Thursday, July 13, 2006

"Musing on Life's Twists & Turns"

Over at MouthfulsFood.com (my online foodie community), a woman called "foodie52" has inspired hundreds of us with a very poignant story, which began last August. She calls the thread "Musings on Life's Twists and Turns," and it is the story of how a group of Colombian orphans visited her city of Austin, Texas.

She writes: "So last Saturday in the Austin paper we read about Colombian orphans in town, hoping to be adopted. Hmmm ... interesting ... my husband made a phone call - just to ask, that's all. Right. Yesterday we began the process of adopting Natali, 13 years old. When we met her, it was love at first sight for all of us, including my two grown children.

"I thought we were finished with child rearing, but apparently not!"

Well, after one setback after another, and some near-fiascos, their daughter arrived in Austin, and their lives as a family together can finally begin.

Now that that story is concluding, Foodie52 wants to do more to benefit the orphanage in Colombia. Perhaps a blog to that effect will be in the works—I've offered to help her if I can.

She wasn't sure how to get publicity, and I told her that I would bet this community would likewise be inspired by her amazing experience, and that I'm sure many of you would be willing put a link and a mention on your blogs to whatever website or blog develops.

I'll let you know what developments there are (probably here and on my own site)...

Meanwhile, if you are like me, you might need some hankies when you read her tale.

Thanks in advance for your help.

2 comments:

Sam said...

Tana - I have joined up for Blogathon to raise money for the charity of my own choice (Food Runners). Maybe you should suggest that to her, as a way to raise money. Perhaps you could run it on your own blog?

Visit Blogathon.org for more details. I do not really want FBS to turn into a promotional sound board for arbitrary causes, which is why I refrained from even mentioning Blogathon in a post here even though I am trying to raise money for a food related charity with it and I think mention of it would meet my criteria.

I do not want a trend to start here with people thinking they can just jump onto food blog scool and advertise their charity of choice. There are just too many worthy ones, including this one, obviously.

I am sorry - this sounds cruel perhaps, but I have to draw a line somewhere. Foodie52 is not a member of food blog school, she is not a blogger, the charity is not related to food, there is not enough of a connection with this community.

It's not fair, there are too many good causes in the world.

For future reference, I will allow, however, food blog community driven charitable endeavours to be discussed here. This means, campaigns run by food bloggers themselves.

If you yourself think of a fund raising campaign, make it in the spirit of something that will be of interest to food bloggers and run it from your own blog, then i think that would be valid.

On checking your blog this morning- I can't see that you have even mentioned this campaign and I would think that would be the first place to start.

Anonymous said...

Sam, I didn't put it on my blog yet because I was just doing a preliminary run. Though perhaps you are right: my only conversations with Jane, who is adopting Nataly, was that, gee, I bet I knew a whole bunch of charitable people who wouldn't mind spreading the word—without asking for money or anything—merely spreading their touching story.

I certainly didn't mean to interrupt other important business, and had no intention to offend anyone by pointing out something that so many people found inspirational.

In my book, nothing is "fair." In my book, one member of a community can turn to another community and send up a flare. In my book, if someone responds to that flare, as a matter of heart or conscience, that is simply the chemistry of life.

I shan't intrude again for any reason.