Hats For Health

Mama Ada Foundation

2011-05-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

Like a broken record that skips--wow that metaphor shows my age--I keep trying to spread the idea of paper party hats as a way to engage people in charitable giving. The persistence of this idea in my mind is completely without evidence that it works or is useful in the real world. But here goes anyway.

I started this blog with a particular project to provide a potable water system for a community in Uganda, hence the water focus of the blog archives. Along the way I explained:

We need clean water and we need more parties.

The vision of the Mama Ada Foundation "is to release the Rift Valley Province in Kenya from the bonds of poverty." And the mission "is to stimulate economic development." Visit the wonderful Website to find out more. Anyhow, adapting what I said about clean water to the mission of the Mama Ada Foundation:

We need to stimulate economic development and we need more parties.

So what do paper party hats have to do with economic development?

That's a long(ish) story.

First I'll tell how I came to know a little about the Mama Ada Foundation. My brother wrote to tell me that his teen-aged daughter, my lovely niece and Godchild, had heard a presentation at her school given by a girl from Kenya. Soccer plays a big role in my niece's life so a part of the presentation that stuck with her was that sometimes kids are so poor that they have no ball to play soccer, so they make one from old plastic bags. Here's a link to a YouTube video of a boy making such a ball if you've never imagined such a thing. My niece wanted to do something to make regulation balls available to more kids in Kenya. My brother knowing that I have an interest in economic development in Africa sent me an email asking if I had any thoughts about the matter. Among other things I wrote back to him:

Relationships are more valuable than stuff.

That seemed a bit cryptic and I wasn't sure my brother would understand what I was trying to say. I was happy when he replied to my email saying that Jim Cook, the rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida the church my brother's family belongs to, was on the board of The Mama Ada Foundation. My brother wanted to know if I knew about The Mama Ada Foundation? I did not, so I clicked the link he provided. One of the first sentences I read at the Web site was:

We seek to know each other's stories, even across the globe. For it is through our stories that our hearts meet, our lives cross and our hands work.

Ah, I knew my brother had understood exactly what I was saying.

Let's look at the back half: We need more parties. Sometimes I think kids get the wrong idea about adults and parties. They know we're excited about being with our friends, that much they understand. We may even tell them we're looking forward to being with other adults for a change. But do kids really know that adults are excited to go to parties so we can share stories about the kids in our lives? Well, of course parties are about much more than that; there's food and drink. Probably there's singing and dancing, at least there's music. Parties are also the center of what Edgar Cahn calls the "kitchen table economy." Parties are where we celebrate the accomplishments of others, knowing that in some way we share in those accomplishments. They are also where we learn about who's ailing or suffering hardships. Parties remind us to call mom or check in with an elderly neighbor because central to the joy which parties bring is the knowledge we are not alone.

We need more parties.

We need more parties because we're living in difficult times and hard times are better weathered in fellowship.

Now the question is: Why should any of us care about poverty and economic development in the Rift Valley in Africa?

This is a question I've thought about quite a bit. Often times the lack of interest seems to boil down to: I'm not really into Africa. When it comes around to the many reasons I think more of us ought to care about poverty in Africa all the reasons I offer fall on deaf ears. Anyone who's read this far already cares, so I'll just mention one reason for caring I've been thinking about recently. We should care about poverty and economic development in the Rift Valley (or other places in the world today) for the sake of the young people close to us.

Only about 1/5 of adults responding to opinion polls believe today's children will be better off than their parents. It hasn't always been thus. I'm not temperamentally a rosy optimist, so if asked I'd probably be among the gloomy 4/5's of Americans. But what I've just started paying attention to lately is what this adult pessimism is doing to young people. What got me to noticing probably was listening to music videos on YouTube. The YoungBloodz, If you don't give a damn, we don't give a fig(you guess the real title) grabbed my attention when I first heard it--Whoa! Certainly not all music young people pay attention to, but a significant portion, conveys not just pessimism, but a feeling a resigned despair.

Most adults feel they have a lot invested in young people. We've seen them steadily gain mastery often demonstrating admirable perseverance. Beth Kanter posted a picture on her Facebook page of a fruit stand her kids made. From what I understand her 11-year old son was the primary instigator. Seeing the devastation of the tornado in Joplin, Missouri he wanted to do something. He came up with a fruit stand with the proceeds going to help the people of Joplin. I noticed several things about this, but the most important thing is that an 11-year old didn't hesitate to think, "There's nothing I can do." no, he skipped right over that to imagine what it was he could do in response to such a disaster. In one sense I'm sure Beth's son is an exceptional boy, but in another sense it's not unusual for kids to respond to events. That's what kids do, it's how they make sense of the world. Older folks sometimes take a rather wizened pride in being curmudgeons, but nobody thinks to cheer when young adults are prematurely jaded.

Young people in developing economies tend to be more optimistic about future prospects. That's not simply a matter of when you're poor even small progress seem like up to them, that misses not only the belief that development is possible, but the determination that it's necessary. Many young people in the USA today are without belief in what's possible and lack the determination to try. If you ask me, a big part of the reason has to do with the selfish carelessness of the adults around them. Participating in conversations with people in the developing world and engagement with them in development projects is a beginning towards becoming released from spiritual impoverishment.

Why paper party hats?

Nothing says "I'm a fun person." quite so much as a goofy hat. One of the earliest signs that ancient people were human is finding red ocher in archeological remains. People have been adorning their bodies since time immemorial. Surely part of the reason people adorn themselves is to stand out, to show others that we are individuals. But in these time where we hold so fast to our identities, we may miss the important part which says that when we are all adorned that demonstrates our belonging together as people. One person wearing a party hat isa silly individual. A room full of people wearing paper party hats, then we're all having fun together. Party hats show us that we belong; high or low, the boundaries are blurred when everyone has a crazy hat on.

Paper party hats are easy and fun to make and cost so little. Kids often more than adults are ready and willing to help others, but have lesser means to do so. Kids making party paper party hats are a way they can make something of real value for not much money invested. Paper party hats probably aren't worth much, but a buck or two doesn't seem out of line.

There's an opening here. Adults generally have more money, and goodness knows adults need to feel they belong. So all it takes is for an adult to be a big enough sport to commit to party hats for their next party and for someone to organize a hat making party for the kids. The price of admission would be a hat which the kids would sell to the adults.

Hat making isn't just for kids, it's really fun for everyone. So here's another idea. Perhaps there's an adult who deserves honoring. Everyone likes presents, but many adults feel like they've got enough crap already. A donation in the person of honor's name is a nice gesture. How much nicer then to be surprised by colleagues wearing paper hats when she arrives to work. Allowing the strangeness to settle in to finally reveal the story of the hats. How a group had made a collection of hats and everyone made a small donation to buy a hat, and all together the money was pooled to make a donation in her honor. Of course the very best hat would be presented to the honoree. Yes, it's silly, silly enough to be remembered for a long time.

Those are just two ideas, not the best ideas. The points to remember are wearing party hats is fun and so is making paper party hats. The possibilities are many, there can be all sorts of themes involving party hats. Making hats is fun for young and old. And not to be forgotten, people will want to know the story behind the hats, so it's a great way to begin the conversation about the Mama Ada Foundation.

"A nice thing... when grownups say 'yes' to play"

2010-06-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

The blog A Nice Thing has a lovely story of a birthday crown.

One day, four years ago, a work friend told me it was her birthday. She was chair of her department and was having a challenging year. Sometimes ideas just take hold of me; and, on that day, the idea that my friend should be acknowledged became my mission. We needed a little joy in Mudville.

Read the whole thing and see a photo of the crown. The story ends with the title of this post.

Donald Johanson on Human Art

2010-04-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

This video via the always fascinating 3 Quarks Daily. The whole interview can be found at bigthink.

When I was a boy my mother made paper hats for us and over time for family parties we'd make paper party hats. But it's only as an adult sharing this family custom that I discovered that paper hats do something to people, do something good. In this interview Johanson talks about going to a Massai wedding in Tanzania. All the guests faces were painted red. He felt very much alien, but then a woman painted his face too. He describes how that transformed the experience for him. I think paper party hats, especially ones made as part of a community project works in much the same way. Johanson is a paleanthropologist and is speaking of how people have been decorating each other stretching back at least 160,000 years. No wonder paper hats can seem profound.

Paper Hat Party at Boyd Community Center

2010-03-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

Explore your creative side, get your hands sticky. A Paper Hat Making Party at Boyd Community Center

Saturday March 13, 2010
From 1-3
Register Now: Boyd Community Center 412.828.8566 x11

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International Day of Peace

2009-09-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a long time!

A little while back someone I'd met at a party found me on Twitter. Apparently she remembered me from a party where I talked about diarrhea as the number one killer of children under the age of five. She'd become fired up about water issues and was eager to make a connection.

I notice that my Internet handle at Twitter is "protoslacker." That's an old handle, I'm old and I figure that slackers should know that there have been slackers through history even if we aren't represented well in history. Now with the Internet there's a new word slactivism. That link to Wikipedia quotes Barbara Mikkelson (of www.snopes.com) with a succinct definition:

"the desire people have to do something good without getting out of their chair."

Earlier today I saw a status update at Facebook from a friend there who wages a steady campaign against feel-good measures with little practical effect. I find the shear volume of his 140 character missives annoying, but generally ignore them. But today his:

Harry Lyme comical, feel-good, token gestures - seed bombs, wrist-bands -- R just that :) If U'r an org Let's C bottom line :) travel vs seed costs :D

stuck in my craw. What I couldn't justify in my mind was how someone who spends prodigious amounts of time trolling for slactivists online would so glibly demand to see results. What's wrong with feeling good? Isn't the point of constant trolling to feel good making others feel bad?

There was no response to my question: What's your bottom line?

Closely related to slactivism is arm chair psychoanalysis. With my psychoanalysis hat on, my prediction is the answer to my question about pleasure in trolling would be that I'm off-base. The real reason is righteous indignation, calling out the hypocrites. Still, the impulse to feel good by doing something, even if it means not having to get out of a chair, seems almost identical to the trolling my Facebook friend pursues.

September 21st is the International Day of Peace. Can you imagine a world free of nuclear weapons? I can, indeed the only reasonable response to the predicament of nuclear weapons seems a resolve never to use them. And if we resolve never to use them, the luxury of having them seems utterly foolhardy. I doubt I'm in a minority feeling as I do, but I'm sure few of those who imagine they are in control of nuclear weaponry can dream a world without them. Nuclear weapons represent the greatest projection of power, and power-over others is what concerns those whose hands are on these weapons.

A classic bit of slacktivism is to sign a declaration. Won't you sign the We Must Disarm Declaration' Today! It probably will not make you feel good just to do it. Nevertheless, I think it important that we speak together as people all over the world to affirm the power of life beyond the power-over others death projects.

The explosive power of nuclear weapons is quantified in megatonnage. What's the power of a million slacktivists signing online petitions? I'm not sure, but hardly think it nothing, as so often is presumed. People today face dire predicaments, and the sensible response to them so often seems a change of mind, or better yet, a change of heart.

The explosive power of one million tons of TNT is something we can quantify. It's much harder to quantify the effect of one million people saying "no" to nuclear weapons. Of course it matters who those one million are, and let's face it my voice and your voice aren't much. When the US Air Force carelessly lost track of six missiles we were told the Commander was disciplined but not the Commander's name. I suppose it would be inconvenient for the public to know. I suspect the change in hearts and minds of ten generals might have more significance than one million petition signers. We were safe the whole time, we were assured, "since the weapons were in Air Force custody and control at all times." The detail that the Air Force crews had no idea they were flying with nuclear tipped missiles apparently is of little significance.

One of my friend's 13 year old son loves Bob Marley; oh me too! Finding myself in the middle of this rant I began searching my mental jukebox for tunes. Punky Reggae Party came to mind.

it takes a joyful sound to make the world go round

I got a lovely email recently from Colin McDonald of the blog Straight Up, Straight Through Downtown inquiring about hats. Colin figured the blog was all about Africa. I guess that's fair enough; I haven't mentioned clean water here enough.

I've got two ideas for this blog: people everywhere need clean water and people everywhere need more parties. Clean water for everyone is not a trivial issue. Parties on the other hand may seem so. I think parties are important because we need face to face interactions with others to take joy and affirm our connections to one another. We need to get up and dance, to feel and to feel together. Paper party hats are optional, but create yet another excuse for party making. Bob Marley's songs make me want to get right up out of my chair-Exodus, Get Up Stand Up, Natural Mystic and Redemption Song. I like that Bob Marley's songs still move youngster's like my friend's son. Play what moves you at your parties naturally. But don't give up, create something good. How to measure the effects isn't always obvious, yet we are more powerful than we imagine. Our goodness will make all the difference.

Peace all.

Black and Gold

2009-01-20T23:14:00.000-08:00

By now it should be obvious that the hats I make never really look like the hats I start out to make. What I had in mind for this one was a hat like Chico Marx wore but with the brim turned up all around, what I got was something like a Viking helmet. People have been telling me that I should be making black and gold hats, because apparently the Pittsburgh Steelers are doing quite well this season. I'm not entirely happy with this hat so I'll have to dream up another attempt.

Black tissue paper was surprisingly hard to find, not that I looked at very many places. I went to Michaels, a craft store, and bought what I always buy, a package of 100 sheets of art tissue. Even Michaels seems to have cut way back on their tissue selection. With 100 sheets there are 4 sheets of 25 colors. I used one sheet of black and one sheet of gold (yellow) for this hat, so if I'm clever I can make three more black and gold hats.

I've been enjoying looking at pictures of the Inauguration. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aretha Franklin and noticed her hat. I want to find a picture of that maybe it will give me an idea. At least she had the good sense to button her coat. Both Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Obama looked lovely, but I thought the must have been freezing!

I voted for Barack H. Obama. I even changed my middle name to Hussein. And I'm impressed with many of the folks he's bringing into government. Still all along I've been reading critical assessments of his plans and have a guarded sense of optimism because the challenges are so great. Ruminating on a couple of very thoughtful posts quite critical of Obama, I found myself clicking through links at the White House Web site. There's an RSS feed and a link to have digests go to your email inbox. Did I miss those on the old site? Under the About the White House tab is a link to First Pets. Well, I'm a sucker for cute pictures, and was quite moved by the photos. Our presidents aren't gods, and there's nothing like a pet to remind a person what's important in life. So I hope Barack Obama bonds with the new puppy when it arrives.

Lots of people have remarked that the upshot of Obama's address today was: "Get to work!" In case that message was lost on us, President Obama issued a proclamation:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

Regardless of our politics, regardless of who we are, we've gotta serve somebody. Yes we gotta. Yes we can!

Commons

2009-01-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

New Hat

2009-01-07T20:55:00.001-08:00

I showed the hat to a friend and he thought it reminded him somehow of Venice. But the idea for the hat came from watching Mahlathini & Mahotella Queens on YouTube. I bet it was this video that first drew my attention to the hat shape. Oh and I'm quite aware that my paper hats are rather pale imitations. But what interested me was the front view of the hats.

I like the upturned brim. What I did was to attach a circular brim out of kraft paper with a round hole cut out of the center the diameter of the hat tube and attach it to the top of the tube. Then I pasted tissue to the top of the circle of paper with a little tension so the brim would stand up. It's a rather cool effect I think. One that is ripe for a more decorative treatment of the brim than I accomplished, for example check out the wonderful hats the Mahotella Queens are wearing in this video. I'm running out of colored tissue, so I went with a solid color. That partly explains why I used wrapping paper instead of tissue for the tub of the hat. The black and white checkered paper probably accounts for it's Italian flavor.

I know that not everyone bothers viewing videos, or has a fast enough Internet connection for videos. But for those who do, perhaps you'll note that both of the videos I linked to were put up by Seka Moke Foundation.

Seka Moke Foundation is established to introduce North Americans to the upbeat and melodic music of Africa. We would also like to portray an accurate and positive view of Africa to our fellow African Americans and all friends of Africa throughout America. By combining our appealing music and video samples, anyone can experience our unique culture that keeps us going despite numerous adversities.

I think it's a wonderful organization and subscribing to their YouTube Channel is a great way to be introduced to African music with perhaps a bit of context added. There are over 400 videos on their channel. One feature is Africa A-Z. I particularly like this method of surfing through their channel because it emphasizes not only the music of many countries, but also the great diversity of musical styles.

