Inspiring

My friend Cara and her boyfriend Kevin planned an inexpensive spring break camping in the Outer Banks. They didn't plan on a hurricane hitting during their second night. It's actually a fabulous story, one that she tells far better than I would, but the point here is a small detail - she described how they were trying to find somewhere to go, a hotel or some sort of shelter, and reached a flooded section of road. They could see a car accident had occurred on the other side of the flood and Kevin said, I can't leave them. Not, perhaps we should call for help for them, but I am incapable of abandoning these people whom I have never met, so I will wade perhaps 50 yards through chest deep near-freezing water to make sure they're ok. I like to think that I would rise to an occasion like that, and I always admire the abstract heroic acts of people on television or in the newspaper. But it's entirely different when the living, breathing people are those whom I am lucky enough to call friends.

Also inspiring today was meeting Jane Roberts. A retired French teacher who is so outraged by President Bush's careless veto of $34 million dollars for the United Nations Population Fund (the folks who provide reproductive health care to third world countries - everything from condoms to basic ob/gyn check-ups to midwives and birthing assistance and neo-natal care) that she woke up at 3 am with the idea - a brilliant social statement that Bush was wrong and ordinary Americans will right that wrong - 34 million friends. Everyone donates one dollar. One, single, little dollar. To make up for the President's mistake. To pay for things like surgery for 13 year old girls suffering from fistulas as a result of pregnancies before their bodies were ready. (don't know what a fistula is? look it up, then dig a dollar out of your wallet and mail it to the US Committee for UNFPA, 3800 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 210, Boulder CO, 80303 or go here and donate online) She's travelled to Senegal and Mali where she's met women who have had life saving c-sections, thanks to funds from the UNFPA. I have so much more to say about this, but it's way past my bedtime, so tune in tomorrow for more fun facts about poverty-stricken women in third-world countries - just another segment of the world population receiving a giant Fuck You from the current administration.