Thanks, but, no thanks…

My friend Sara posted a link on her blog to the Daily Kos which reported on a rally in Anchorage , Alaska against McCain and Palin. This was my favorite picture from the rally:

Anchorage, Alaska rally against Palin and McCain

A Night With Greg Mortenson

Kevin and I just got back from an evening at the Fairmont where we joined some friends to hear Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea” speak about his work in building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was a great talk and gave some real actions of people doing things to help the region. Dr. Greg (as many people called him in the region) truly believes that educating the kids (especially girls) will promote peace in the region. He has worked with these various tribal communities to build these schools. By getting ‘buy-in’ from the community, the school had a lot more hope for successes. He also talked about talking to military leaders, people in our Congress, kids, students and many others about his philosophy’s. General Patreaus  has even read his books and sent him his thoughts on it.He was very good, however, on staying out of politics. He said that Obama, McCain and Clinton all came to him for endorsements, but, he steered clear of all of them.  It was a breath of fresh air to hear someone put out real solutions to our problems in the Middleast. The candidates for president are always so vague with their ideas, as not to offend anyone, that we are never really sure what they will do when in office.

While the news of the current political system in Pakistan and Afghanistan sounded grim, the talk was very positive, overall. It gave me inspiration of how much good we can do in the world. Again, I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, but, if you haven’t read “Three Cups of Tea”, its amazing. Everyone should read it.

Bringing Obama to France

Last Friday night, I was riding the cable car down to Union Square (Yes, a resident of San Francisco actually takes the cable car as daily public transit). The cable car never really loses its magic for me. I also love watching tourists jump on the side of the car and get all giddy about the experience of wrapping around one of the poles and hanging off the side as if they were in movie.  Anyways, on this particular day, I was watching a group of five excited French tourists jump on the cable car. One of them grabbed the pole next to me and was standing right in front of me. I pulled my purse in a little closer to my chest to allow him more room. This apparently exposed my navy blue Obama pin that I wear pinned to my purse. The tourist looked at it and got really excited. He asked me where he could find one of these Obama pins. He really wanted to take some home to France. One of his friends chimed in that they hear a lot about Obama in their country. I thought about it for a minute and decided to suggest that they take a trip down to the Ferry building the following morning. There is almost always a table of Obama supporters in front of the Farmer’s Market selling Obama goods and registering voters.  The tourists carefully listened to my details of how to get to the Ferry Building the following day. But, after I thought about it, I decided to just give the guy in front of me my pin. I mean, surely, I could run into a group of Obama loving, pin selling vendors in SF, but, they may never get that opportunity.  So, I said goodbye to my classic navy blue Obama pin (with the cool rising sun logo). The French guy was super excited and pinned it to his backpack. His friends were definitely envious.  So, I felt like I did a small deed to help bring some Obama love to France.

The following day, I ended up at the Ferry Building and bought a new Obama pin. Unfortunately, the cool navy blue ones were no longer in site. Instead, I got a Obama Biden pin which looks kind of bland. Oh well… so it goes.  Here’s to my old pin:

Heading to New Orleans in November to help build houses

Since graduating college, I have always been a bit jealous of many of my friends who took a year off post college to work for various non-profits across America and internationally. Most of them did this service through JVC (Jesuit Volunteer Corps). Others did Americorps and Peace Corps. At the time, I felt I had to get started on my career and that I couldn’t give up the year. Well, my friends who gave up that year came away with amazing memories and have still moved on just fine in their careers.

Anyways, over time, my desire to go somewhere and volunteer has always sat in the back of my mind. When Katrina hit, I wished that I could do something, so, we gave money to our red cross and I donated blood (just as I did post-911). Still, I’ve always felt like I couldn’t leave work for any extensive volunteering. Instead, I’ve tried to blend volunteering and work.  This has actually worked out alright. Luckily, I work for Adobe which values service to the community. I’ve tried to stay involved in our “Adobe In Action” committee that organizes various events through the years. I’ve helped organize our food drives, multiple trips to the food bank and some other volunteering opportunities for my team and our site as a whole.

But, finally, I’m really going to step out of my comfort zone and volunteer down in New Orleans in November. Now, granted, this trip is only one week (Nov 9-14). But, I think it will probably make me want to do more “volunteer vacations”. Kevin found this opportunity through OneBrick.org whom I’ve volunteered with multiple times before. I trust them to be pretty organized. They will be working with the St. Bernard Project and Habitat for Humanity (who I’ve also volunteered with in the bay area), so, this should be fairly familiar work for me. However, the last time I spent a day working with Habitat, I was sore for 2 days from pounding a hammer for 8 hours. Who knew that pounding nails was so hard?

Kevin is coming for a few days to hang out with me in New Orleans before the volunteering begins and will then fly home. It will be my first trip to New Orleans!

Is anyone else out there interested in joining me in New Orleans? You only need to pay for your flight to New Orleans. Then, its $150 for lodging and 3 meals a day for the whole week. Here’s the info:

http://www.onebrick.org/eventdetails.asp?EventID=4387

Come join me! I’d love the company.

Slow Food Nation Equals Delicious Food

This past weekend, Kevin and I met up with a friend at the first “Slow Food Nation” event in San Francisco. This was a three day event to promote a sustainable, healthy and delicious food culture. I checked online for the various events, but, I was too late to get tickets to any of the tasting events. These included chocolate tastings, ice cream, wine, sausage, breads, etc. Each one was about $20 or $65 for a full day’s tasting. Next time, I’ll need to get tickets way ahead of time. While there were also movies and speakers throughout the city, we only hit up the CIvic Center area where they had food stalls, a big organic urban garden, some speakers on a soap box and a farmer’s market of only farmers that used specific sustainable methods of growing our food.

We ended up eating quite at quite a few food stalls and having a couple of celebrity chef sitings. First, I couldn’t resist the tamales from Primavera. These had a swiss chard, hard boiled egg and a pumpkin seed pesto. The tamale had fresh masa and was steamed in a banana leaf. The salsa on top was organic early girl tomatoes. Then, I moved on to a chaat (Indian Street food) from Vic’s Chaat House. They are located in Berkeley (which we never go to), so, I couldn’t resist. Kevin had a sausage sandwich which had fresh mozarella, and a pesto. I think the sausage was from “Fatted Calf” from Napa. They have hand-crafted cured meats and sausages using sustainability-raised heritage meats, local produce, and organic herbs and spices.I took one bite from the sausage sandwich (I couldn’t resist…it was delicious). I’m not against meat when its been raised well. Lastly, we ordered these tiny buttery biscuits which cured ham from Heritage Farms. Our friend Brian ordered some noodles from “Out the Door” which is a fast food off shoot of the SF favorite “Slanted Door”. I figured that I could get this food at any time at the restaurant in SF, so, I choose not to get “Out the Door” food. However, I later discovered that head chef Charles Phan was working in the back. Wow! You can’t even get him to touch your food at Slanted Door these days and here he is making up street food. As we joked on Sunday, Brian had his pork touched by the hand of Charles Phan. That would have made a great Facebook status.

Lastly, we strolled the Farmer’s Market and I also stalked Alice Waters (famed chef of Chez Panisse who helped start the organic food movement. Kevin and I agreed that she looked a lot like Hillary Clinton. It didn’t hurt that she had an entourage of people and camera’s constantly following her. I caught this shot of her at one point.

Lastly, here is a shot of the urban garden in front of City Hall. Apparently, the garden was producing 100 lbs of food a week that was getting donated to the San Francisco Food Bank… how cool.

(pictured is Swiss Chard)