Maker Faire Africa

2009-01-03T21:15:00.001-08:00

Maker Faire Africa
Originally uploaded by whiteafrican

I'm such a lazy blogger! I've made a new hat, but my camera battery is dead and it's been over a week without doing something about it. I really like the new hat I made, but it's one of my bigger hats. In the back of my mind I've been thinking about selling paper hats at Etsy. I wondered how to send hats; that is the packaging for the product. I experimented today with making a hat box from old magazines. So that's something to blog about in the future once I charge up my camera batteries.

Also I'm mostly been blogging about hats leaving out the "health" part of Hats For Health. Not that there are really any regular readers of this irregular blog, but a few may know that in the past I've focused on water borne diarrheal diseases. Like most Americans when we hear about clean water or smoke from cooking fires killing millions at first glance it seems there must be simple solutions. Further examination shows the problems are not so simple even if the solutions must be.

Diarrhea kills millions every year, especially deadly for children under five. But I was surprised to hear MIT Professor Amy Smith in her Ted Talk point out that acute respiratory infections kill even more people worldwide. I was surprised, but know from my friends that smoke from cooking is a big problem.

I often end up chatting with people on the Internet. Ever since I've heard about Maker Faire Africa I've brought it up in conversations with some of my African correspondents.

My friend Nathan runs a community based organization in Uganda called the Busoga Shining Light Association. The aims of the BSLA are: Promote Fellowship, Increase Education, Improve Health, Steward the Environment and Nurture Livelihood. Over and over Nathan has been told and I have been told that the organization had to do one thing. But it always seems that what the BSLA wants to do in communities involves all five aims. It's so hard to figure out how to pull the issues apart.

The idea for the Maker Faire Africa is about focusing attention on making things, on the small scale economic activities that really make a difference. Amy Smith's work and Ted Talk shows how talking about making stuff connects with health and the environment.

Make Magazine has given the organizers the okay to use the registered trademark Maker Faire for the Maker Faire Africa. Make Magazine isn't running the show. But Make Magazine is really cool! More than any other publication I know, they have embraced the possibilities of Web 2.0. What my friends and I have been talking about are ways that we might translate some of the joy of invention that Make Magazine promotes so well into an African context. We're all poor, so we're thinking along the lines of blogs or other simple promotions. What's great is how the idea of Maker Faire Africa has captured my friends' attention, quite unlike the usual reaction to my many cockamamie ideas.

The often brilliant Ethan Zuckerman wrote a really important post last October Innovating from constraint. He offered seven rules to help to explain how innovation proceeds in the context of the developing world. I won't list all of them because the post is short and very worthwhile reading the whole thing. One of his rules:

- don’t fight culture (If people cook by stirring their stews, they’re not going to use a solar oven, no matter what you do to market it. Make them a better stove instead.)

It seems like such a simple and obvious observation, still it's profound and something that so often is ignored. My Internet friends get tired of hearing all the time what they ought to do, when what they really want to explain is what life's like for them.

A month after posting his original post Zuckerman came back with Innovation from Constraint (the extended dance mix). This post is a lot longer. But it's worth clicking through if only to see the great photos he's used to illustrate his points.

I'm really psyched that a friend in Ghana and a friend in Uganda seem intrigued enough about Maker Faire Africa to want to try to draw attention to it and the idea of innovation as "using the ordinary in extraordinary ways." I'm not sure what will come of it. It's really nice to know that the excitement about making things is something that crosses boarders so well.

Making paper hats and trying to figure out how to package them are things I do for fun. I would like to figure a way make some little money out of it, because some little money can go a long way to promoting health and other good aims in the many community projects I support. It's true nobody really needs paper party hats, still people do need parties. But I like to tinker and lots of us do as well. It's good to realize that our tinkering really can play a part in the many problems we face in the world today.

Wizard Hats

2008-12-26T11:01:00.001-08:00

I'm running out of different colored tissues. I guess I'll have to break down and buy a new package. The other day I went online to look at tissues online and browsed Dick Blick a great resource for art supplies. Then I went to Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo and in the ads there was a link to Dick Blick. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but ad targeting really is sophisticated these days.

This hat was inspired by a photo of Sean Paul Kelley who is travelling the world and writing about it at The Agonist. I haven't figured out yet the geometry of making triangular hats with my simple tube method. The challenge is how to get more material above the crown. In this attempt what I got is essentially a wizard hat; not that there's anything wrong with that.

For the tube type hats I start with a strip of kraft paper about 3 inches wide and 25 3/4 inches long, folded in half lengthwise. One standard size for tissue paper is 20 x 25 inches and that's the size most convenient to use. So for this hat I cut two triangles about 12 1/2 inches at the base. I placed one of the triangles in the middle of my hat band. The sensible thing would have been to place the two triangles side by side--so they looked like two mountains. Because I did not do that I had to cut the second triangle in half and put the two halves beside the triangle. It just goes to show how forgiving working with tissue paper and paste is. It's probably a good thing to work out the geometry of designs in advance, but it's much easier simply to play around without much care.

Because what I had in mind was the picture of Kelley in his Vietnamese garb, I wanted to make the front and back look like triangles. So I joined the two triangles on either side with a strip of tissue that got crinkled in the middle. The appearance was still rounded. Perhaps if I'd worked with a newspaper base the shape I was going for would have worked better as newsprint is slightly stiffer than tissue.

Anyhow in my mind's eye I was imaging the hat to have a front like a bishop's miter. However when a friend came to visit we had a fire outside. He didn't have a hat for the cold, so I gave him the hat to wear. Immediately he put the hat on with the creased part in the front and the two triangles by his ears. That's the way the hat looks best! It hardly matters that the front is on the side. Finding the front of the hat is often something that can only be known by putting the hat on and looking in a mirror. When the paste is newly applied the hat is a bit flexible. Generally the hats feel best in a particular position and while flexible the hat can be shaped for the best effect.

Once the front has been chosen I like to make a fold in the back of the hat band, a pinch, to make sizing to differently sized heads easier. The bigger the hat, the more essential it is for the band to be the right size. a staple or piece of tape can hold the pinched part of the hat at just the right size.

Wizard hats are quite available with the popularity of Harry Potter. These are very nice, but there's something proper about a custom-made hat. Every wizard is unique and in making ones own wizard hat, or one for that special wizard in your life, that originality can show through.

Hat Sizes

2008-12-16T19:55:00.000-08:00

Hats look quite boring set on a bowl, but when people are around the last thing I want to do is to take pictures.

I really like this hat. Tube style hats are the easiest to make. For the very top of the crown I just cut a round of tissue for the top, and a round of wrapping paper for inside the crown. Because the wrapping paper is slightly sturdier I pasted the open part of the tube to that round first and then pasted the tissue round on the outside of it.

The idea for it came from a 1960's video of Miriam Makeba singing Khawuleza. I'm awfully fond of that video.

Friends stopped by on Thanksgiving evening and we built a fire outside. They hadn't arrived with hats so I put paper hats on them both. The hats are surprisingly effective for warmth. It's the layer of warm air that's held between the scalp and hat that makes them warm.

I start my tube hats with a strip of craft paper which I fold down the middle lengthwise embedding the tissue paper in between and then drawing the ends together to make the circle. The length I generally use for the kraft paper strip is 25 3/4 inches. This allows me an inch or less to overlap the band ends while still being big enough for most heads. Charlie 1 Horse hats has a handy chart showing standard hat sizes in inch an metric measures.

People with big heads really seem to hate hats. I find it's good to make hats big so that big-headed people are pleasantly surprised that a hat fits on their head. But a hat too big is unpleasant to wear. What I generally do when making the hats and the paste is still a little flexible is to pinch a fold at the back of the hat. Fiddling with the fold is often enough to get the hat to fit well. But a quick staple on the fold, or a strip of tape will make the fit more durable. The pinch had the effect on this hat to make angle slightly to the back when worn.

I thought it looked splendid, but the next day when my friends when home, the woman wearing it demurred when I said she could take it home. Her partner helpfully added that she doesn't like stripes. I thought the hat suggested plaid. In any case there's no accounting for taste.

I haven't really had the opportunity to make hats with and for children. I'm not sure how big to make hats for kids. The easy way to discover the size is simply to wrap a strip of kraft paper around their head and measure it. If there's a gaggle of kids you can strike an average and cut strips ahead of time erring on the larger size knowing you can size this sort of hat with the pinch method.

The kraft paper I get is sold in rolls. The rolls seem about 30 inches wide. So I cut a length to my 25 3/4 inched dimension. Sometimes rolls are difficult because the paper always wants to return to the roll shape. Everything can be measured, penciled and cut with sissors. I find it much easier to fold the paper and cut it with a knife along the fold as if you were opening an envelope. Consequently I don't actually measure the widths of the strips at all, simply arrive at a size by successive folding of the paper.

Micro Books

2008-12-13T18:36:00.001-08:00

I threatened to start posting here again and then completely forgot to! No, I didn't really forget, just wondering what to say.

The picture is a hat I made for a friend's birthday. There was a little party at a bar and restaurant for him and I was pleased that he seemed happy wearing it the whole evening. The idea for the hat was taken from a music video from Tanzania by Saida Karoli entitled Mapenzi Kizunguzungu. I enjoyed the video not just for the music, dancing and great hats; I also really loved how a loving couple is portrayed. They meet and the man is so overjoyed he lifts her off her feet when they embrace. Then without fanfare he gathers up the bundle of plants she's been harvesting and carries them as the walk. That's pretty mundane, I suppose, but it's so rare that tenderness is depcited in music videos.

At the party I was telling my friend how much I love YouTube and I really do. The last time I posted here I mentioned Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord and Making Books Blog. A recent post on her blog got me to open Blogger with the thoughts to add here blog to the blog roll here. I haven't done that yet, but since I was here I thought to post. Her post is about making a Word a Day Journal. In that post she's embedded a YouTube video. It turns out Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has a YouTube Channel!

It's really a pleasure to watch great teachers in action. The Journal actually consists of 12 books, one for each month. The books are made from a method she calls a Hotdog Book. I knew this great design for a book from one of my favorite fd flickr toys, their Pocket Album. At Susan's YouTube Channel she's also got a whole video about making HotDog booklets. In the Journal a Day video she mentions that she likes to reuse paper, so she collects paper with writing only on one side for projects like these. She proceeds through the folding instructions with clever mnemonics: first fold is long like a hot dog bun, second fold squat like a hamburger, and you'll know if you've done then next two folds right when the paper looks like a W. She's really thought it all out and is able to very plainly explain the instructions.

I love the idea of micro books, what I call Cracker Jack Books and blogged about them along time ago at Bazungu Bucks. Part of the challenge of spreading the read/write culture of the Internet in the developing world is there's not many private computers, often electricity isn't widespread. But there still are computers and the Internet there. What's lacking are ways to interface with the Internet and make it portable. It's a bit like the last mile problem preventing more people in the USA from having broadband Internet. Paper seems an obvious solution, so I've been thinking about little books for a long time. Actually there are many little problems to be worked out, so I haven't gotten very far. One of the great things about YouTube is the related video feature. There I saw instructions for making a 16 page book from a single piece of paper by sammiboy96. Man, I presume the '96 part stands for being born in 1996. I'm so out of it that if you'd said he was born in 1996 I probably would have wondered if sammiboy was walking yet. Nevertheless he provides a brilliant demonstration for making his booklet.

I wonder why I never thought to search YouTube for bookbinding before? Well, of course the blessing and problem with YouTube is that one video leads to another. Clearly there are lots of videos I want to check out about making books there now that I know to look for them. I wonder if there are videos about making paper party hats...

Hats for Holidays

2008-11-21T20:33:00.001-08:00

The two little ones in this photo are celebrating their first birthdays with paper party hats. Those girls are are all grown up now. I'm sure they don't remember those birthday crowns, but I bet they remember other paper hats made for special occasions from their childhood.

I haven't posted in a very long time. But recently have been thinking of hats again. the main reason is that a friend of mine in Kampala could really use some immediate help to pay his university fees. If he doesn't pay all the hard work for the 18 credits he's taken this semester will be lost. And I'm broke, so I though maybe I could try to raise some money with my funky paper party hats.

Kayiwa Fred is a really righteous fellow. He comes from a very poor background and so attending university means he has to work hard for the tuition. That's a common story all over, true for very many university students here in the USA too. In addition to his work and school work, Kayiwa's passion is working with a youth football league in the Kisenyi II parish in Kampala called the Kampala Junior Team.

I know about Kayiwa's activities with the Kampala Junior Team from chatting with Kayiwa and because he's good about getting the word out at Facebook and other places. In fact the KJT even has a group of international supporters. Grace Ayaa of Life in Africa visited the team and wrote two very moving posts here and here. I could go on and on about Grace Ayaa, but I won't today because I'm thinking of Kayiwa and the dreaded exam fees.

Oh but wait, Grace and Kayiwa are precisely the point and thousands others like them. There are people who despite limited means make life better for the least of us. And these people deserve our attention and aid. As the economy worsens here in the USA and elsewhere many more people will fall through the cracks. We must remember them. There are so many ways of doing so. I'm stuck on paper party hats as one way to help.

I haven't made any hats in a very long time. It's fun to make them alone, but no where near as fun as when making hats with others. It helps a lot to have a reason to make them too. This evening I made a hat after supper and I'm wearing it now. Recently South African singer, the great Mama Africa, Miriam Mekeba passed away. Remembering her, it's a bit embarrassing to admit how many times I've watched a YouTube video of a 1960's performance of Khawuleza. The hat I'm wearing was inspired by the headgear she's wearing in the video. I'll recharge the batteries and take a photo of the hat soon.

In other news I recently discovered Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord's Making Books with Children. Along with paper hats I love handmade books. At her blog she has a wonderful idea for a Giving Thanks Accordion Book. Like making paper hats it's an easy project. Gaylord provides some great links to incorporate lessons in the making of the accordion book, as her idea was inspired by reading Jake Swamp's book Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message.

Around the holidays there is simply too much to do! That's especially the case if you have young children in the house. The holidays are a time for thanksgiving. Of course children love to get gifts, but children also long to give. Simple paper projects cost little and are a way for them to create memorable gifts.

I'm not so sure I have much to offer, but I do intend to post here more frequently, and with special attention to ways that we can all participate in this season of giving and thanksgiving.

Paper Forest

2007-12-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

Do you subscribe to Paper Forest? It's a beautiful blog and where I was alerted to this wonderful YouTube video.

Hats for Fun

2007-08-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

Hat by Brent Adrian

Last week the house was full of visitors. My brother's family came and two of my sister's daughter's along with Brent Adrian. I suggested making party hats, but it was only my nieces and Brent who actually took the bait. Making hats as a group is really rather fun. I've yet to discover somebody when introduced to making paper hats get stuck in the how-to. Even I can make hats, so it must be easy. Creativity is the other great thing I've noticed, nobody ever makes a hat that looks like someone else's. All the hats we made that afternoon are lovely. I like all the curves in Brent's hat.

It made me happy when Brent had finished his hat to hear him say, "I'm not sure where the front is." So he had to try it on to discover. I never can actually finish a hat without trying it on an looking in the mirror several times. Brent also suggested it would be fun to have a hat making party. That's half the battle, but the other half: the concept that somehow party hats might be towards the great challenge of water-borne disease, I'm just not good yet at making the connection.

My impetus for this blog was a funding proposal at Omidyar.net an innovative social network and Web site with great user functionality. Sadly Omidyar.net is closing on September 7th. Already the site is accepting no new members. So the regulars at Omidyar.net are looking at new spaces to continue their online collaboration. One of the exciting sites I've discovered is Razoo. Razoo is an online collaborative community with a great set of tools for making positive change in our world.

At Razoo there are groups which allow people to come together for collaboration and there are Causes which allow people to work together around a common issue. I've taken the liberty to create a Hats For Health cause at Razoo. You are welcome to join us (me) there. It's worth taking a look around the Razoo site. There are many worth causes and groups to participate in.

In a general way, I think Razoo is onto something by separating groups and causes with slightly different functionality on the respective Web pages. Causes need to have a focus and offer specific actions to take. The premise of Hats for Health as a vehicle for doing something good about the problem of water-borne diarrheal disease is just too broad. The way forward, it seems is to identify more focused projects geared towards solving specific problems. I sure could use some help in identifying such projects. Please leave a comment if you know of some good efforts.

