The wealth of the world’s 85 richest people equals the wealth of the world’s poorest 3.5 BILLION.
That stat, released in a recent OxFam report that is covered in this Guardian story, blew my mind.
$ of 85 = $ of 3,500,000,000
I first heard the stat yesterday while driving our 2005 Pontiac G6 to The Arsenal for my daily CrossFit humbling at 5:45 AM. Immediately I thought of those 85 people and what it would be like for them to hear that stat while being flown in their solid gold helicopter, or whatever, on their way to their basketball workout with Michael Jordan, or wherever. How would they feel?
If I were them, how would I feel?
Burdened. That’s the word that jumps to mind. The…
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We thought the hermit crab that our four-year-old daughter, Harper, got for Christmas was dead. But then he went missing.
“Did you move the crab?” Annie, my wife, asked me last night at 2AM.
“No.”
“He’s not in the dish!” Annie said. 
Our house is for sale and anything that isn’t necessary needs to go. A hermit crab habitat complete with “I’m crabby” sign was taking up a chunk of our kitchen counter. And since the crab that lived in there didn’t seem to be moving, drinking, or eating, and by all appearances was dead, the habitat had to go. Annie had already had the, “your crab is dead,” talk with Harper, which ended in tears, but for some reason Annie didn’t make…
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Fifteen years ago if you would’ve told me I would settle down in Muncie, Indiana, I would’ve done a spit-take. I was going to live somewhere with mountains or oceans or, more than likely, both.
Over the decade that Annie and I dated, I tried to convince her to move to the Florida Keys and Hawaii. I tried to convince her to put her life in a backpack and hit the road with me. I followed her to North Carolina where we lived for two years. She worked as a nanny. I worked retail at an outdoor equipment store (think backpack and tents) and as a SCUBA instructor. I also wrote and got paid tens of dollars per month for my writing. While we…
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I talk about storytelling a lot with my friend Matt who is a pastor. He recently handed me a book with this quote from Flannery O’Connor:
People have a habit of saying, “What is the theme of your story?” (They) have the notion that you read the story and then climb out of it into the meaning, but for the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning… When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of the story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a…
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Bangladeshis and Cambodians have taken to the streets to protest economies and political systems in which they feel underrepresented. Both protests were featured separately in the New York Times yesterday.
I visited both of these countries in researching Where Am I Wearing. Each is a major player in the garment industry.
The industry referenced in the Bangladeshi story:
The struggle between the two political coalitions has paralyzed Bangladesh, unnerved Western governments and wounded the country’s vital garment industry.
The industry referenced in the Cambodian story:
Touch Vandeth, 24, was one of thousands of garment workers on strike who demanded a doubling of the minimum wage to $160 a month, a sharp increase that would put wages well above those of Cambodia’s regional economic competitors, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam. Ms. Touch…
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We didn’t send out Christmas cards this year. So this is it. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and we hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did.
…
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I’ve been writing
about my CrossFit journey over at the blog of the Arsenal, Muncie’s only CrossFit gym. My latest post…
CrossFit showed us how strong we can be
CrossFit was the best thing that happened to my family in 2013.
I know that sounds like an overstatement of immense proportions. It’s not.
Annie, my wife, agrees. And if you know Annie, she doesn’t overstate anything.
Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of awesome things happen personally (I taught my daughter how to ride a bike…on Father’s day!) and professionally (my second book came out), but the last year has been tough.
Honestly, we’ve sort of been reeling since September 18th, 2012. That’s the day we learned that our son Griffin might be on the autism spectrum….
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I’ve never played the lottery nor do I intend to start doing so, but it’s hard not to hear the amount of the jackpot of the Mega Millions lottery – $636 million – and not ask: “If I won two-thirds of a billion dollars, how would it impact my life?”
We would move into a new home, about the size of our current home, but with more land. I want the kids to be able to hit a baseball as far as they are able in our yard. But we’re going to do that anyhow. Our house went on the market yesterday. So I guess that really doesn’t count other than we’d pay cash for the house.
We’d probably keep our G6 with 106K miles…
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I wrote this post for and it first appeared at FacingProject.com. I’m the co-founder of the Facing Project which seeks to connect people through stories to strengthen communities.
A participant of Facing Homelessness in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, decided she wanted to do something to help homeless individuals sleep better at night. Now she makes and gives sleeping bags to Ft. Wayne’s homeless.
A students writer who participated in Facing Hope in Rome, Georgia, got a job at the magazine that published the books for the project.
Books from Ft. Wayne’s Facing Homelessness are being used in sociology classes in Florida.
TEAMwork for Quality Living, the community partner on the very first Facing Project, organized 15+ local nonprofits to share stories of those in Muncie Facing Poverty. Less than 6 months after…
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