist writes, perhaps because a noted cleric was sacked after criticising the co-ed policies at the magnificent new King Abdullah University for Science and Technology.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

Post a Comment |

Monday

04Jan2010

Smart Thinking: Google, Newton & Burj Khalifa

Monday, January 4, 2010 at 5:57PM

I love the Christian Science Monitor for many reasons, but high on today’s list is that I now know why red balls have been falling off of Google today.

The animation’s great, but rather than concentrate on my writing, I spent valuable time trying to figure out apples vs cherries, finally deciding apples, when a friend asked me how they looked against the Google O.

“Ah yes,” I responded. “Good point. They are apples. Did George Washington chop down an apple tree?”

Let me spare you misinformation. It’s Isaac Newton’s b-day today — 367 years old, if he was sitting here. Read about this great scientist at CSM. Without his contributions to our understanding of the laws of gravity and motion, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa might not have risen half a mile into the sky today.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

Post a Comment |

Monday

04Jan2010

Burj Khalifa Rises Half A Mile Into Dubai Sky

Monday, January 4, 2010 at 11:25AM

Skyscrapers are icons of the modern age, masculine symbols of man’s triumph over Mother Nature, who is left in the dust until death, when humans return to their original birthing place on land.

Living at Ground Zero in New York reminds me that skyscrapers symbolize what more nomadic people believe is the battle of civilizations. To some economists, new skyscrapers in America and Dubai, both mortgaged to the hilt in pursuit of being top dogs in the world, cause concern of around round in the global financial crisis.

In our post Sept. 11 world, skyscrapers have dual meanings then as modern symbols of imperial power and uncontrolled consumption, as well as glorious human achievements of architectural design and national status.

photo via Melanie on Picasaweb.comThe structure’s architects, Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, have called the Burj “a bold global icon that will serve as a model for future urban centers.” via CNN

Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum lead celebrations today to unveil the 2,684 ft, glorious monument to modern-day Icarus men and women. (See live video)

Click to read more ...

Anne |

Post a Comment |

Art & Culture,

Big Thinkers,

Design & Fashion

Friday

01Jan2010

2010 New Perspective: Life in the Tenth Parallel

Friday, January 1, 2010 at 9:01AM

At least 10,000 Nigerians have died during Christian-Muslim violence during the past decade. The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria is evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.

Eliza Griswold, who has spent the last five years traveling to Nigeria to examine the causes of religious violence, explores the fact the Muslims and Christians in Africa are involved in a numbers game, in her upcoming book “The Tenth Parallel”, due in August 2010.

Soldiers stand guard after December 2008 post-election riots in central Nigeria leave hundreds dead.The tenth parallel north, the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator, is the defining metaphor of our time, according to Griswold.

An ideological front line stretching across two continents and nineteen countries, this is where Christianity and Islam collide—a profound encounter that shapes the lives of more than a billion people. It’s not just geographic; it’s demographic.

Griswold offers thinking people a new context for understanding what’s going on in our world, at a time when big words like poverty, religious conflict or global development are ambiguous, overwhelming concepts.

While CNN focuses on Nigeria — the most visible paradigm of a self-destructive country breeding terrorists like Uman Farouk AbdulMutallab — Griswold directs our attention to the tenth parallel north. She also puts religion front and center as the major influence in this zone.

Click to read more ...

Anne |

Post a Comment |