A Reprise for Giving Back

reprise (noun):  a recurrence, renewal, or resumption of an action

 

A few of you may remember my sewing machine image from a year ago when it accompanied my post at the time.  Today I reprise it to make an announcement:

OUR V&V SHOPPE IS NOW OPEN!

There are 21 women of this age who are collaborating day in and day out to make this vision and verb juxtapositioning work.  Some of us have been on the ground level from the get-go when we started out in January of 2010.  Our newest member joined us a week ago.  As we say, a lot of water has gone under our bridge!

One piece bantered about, once our feet got wet enough, was how we could give back to the world at large.  Could we do more than just click our cameras and blah-blah-blah?  Could we think bigger?  Could we make a difference?

YES.  A resounding YES from all of us!

And, after all the back-n-forths, it has come to this:  we collectively are reprising select images from over 800 posts in the form of greeting cards.  Greeting cards for sale to the public.  To the WHOLE WIDE WORLD.  To you.

And what will you get out of it?  Our fine art.  Our heartbeat.  Our soul....

And more!  The profit from every card sold (approximately 50%) will be given back to the larger world in allotments of $25 loans to men and women seeking to start their own businesses.  The conduit for these loans is KIVA, a non-profit organization that enables us to lend to the "working poor" around the world.

SEE THAT BUTTON?  Our very own Marie Otero has created the above graphic, incorporating my sewing machine into the KIVA mission of empowering people around the world.  She also created the graphic for our Vision & Verb button on our sidebar.  If you wish to add either or both to your own site, please let us know privately or in a comment below.  We'd love for you to further our cause around the internet.

More than anything, huge gratitude goes to our own Sue Henry who is the html architect behind this room in our V&V home.  You would not be reading this post today if it weren't for her magic.  It's been a real honor for me to work with her to bring this "mission" to fruition.  Thank you, Sue!

Check it all out here or click on Our Shoppe room at the top of this page.  You'll find collaborator galleries for mixing and matching...a total of 79 cards to begin with.  We'll add more and/or swap out over time, once we see how this takes off.

But for now, please join us in our Grand Opening.  Share a button or two and buy some cards!

Recurrence.  Renewal.  Resumption of an action.  We reprise (verb) in order to give back and to say Thank You to the world!

OUR SHOPPE IS NOW OPEN!
Help us empower people around the world with a $25 loan.

Death Has Its Reason

The 12th Station of the Cross in the Maria Magdalenakerk, Goes, Netherlands.

Today is the 2nd Easter Day here in the Netherlands, an official holiday.  So, because it’s still Easter…. 

In my conservative, protestant, Christian, evangelical, preacher’s-home heritage of Easter, death was always-always-always connected to resurrection.  Death never sat alone.  Easter was proof for what we believed in, that life comes after death. 

The joke, however, was that we Protestants could always pick out our Roman Catholic friends by the crucifixes they wore.  While our crosses sat “empty,” their Jesuses hung forever dying around their necks.

I don’t quibble over these things anymore.  Nor do I feel sacrilegious in how the joke might go in my home these days: 

     Ginnie:  Did you read the article about how the use of microwaves causes cancer?
     Ginnie:  What do the Dutch think about the butter vs. margarine debate?
     Ginnie:  You eat animal fat?????

     Astrid:  But…death has to have a reason!  Something’s gonna kill you.

Think about George Burns who was guilty of everything that should have killed him decades before his 100^th year.  “He had good genes,” they said.  As opposed to my dad who died of lung cancer at age 78, having never smoked a day in his life!  “He had the gene,” said the hospice nurse. 

Then there’s Mom who faithfully did all those brain teasers that supposedly protect us from dementia, right?  Besides loving crossword puzzles, she’d play solitary Scrabble with a goal to beat 1,000 points every game, which she often achieved.  And oh yes, she also played the piano and organ, composed cantatas, directed the church choir, taught women’s classes, and raised 8 kids.  Officially, she died of Alzheimer’s.  She must have had the gene. 

Remember that gravestone epitaph, “I told you I was sick!” 

My brother Bennett, 3 years my junior, died of severe arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 47.  By occupation he delivered parcels in a courier van all over the Midwest, but by hobby he was a photographer and was in the process of building his log house.  A strapping young mountain man, you’d say, if you saw him in his flowing beard and flannel shirts.  The every-6-months physical required for his job never detected his arteries were clogged.  Maybe he, too, had the gene?

To be honest, this is how I think it works:  Mom officially died of Alzheimer’s but in actuality died peacefully in her sleep one abnormally lucid evening…30 minutes before Easter Sunday.  What was the reason?  I ‘spect it was Dad, her husband, who was buried two years previously the Saturday before Easter.  My brother Bennett, her son, died a year after Dad, a month before Easter.  He was the only one of us 8 kids who never married or had children.  He loved driving Mom and Dad all over the back roads of Michigan.  I think both he and Dad were tired of waiting for her and just said:  “C’mon, Mom, it’s time!  Let’s celebrate this Easter together.” 

Not that I advocate an eat-drink-and-be-merry, happy-go-lucky, toss-everything-to-the-wind lifestyle (more like “moderation in everything”), but sometimes I think we get too crazy about what might kill us.  Does death really scare us that much?  When did we forget that life comes after death?  Actually, it also comes before death and may make shaving off a couple years worth some of the fun?

Death is in our genes.  It's gonna happen!  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it happened peacefully in our sleep one night…for absolutely no reason at all.  Not that we get to choose, of course, but what a way to go!