Sono Filter

2007-08-08T13:30:00.001-07:00

Photo: George Mason University via MSNBC

The late great newspaper woman Molly Ivins used to refer to newspapers as The Daily Disappointment. Boy, do I ever feel that way often. I find it amazing that newspapers don't seem to understand that people who read and write blogs are among newspaper's biggest fans. Maybe it's not so amazing, given that bloggers are so critical of the press.

I'm always eager to link to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, my own Daily Disappointment. Today there is a great article about the invention of the low-cost water SONO water filter which filters out arsenic and makes it safe.

Because it's local article in my local paper, the reporter, Shamim Ashraf, naturally had to play up the local angle. Abul Hussam the inventor of the SOLO filter, for which he won the $1 million dollar National Academy of Engineering challenge to provide safe water, is an alumnus of the University of Pittsburgh. In the scheme of things, that's just a bit of hometown pride, but both the prize and universities around the globe speak to the importance of basic research. Dr. Hussam, of course, is free to use his prize money for anything he wants. The article points out that 70% of his prize money has already been donated for the manufacture and distribution of 11,000 filters in Bangladesh. And 25% of the prize money is now being used for research and further development of filtration technology. Huzzah! Dr. Hussam.

The story is important on so many different levels. Or another way to put it is developing practical solutions for provision of clean water is a complex undertaking. The SOLO filter (PDF file)employs easily available local materials, so is low-tech, but the invention itself involved years of study and academic support.

Another angle on the story has to do with the reporter, Shamim Ashraf. He is the Post-Gazette's 2007 Alfred Friendly Fellow. These fellowships provide opportunities for journalists from the developing world to work in American newsrooms.

So much of what we do depends on markets, in fact so many Americans believe that market-solutions are the only ones worth anything. One of the lessons I take from this wonderful article on the SONO filter is that there are important institutions other than markets.

Either/or thinking and rhetoric tends to leave me cold. So often people mock the efforts of non-profits on the basis that it's only markets which matter. Others mock anything which have to do with corporations and money-making. The reality it seems is there are many institutions in society necessary for the public good--necessary for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

So far as I know Hats For Health has been successful in raising a total of $15 dollars. Obviously as a fund raising idea, it's not the best. Or perhaps it an idea whose time hasn't come. The really important part of the idea, it seems to me, isn't the money to be raised, but the stories to be told. The many of us who are concerned about doing something good about the great problem of water-borne diarrheal illness can support the cause in many ways other than by raising money.

What impresses me about the article in my hometown paper is how it demonstrates that simple solutions to complicated problems emerge from a rich matrix of caring. The solution involves educational institutions, professional societies, and a myriad of ways people collaborate together.

Mosquito Action

2007-07-19T20:20:00.001-07:00

Momentos antes de morir aplastado
Originally uploaded by Gustavo (lu7frb)

I'm a lazy son of a gun! I haven't made a hat in a while. I have a hat in mind I want to make. A few of you may be old enough to remember the character Johnny Carson sometimes played on the Tonight Show of Carnac the Magnificent. Yeah, I want to make a hat like that.

Something I do when I should be working is to read blogs about American politics. Then I get too worn out to work. I was very pleasantly surprised to read post by Washington political insider Steve Clemons, Buzz Cuts: Malaria Activism on Campus. Clemons post was recognizing winners of small grants from The People Speak. As they always say, "talk is cheap" so even though the money has been handed out there are plenty of great ideas at the Web site to encourage young people to engage in the important issues of our time.

Among the small grant winners was:

Alison Case, DePauw University: Knitting for Nets: Using a popular Monday "knit night" club, presentations will educate knitters about malaria and they will then knit scarves to sell for $10 a piece. Each scarf will include information about Nothing But Nets and malaria.

I like this effort because it's a little bit like the idea of Hats For Health to get people together to make something. The trouble with "educating" the public is education takes time and effort. Getting together to do something fun while you learn together makes it a lot more palatable. And then again once you've invested some time to make something to sell, you'll want to explain to someone who might buy your scarf or hat just why you spent the time.

Malaria isn't diarrhea, but it's an inter-connected problem with water-borne disease. I follow the news of the Uganda Village Project which sends medical school students and medical professionals to work in the Iganga District of Uganda. Recently they tested 476 residents and 56% of the adults tested positve for malaria and 78% of the children 0-5 years old. That was very depressing news to me.

I'm not a very good communicator, when I talk about malaria people always: "tsk, tsk" and say "Malaria is so easily cured;" or they say "Isn't there a vaccine for malaria?" But if malaria (PDF file) were so easily cured, then there wouldn't be 300--500 million acute cases of malaria every year, nor 1.1--2.7 million deaths of children under five every year. the issues is complicated and the solutions muti-pronged; just like the problem of water-borne disease.

None of us can do everything, but we all can do something. I was so pleased to see the list of clever ways to raise awareness and money to combat malaria. Of course I'd be happy to see people making crazy party hats for malaria too.

My New Hat

2007-07-07T18:47:00.001-07:00

It's kinda hot and muggy and one consequence is the hat hasn't dried quite, so is still a little sticky.

Working with paste and tissue paper my fingers get a bit sticky and paper gets stuck to them; or errant paste sticks tissue to the work surface. I have a damp cloth handy for my fingers. There's something pleasurable and funny about sticky hands that mitigates the frustration.

Making party hats as I do isn't about perfection, rather just having fun creating. I wonder why I ever gave up coloring books, because the feeling I get from making hats is something like that. As a child we always had crayons, but coloring books were much more occasional. My mother preferred the idea we'd create our own pictures. I think we mostly preferred the coloring books to dreaming up our own pictures, especially as we got a little older and could read. Kids think pictures have to be "of" something and often don't have the skills to render those somethings realistically; so it's much easier just to color pictures in. In making hats it's easier to forget about making a hat look the way a hat is supposed to look and simply go along with the shape and color scheme that emerges.

I've cut my own hair for a long time. Something I had to learn early on is there comes a time in the process of cutting, that more cutting isn't going to improve the situation. With tissue you can add decoration endlessly, but truth be told, there comes a point were adding something more doesn't improve the hat. Artists often agonize over when their art is done. But in reading accounts of this it always seems that the emotional impact of claiming something "done" is less elation and more "It's a fact, Jack." Very small kids seem to understand this about their pictures. They also know when one is done, that means it's time to make another.

Water Parties

2007-07-05T21:19:00.001-07:00

microcosmonaut04
Originally uploaded by Kaunda

Writing a blog post is something I seem to be able to avoid easily. I'm particularly good at avoiding things because it takes so little effort to do so.

This blog is really quite quixotic. The issue of water-borne disease is so important, and something that I really care about. Figuring out something meaningful that I can do doesn't always seem easy. But that's only half of it. The other half is that I think people need more parties. Summer is such a lovely time for parties too.

One of the reasons I got off my stride in posting here and at Bazungu Bucks was that I was spending a bit more time in my garden this spring than I did the previous spring. I do love working in my garden, but sometimes I despair that my garden never really looks like I spend time working in it. The bright side to that is all the truly great gardens looks as though they just happened, that is that they are a product of nature. My garden is not great, which just goes to show that nature works in strange ways. The wonderful thing about gardens and gardening is that as soon as I try to say what's wrong with it, the bright side of the coin appears. For example about nature working in strange ways; so many of the plants and combinations and little critters in the garden have nothing to do with my intentions, but are precisely what delight and fascinate me the most.

Meanwhile after spending more time working in my garden in the spring, I've let things slide lately. We've had some storms which brought down branches and with those storms rain that makes the weeds prosper. So while I'm avoiding working in my garden I thought to post. I thought to run upstairs and take a picture of a wonderful paper turban-style hat a friend made while visiting a while back. Then I remembered something...I lost my computer to a close lightening strike recently and am using an old computer a friend graciously gave to me. I haven't loaded the camera software onto this machine, and I don't feel like doing that now.

The picture was taken by microcosmonaut a talented artist and photographer of the interior of a basic party hat. A couple of friends were over at my place making hats. Both choose to make a hat with a newspaper base which they covered with tissue paper. But both chose to make their hats following the formula described in Make a Simple Hat instead of the brimmed hats along the lines of Newspaper Hats. I didn't make a hat along with them, in fact hadn't made a hat in a while. Last night I began a new one. I think it will look pretty nice when I'm done. But one thing for sure is every time I try to make a hat it's clear that I still don't have a clue about what I'm doing.

On the party front, I heard an old song by Jonathan Richman, Parties in the USA on the radio the other day. You can find the lyrics on Frank Wu's Jonathan Richman Home Page. That song really mirrors my feelings about parties, except it doesn't really get into the sort of party anxiety I feel when I try to throw a party. Here are a few lines from the song:

We need more pa-pa-pa-pa Lupe Lu,
We need more Shake it shake it shake it Lupe.
We need more Parties yeah, in the USA,
Alright, Yeah, shake it up, shake it up, Oh.

On the water front, you know, I mean on the subject of water and preventing water borne disease, google.org now has a blog. A post by Alix Zwane has links to a couple of really important articles about preventing water borne disease.

Basic research into what practices really work and what doesn't work is so important because we urgently need to know where to expend our efforts. Sometimes the results revealed by research are quite discouraging. Some things that really ought to work, just don't in the real world. It's pretty standard in research papers to direct attention to future research needed. That's always struck me, as a not-academic type, as a bit funny, as if researchers are trying to keep themselves in business. But in Alix Zwane's research about efforts to protect community drinking water sources, I was quite intrigued by the question of why these efforts are not more effective in preventing water borne disease especially in children. So the areas for future research Zwane proposes are really necessary. These papers will be of interest to everyone who's working to design and sustain projects on the ground to prevent water borne disease. The google.org blog is of great interest more generally. New approaches for solving the basic problems people face are needed and google.org seems poised to blaze new trails.

Finally via the incomparable Beth's Blog I was alerted to an interview series on Eric Eckl's blog Water Words That Work. My writing is something like doing a cannonball into the water. How hip is it: a blog about writing effectively about environmental issues. I could sure use some help. Sadly, I'll probably pay about as much attention to that as I do my garden and my blogging: not enough. But here's hoping that others out there are better than I am. I'm counting on you.

Another Crushed Hat

2007-05-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

I tried the same approach as with the wizard hat, that is starting out with a tall piece of newspaper and then stiffening the crown of the hat by folding the paper-in accordion style. Actually, what I managed to do is to crush the hat. This technique has great potential, I suspect; nonetheless I wasn't over awed by this hat. It might be nice for the Fourth of July.

Something else that would have improved the results is paying a little more attention to the stripes on the brim. I made the mistake of starting out with a squared end of paper at the crown instead of an angled piece. The result is that the stripes aren't consistent. Then again, my philosophy is not to think too much about making these hats, as it seems more fun just to enjoy pasting.

Crushed Hats

2007-05-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

Amusing comic at Jen Sorenson's Slowpoke, Least Effective Forms of Political Activism. I guess Sorenson hasn't discovered Hats For Health yet.

This is a picture of the wizard hat re-jiggered. I was enjoying the evening air by a fire with friends while wearing the wizard hat. The moisture in the air made the tall hat rather floppy, so we played with various ways of trying to get the horn to stand upright. What seemed to work the best was folding the cone into pleats. Tissue paper hats are surprisingly durable, however they do tear sometimes. It's good to know that one needn't be too worried about tearing because it's so easy to simply paste patches of paper to correct them. Also decorations sometimes curl a bit, a little dab of Elmer's glue solves that in no time. I enjoyed discovering the pleating technique and when I get around to it will employ it in my next hat.

Wizard Hat

2007-04-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

Using newspaper to make the hat and then decorating with tissue allows for much more flexibility in styles and sizes. This wizard hat is just slightly top heavy, and sets a little further down on my head than I'd like. But it works well enough.

I've been negligent about posting in general, but especially about the health part of Hats For Health. It seems as though there's a balancing act a person has to perform between realistic pessimism and imaginative optimism. Nearly a billion people lack reliable access to potable water. A billion is really too big a number for me to imagine, but suffice it to say there are many stories of real people behind that statistic, in many different locales. There is no single answer. Alas, of late I've been awash in pessimism. Regaining balance isn't so easy. Probably just a personality quirk, I'm rather natively optimistic. In any case it's important for me not so much to deny what Al Gore calls "inconvenient truths," but rather to imagine that solutions are possible. I'm feeling discouraged.

I also have a blog called Bazungu Bucks where I'm quite as negligent about posting as I am here. One of the great advantages of having an African-centric blog is I get to talk to more Africans than I would otherwise. I'm a middle-aged white American. I even fit the stereotype of the guy blogging in the basement. One of the things that comes up, generally quite good-naturedly, are comments like: "Of course, you're an American!" It's a slightly different look at the the "white-guy" thing than when it comes up with another American. Looking at my ideas about optimism, even my "save-the-worldism," there's a bit of that white-guy mentality in action.

Reading my daily dose of political blogs today ZuZu at Feministe takes down Will Saletan. The issue is abortion, but the subtext is about a familiar patronizing attitude. From ZuZu's article there's a link to Ilyka at Pandagon Your White Guy Passport to Expertland. Ilyka states the two foundational principles of "White Guyness." The first is: "Everthing is knowable." The second is, well, there are a couple of words in it that I won't use here. But ouch, the pot title alone nails it! I'm afraid I'm as stuck with White Guyness as I am with my big nose. While don't very much appreciate people talking about my big nose, I do appreciate talking about the other thing. It really does help to be reminded on occasion that my perspective is only one perspective and most of the time multiple perspectives are advantageous.

I want action and teetering on the pessimistic edge these days feels debilitating. Finding that step, as in one step at a time, is what I want. Still I value times like these when I feel moved, even overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of the troubles we face; because it's not just any step I need, but a good step. I hope I imagine one soon. A Web site that helps me is WorldChanging.

When all that seems too heavy there's Paper Forest. What a delightful blog on paper crafts! The links on the sidebar are worth exploring too.
I take the same sort of pleasure in looking at the paper constructions that I do looking at any of the Taunton Press "Fine" series of magazines. And I'm at least as likely not to make any such thing. Still articles and picture of really well-made things inspire some ideas or perhaps suggest solutions to a problems I've been puzzling over.

Ah now I've got my wizard hat on and I'm feeling much more optimistic. I'm not sure why really. It occurs to me that a wizard hat is very much like a dunce cap. I wonder if there's something about the shape that's supposed to make a person smarter? One thing for sure, it's very hard to take myself too seriously while wearing a paper party hat. Maybe that's magic enough.

Fez

2007-04-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

The Fez was easy to make. What parade would be complete without Shriners on tiny motorcycles? Really I wasn't thinking about Shriners when I made the Fez, but thinking about parades made me think of them and also ways to make the parade longer and involve as many as possible. A bunch of adults on interesting pedal powered vehicles all wearing Fez would be a nice touch I think.

There are many themes for a parade. The one I like the best is an "I Love You Day Parade." I saw the idea for an "I Love You Day" at Omidyar.net. But search as I might, I haven't been able to find the thread. Part of what attracts me to the idea of an I Love You Day Parade, is who could be against it? Answering my own question, being of a certain age, the idea connotes Flower Power and Love Ins. Apparently some of us fifty-somethings exaggerate to impress the kids. Oh my! But it will be forty years since the Summer of Love and the Human Be-In. Some are now asking whether 2007 can be a Summer of Love. I hope many more will ask the question and more importantly answer yes!

Another great thing about I Love You Day is it can be any and everyday.

Parade Hats

2007-04-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

I imagine making hats more than I do actually going about making them. And when I go about making them I start out with the most general idea. This idea is based on a hat I saw in a picture of a parade somewhere. I rather like the idea of big hats. Starting out with a newspaper base certainly lends a great deal of flexibility of design. I suspect my next hat project will be a small hat, more or less a fez.

I do like the idea of paper party hats as a vehicle for fund raising, but on that score little success has borne out. People all over the world need clean water and sanitation, so I'm committed to discovering ways to engage as many people as possible on the issues. But I believe we need more parties too. When people are assembled together so many ways of sharing are possible that simply aren't otherwise. Of course, parties aren't the only sort of joyful assembly; Who doesn't love a parade?

Recently I've been talking with friends trying to pare down a parade to something we might actually be able to organize. It's awfully fun to talk about parades. I've suggested that a parade benefits from a crepe paper decorated VIP car. Drummers seem absolutely necessary. Floats are a good idea because they make the parade much longer, but including them and any vehicle greatly adds to the complications. It seems that a walking parade can escape most of the requirements for permits, hiring police, and insurance.

