Recorded LIVE: Will Johanning Featuring Selena Green & The Family Blend Band

One of my favorite songs to sing. This was a song we performed with Selena Green & The Family Blend Band project. It was so fun! Enjoy!

Interesting take on Microsoft’s positioning in the wake of TiVo, iPod + iTunes, Google, Blackberry, smartphones, Facebook, Kindle, iPhone, Twitter, iPad…

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?

‘Haiti’ t-shirt on Threadless

With your vote, this ‘Haiti’ t-shirt can get printed and $2,200 will be sent to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. There are 6 more days left to vote. VOTE Here: http://www.threadless.com/submission/250649/Haiti (May require a Threadless account sign-up. It only takes seconds to do that!) And thank you, if you do decide to vote. I really appreciate it!

If you vote, keep in mind that it contributes to the likelihood it will get printed. Please vote, “You’d buy it as a tee!” and #5. It only takes a second to create a Threadless voting account.

Why purchase a t-shirt instead of donating directly to the Red Cross? The goal is to continue to develop long-term awareness and interest about the need in Haiti, long after the media firestorm dies down.

The media can sometimes get distracted with other stories: If we can wear a t-shirt that is recognizable as a symbol for Haitian relief: all the better for Haiti.

We thank you Martin, for your dream.

Thinking of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy. Celebrating this special day in my own little way. Thankful we do live in a country that celebrates equal opportunity, and not equal outcome. There is a difference. As a nation, we are in a much different place today because of Dr. King and many other leaders who spoke up when it was time to speak up.

As a favorite lyric from a Selena Green song says, “We thank you Martin, for your dream. We thank you for giving us something to believe…”

Excerpt from “Steve Jobs Oral History,” Computerworld Honors Program International Archives

(Below is one of my favorite moments in the interview with Steve. What he says is inspiring and profound. Keep in mind that this is before Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 as iCEO (interim CEO) where he succeeded in turning around Apple and assembled a world-class team that would soon produce the iMac and iPod + iTunes.)

April 20, 1995 @ NeXT Computer
Transcript of a Video History Interview
with Steve Jobs, Co-Founder, Apple & NeXT Computer [& Pixar!]

“DSM: You used an interesting word in describing what you were doing. You were talking about art not engineering, not science. Tell me about that.

SJ: I actually think there’s actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest caliber. I’ve never had a distinction in my mind between those two types of people. They’ve just been to me people who pursue different paths but basically kind of headed to the same goal which is to express something of what they perceive to be the truth around them so that others can benefit by it.

DSM: And the artistry is in the elegance of the solution, like chess playing or mathematics?

SJ: No. I think the artistry is in having an insight into what one sees around them. Generally putting things together in a way no one else has before and finding a way to express that to other people who don’t have that insight so they can get some of the advantage of that insight that makes them feel a certain way or allows them to do a certain thing. I think that a lot of the folks on the Macintosh team were capable of doing that and did exactly that.

If you study these people a little bit more what you’ll find is that in this particular time, in the 70’s and the 80’s the best people in computers would have normally been poets and writers and musicians. Almost all of them were musicians. A lot of them were poets on the side. They went into computers because it was so compelling. It was fresh and new. It was a new medium of expression for their creative talents. The feelings and the passion that people put into it were completely indistinguishable from a poet or a painter. Many of the people were introspective, inward people who expressed how they felt about other people or the rest of humanity in general into their work, work that other people would use.

Steve Jobs Oral History 11

People put a lot of love into these products, and a lot of expression of their appreciation came to these things. It’s hard to explain.”

Video of Tracy Reines, Director of Response Operations for the American Red Cross

She discusses the latest for the disaster response to Haiti as of 11 PM EST on Tuesday night. For more information on how your can help, visit www.redcross.org.

American Red Cross releases $200,000 in aid to help communities affected by earthquake in Haiti

The American Red Cross has pledged an initial $200,000 to assist communities impacted by today’s earthquake in Haiti, and is prepared to take further action as local responders assess the situation.

“Initial reports indicate widespread damage in Port au Prince, with continuing aftershocks,” says Tracy Reines, director of international disaster response for the American Red Cross. “As with most earthquakes, we expect to see immediate needs for food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support.”

The American Red Cross has made available all of the relief supplies from its warehouse in Panama which would provide for basic needs for approximately 5,000 families. In addition, it is deploying a disaster management specialist to Haiti, and has additional disaster specialists on standby if needed.

The American Red Cross has an extensive partnership with the Haitian Red Cross, which is expected to lead the Red Cross response to the earthquake.

The American Red Cross has staff on the ground in Haiti who provide ongoing HIV/AIDS prevention and disaster preparedness programs. At this time, all the three American Red Cross staff in Haiti have all been reported safe.

The Haitian Red Cross was founded in 1932 and is one of the primary organizations in the country responding to disasters. Although earthquakes are less common, Haiti is frequently impacted by hurricanes including those in 2008, and the Haiti Red Cross has developed experience in disaster response due those disasters.

For more information and to schedule interviews, please contact Mat Morgan:  morganmat@usa.redcross.org or 202-262-9148.

Earthquake in Haiti: Photoessay

Haiti Devastated by Quake; Thousands of Homes Destroyed – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News – FOXNews.com

Haiti Devastated by Quake; Thousands of Homes Destroyed – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News – FOXNews.com

Posted using ShareThis

Our Dream College: Steve Vinton’s letter from Africa

The following is an email sent from Steve Vinton, founder of Village Schools International, a Christian missional organization dedicated to sending missionary teachers to small villages in Africa to get so involved in the lives of their students, that sharing the Gospel is the natural result of loving them.

