Miss Dilettante's Playground

Last year I took Aerosmith's Dream On, as my theme song and wish for 2008. Who would have thought that when I first cranked up that song 35 years ago that it would continue to inspire me on the eve of 2009.  But it does. And here is the reason: "Dream on...dream until your dream comes true." 2008 has had its share of ups and downs. Foreclosures, government bailouts, assorted natural disasters, death and stock market crashes contributed to the downs. The election of Barack Obama, the discovery of art bloggers and musicians on MySpace, and the continued love and support of family and friends count as the ups. I realize that the downs were not specific to me but to the world at large. The ups contain my personal favorites. This holiday season has been quiet for me, because I was ill for half of my winter break. The silver lining in that is that I was able to read, knit, and reflect more than I normally would. I'm in the middle of reading Dewey: The Small-Tow...

On December 21, I anticipated a white Christmas due to the storm on December 19. That storm deposited enough snow to close schools and businesses. This is the view of my deck. Christmas day was about the only day that the sun came out, and it didn't snow. Great weather for driving. Then yesterday came the record breaking temperatures--56 degrees. Instead of snow, it rained torrentially. I'm not sure how much mid-Michigan got with the latest rainfall. This is what my deck looked like after the rain. Normally there isn't a pool of water beyond the deck. This is a better view of "Lake Delmonico" (my late husband named it in honor of our cat, Dominic Delmonico, whenever the area flooded). Next on the agenda: winds gusting up to 50 miles per hour. Missouri experienced tornadoes. 8,500 residents in my county lost power, and temperatures are back down to 32 degrees. I haven't heard yet about flooding in the area, but that wind has dried up much of Lake Delmon...

I had been mulling different ideas of what I wanted to write about, and today I received some inspiration from Ari Herzog's blog . In today's post, he wrote about the power of social media in creating positive change in the world. He offered up two instances of using Twitter to create a buzz for charitable donations. Laura Fitton's wish for Christmas is for anyone and everyone to donate $2 USD to fund the production of clean drinking water systems in Africa. It's not critical that you tweet your donation. I'm not on Twitter, so I had the option to donate with a credit card or PayPal. What is neat about this organization is that 100 percent of your donation will go to the people who directly benefit from it. Funding for adminstrative costs is provided by other sources. Come on. You know you want to do this!