Poverty, especially child poverty is an extremly sad problem, wherever it ocurrs. I find the statistics that Ajay posted to be eye opening and agree that I feel we can best affect our local community. However, for comparison's sake, I have also been to Northern Africa and I have seen the ghetto in Compton outside of LA. While I can say Compton seems more dangerous (boarded up, gun shot holes in windows and stop signs, the poor in Northern Africa were starving and suffering at a completely different level.

The poor in Africa were also ostracized in a differnt way and had no access to any governmental services. I am not saying that we have a amazing social welfare program, in comparison to western Europe or other places, but we at least have one and some people can live off it. Especially, those with children.

Another comparitive issue is that while it is true that many people ingore and reject the homeless in our neighborhood, I also do not believe that they feel in any way, for example like the untouchables in India or other oppressed people in poverty whose place is determined by religious beliefs or caste.

Lastly, I would like to commend the chruch across of the street from me on Lafayette and Elmwood for feeding the poor in our neighborhood on a daily basis. I see them waiting outside for food each day, and in some way during that waiting period when they are all together, I get the feeling they are also experiencing a form of community.

So what I am trying to say is that I agree with Ajay and lets work to help our local community but lets also no forget that even our poor are living in the richest country in the world.

By the way S. Ross is in town. The same Sara from our homeless fund raiser sleepout in 1989.

Missing Image ;(

The mail system has been completely revised.



Spammers can no longer harvest our emails off the site and send us junkmail. Also, people sending you email can never see you personal email unless you respond. It is a great little web form based email system that involves no need for an email client. The emails look cute too and you can even send attachments. I tested them on hotmail, outlook, yahoo, canisius mail, and elmwoodstrip mail. If other people test them and have any problems, please contact me.

I just recevied an email from freecooperation.org that had a link to the Creative Commons Site. It has a great Flash animation/video about their cause. It is like opensource learning. They mention that MIT and Rice are adding their course work to this Creative Commons Concept. Check it out

I decied to go with the confirm the email idea. Now when a new user signs up , the server sends them an email with a link in order to confirm the email address. This should end any communication problems. The journals are also non-public by default, at least until the user turns it on by following the instructions in their email. This allows should finally end the empty journals in the list problem, that so many people were ocmplaining about.

So we were up all night celebrating the New Year. I finally fell asleep near Chris and Chris which ended up making me mega-allergic and asthmatic today. Unfrotunately, I ran out of inhaler last month and Matthew took all my natural astma medicine so I was out of luck and spent the day sleeping.

At one poin tI decided to chaneg the sheets but could get so little air that it actually tired me out and I had to go back to sleep.