This letter he sent was very inspiring to me, as I have been loosely following Steve’s emails that he has been sending these past two years, ever since my friend here in Milwaukee decided in August of 2008 that he would work with Village Schools for a year after he graduated from UW-Milwaukee with his degree in Teaching.

I just thought it was inspiring because Steve is in process of building his last college in Africa—a leadership training institute that will train the community and spiritual leaders of tomorrow in Congo. Read his wording and tell me if you can’t sense a man with passion for his work? My heart flutters just thinking about it:

Steve & Susan Vinton
Village Schools International
Box 1929 TomballTexas 77377
www.villageschools.org

January 12, 2010

When Godfrey and Emmanueli came to get me this morning and we got into the car and we turned right after we came out of the big forest I began to suspect what their big surprise had to be.  When after a couple of miles they turned on the road heading towards Mudabulo village, and then made the turn heading up towards the 55 acres of land the village had given us to build our college, I smiled inside, convinced that I knew what surprise they had prepared for me.  And when we came through the woods into the meadow near the top of the hill my eyes saw the walls of the first three lecture halls, so beautifully and wonderfully built, and I was thrilled to the depths of my soul.  Godfrey and Emmanueli just smiled.  And then we bounded out of the car and the three of us ran and danced together hugging and banging each other on the back.  What a tremendous sight it was to see.  Glorious.  All of the truckloads upon truckloads of stones that our students had hauled, the hundreds of thousands of bricks that had been carried during these past three years, the mounds of sand, the huge piles of gravel that had been pounded painstakingly by hand, it was now after all these years of waiting so patiently and sometimes so very impatiently, it was all being turned into our college.  Our dream college.

But that wasn’t their special surprise.  It certainly was a surprise– but it wasn’t their special suprise.  And Godfrey didn’t succeed in making my eyes well up with tears of joy until from behind one of the walls out walked Festo.  He’s the one Mzee who we chose to do his internship working under me and Emmanueli supervising the building of this college. I was so happy that I did indeed feel my eyes well up in tears.  You see it was Festo’s father who welcomed us to the village of Igoda in 2005 and he was the one who gave the land, the whole Madisi hill, where we built our very first school, where we all live together now, where VSI first started taking shape.  Festo was yet another kid who was never supposed to get to go to secondary school.  The year he finished primary school he wasn’t chosen to get to go to the government school and so Festo got married, he farmed, he planted trees, he had children, he was a good member of the village.  Until the year his father gave the land for the building of the school.  That was the year that Festo became a student again.  And now five years later, Festo has finished his ordinary level studies (with honors near the top of his class no less), and while he waits for the results from the national examination council so he can do his advanced level studies, Festo is building the college.  We have two years to build this college Mzee. I smiled.  We will get it finished Mzee. I smiled again.  It will be a lot of work building this whole campus.  This is where I’m going to go to college Mzee. That succeeded in causing my eyes to well up again.

I’ve built two colleges here on this continent — both of them in Congo – one,a teachers training college,and the second one,a theological college.  They both continue to this day to produce young men and women with five-year degrees who are building their country and changing lives.  But those colleges weren’t anything particularly special.  I was young back then and I just wanted to train teachers and I just wanted to train pastors and any curriculum would do.  But this college, my third college and I suspect my final college, this will be my dream college. It will be special.

This college will train leaders.  We don’t have a name for it yet.  But it’s going to be a leadership college and it is going to train leaders.  Principals for schools.  Project managers who will be able to lead communities to build schools.  Chaplains who will be spiritual leaders for teachers and students.  And of course teachers.  This will be a Christian college that will train a leaders with an entrepreneurial spirit committed to being used by God to transform lives and to transform society.  Our graduates won’t just be mere principals, they will be leaders committed to inspiring their teachers and their students and leading them to greatness.  Our project managers won’t just be overseers, they will be catalysts for change, people who will have the vision of inspiring individuals and communities to go beyond what they thought possible to successfuly complete projects.  Those who study at this college won’t be theologians — oh they’ll know theology, they’ll know their Bibles, but we intend for them to graduate with a vision for sharing the Gospel with students and being spiritual leaders for them as they grow in their faith.  And we will indeed train teachers.  Teachers who will want to be leaders in their field, trying to find new and creative ways to make sure their students understand.  I remember promising the Minister of Education in 2005 that ours would be the only college of its kind to be built in a village.  That ours would be a uniquely Christian college.  That ours would be a pre-eminently practical college with our students using our network of secondary schools as their laboratories to practice what they would learn in class.  What I never told the Minister of Education was what I never knew until today.  That our college would be the only college to be built by Festo, a young man who is among those known here in Tanzania as “the unchosen ones”, a young man who when he finished the seventh grade was passed over, was told there was no room for him, was told that he wasn’t good enough, that he wasn’t among on the one or two kids from his village that year who were chosen to get to go on to secondary school.  A young man who was born in a small village to a poor farmer and he was to never get any education beyond the seventh grade.

Today Festo stood in that lecture hall with his muddy boots on.  One day two years from now it is very possible that he will indeed sit in that lecture hall as a student.  And who knows, one day a decade from now he just might stand in that lecture hall, not as a student, but a professor, giving lectures to his students.

It was good of Godfrey to keep stringing me along for all of these months making me wait all of this time for my surprise.

Festo is one of the 73 of our graduates chosen by Godfrey and Emmanueli to participate in a special 4-month internship program they designed for our students while they wait for their national examination results.  Many of them are teaching in our special Intensive English program throughout our 16 schools.  Some of them are overseeing the building of new classrooms.  A few of them, like Festo, have been chosen to work closely with Godfrey and Emmanueli in positions of leadership.