What has to happen regardless of how elaborate the parade is to find people to form crews who will walk together. A friend suggested a precision rain stick marching crew. Along with that he said that over sized maracas can be made by putting pellets into toilet plungers of this type. Another friend suggested a kite that she's made with kids that's held on a short string and held aloft just by the movement. At one time I actually found the plans for that kite, but I'm not having any luck locating it today. However at instructables are plans for a cool pocket sized kite. That's something to do after the parade perhaps. A great thing about making paper hats is the ideas for making fun stuff out of paper keeps on growing. Clearly there are lots of simple things that crews can come up with to please the parade watchers. And nothing says "Parade" better than Paper Parade hats.

This design is quite simple. I began with a simple tube hat made from newspaper. The basic process is to paste a piece of paper to a paper band that's about 25 inches long and folded in half down the middle. That length allows for about an inch overlap to join the ends to form a circle. The ends can be stapled or pasted. To form the hat crown in this hat I just folded to make a pointy top. Then I pasted two more pieces of newspaper to hat bands, but rather than joining the ends together I stapled them at the middle of the hat band of the simple tube hat. That made two "ears" on either side of the hat. On these "ears I folded the excess paper inside and then joined the edges with paste inserting the red tissue fringe in between. Many people will be much better at decorating such a hat than I, but in general it's a very serviceable design for a parade hat.

This Saturday, April 14th is a national day for climate action. Check out Step It Up 2007. There are hundreds of gathering all over the country, three in Pittsburgh alone. Events like these are just the right sort of events to wear a paper party hat! If you go and wear a hat, I'd love to hear about it and to see a photo. I'd love to see photos of hat you make in any case. Everyone is welcome to post their pictures at the Party Hat Group at Flickr.

Easter Bonnet

2007-04-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

I made an Easter bonnet for a friend. So far I've not been good at moving the concept of hats as a means to raise awareness and money to tackle the issue of water-borne diseases.

I showed another friend the Easter bonnet I'd made. He mentioned seeing hats at the Kentucky Derby. That was a great suggestion because there are lots of pictures of fantastic hats worn by people at the Kentucky Derby. Something I've got to learn how to do is ribbon and fabric decoration for the hats. His point was that the real hats are so expensive, but paper hats would be a way for regular people to participate in the fun.

I got an invitation forwarded to me for a rather posh fund raiser for The Samburu Project at Pittsburgh's fabulous Mattress Factory Museum. I'm wondering if a forwarded invitation is still a valid invitation? In any case the Samburu project seeks to raise enough money, about $250,000.00 to build 25 new wells in the the Samburu region of Kenya.

I've been participating in an online thread brainstorming ideas to tackle the problem of water-borne disease. Sometimes this thread has gotten contentious because it's not easy to settle on what to do.

Something I'm not very good at is thinking big. When people want to raise money, it seems they want to raise big money. I say: More power to them! But I feel like I'm stuck way out on the long tail of things. When I imagine money I imagine little money. But then again, it's amazing what a difference a little money can make sometimes. So for me, a fund raiser which raises $100 seems like a great thing.

Looking at pictures of Kentucky Derby hats, I imagined the charity events I see in the newspaper where the hoity-toity are SEEN often in stylish hats. My friend is right, fancy paper hats are a way for the hoi polloi can gather in big hats. A charity ball doesn't have to cost big money to be a big success.

With this hat I finally did experiment using wall paper wheat paste. I need to experiment some more, because it surely must be a useful technique. However wheat paste is much wetter than the Yes! Paste I use and like so much, also wetter than Elmer's glue or something like that. But that feature is useful for shapes. As you might notice from the picture I added paper to make a really big brim for this Easter bonnet. The wetter paper allows for shaping, but it takes a day or so to dry. And there is a bit of shrinkage involved.

Still the hats made from newspaper offer so many possibilities and for the time being are my favorite kinds of hats to make.

There's a good post at the Private Sector Development Blog today regarding preventing water-borne diseases by treating water at the point of use; i.e., in household quantities.

Water is essential for life and the challenge of providing the people of the world with safe water is a daunting task. That mean it will take lots of us working towards a solution: rich and poor alike.

World Day for Water

2007-03-19T20:38:00.000-07:00

How I managed to wear such a dour expression wearing such a silly hat, I'll never fathom! Perhaps it was because last week we had a few days of very nice warm weather, but then the snow and ice returned. I'm so looking forward to Spring and it's almost here. March 21st is the official beginning of Spring. March 22nd is World Day for Water.

This year's theme is Coping with Water Scarcity. This is a very significant subject, which touches all of us. So I should have something very serious to say. I'm afraid, however, I'm at a loss for words, being out of practice about blog posting. Did you miss me?

Darn it! I can't ever seem to get to the point about anything.

I was rather stuck on the problem of making that Triceratops hat anything I'd want to look at. It laid around for a month while I pondered its fate. I probably would have destroyed it had I not posted a photo of it in its still uncompleted form here. What gave me the inspiration to finish it was that my friend pingting was returning from his journey to India and I thought to meet him at the airport wearing a festive hat.

I showed up at the airport wearing the labors of the night before, but it became clear after an hour or so he wasn't on any of the logical flights. You see, pingting began his journey to India during the Valentines Days snow emergency, which set new records lows for airline consideration of travelers, and he returned on the day of a similar, yet slightly less stupendous breakdown of air service resulting from the weather.

My embarrassment in loitering around the airport wearing the hat was somewhat off-set by the fact that it was Saint Patrick's Day, apparently an opportunity for people to wear funny head gear in public. All rights are reserved, but check out this photo at Flickr of an especially awesome Saint Patrick's Day Parade hat.

I guess I have a couple of days to come up with something constructive to say about coping with severe water shortages. In the meantime I'll encourage you to send a ecard from the World Water Day site. You get to choose from five wonderful photos by Milapsinh Jadeja and from four different stamp designs to highlight World Water Day.

Then do yourself a favor and click on the link to Milapsinh Jadeja's Flickr photos. He's a great photographer and the pictures and notes a wonderful excursion.

Crazy Hat Days

2007-02-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

Darn. That's an ugly hat!

I'm not what you'd call "artistic." The great thing about making paper hats is it's something that doesn't require talent. I've made enough hats and watched many others making hats to know that artistic talent isn't essential for making crazy hats.

Something that does get in the way of making hats is the expectation, often confirmed in the process of making a hat, that the hat I make will be ugly, or at least not as pretty as the hats other people might make.

This sort of insecurity runs through most of the activities I like to do. I think of myself as an incompetent gardener. Part of that is while I don't hate weeding, I do seem to loose interest rather sooner than more competent gardeners do, and in an activity where timing is so important I'm too often am just behind. More plants have perished from my neglect than I care to admit and the plants that really thrive in my garden might be described as "common" or even weedy. Yet seeing flowers bloom around me, especially at times of the day with certain qualities of light, fills me with delight. So I'm not the best gardener in the world, but I still love gardening.

I'm not the best paper party hat maker either. For some reason I imagine that I ought to have an idea in my head of what the finished hat should look like. I seem to be able to conjure up images in my head alright, but the hats I actually make bare scant resemblance to them.

The picture is a hat which isn't finished yet. It's far from what I had in mind. While the hat's got a goodly amount of "crazy" it's got too much "ugly" to it. So I'll have to experiment around a bit to see if I can't make it look better. Those three horns seem made for dangling something, I rather like the idea of introducing some kinetic movement to a hat, something I haven't done before. I never had a propeller beanie, but that's a good example of a popular hat that incorporates movement in the design.

Children, in my experience, seem to understand that part of the pleasure in making things is solving problems and making decisions. Certainly there are those who are able to imagine a hat and to imagine the step by step process which will make that idea an actuality. But most of us will have some rough ideas about hats and an even rougher set of ideas of how to make them. You know what? That's half the fun!

Many adults do things which they've spent years learning and even more years perfecting. But that's no reason not to try to do new things, to explore activities we might not be really good at doing. There's little risk of embarrassment in making a paper party hat. The point is for the hats to be silly and fun. It's something adults can do to reconnect with the pleasure we all experienced as children in making things.

Now that I've shown this hat that's got me stuck on account of it being too ugly, I'll have to work on it and provide a photo when it's done. Sometimes there's no hiding ugly, so we'll see what emerges.

Hat Politics

2007-02-07T21:48:00.000-08:00

Politics is the way people make decisions. Like death and taxes, it's easy not to like politics, but impossible to escape. Nobody opposes clean water and every sensible person wants to reduce water-borne diarrhea; but making decisions, the politics of water issues, gets rather tricky.

Reactions to global climate change with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and the issue of peak oil with A Crude Awakening demonstrate that political waters aren't easy to navigate. I unfortunately have a history of sometimes alienating people by how I relate my ideas. Recently in an online discussion group the subject of National Black HIV Awareness 2007 (February 7) came up. The first response in the thread was from the point of view of AIDS skepticism. The thread did not devolve into a brouhaha, and I didn't offer my comments. But I've witnessed near riots over the subject in other contexts. One of the problems is separating out legitimate skepticism from abuses of skepticism.

In my local watershed the issue of agricultural run-off is a difficult area for political decision-making. As I ruminated in a previous post I was surprised to become a little politically-agitated over talk of "invasive species" in a wonderful stream restoration project in Pittsburgh and surrounding communities. My issues with the "invasive species" talk are really very small, the significant thing was realizing that water issues and the problem of water-borne disease are not immune from politically charged exchanges. Everyone needs water so decisions must be made about how we use and share the resources.

I was delighted to receive and email from the incomparable Beth Kanter that her son, Harry had taken some Hats For Health to school for "crazy hat day." First of all, I'm so pleased Harry's school has a "crazy hat day." Beth relayed that Harry, "told everyone the story behind the hats ... Not sure they got it - they're only 7." I wish I'd heard what Harry said, because if Hats For Health is ever to become a meme that spreads, it's got to be a story that even a seven year old can tell.

Too many people get sick from the water they use and drink. We need to find ways together to help the sick get better and to make sure people have the clean water they need.

That's the basic idea, but it lacks "snap." As far as politics go it's the "we need to" part that will raise hackles.

I think for young and old alike it's probably easier to focus and become excited about a project which solves a particular issue, for example helping a community in a developing country with funds to build a well or to install a pump. The problem with that is a little like the problem of cajoling children to eat the broccoli on their plate by saying, "Think of the starving children in..." It creates a distance that numbs curiosity of how it is we might happen to have water safe to drink, and how to keep it that way. It even numbs the imagination of what it is to live where something as essential as water makes people sick.

I wonder how water-borne diarrheal illness can be a topic that connects us in our common humanity and encourages us to find ways address our pressing problems? I have to laugh that I imagine paper party hats might play a role. I don't know seven-year old Harry, but I'm indeed encouraged he took advantage of "crazy hat day" to tell the story of Hats For Health. I'm inspired by the idea of crazy hat days too, there's an idea with legs if I ever heard one!

Marcus Samuelsson Asks a Question

2007-02-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

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Marcus Samuelsson, chef, critically acclaimed author and UNICEF ambassador asks a question at Yahoo! Answers. Between January 30 and February Yahoo! Answers is encouraging us to get Up Close with UNICEF. The questions by nine celebrity UNICEF ambassadors are all good ones; questions that invite real answers. There are also some videos which are fun to watch. If you answer any of the questions, won't you share your answer here too?

One Hour of Time

2007-01-29T20:22:00.000-08:00

My ideas always seem half-baked. I've got another blog called Bazungu Bucks. The idea behind Bazungu Bucks is to assign a credit for time spent in service to African people, where one hour of time equals one Bazungu Buck. You can read a little more about the idea in this post. I guess it's a very Western metaphor to think; time is money. But then again, Bazungu Bucks aren't real money but an alternative currency.

Now this idea hasn't gone anywhere because nobody can figure out how to spend Bazungu Bucks, so what's the use? Since you really can't spend Bazungu Bucks like money, what I had in mind is that sort of a reputation system. If a person spends enough time in service to African people and accrues some Bazungu Bucks they could go to another person with some Bazungu Bucks and make a deal--after all who else would do something for Bazungu Bucks than someone who already had some? Perhaps first there is a question: What did you do to earn those bucks? Chances are good that the ways different people earned their bucks represent individual interests and skills. So the next question might be: Would you be willing to trade some of your time using your skills to earn some of my Bazungu Bucks? The bucks sort of grease the wheels of collaboration among partners.

The devil is always in the details. In this case I've not worked out too many of the details for anyone to take the idea seriously. Nevertheless I think there is a kernel of a good idea in Bazungu Bucks and that's simply: Our time is valuable. One dollar won't get anyone very far, and a single Bazungu Buck may not get you anywhere. But dollars added up can make a difference and so too the small efforts of many. The reputation systems at various Web sites like eBay function a little like how I imagine Bazungu Bucks might. In any case such reputation systems prove there is value to what we do which is not so easily measured by real money.

It takes about an hour to make a hat. As a fund raising endeavor it's probably not very efficient. I think most people would be willing to pay a dollar for a handmade paper party hat. And I think most would agree that a dollar an hour is slave wages. So maybe the idea of Hats For Health isn't just half-baked but downright wacky too.

I think that Hats For Health hold value beyond fund raising. First of all parties are very important to people because they are a way to share our connections to others. An hour making a Hat For Health is an hour spent in service to others. In that hour a person makes all sorts of decisions to make a nice hat. So the hat contains a story about the person who makes the hat. When people make hats together in groups stories are shared. Now fund raising is a good reason to make hats, so the best way to sell the hat is to tell someone the story about the hat. When a person wears a Hat For Health they tell a story about it to. Making Hats For Health is a way of expanding connections. The stories of paper party hats for health have real value beyond the money raised.

Three million people die a year as a result of diarrhea, a disproportionate number of them are children. Nearly two-thirds of the people on the globe do not have dependable access to safe water. So at a very rudimentary level the story of a hat begins: Too many people in the world lack for the basic essentials of life, and too many are dying. I made this hat to do something about that. Won't you do something too?

The best part about the hats is they are colorful and fun. They are meant to be worn at a parties. The stories in the hats is joyful. The invitation to do something, to spend a little of your time to devise solutions to the pressing problems today is joined by: Come on, it will be fun!

My Pansy Hat

2007-01-26T22:25:00.000-08:00

I've really gotten fond of these newspaper hats. Today was my father's 85th birthday, so I baked a cake and made a pan of lasagna. While I was waiting for the stuff in the oven I set about to make a hat. I had in mind a bowler or derby, what I ended up with is more a pith helmet.

Something that's noticeable in the picture, but doesn't seem so much in real life is that I don't turn the tissue paper from the band up so that it might touch the head. The reason is that sometimes the colors from tissue paper can bleed when wet. The color in this particular tissue seems doesn't seem to run. You can buy tissue which is meant to bleed, and that's rather a nice effect sometimes. I suppose if I were to be careful I could use some white tissue to join the joint between the band of the hat and the brim. But hey, these are just party hats!

Decorating hats is really quite fun. Clearly there are so many ways to do it. One of these days I'm going to get brave enough to try paint. But in the meantime I'm impressed by how making hats makes me appreciate what makes pretty paper pretty.

I do like the pansies. As I've mentioned, I'm the Incompetent Gardener, and while there's nothing hard about growing pansies, I'm not really that good at it. I very much like the old species variety Viola tricolor. I like them because they remind me of my grandmother who always called them Johnny Jump Ups. I'm such an attention hound that anything with my name in it catches my attention. My grandmother also always called corn bread "Johnny cake." But I'm sure I would like both pansies and corn bread just as much without sometimes being called names with my name in them. V. tricolor is also sometimes called Heartsease. It's a lovely plant that will often self-seed. There's also a selection 'Bowles Black' which can really look splendid. Some Bowels Black pansies had seeded themselves under two mullein plants and I loved the way the black flowers looked with the yellow spires and hairy leaves of the mullein. One of the advantages of being an incompetent gardener is such happy serendipity.

