Votes are being counted and the BROWN family is currently about 150 votes behind first place. If you haven't voted, I could REALLY use your help right now! There are three really easy ways to do it without even signing up anywhere too unusual:
Just a reminder to all those helping out: there are 10 days left for Recognize Good's campaign to "Say Thanks Austin" and every day you can vote up to 7 different ways for the BROWN family. Please help me get the word out and hopefully the Miracle League will be the recipient of the $10,000 prize. This organization is a wonderful one, please help me give back to it!
Happy Friday everyone! As I may have told you, for the past year I've been volunteering with Miracle League, a specially-designed place for kids with special needs to get outdoors and play softball and kickball with all the social and physical support they need. High-school-aged "Buddies" help guide kids to interact with the ball and get around the bases, and I've been helping the adult coaches as a field marshall, involving a number of tasks ranging from pitching, catching, outfielding, drawing in the less-active kids more into play, and assisting buddies with kids who need a bit of extra attention either medically or behaviorally. Recognize Good is an Austin-based philanthropic program with a mission to inspire and promote goodness in our city, and I am pleased to have an opportunity to help the Miracle League simply by voting for them. Voting can be repeated daily until January 26, so each day I plan on putting in as many votes as I can until then, and I ask anyone who can help to take part. You know I don't do this often, but if you have a Twitter account, I have a favor to ask you. Please help me raise $10,000 for the Miracle League organization by simply tweeting: BROWN #SayThanksAustin @RecognizeGood There are other easy ways to vote as well, each day:
If you want to watch a YouTube video about this, click here and/or go to the RecognizeGood site. Your help is appreciated!! Love you all and wishing you a happy and healthy 2014! Laura
Miracle League needs your help for us to have a chance at a donation of $10,000.00! If Miracle League’s Steve and Tracey Brown receive the most votes, then RecognizeGood will reward us with $10,000 that will go directly to the MIRACLE LEAGUE! Voting opened at 12:00AM on 1/2/14 and closes at 11:59PM on 1/26/14. Anyone in the world may vote for the Browns, 7 Different Ways EACH DAY. So you could vote 7 times per day through January 26th at midnight. So if you started voting TODAY, that would add up to 133 total votes for you alone! How cool is that? Here are the 7 ways to vote EACH DAY (click on the links to go directly to that application):
If you want more information on RecognizeGood, The Miracle League or the SAY THANKS AUSTIN program that they are running, please click through to our website at http://miracle.tandcsports.org/page.php?p=148
As you may have noticed, I took a break from blogging in 2013. I spent the year working on myself, volunteering, animating on my own, reading a lot, enjoying time with friends and family, producing in downtown Austin at Invodo, still supervising animation on the fully-animated short "One Per Person" (2014), and producing and directing animation on another short film coming out that was a very fun live-action / cg blend (still in non-disclosure, but coming soon in 2014). So it was a busy year, and I have a busy year cut out for 2014 as well.
Just a shout out to the whole world today on this December 21, 2012. For centuries, humanity has tried to predict its own demise. Today, end of an era or not, we are still here. Perhaps we need to take on faith that we don't know the day or the hour, after all.
The significance of the completion of the Mayan long count calendar, if any, has yet to be determined. Today, we are consumers, and we generate 12-month calendars and recycle them at the end of the year. Why it was important to develop the long calendar, I can only speculate, and no better than anyone else (especially not better than actual students of historical culture).
The tiny, highly-focused, autistic-sympathetic creature in my brain makes me think that back then someone just really got into this calendar thing, and it's just as much art as it is calculation. At some point it just felt like a finished work, which no doubt feels significant to anyone. The danger of such a lasting piece of history with such implied finality of an era is the part of our paranoid humanity that looks to know when our end will come.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
It would be a beautiful thing if the end of this 13th Baktun signified an end to mindless speculation and fear mongering. When the world propagates fear, it propagates violence, ignorance, destruction, stagnation, and other crises. We have the power to maintain fear, but also the power to overcome it, to be sensible, educated, peaceful, and forward-thinking. Progress is won by our active choice to challenge fear. What is the meaning of life, if not to progress? If we can't fathom the meaning of life in our time, hope moves us to believe in the future. We believe in our children. We believe in our advancements in society and sciences. If we can believe in a better tomorrow and picture it in our minds, together we can develop stepping stones to achieving that image.
Preachy right? I won't apologize. Personally I feel that now more than ever, we need solidarity in believing in humanity's potential for greatness. Why not? We can argue about how to define greatness, but who can argue with the universal desire to fit those definitions, if only to surpass them?
Some people who spread fear are afraid themselves and feel a need for others to share in their anxieties, when the real comfort should instead come from a unified, collaborative pursuit of progress. However, there are people in the world who have determined that progress is unnecessary and that existence is meaningless. For those who can not hope, who find life to be pointless, you are not alone, but you are in a niche group, and you like everyone have a right to your opinion. We all have our place in the world, and terrorism of any nature is unwarranted and wrong, whether big or small, mental or physical. If you can at least recognize the potential for human goodness, you can see the morality in allowing that potential to exist, simply by acknowledging others and embodying a respectful openness that many people in the world do believe that life has a purpose (even if we don't know explicitly what that purpose is, yet).
Live and let live. Treat others as you'd like to be treated. The show must go on.
With the holidays right around the corner, I'd just like to wish everyone all the very best, no matter what you celebrate (or don't). As for me, I'll be celebrating Christmas with my family, enjoying our traditions, playing with my nieces and nephews, and forgetting all about fear.