I am looking forward to spring. I think I must get my florescent lights in order to start some seedlings again this year. For several years I was diligent about that, but I've rather burnt out. The problem it seems to me is making too many flats and not having a place to keep them all. We tend to go from having evening frosts to hot days. A single cold night or a single hot day can destroy a whole flat of plants without proper attention. One of the great challenges of gardening is the matter of timing; oh, and running out of time. It pays to have good humor about it. And generally since seeds are relatively cheaper than plants, it helps to rely on seeds to a greater extent than expensive plants.

As far as paper hats go, I need to locate some wheat paste, the kind they always used to use for hanging wall paper. Or perhaps I'll try some of the wall paper paste mixtures they have nowadays. I've been told that wheat paste is hard to come by these days. I very much like Yes! Paste but it's a bit dear. It also tends to harden a bit more than I would like. That's useful sometimes, but it makes the tube-type hats more fragile than I'd like. Elmer's Glue also works well and I should give that a go again too. Yes! Paste is very much like a glue stick and has the same advantage of being tacky enough to hold, but not hold so well when still loose that you can't adjust the position of things.

Soon I'll go to the hardware store to look. I bet they'll have seeds. Hum they used to have cheap seeds, but not so much anymore. If I'm going to spend good money on seeds, I like to order them. I have too many favorite seed catalogs. Nichols Garden Nursery is one. They sell a very special marigold 'Red Metamorph' which when I first grew it a few years ago expected to find it in all the catalogs the next year. But so far I've only seen it at Nichols. Right on the Home page at Nichols is a link to Plant a Row for the Hungry Web site. Nichols Garden Nursery have been a long supporter of this cause. There is something great about seed companies that tell you to buy only what you need and to grow something for the hungry. Not too far from me is a nursery that is a collection point for farmer-grown foods that will go to food banks. This year I'm going to try hard to make sure I manage to grow some food for that worthy cause.

Update: I corrected some spelling errors, probably I still missed some.

Update #2: I discovered that my list at Topic The Incompetent Gardener is still up, they didn't purge it as they said they would.

Incompetent Gardener

2007-01-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

That's a picture of my little house in springtime. It has not much to do with water-borne diarrheal illness or paper party hats. (Do you notice the house is falling down in two directions?) Finally here in Western Pennsylvania we're getting some winter weather after a long spell of unseasonably warm weather. I'm not at all complaining, indeed I'm quite grateful we've avoided the bouts of heavy weather that have hit many parts of the USA this winter. Still, I'm dreaming of springtime.

Over at Omidyar.net the team who were so successful in raising donations to be matched by the Omidyar Network has been brainstorming about how to proceed. If you're interested you can follow the discussion here; there's even a handy flipchart that summarizes the main ideas so far. Please join us at Omidyar.net if you'd like. Omidyar.net is a great place to have others engage you about your ideas.

One of the things about brainstorming is generating a bunch of ideas without judging them up front. But of course eventually judgment is involved. It really is like trying on clothing to decide whether or not to buy them. So I threw out the idea of making some educational lessons on the subject. Teaching is harder than it sounds.

Oh I suppose that's why I chose the title for this post. I was pretty late getting online. In any case when I did come online, I didn't know about blogs. But I did discover email lists, so I began writing essays under the guise of The Incompetent Gardener. These essays may still be online somewhere, I really should look because I don't have copies of them and I liked at least a few of them. I'm not a very good gardener, but I very much like to garden. So I talked about liking gardening and not quite getting it. For example, when I planted those bright orange tulips in the background of the picture, I wasn't thinking about the Mauve blooms of the PJM rhododendrons that would bloom at the same time. Lacking good taste, I was delighted how rude the colors looked together when they bloomed.

Yeah well, the history of my attempt at teaching have been a little like that too. The technologist Jon Udell made a really important point about new electronic technologies, First have a great use experience, then have a great user experience. One of the big challenges in creating a lesson is getting students to discover that "aha!" and have a reason to study further. It's much like what Udell is talking about with adopting new technologies.

H.L. Mencken is credited with saying: "Those that can--do, those that can't--teach." Ouch! That's always stung because it reflects the rather general assumption of failure of teachers even before they begin. And it grates because the presumption isthat teaching is somehow easy.

An adage in the environmental field is: "Think globally, Act locally." The attribution is always clear, but I believe it was Rene Dubos who said it first. The idea is that local ecological, economic, and cultural differences are critical for finding solutions to global environmental problems. Such a view is not universally shared. Many people are quite focused on worldwide issues of concern like global climate change.

In thinking about making lessons for students to learn about water-borne disease,it's really important to find ways to make the subject immediate and interesting. Generally, I think it's easier to interest people in local matters because they already know something about that. Ah, yes, another thing is that knowledge builds on knowledge. Making connections with what people already know is a good way for people to gain new knowledge.

So in trying to flesh out my ideas on making educational materials, I began to look into local watersheds. I knew that there's an ongoing effort to restore and protect a creek which runs trough the City of Pittsburgh called Nine Mile Run. The Nine Mile Run Watershed Association has a wonderful Web site. I've enjoyed reading the pages there and have gotten some good ideas for ways that lessons about that watershed might be made. But when I read the page on Invasive Plant Control I had some questions.

There are many issues which become hot button issues. Invasive species is one of those issues. Via the wonderful, must-read blog 3Quarks Daily was a link to an excellent essay in The Boston Review by Kerry Emanuel, Phaeton's Reins: The human hand in climate change. Global climate change is a good example of a hot-button issue. It's sometimes suggested that teachers should "teach the controversy." Teachers not only want to create lessons which will increase their students' knowledge about scientific knowledge, but also to help students learn how to think scientifically. Teachers want student to know how to use science as a tool, a method of knowing. So "teaching the controversy" isn't straightforward at all, especially with a subject like global climate change as a result of human activity where there is broad consensus among scientist who study the issue.

Something that made my ears prick up in the Nine Mile Run page on invasive species was referring to the success of non-native invasive plant species as the result of lacking "predators." I think of predators as certain types of animals and the application of the term for plants seemed at best a metaphor and one I wasn't completely comfortable with. The author page isn't credited, but I know form their Web site the people involved are highly qualified experts in their fields. It hardly seems worthwhile to get stuck over a little matter, especially as it would probably be easy to skirt the issue of non-native plants entirely in developing lessons. But pausing to think for a moment about the issue made me realize that I have a different, and perhaps peculiar way of looking at ecological systems.

Regardless how good at actually teaching various teachers are, something teachers share in common is wanting to keep kids safe. Most people say they love kids, and I think that's true, but most people also know that kids, particularly in groups can be quite annoying. Teachers certainly know that! But no matter, teachers also know that every single one of their student's is "somebody's baby child" and being responsible for them is something that cannot be taken lightly. That sense of responsibility extends to the content of lessons. Teachers and people developing educational lessons feel responsible for the content to be accurate and able to be applied.

So seeing signs that my approach to the subject of invasive plants signaled more general differences about the science involved, I've begun reviewing the literature. What I've come to appreciate is a little different from hot-button issues, but just as tricky to negotiate and that's differing schools of thought within the scientific community. And what I find is that I tend very much toward one camp over another. The significant issue isn't invasive species, it's just that issue revealed a more general difference in scientific approaches.

I've prattled on too long already, so I won't delve into this subject any further today. I'm quite happy being an incompetent gardener, but not at all content to be an incompetent teacher. The notion of creating educational lessons about water and water borne disease is one that's going to take quite a lot more discovery on my part.

Meanwhile the brains are storming over at Omidyar.net. A new Stop WDI Web site has been launched. "The more the merrier" I always say. Do you have ideas about how to begin solving the problem of water-borne diseases, a leading cause of death worldwide? Won't you find a way to share them?

What's Up?

2007-01-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a long while since posting here. Over at Omidyar.net the team which successfully raised money to meet the matching grant money offered by Omidyar Network for attacking water-borne illnesses has been busy brainstorming about what to do next. I'm embarrassed not to have contributed or lead to the contribution of one red cent in the December campaign. But I'm actively following the "what next" discussion. I'm also wondering what's next for this blog?

A friend, who is an attorney and quite a stickler about his commitment to pro bono work got some money for work he considered pro bono. I had told him about Hats for Health and he wanted to know whether he could contribute even after the deadline had passed. Of course he can, but I have such a collection of causes I consider worthwhile, that I'm afraid I simply burdened him with choices. Talk about NOT being a closer!

I'm not sure where the brainstorming at Omidyar.net will lead. If you are a member at Omidyar.net or would like to join us, please do. Omidyar.net is a wonderful community of people with loads of ideas and projects; there's something or someone that's sure to be right up your alley there. But, and perhaps it's just me, the site is a little clunky to navigate; that is, sometimes it's a bit difficult to find ones way around the site. So it takes expending a little effort and patience to really appreciate.

While the WDI team charts a new course, I still think the idea of making paper party hats can play a role in addressing the crisis of water borne disease. One organization I'm very high on is The African Well Fund. The AFW doesn't build wells but rather serves to mobilise people about the issue and to raise money for Africare and Africare's initiatives for clean water. Africare does build wells with the donations from the African Well Fund, so it's a great partnership.

The African Well Fund has a number of ideas for fund raising and once I'm out of the moderation queue the Hats for Health idea is something I'll introduce on the forums there.

The image is something for Beth Kanter's birthday. I simply love Beth's Blog and as I mentioned before Beth's campaign on behalf of The Sharing Foundation got the matching money Yahoo promised in December for their Charity Badge Contest. You can find out about Yahoo for Good right here. Beth Kanter provides so much good information about technology for non-profits, but really the information she shares is useful for so many different activities and especially people engaged in educational activities of all sorts. Reading the blog is downright fun because she experiments so. And the image has to do with an experiment: Flickr Photo Remix Contest.

Beth describes herself as "a visual learner." I'm sure there's all sorts of truth to that, but something she demonstrates so well about technology issues is how much everyone can learn by just playing around. Over the last month or so Beth has covered the issue of Creative Commons licenses and remixing/mashups. Wow! This is such an interesting subject in general. It's not online but there is a great article in February's Harpers On The Rights Of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context by Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas. Beth's challenge is to make her a birthday card remixing photos of her.

I really don't know how to use photo editing software. I tried to put a paper Hats For Health on her head using PhotoShop, but I didn't do a very good job. And I didn't even add this to the Flickr site. Mostly I'm showing it here to suggest that people explore the fun Flickr Toys at BigHuge Labs. Really useful stuff and fun too! To make Beth's card I used the Movie Poster Maker.

I'm still interested in Hats For Health and will try hard to come up with some content for this blog. Don't be shy about contacting me with your ideas and projects. Making paper hats is great fun and that fun can be coupled with doing something really good for others too.

Heroes

2007-01-03T18:03:00.001-08:00

Dr. Hendrie with Tep Vuthea, an orphan from Roteang Village
Originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

To update the Attacking Water-Borne Diarrheal Illness campaign at Omidyar.net: It was a big success. $20,230.52 was raised to benefit the five organizations on the ground. So the full matching grant from Omidyar of $12,500.00 was realized, for a grand total of $32,719.52. I didn't contribute. I didn't manage to raise one thin dime with my paper hats. Oh well, I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea yet.

Given my lack of productivity I was keeping a pretty low profile on the discussion threads at Omidyar, but still reading them avidly. There are so many really lovely people around, and the efficiency in meeting them online is great. The month of December saw Omidyar Network matching grants, Yahoo also got into the match game with their new Charity Badge. To sweeten the pot Yahoo offered to donate $50,000.00 to the charity badge with the most donations. The winner is: The Sharing Foundation.

Today's title is Heroes and with the success of The Sharing Foundation's campaign it seemed natural to post a picture of Dr. Nancy Hendrie, a retired pediatrician and founder of The Sharing Foundation. I'll count her as one of my heroes.

But I also so many others to count. Beth Kanter's Beth's Blog

A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and publish links about nptech, educational technology, information design, visual thinking, creativity, ICT in the developing world, and much more.

is one of my favorite blog destinations. Beth Kanter among many other things provides the real skinny on useful online tools. She's an early adopter with a real gift for providing clear explanations. The Kanter's have two young school-aged children and as a family have committed to providing yearly college tuition to an orphan in The Sharing Project. The annual cost is about $950 and Beth explained that as a family young kids they really don't have a lot of money and so have ended up in the past enlisting friends and family to raise the amount. She had been writing about widgets for blogs, so decided to launch a campaign using a widget called ChipIn.

Actually, Kanter pulled out the stops and used all sorts of online tools to raise the visibility of the campaign. She leveraged Flickr and YouTube--if you're thinking of Vlogging go to her blog and find out about all of the possibilities not jut YouTube. Most of all Beth Kanter passionately told stories about how The Sharing Foundation makes life so much better for so many. So, of course her ChipIn campaign was a big success. Encouraged she started a second campaign and won the Yahoo Competition. No question Beth Kanter is an extraordinary person, but her experience shows that personal fund raising can be successful.

At Omidyar.net one of the principle members of the team was hospitalized right around Christmas. She had her son bring a laptop to her bedside so she could continue to post. I was so moved by her commitment, but knowing a little of her history it's nothing new. She was an elementary school teacher in the South starting in the Civil Rights era. She's a hero.

Another hero came up in the Omidyar.net Campaign too. Mr. Carpenter is retired, but gardens in his English village. Just outside his gate he provides daily produce from the garden and a collection box. Every month he writes a check to a charity with the proceeds from the vegetable sales.

In today's news is a story of Wesley Autrey who pulled off a daring rescue on the New York Subway. Autrey was waiting for a train with his two young daughters when he noticed a young man was having some sort of medical incident. Along with two women Autrey went to attend to the man. But the the man collapsed and fell onto the tracks. Autrey jumped down and laid over the man as the train passed over them. Good grief! The first thing that Autrey shouted once the train had stopped and realizing they were going to trapped for a while until the electricity could be shut off was: "Listen to me, there are two little girls, tell them their father is alright."

So often when we hear tales of heroism, the heroes say something along the order: "I just did what anyone else in my situation would have done." We hear it enough times, and it resonates, but then again would I have jumped into to save the man as Autrey did? I'm not so sure.

There is a lesson, I think, in knowing that heroes are regular people too. We all maybe called on to be heroes. Or maybe it's more that by living in a way so we try to create something good sometimes we'll become heroes.

Mapping

2006-12-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

A photographer friend has no interest in altered photographs. I find them interesting because I'm a lousy photographer. My lovely friend is pictured in the photo collage made with one of FD Flickr Toys the Hockneyizer. I love these toys; they're useful and fun. My friend was married in a very private ceremony. I was privileged to attend under the guise that I would take photos. When I got home I discovered that all of the pictures had real troubles: the light was bad and the camera shook. It took some adjustment to make the photos the least bit presentable.

That has nothing to do with attacking water-borne diarrheal illness, nor paper party hats. In truth I was just playing around with Flickr Toys and liked the result of that particular photo. The combination of Polariods into a photomontage a technique employed by artist David Hockney, he referred to these works as "Joiners," is "modern art." Polaroids pictures were modern to the nth-degree when I was growing up. Nowadays, I suppose they are something of a quaint throwback. But the challenge of making a "sensible" picture from many not-necessarily-sensible parts remains a modern day challenge.

Marshall McLuhan wrote presciently about the challenge in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. It's been a long time since I read that book, and I'm not sure I understood much of it when I did read it. But several catchphrases McLuhan introduced are still current; like "the global village" and "the medium is the message." Here's Bjork talking about television at Youtube. I think she's brilliant in her commentary of McLuhan's thesis about TV:

You shouldn't let poets lie to you.

Thinking about maps I thought to share a picture of where I live from Google Earth. My father isn't much interested in the Internet, bet even he became quite absorbed in playing with that software. As fascinating and astounding as the new media is in providing maps of where we are, it seems people are feeling more lost than ever.

What do we do when we can know about what's happening round the world in real time? There is a disconnect between connected online world and the everyday world we navigate around. Making connections seems harder than ever before. Knowing about great deprivation and the suffering of humankind all over is sometimes too much to bear.

One of the reasons I like paper party hats is I like parties. Parties are a time when we get to interact in real time with people in the same space. The picture I used to put in the Hockeyizer was taken at my birthday party on Thursday. I took some of my newspaper hats and they gave me an entre to discuss my other motivation for making them, and that is to raise money to address the great problem of water-borne diarrheal illness.

Like me, my friends don't have a lot of money to spread around, especially at Christmastime. Still the dialog about such an important subject is worthwhile. In response to a comment about life-saving re-hydration salts a friend suggested that some corporation should tie the distribution of the oral re-hydration salts to the sales of a product. My friend mentioned Starbucks, but today I see that at Omidyar.net a sophisticated proposal targets the Coca Cola Company for some Dasani Love. Globalization means many things, and the expectation that corporations use their global reach for social good will surely create some interesting dynamics between corporations and their customers.

Our mental maps of the world are changing, but reading maps, nor making maps, has never really been simple. While studying education, naturally, many of my projects involved making lessons. Creating lessons about maps impressed upon me how very complicated interpreting maps actually is. In attempting to introduce map concepts to children, I found it useful to engage students in making maps. The maps that are easiest for students to begin making were maps of places they know very well. And I think local maps are a good place for all of us to hone our skills at making meaning from maps.

"A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

The first half of Alford Korzybski's observation about maps is best known without the second half: "but if correct, it has a similar structure." All of us human beings have the same basic needs, and all of us are unique. Making sense out of the many images we receive of the world today suggest the maps we make account for the basic structures we all need as humans. Clean safe drinking water is so very fundamental. So many millions become sick and die for lack of clean water.

Here in the USA we are used to taking clean water for granted, so we don't often consider where the water we need comes from. So finding out about that is a great way to explore with maps. In the USA the EPA has a great Web site to begin that exploration, Surf Your Watershed. Our watersheds are more fragile and at risk than many of us know.

"Think Globally, act locally." Was famously coined by Rene Dubos. Very implicit in the slogan is the recognition that local conditions, environmental, social, economic and social differences are important in how we act. To act locally means to educate ourselves and participate with others in creating our life sustaining patterns where we live. Dubos believed that the uniqueness of people and places, a local identity was crucial to creating life sustaining environments. Dubos also imagined a rich interplay between communities through communication and sharing.

Something I like very much about the Water-Borne Diarrheal Illness proposal done at Omidar.net is that each of the organizations identified, ICDDR,B, FIMRC, Practical Action, The Rural Health Care Foundation and The New Life Foundation will use funds donated in specific locations. Attacking water borne disease is not a "one size fits all" solution. The solutions will always be made by local people responding to local conditions.

Not everyone will be able to donate. But all of use can play a part in solving the great challenge of managing disease and providing clean water for the needs of people everywhere. Acting locally for the health of your own watershed is a way to join a global effort which people everywhere are engaged. Our needs are similar. Making sense of the big picture then is greatly aided by paying attention to our particular locations and making maps where we live, even if only in our heads. As we communicate globally, we'll discover rich diversity, but also be reminded our common humanity.

More Newspaper Hats

2006-12-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

Tis the season to be jolly. This Saturday a couple of good friends came to visit me. The weather has been mild and beautiful so we made a nice yule fire in the garden.

I had been quite interested in the newspaper hats Michelle Baldwin makes. She takes sheets of newspaper puts them on a person's head and then wraps masking tape around to form the hat band. My attempts to do the same were thwarted by an old roll of tape that kept breaking. We started the fire with newspapers and once the fire was going I had a stack of papers to play with and started to make some hats. Here's a picture of Bob posted at the Flickr Party Hat Pool taken by pingting.

The main problem to solve in making hats of this sort is creating the hat band and attaching it to the paper so the crown of the hat stays high. Michelle's solution to use masking tape is probably the easiest, but as my roll of masking tape is defective I used a strip of brown paper 25 inches long and stapled it. It still helps to put the papers over a head to get the shape of the hat. One of the reasons is that newsprint isn't a square but rectangular. That means that the part of the newsprint that will form the brim will be longer on two sides than the other, so it's good to have a head to find a good center of the paper. If a head isn't available, your kee can serve the same purpose.

I can't exactly tell, but it seems to me that Michelle uses three sheets of newsprint and lays them on top of one another at slight angles so as to have material all around to form the brim. I just used two sheets of paper and there seems plenty of paper for the brim. I make the newsprint into sort of a baseball bat shape to pull it through the hat band and then use a few staples to attach the newsprint to the band. Once the hat band is fastened it's an easy matter to shape the hat. A few staples here and there can hold the hat band in shape.

The question then was how to decorate the hats. The problem is the hats aren't smooth. My first thought was paint. Somewhere I've got a couple of big jars of purple tempera paint powder, but I couldn't lay my hands on it. Tissue paper fortunately is very forgiving. I tried a whole sheet and it worked okay. My second try I just tore sheets of tissue and pasted them patchwork like and I like that effect.

Newspaper hats of this design are quite comfortable to wear. They also seem more durable than the tissue tube-hats.

Making hats is quite fun. I'm sure there are a thousand and one ways to make a hat. Nay, every hat is a unique creation. Please share your creations at Flickr!

Learn more about ways to donate your proceeds from donations to attack water-borne diarrheal illnesses at the Lemonaid Fund.

(Product) RED

2006-12-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

There's a red hat over yonder. I suppose that in the a world of copyrights, trademarks, and patents some sort of legal disclaimer about my RED hat is in order. This hat is not connected to any of the manufacturers or merchants participating in (Product) RED. Maybe it won't hold up in court, still: imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. My RED hats are not licensed as (Product) RED and I'm making no commitments. I do believe (RED) is cool.

I try not to spend too much money. The issue really is not having any money and spending it anyway. In that regard, I don't have expansive knowledge about (RED). What I know in a general way is that it's an effort to connect consumer purchases among the rich divide in the world with support of the Global Fund. The full name for the Global Fund is The Global Fund to Fight AIDS,Tuberculosis & Malaria.

The Global Fund is so very important. But there is concern nowadays that the attention to AIDS may be crowding out other health initiatives.

I'm so very much not a scientist, or policy expert, but here's my take on disease. Often people don't worry about disease because they figure that being sick is something personal. Disease when it strikes you is something to be concerned about, but it's also important to notice that disease affects a population. For example if you get chicken pox, you know not to have contact with too many others because you put them at risk.

The really good thing about HIV is that as viruses go, it's pretty hard to contract. So people not irrationally often measure their risk of contracting HIV as low. The risk of contracting Tuberculosis is not so low because the bacterium which causes it is spread by a sneeze. Since 1700 more than a billion human beings have perished from TB. After WWII when penicillin became available an effective treatment for TB emerged. Within a short time penicillin-resistant strains of TB came about and ever since it's been a race to find new antibiotics to cure TB. The truly scary thing is we've already fallen behind in this race.

Right now most (RED) buyers probably think they can manage their own risks of contracting HIV--I certainly hope we know how--and rate their risk of contracting TB or malaria as very low. The motivation then in buying (RED) is helping others who are at risk or already sick. That's a very good and powerful motivation. But diseases attack human populations so none of us are as safe as we think. Healthy personal practices are important, yet fighting disease requires much more than personal effort.

(RED) makes connections between the worldwide system of trade and globalization and the worldwide effort to fight three of humankind's greatest scourges. Our personal health and well-being is at stake. What impresses me the most is how (RED) acknowledges the enormous disparity of wealth--half the world's population owns barely 1% of the wealth and 2% own more than half of all the wealth--but emphasizes the connections we people share. While (RED) may now be a trendy fashion statement, it represents a direction in business models which I suspect will become more widespread. In a globalized world the bottom line of profit simply doesn't account for the degree of interdependence necessary to sustain us. Social well-being and the quality of the environment to sustain people are essential bottom lines too.

I don't have a subscription to Science Magazine but was alerted yesterday to an important article recently published there, Dual Infection with HIV and Malaria Fuels the Spread of Both Diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Mounting evidence has revealed pathological interactions between HIV and malaria in dually infected patients, but the public health implications of the interplay have remained unclear. A transient almost one-log elevation in HIV viral load occurs during febrile malaria episodes; in addition, susceptibility to malaria is enhanced in HIV-infected patients...Hence, transient and repeated increases in HIV viral load resulting from recurrent co-infection with malaria may be an important factor in promoting the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are accustomed to wishing and hoping for "a cure," but that way of thinking is out-moded. Our understanding of disease is increased by knowledge of the inter-relationships, the connections, between many factors.

Water-borne diarrheal illnesses is a leading cause of death worldwide. Major philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have identified it as a priority. A great thing about acute diarrhea is it can be treated effectively and inexpensively, another great thing is effective prevention methods are known and often local. This is an issue where our contributions cna make an immediate impact.

(RED) provides a way for people in rich countries to make some of their money spent on goods available for fighting AIDS, TB, and malaria as well as to raise awareness. That's a great buy. Party hats, RED or otherwise can be a way for use to become producers of a product, paper party hats, to raise money to solve water-borne diarrheal illnesses and awareness too. My RED hat is shameless borrowing, er, remixing. Of course I want (Product) RED to be able to prevent manufacturers and merchants who've not agreed to commit to support the Global Fund from claiming the (RED) logo. Still, I hope people will take notice and more commerce making connections to what we all need to live will commence.

Healthy Hats

2006-12-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

The Newspaper Clipping Generator

I'm too lazy! Tonight I planned to make hats. A friend suggested that I make red hats to tag along with the (Product) RED campaign--pingting is my friend. Last week I went to the craft store and bought a bit of red tissue paper. When I got around to start thinking about making RED hats I discovered the paper I got was 20 20 inches. I'm used to tissue paper being 24 x 18 inches. The 24 inch stuff is great because 24 inches is a nice size for adult heads. So I just gave up on making hats tonight. I wanted to post a picture of a RED hat, maybe tomorrow. What I found instead is a neet-o Web site for making newspaper clippings. Too lazy to correct the typos, but you get the idea.

Pingting sent me a link today to Radio DavidByrne where this month's play list is Gospel. As un-churched as I am I'm completely into this play list. Some of these songs are familiar and move me to tears. The set begins with Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come. Later in the set is a powerful new song, 4th Elyment by Elymental which also speaks of change. I liked it so much I searched, but the only reference to it was David Byrne's site; I guess he can say: "You heard it here first;" I expect it won't be the last we hear of Elymental.

Pingting has also been encouraging about Hats for Health. I told him it would be great to get a group of kids together to make hats to raise money for this effort. Actually, I brought it up in the context of groups of kids making hats so that everyone at the performance at the Nutcracker would wear a hat. Counting my chicks before they hatched, I figured that even at a buck a piece that single sitting would raise over $3000. He said I could find a group of child-hat makers easily. Meanwhile, I'm at a loss to think of batch of kids I could get access to at short notice. These sorts of things take organization and that's one of many areas of my life I fall short.

Thank goodness everyone isn't like me! Susan A. Kitchens happened upon this blog and turned me on to When Watute Wants Some Water. Jennifer Sarja is an author and educator. Sarja is the founder of youthinkwell a center for writing. The approach to learning that youthinkwell takes is near and dear to my heart. It's not just the approach to learning, that impresses me, also the keen understanding of who kids are. I wrote about the Dutch kids who bet on Kyoto recently. Young people are capable of making really positive change, and they want to. Sarja's programming understands this.

Sarja's profile mentions that she's a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. I noted with interest because relatives live near Exeter and a cousin may indeed have cooked the young Jennifer's breakfast. At Phillips Exeter instruction is often around round tables, seminar style--education by inquiry and discussion. A similar emphasis on critical thinking and discussion is evident in youthinkwell's program.

Jennifer Sarja in the autumn of 2004 joined the Save the Children’s Women’s
Empowerment Delegation to Ethiopia and Uganda to chronicle the trip. Upon returning she founded youthinkwell. From the African Well Fund forums a snippet from an article from The Arcadia Weekly about When Watute Wants Some Water:

Since its inception as a critical thinking and writing program for children after school, Youth Inkwell has begun financing water wells for villages whose children don’t attend school because their day is consumed by finding and hauling water.

100% of the profits from the sales of the book have gone to building wells. And Sarja's innovative curriculum continues with engaging students in water issues and basic rights.

The signature of Karla Siegel who posted the article at the Africa Well Fund forums is a line by Wangari Maathai:

We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind.

Together all of us can find ways to solve our most pressing problems. Attacking Water Borne Diarrheal Illness is a cause we all of us can do something about.

Pay It Forward

2006-12-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

As a fairly late adopter to the Internet right from the beginning the availability of so many news sources seemed so great to me. I still find it so. I read my local paper, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in paper form in the morning. Then I look at several blogs, the handy BBC headlines delivered via RSS to my Firefox browser, and often seek out more news stories I've read about. Everybody has a different set of Internet news sources, but news is a big reason people like the World Wide Web so much. The downside is so much of the news makes me profoundly sad.

I was feeling pretty discouraged after my news gathering routine today. But then read a post at Beth's Blog, My Pay It Forward Portrait.

This is my pay it forward portrait. It was created by Roy Blumenthal, an artist who lives in South Africa with many talents! I met Roy via the portrait he did for Dave Wallace's web site and communicated via flickr. I'm lucky in that he sometimes works on a pay-it-forward basis - so in return I donated the value of his portrait in in-kind time to my favorite development organization in Cambodia and paid it forward to a few folks with some good deeds.

I had never heard of pay it forward before. Quite often I find myself living under a rock as far as popular culture goes, but reading about the movie triggered some vague memory of having heard about it. The film was based on a book by Catherine Ryan Hyde. An excerpt from that book at the Pay It Forward Foundation Web site provides the gist succinctly:

“Pay It Forward,” starts a movement with this voluntary, extra-credit assignment: THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION. Trevor, the 12-year-old hero of “Pay It Forward,” thinks of quite an idea. He describes it to his mother and teacher this way: "You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven." He turned on the calculator, punched in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see. To eighty-one. Then two hundred forty-three. Then seven hundred twenty-nine. Then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven. See how big it gets?"

I love this idea! Really it's something like what I had in mind for Bazungu Bucks. I printed up a bunch of Bazungu Bucks and have handed them out, partly thinking maybe they'd visit the blog, and partly to encourage them to think about how they can spend an hour of their time in service to African people.

The idea hasn't really taken off like gang busters. I've learned so much by doing the blog. Part of the idea of "bucks" was the idea that there is something good about keeping track of service we do and also that the accumulation of credits that can be traded or "spent" might encourage collaboration and creative cooperative ventures. This idea isn't so different than the peer production so widely talked about among computer visionaries, for example Umair.

Belying my feigned ignorance about Pop culture, this interview with Matt Damon, Matt Damon a Changed Man After Visit to Africa at amPOP encouraged me so. Damon said:

These are issues that can be solved and problems that can be fixed. It's just a matter of us raising our collective consciousness about it.

Attacking water borne diarrheal illness is solvable. In this season of giving the requests to give can seem overwhelming. It helps, I think not to concentrate too much on money, although obviously money is crucial, but rather to concentrate on doing good and the sorts of creative change paying it forward can produce. Do you have a skill or a talent that you can sometimes be paid for by paying it forward? Rhetorical question, of course we all do. In this season of giving for many of us that's really the only practical option. I think there's reason for optimism about where this will lead.

A Beautiful Email

2006-12-06T23:38:00.000-08:00

BUT YOU CAN HELP STOP CONDITIONS LIKE THESE!
We know how to cure it - each life-saving treatment costs just 12 cents
We know how to prevent it - clean water, health education and basic latrines
What are we doing about it? - we intend to raise awareness and money

Omidyar Networks, LLC will match our donations in December up to a total of $12,500.

To read the full funding proposal including the funding group rationale click here.

$25,000 - or $5000 per project - would enable so much good to happen!

Funding Area - Re-hydration programs
NPO - Child Health Foundation
Project - ICDDR,B (Bangledesh)

Funding Area - Education for health providers
NPO - FIMRC

Funding Area - Sanitary conditions and physical solutions
NPO - Lemon Aid Fund
Project - Practical Action

Funding Area - Education on the necessity of sanitary conditions
NPO - Lemon Aid Fund
Project - Rural Health Care Foundation (Kampala, Uganda)

Funding Area - Clean water sources
NPO - New Life International (U.S.A.)

Support these projects HERE!!!

Donate with the links.

Become a member at omidyar.net following the instructions.
Register your donation to qualify it for the Omidyar Networks, LLC match.
If you work for a company that matches your charitable contributions - apply for the match!
Go one step further and convince the matching coordinator to become a member at omidyar.net and register the match and it will be matched by Omidyar Networks as well.

ALTERNATIVELY -

Donate using PayPal at this dropcash box.

You can make donations here for any of the 5 projects or all! If you wish to donate to a specific project, please specify it in the PayPal transaction. If nothing is specified, the funds will be distributed by the team to attempt to keep things even.
Every attempt will be made to see that your contribution is in those matched by Omidyar Networks, LLC, but if all of the matching funds are used prior to the transfer of your contribution to the appropriate NPO, your contribution will not be matched but will still go to an important cause. Donations made here will not be tax deductible as they would be if you donated directly to the NPO link on the workspace.

OR

Participate by supporting other individuals who have used their creativity to attack this problem.

Thanks in advance for your support

Drinking Water

2006-12-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

Photo credit: Sean Mason

It's already Wednesday, I just noticed. I've intended to post to this blog regularly during December in support of a wonderful opportunity to support five very deserving organizations working to take the die out of diarrhea. Alas, I'm easily distracted.

The water which comes out of the tap at my home is from a bored-well located about 160 feet into water bearing rock. It's clean, odor free, and tastes good. The waste water goes into a septic system. And we have a second bored-well which is just a little deeper than the one we use for our household water.

Eric Hersman blogs at White African where Africa and technology collide always manages to catch my interest. He lives in the USA now but grew up in the Sudan and Kenya and says he feels more "at home" there. He's in the business of marketing and like so much else these days that means knowing the way of technology. What's so interesting about his perspective is instead of asking the old twentieth century sales question: "But will it play in Peoria?" he seems to be asking: "Will it play in Kisumu, Watamu, Malindi?" I'm not sure his associates were asking that when they came up with Eppraisal a very quick an easy Web site for for Americans to get an idea of the market value of their real estate. So Eppraisal doesn't support my point about Hersman, but I'll stand by my opinion anyway.

When I plugged in our address, no appraisal was available, however they did answer a question I've been curious about but too lazy to find the answer, and that is our house was built in 1900. What do you know? A certified antique. I think the well by the house dates from that era. The earliest evidence I can find for electrical wiring here is 1955. So most of the time the house was occupied the lighting was by gaselier. I suppose the venerable old Demming pump we powered by electric motor, and eventually replaced, must have been powered by a combustion engine of some sort back in the days.

Western Pennsylvania was where the oil industry was born. It was also a famous center for iron, steel and glass manufacture. Most of the steel industry is gone now. Vast industrial sites razed along the rivers now sprout green grass and vistas through clear skies. One of the enduring legacies of the past is there are a lot of old machines around. Quite a few are still around because they're so big and heavy it was easy not to move them. So there are a number of hobbyists who like to tinker with old machines. At the opposite end of the spectrum there's even a local company which produces miniature steam engines called Jensen Steam Engine.

We replaced our old pump not so many years ago, and it's remarkable that it was serviceable for nearly one hundred years. The electric pump we use now probably has a life expectancy of 10-15 years. Quite a lot of human ingenuity has been applied to the problem of getting water where people want it. Since people need water and always have the technologies we use are often combinations of ancient and modern. Some of the pipes connected to Pittsburgh's municipal water system may have been in use for over a hundred years. Although the not so rare spectacular water main failures seen on the TV news are pipes of considerably more recent vintage.

I saw today, Kids vs Politicians energy challenge where Dutch school kids bet "their local politicians that they can beat the EU's energy savings targets within a given time period, and if they succeed, the politician agrees to undertake an energy saving initiative of their own." You can read more about the school kids who succeed this year at the BBC.

My rambling on about old machines and water has to do with thinking about mobilizing the world's fourteen year olds towards meeting the challenges of the new century. Put 'em to work early, I say. Water seems a good place to put them to the challenge. For one thing, there is so much to learn. Every school boy should know about Archimede's screw. They might also be interested to know the ancient Iraqi's probably came up with the idea 300 years before the young Archimedes was but a twinkle in his father's eye.

I'd love it if cadres of young people were to make paper party hats in advance of their parent's New Year's Eve celebrations for which they could extort a buck or two to add to the WDI matching grant campaign. But that's just the start. Young problem solvers may well be able to contribute materially to the complex, but eminently solvable problem of providing clean water to the millions who need it. What's needed are challenges like the bet in The Netherlands. My bet is the kids will be up to the challenge!

Attacking Water Borne Diarrheal Illness

2006-12-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

Omidyar.net is a wiki and social networking platform to assist small groups of people to create something good. I recently joined. But right from the start, I'll say I easily understand the reluctance most of us feel about joining sites sometimes referred to as "walled gardens." This summer teenage relatives came to visit who enjoy MySpace. I had joined MySpace before because of band pages and Invisible Children. But it was only watching them interact on the site that I "got it." Oh, who am I kidding? I don't really get MySpace. On the other hand, I do enjoy Tribe.net. My not getting MySpace is a good point to remember when I mention Tribe.net or any of the other Web sites with social networking features to others. In essence it comes down to something being "your cup of tea" or not.

This long preamble sets up pitch to donate to some very worthy organizations during December in the context of a matching grant opportunity. It's not at all hard to do. My explanation, however may seem a bit complicated. First let me introduce a neat widget that makes donating easy.

Right at the top of the sidebar it says: Water borne Diarrheal Illness with a box under it that says Donate Now. If you click that you will be taken to a page at DropCash where you can quickly and easily make a donation by way of PayPal. For people who don't like joining, PayPal may be just another obstacle. On the other hand those who've made purchase on eBay may well already have signed up.

You can make a donation to any of the five projects listed on the project page here. If you want your donation to go to one of the projects in particular then specify which organization during the PayPal transaction. Unspecified donations will be distributed by the WDI team to keep things even among the five organizations. The goal is to raise $12,500 so that with matching money each of the five organizations will receive a $5000 grant. If the money cap has been reached then your donation may not be matched but will still go to the organization you specified. Donations made to the DropCash box won't be tax-deductible as they would be by going to the organization links at Omidyar Workpage donating to the organization and entering the donation on the workpage. More on that in a moment. A good discussion of tax deductions for charitable organizations can be found here.

The DropCash page is not the only way to your donations to be eligible for the matching contributions of the Omidyar Network, just an easy way. In order to count contributions for matching money the Omidyar Network needs to keep track of the contributions going to the five organizations selected by the WDI team at Omidyar.net.

Another way to make your donations count is to join Omidyar.net is to join. It's easy to do, just click here and enter your email. The the WDI Project Donation Page has links to where you can donate directly to any of the five organizations selected to receive funds. Having made a donation that way you then enter your name, the donation amount and date on that page--the directions how to do that are on the page.

Of course you could also make your donation through a friend who is already a member of Omidyar.net who will do all of this for you. I would be happy to assist anyone who wants to donate in a way that qualifies for the matching donation. Simply drop me an email which you can find by clicking on the "About Me" link on the sidebar.

When I go on and on about the Internet, my friends generally roll their eyes. First of all they know I don't know much about computers or technology in general for that matter. And second, they're just skeptical that the Internet changes much of anything anyway.

Susan Mernit is a technologist with a blog where she points to interesting stuff with wry wit. A regular feature is "Quote of the Day." Recently she quoted Seagate CEO Bill Watkins from a piece in Fortune:

"Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."

I laughed, because Watkins view matches pretty much the conventional wisdom about the Internet. My own view is the Internet is world changing. Maybe it is my age and what even back in the day was derided as "hippie-do" and which the majority of my generation outgrew in short order. Still perhaps, "Never doubt a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." is the most familiar quotation of Margaret Mead and it's that sentiment underlying so much of my enthusiasm about the power of the Internet to transform. Selling crap and watching porn may indeed sum things up in the aggregate, but doesn't much deter those small groups of us.

A little money can go a long way to help solve the problem of water borne diarrheal illnesses. Money alone won't do it all. "Informed citizens" are what really make the difference. Making paper party hats is one way of raising funds for this worthy cause. Silly hats are also a fun way to make people aware. I hope many of you will join with me in making hats for health to raise funds.

World AIDS Day

2006-11-30T21:19:00.000-08:00

December 1st is World AIDS Day.

I've just gotten through writing a post at my blog Bazungu Bucks in honor of the occasion which I invite you to read.

I started to blog about a year ago and very quickly discovered I suffer from bloggerhea with the tell tail symptoms of prolix bloviation. A good friend has remarked: "You'd be a good writer with an editor." That sounded like "damned by faint praise," but I'm sure he's sincere. The problem is that I haven't quite figured out how to edit myself or actually how to write at all. If I think too much about posts, then I won't post at all.

So I begin by just writing and then see where that leads. Closing up the windows holding some of the Web pages I used for the post at Bazungu Bucks, I noticed that I hadn't mentioned at all the page I had opened first as inspiration for the post. It's the lyrics for a song by Pete Seeger Letter to Eve. I love that song, especially a version on the tribute album Where Have All The Flowers Gone? performed by the Indigo Girls.

Here are the lyrics by way of The Mud Cat Cafe.

LETTER TO EVE
(Pete Seeger)

Oh, Eve, where is Adam, now you're kicked out of the garden?
Oh, Eve, where is Adam, now you're kicked out of the garden?
Been wandering from shore to shore,
Now you find there's no more
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

Don't you wish love, love alone, could save this world from disaster?
Don't you wish love, love alone, could save this world from disaster?
If only love could end the confusion -
Or is it just one more illusion?
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

Well if . . . you want to have great love, you got to have great anger
Well if . . . you want to have great love, you got to have great anger
When I see innocent folk shot down,
Should I just shake my head and frown?
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

Well if . . . you want to hit the target square, you better not have blind anger
Well if . . . you want to hit the target square, you better not have blind anger
Or else it'll be just one more time
The correction creates another crime.
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

Oh Eve, you tell Adam, next time he asks you
Oh Eve, you tell Adam, next time he asks you
He'll say, "Baby it's cold outside;
What's the password to come inside?"
You say, Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

Oh, Eve, go tell Adam, we got build a new garden
Oh, Eve, go tell Adam, we got build a new garden
We got to get workin' on the building
Of a decent home for all o' God's children.
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

If music . . . could only bring peace, I'd only be a musician
If music . . . could only bring peace, I'd only be a musician
If songs could do more than dull the pain,
If melodies could only break these chains
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa.

Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa!
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa!
Four thousand languages in this world,
Means the same thing to every boy and girl
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa!
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa!

[Seeger added the following verse later]
Oh, when it's stormy weather good people got to gather together
Oh, when it's stormy weather good people got to gather together
We know there's no place to hide,
Still in friends one can confide
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa!
Oh, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa!

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1967)
(c) 1967 by Sanga Music Inc.

Source: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, by Pete Seeger (Sing Out Publications, 1993)

Attacking water-borne diarrheal illnesses is integral to dealing with the AIDS crisis. There are those who are skeptical about the HIV virus being a cause of AIDS. I am not one of those skeptics. But I find myself in agreement when they say poverty is a cause of AIDS. Water-borne disease is one of the key causes of the cycle of poverty. The cycle of poverty is a complex dynamic system. So far there is no cure for AIDS, nor a vaccine against it. There are useful medicines and much that can be done to protect against contracting the virus. But unlike AIDS we already know how to treat water-borne illnesses and the technologies to prevent the diseases in the first place are well within our grasp.

"Oh Eve, got tell Adam we've got to build a new garden." Water is the first step. And attacking water-borne diarrheal illness really does begin with a garden. It will mean being careful of our waste and protecting our watersheds. Peace on Earth means walking on the dirt with respect. Having the will to solve the problems of water-borne disease is a way to begin to repair all that ails us.

Here's a list of the word peace in many languages. Our universal hope for peace requires as this wonderful song suggests some real work to build a new garden. World AIDS Day is a reminder about that. Water is necessary for health, and in securing clean water and available treatments for water-borne illnesses is a good way to address the cycle of poverty. In turn reducing poverty provides a way to address the crisis of AIDS.

Newspaper Hats

2006-11-29T19:09:00.000-08:00

Michelle Baldwin

I'm stealing this picture without permission, the thing is it's the best one I've found of this sort of hat. Click on the link and you will find a short video of how they're made. I tried to make one to show but I had a couple of problems. The first was that my roll of masking tape was old and kept breaking. The second problem was trying to make the hat over a bowl. I think just as in the video a live head is the way to go with these hats.

In the summer I saw some beautiful hats made this way by a church group in the newspaper, but so far haven't been able to locate the story in the archives. Some of those hats were painted and painting hats opens all sorts of possibilities. Entertainers Direct has some pictures of a project they do making hats using grocery bags which are painted. I notice colored feathers involved too. Backs of colored feathers are inexpensive and feathers do make a nice addition to hats. But...have you ever broken a pillow? If you have then you know that feathers scatter and are hard to clean up. I haven't found the best way to manage that, except to say the cellophane bag you purchase them is not the best. Zipper lock bags aren't too bad if there aren't too many feathers in each bag, or shallow bowls with plastic lids would probably work too. If you're working with kids its a good idea to do a little advance thinking before introducing feathers, else you'll be cleaning them up for ages afterwards.

I heard someone exclaim, "I want to put flowers all over my hat!" That's a good idea. Tissue paper flowers aren't so hard to make and there are many directions for making tissue paper flowers on the Web: here, here, here, and here for a start.

The basic technique is to take four or five sheets of cut squares of tissue and stack them. Fold the stack accordion style and then join the folded paper in middle with a pipe cleaner or string. You can round the ends of the stack to make the petals scalloped if you want. The flower is made by opening up the folds.

One way that I like to add flowers to my hats is to cut flowers out of flowered wrapping paper and then pasting then to the hats to decorate them. Nowadays with the popularity of scrap booking there is more interest in pressed flowers. A great invention I haven't tried is a microwavable flower press that makes pressing flowers fast. So of course if you have a quantity of pressed flowers they would be a great addition to hats. Most of us do not have them. Remarkably, pressed flowers are available, but rather expensive, something you might consider for a hat for a special someone. The last time I was in a craft store I spotted a package of five pressed violet flowers, I wanted them. It wasn't that the package was so expensive, over a dollar but well under five, but I couldn't for the life of me think what to do with a package of pressed violets. They looked so dear to me, but I didn't buy them.

There must be other ways of covering a hat with flowers that I'm not thinking of. The only other approach I can think of right now is to start out with flowered tissue paper. Oh, yes I just remembered that rather nice flowers can be made from cutting a cocktail napkin with cuts along the side down towards the middle but not cutting the napkin apart. While in that section of the paper store, thin paper plates are also useful for making hats. They're nice because they have a brim.

Tissue papers come in a remarkable array of colors. My favorite is a jumbo package of primary shades for the best selection and value. Of the specialty tissue papers I like to get gold tissue for making crowns. This is actually tissue and not mylar. I don't advise mylar, even as shiny and nice as it is, because it isn't easy to glue to the irregular hats shapes. Working with gold tissue is very much like working with gold leaf, just not so exacting.

Wade in the Water

2006-11-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

Last post I mentioned that so many Americans seem to have a shrunken view of the continent. Today I came across this image here and credited to Boston University, although I didn't find the image there. I can tell by the "sample" through the image, I better explain that my use is considered (by me) as fair use of a reduced copy for educational purposes. It's a great graphic. A similar difficulty comes when when it comes to imagine the water of the world. Water is common, but clean pure water is precious. It matters very much what people do to protect our sources of safe water.

Ah, what people do. Another site I discovered today is an ecological footprint calculator by Best Foot Forward. It takes but a minute to find your ecological footprint. Mine's rather big, and in order for there to be enough I've got to find ways to trim down. That's easier said than done, but ignoring reality isn't such a good plan, as much as I seem to prefer it.

As a teen growing up during the late 1960's the world situation seemed so precarious; of course, as a kid trying to figure my place in the world. I must have had some birthday money to spend. I remember going to the record store to spend it. I saw a new copy of Rolling Stone, and more importantly the display of the new Rolling Stones album, Sticky Fingers. Probably that's what I really wanted, but I was embarrassed even to get too close to the display. I know what's under my zipper, but was uncertain just what's under the zipper on that album cover. Also probably I wanted to get two records for the money I had, so I looked and looked. What I ended up buying was a Phil Ochs record and an album by The Harmonizing Four. I'm not sure of the title of the album, but it was something on the order of, "God Will Take Care of You" something similarly reassuring to a young mind in troubled times.

I didn't have enough money left to buy a Rolling Stone magazine. Listening to the Phil Ochs record I think I felt a little disappointed by my purchases. I liked and like folk music, but even with Och's anti-war cred, I doubted there would ever be a time to play the record with friends. That feeling went double for an album of of old-fashioned Gospel music. But listening to The Harmonizing Four album a song began with a little guitar intro; and then the great basso voice of Jimmy Jones began:

Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water.

Gobsmacked! The song and that voice resonated deep inside me. And I played it over again and again. I looked and it's available on a recently released CD, Gospel Pearls and for download at i-Tunes. I bought the song today and it still moves me.

Jordon's water is chilly and cold.
God's gonna trouble the water.
It chills the body, but not the soul.
God's gonna trouble the water.

If you get there before I do.
God's gonna trouble the water.
Tell all of my friends I'm coming too.
God's gonna trouble the water.

I found the lyrics at The Mudcat Cafe which is a wonderful resource for musicians and people interested in folk music.

I'm not religious and I wonder why the song moves me so. Explanations for complicated reactions are always going to be found wanting. Nevertheless, for me the song reminds me that I'm a part of something much larger. I grew up in the Episcopal Church. Baptism was something that in the main happened to babies with little sprinkles of water. Yet in the South, I was aware of full-immersion baptism and had even happened upon Baptisms in public waterways. Different traditions, still water connects us.

Disease is also something that connects people. When we hear of the great plagues of our time, it's sometimes easy to imagine that we are somehow inoculated against them. And sometimes that's literally true. To often however we fail to recognize that the disease that affects others may also infect us. Since 1700 over a million people on this Earth have been felled by TB. When I hear reports of how pervasive drug-resistant strains of TB are, I shudder. I wonder how we can be so complacent?

I got a friend in Kampala,Uganda and another near Jinja. There have been heavy rains recently. My friend in Kampala mentioned that cholera cases have been reported in the city. And then yesterday my friend near Jinja said cases had been reported there.

Cholera is caused by a comma-shaped bacteria, Vibrio cholerae. People know that being good avoids a lot of misfortune, but the converse of that way of thinking suggests that illness must be the result of some wickedness, at least that's what people often think. The notion that people who get sick, deserve what they got, is so pervasive that it has frequently obscured the cause of disease and actions to remedy them.

Sick City is a great review of Steven Johnson's, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic in the November 6th The New Yorker by Steven Shapin. It's a interesting story and helpful reminder that our understanding of water-borne disease is relatively recent in human history.

Water is necessary for the religious and irreligious alike. We are joined together as people in very physical ways by water. Solving the great crisis of water borne illnesses starts from the presumption of our shared stake in assuring clean water for all: Wade in the water.

African Hats

2006-11-27T23:17:00.000-08:00

IMG_2697
Originally uploaded by nobodaddy69.

From nobodaddy69's Abuja Carnival Set.

Americans so often act as though Africa is a country not a continent. It's funny when people are asked to draw a map, we draw what is near and familiar bigger than what we know further afield. It's as if most American's mental map of Africa is shrunken. One pleasant fall out from that is when curiosity takes over and people begin to learn there's unexpected diversity and richness all around. African hats are a fun way to begin the exploration.

For those who like shopping there are plenty of site on the Web to shop and purchase hats from Africa; here, here, here, and I'm sure many other places: fire up your search engines! There are also educational sites--hum this is when I wish I would learn to actually use de.licio.us--let me check my list of links. Okay there's this: Hat's off to African Headwear, the Hurst Gallery--I'm not finding the links I want. But while I'm on the subject of educational sites about Africa, several universities have fantastic pages of links about Africa. Stanford's SULAIR is one of my favorites, The National Museum of African Art is a rich site, Princeton's African Art and History Links will keep you busy for hours, and The Smithsonian's page on African History and Culture will too.

I don't use Google as my main search engine, rather use Clusty. Some of it has to do with Clusty being something developed near where I live, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but mostly because I find it most convenient. I like that I can do a quick search of images, which of course you can do with other search engines too. Photo searches are a really great way to search for something like hats or African headwear. I guess the only caution is if you have kids or are quite put off by offensive images to be careful. Google allows you to set preferences. Clusty probably does too, but since no kids use my computer I haven't bothered to check about that, although I don't remember really ever seeing something offensive in my Clusty searches. I think it is worth taking the time to make image searches safe for kids, because a visual search through images is often the quickest way for me to find good sites to visit.

Many cultures have great traditions of hats and headwear. I happen to think that Africans have made and make some of the most interesting of them all. Reaching into the heritage of human art and culture is a wonderful way to inspire oneself to make a fantastic hat.

Something completely different and off-topic of African hats, I came across a team building exercise here using hats. Kids of all ages love craft projects and it seems I've got 101 links saved about kids and making hats. What impressed me about this exercise was that it was meant for business training and team building, but would be just as fun for kids. The shorter version of the exercise is to pass a hat with each person's name in it folded on slips of paper. The group member pick a name out of the hat and decorate it with symbols representing the person. Once everyone is finished making the hats, they present them and everyone talks about it. Valuing others is another good way to dream up designs for a hat; design a hat with someone else in mind.

Diarrhea

2006-11-27T10:50:00.000-08:00

Lovingly Josephine

The stakes are high. Water-borne diarrheal illnesses are the second leading cause of death worldwide. Team members at Omidyar.net worked very hard to identify five organizations who could make a big impact on the problem with a $5000 grant. Now our task is to raise $12,500.00 which will be matched by the Omidyar Network to fund these worthy organizations. Find out more here.

The painting of Mother Teresa and child is by Kentucky Artist Marissa A. Garcia. Proceeds from sales of lithographs of this lovely painting will go towards the WDI matching funds challenge. You may go to eBay and search for "Mother Teresa" to bid on the prints. Or go to a special page Garcia has made to purchase the prints. At this site two sizes of the Mother Teresa print are available: 13" x 19" and 8 1/2" x 11". Note cards of this painting and another beautiful painting "Healing Angel" are also available: packets of seven cards for $15.75. Reasonable shipping charges apply to all orders.

Nothing is simple, but water-borne diarrheal illnesses need not be the killer it is:

We know how to cure it - each life-saving treatment costs just 12 cents

We know how to prevent it - clean water, health education and basic latrines

It's up to use to take simple steps to solve the problem. You can do something during the month of December and beyond. Buy a print or note card by Marissa A. Garcia. Make some paper hats and sell them. Make something else. Donate money. Talk about the issue with others. And most of all share what you are doing. Tell us about your ideas here, comments are open. Join Omidyar.net. The problems of the world seem so great and so complicated. Big problems are always solved by attacking the parts of the problem we know how to solve; solving one part often makes solving others much easier. Water-borne diarrheal illness makes the cycle of poverty spin ever faster. Simple diarrhea! Help to make a difference, please.

Create Paper Hats

2006-11-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me about pompoms, so I thought I'd make one just so I could describe how to. I also thought to photograph it, but that wasn't to be. So now I've got a pink pompom sitting next to me. I guess I'll have to make a hat to put it on.

I'm not very creative and some people who make paper hats are very creative indeed! I remembered seeing an article in The Smithsonian about a Hawaiian man named Moses who makes paper hats from paper bags. I couldn't find the article online but found mention of it. The photos in the photo montage are all taken by Moses. He would meet people and ask if they would like to have their picture taken wearing one of his paper hats. Speaking of creativity, the photo montage is from a wonderful blog Paper Forest all about creative paper art. The particular post is here and a better story with more and bigger pictures about Moses and his hats is at another paper blog, Mr. Paper's Blog.

There's no one way and no right way to make a paper hat. In the spring my local paper the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did a spread on a local church picnic that featured paper hats. I thought that I had snatched some pictures from that piece to post at my blog Bazungu Bucks. I must have been in a mood to observe copyright and didn't post it there and couldn't find a link to the story. I was disappointed because those hats were very creatively made using newspaper. So I was thrilled to discover a video of how to make hats of this sort here. I couldn't find a way to copy the location of the video so scroll down just a little on the page and you'll see a link to the video in a text box on the right. Michelle Baldwin is president of Oregon Ballroom Dance Club and she makes paper hats. Wow! She's so obviously cool!

There are so many directions on the Web for making a Navy hat from newspaper that it's hard to choose the best. emommies has simple directions for that and a couple of other cute hats. The BBC's directions here are quite clear.

The ways of being creative are many. People all over for a very long time have made all sorts of interesting hats and headdresses. Many of these contain good ideas to incorporate in paper party hat creations you make. It will be fun to share some of my favorite hats, not necessarily of the paper party hat sort. I hope you'll sahre some of your favorites here. The comments are open.

Pompoms

2006-11-25T14:34:00.000-08:00

Pompoms are one way to decorate a hat. In making my tube hats described in Make a Simple Paper Hat I mentioned that rather than to use a whole sheet of tissue paper to make the hat that I use half sheets. Instead of tying the tube of tissue paper and then fringing the top, I paste the top to a small round of paper and then attach a pompom. My directions for making a pompom weren't very clear. Unfortunately my camera batteries are dead so I can't take pictures to show how they're made. So for right now I'll try another approach.

Here are directions for something not a pompom but may be helpful in learning how to make a pompom.

Here's a trick:

Take an index card or a piece of paper that's not so big and ask: "Do you think I can cut a hole in this piece of paper big enough for me to go through it?

The white piece of paper is what we're concerned with; the colored paper is just to make it easier to see. With a challenge like that it's helpful to know in advance that you can cut a hole in a small piece of paper big enough to step through. The first step is to fold the paper in half lengthwise a cut down the middle leaving the edges attached as shown.

The next step is a series of cuts. With the paper folded in half and starting from one end cut down almost to the edge of the paper. Then cut up from the edge stopping just short of the cut down the center.

The result from making all those cuts is a hole in the paper that's rather like a flexible chain. If you cut carefully the hole should be big enough to step into and pull the paper up over your head.

Skills learned by this little trick are helpful in making a pompom, but making pompoms is even easier.

Take a half sheet of tissue and fold in half lengthwise. Keep folding in half until the paper is about two inches wide and as long as the width of the half sheet of tissue. Now fold the tissue so it's half as long. Then with scissors cut down to about a half and inch from the middle fold. Keep making cuts down to near the middle.

Once the cuts are made and the paper is still a bit orderly open at the fold and put a spot of paste or glue in the middle of the fold then press the fold together. Holding the fold together between fingers in one hand use your other hand to ball up the paper fringe into a pompom shape. Squeezing a little is all it takes. On the bottom of the pompom is the flat part of the tissue that wasn't cut through. A little paste or glue on the part will attach the pompom to the top of the hat.

Agua

2006-11-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

Make a Simple Hat

I merged together the photos of making a simple paper hat and posted it to Flickr. In the description are the simple steps in words. Please feel free to copy it and send it around.

Artists and poets are inspired by water, a necessity for life. When thinking about this project a beautiful song by
Djavan played in my head Agua. Since I don't speak Portuguese I know it by the English lyrics by Brock Walsh. This is the stanza that repeats in my head:

The Earth without the Heaven's rain
Becomes powder and gravel
Life without a spirit whole
In time becomes a thread unravelled
Or traveled in the circles of agua
And lately there grows a thirst inside me
With only hunger to guide me
Que agua

Water-borne illnesses are the #2 killer of people world wide. Every year about two million people die, disproportionately children, and millions more suffer. I can't avert my eyes. The idea of "a spirit whole" reminds me that "I am a person through other persons" ubuntu. Others in the world matter to me. We are all sacks of water on this watery planet. And we can all make a difference.

Share with me some of your favorite art on the theme water; if you please.

Make a Simple Hat

2006-11-23T16:44:00.000-08:00

There are so many ways to make paper party hats. Here is one that's easy to explain and provides a basic technique from which to improvise.

The first thing is to make the hat band. Cut a strip of packing paper 25 inches long or so by about 4 inches wide . Fold it lengthwise down the middle to make a crease in it.

The next step is to coat the hat band on one side with glue or paste. It really doesn't matter too much whether you use glue or paste. I like paste. White school glue dries fairly clear and is a good choice too. Often it's easier to use a small brush to apply the adhesive rather than bother with the bottle of glue. Or even to apply the glue from the bottle and spread it around with the brush. I use a half inch brush which I cut about half the length of the bristles off. Once you've coated the paper with adhesive lay a sheet of tissue paper along the hat band and fold the other half of the hat band up so the tissues sheet is in the middle.

Join the hat band together in a circle. You want to over lap the joint an inch to an inch and a half. The tissue where the joint is is dry on one side so use a little dab of paste or glue there.

Tie the tissue paper.

Fringe the top.

And paste strips of colorful paper around the outside of the hat band.

The hat can be decorated with colorful pieces of paper, feathers, glitter or other materials. You'll see that the hat band can be cut into shapes to make the hat more crown like. Just make sure you have about two inches straight without cuts so the interior of the hat band will be smooth around the person's head.

Cutting and measuring can be tedious, especially cutting the thin tissue paper. I like to use a knife to cut some of the hat parts. I fold the paper and use the knife to cut it like a person uses a letter opener to open envelopes.

Generally when I make hats like this rather than to use a whole sheet of tissue paper and tie the tissue paper to make the crown of the hat, I use a half sheet of tissue. That is I cut the sheets of tissue lengthwise--so the half sheets are still about 24 inches long. Then I cut a small circle of brown paper and paste the open end of the crown to the paper circle.

A half sheet of tissue also makes a nice pompom. I simply fold the tissue accordion style so that it's about four inches wide and then fold this in half. Using scissors, I cut through the layers of tissue in narrow strips leaving about two inches at the center uncut. Then with a little past attach the pompom to the top of the crown of the hat. It's easier to make nice pompoms this way and it also allows the crown of the hat to be one color and the pompom of a different color.

Party Hats for Health

2006-11-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

This blog for parties and health.

Water is essential for life. Water is so important to us thatwater has always been a subject for poets and artists; and yet so essential we take it for granted until we are without.

Millions of people in the world today live without consistent access to clean water. Water-borne diseases are the 2nd leading killer and for the lack of clean water the deadly cycle of poverty spins ever more tightly.

Clean water for everyone is possible. It wouldn't cost too much, we could afford it. As common as water is, the provision of clean water is difficult because it connects to all that is around us in complicated ways.

Water Partners International on a page of water facts cites a UNICEF study:

Every $1 invested in children, including money to improve access to clean water and sanitation, saved $7 in the cost of long-term public services

The enormous monetary costs incurred for the lack of potable water would be dramatically reduced by investments in water. All over the world investments fall short. But all over the world are good and ordinary people trying to make a difference and together we can.

All over the world people so often feel isolated from one another and lonely. We people are social creatures. Who doesn't love parties? We love holidays for sharing. The world needs clean water. The world needs the basic treatments for water-borne disease. And the world needs more parties!

The Internet allows people all over to connect and collaborate in ways never before dreamed of. Omidyar.net id a wiki discussion board made possible by the Omidyar Network founded by Pierre Omidyar who started eBay. Omidyar.net is a space where people believe that every individual has the power to make a difference and they act like they believe it.

I recently joined-up and there's so much going on it's taken me a little while to get my bearings there. At the end of October some members of Omidyar.net began collaborating on making proposals to identify areas of need and organizations solving problems in those areas. Nine $5000 grants were at stake. Members of Omidyar.net then voted on the proposals to determine which would be funded. I followed the progress of the group working on a proposal Attacking Water-Borne Diarrheal Illnesses (WDI).

It's a great proposal and the list of organizations working on the solving the problem of the #2 killer are very solid. Ah, but the other proposals were wonderful too and in the end the WDI proposal was not one of the ones chosen. We all worked so hard and we discovered how critical and how solvable this problem is, we had to find other ways to act on the proposal. During the month of December donations directed to the organizations vetted in the WDI proposal will be matched. If we can raise $12,500 by the end of December all five of the organizations named could still receive $5000 grants.

It's going to take a lot of us to raise that money. Making party hats is a fun activity. They cost but a few pennies to make but everyone really loves them. People love them enough that they'll be happy to pay a dollar, two dollars, three dollars or more for them. So if lots of us make paper party hats, we can help raise the money needed. And have a good time while we're at it.

So that's what this blog is about.

You can help and not just by making hats. You could make hats and donate the money you make some place else. That wouldn't be so bad, because when people think parties, they should think party hats. One way to help is just to make paper party hats popular.

Show us your hats at at the Flickr Party Hats Pool. You can help by leaving comments here. Tell us about water. Tell us about party fun. Encourage others. Send links. Every individual has the power to make a difference! Let's do it. Party Hats--Party On!