2023 donation list

I think it's so interesting to do these donations because at the end of the year, when i put together this list, i can see what my giving priorities are. when i first started i was sure it would be towards food insecurity but i've barely donated to that, or even environmentalism, at all! of course, current events and such affects my giving but i've actually not given much towards natural disasters or anything like that. i think mostly because the orgs that are dealing with that issue get a lot of publicity for a bit so they get a flood of donations in, so i choose to donate towards my more fundamental priorities, which is the last couple years seems to be public and independent journalism and media.

january - nature conservancy
february - nature conservancy
march - npr
april - vice
may - border kindness
june - LAist
july - pbs
august - norfside long beach
september - algalita and moore institute thru long beach gives
october - radiotopia
november - give directly
december - open secrets

2022 donation list

2021 donation list

2020 donation list

possible orgs for next year (because some of these have been on my list for years, lol): solarbuddy.org, RIP medical debt, Food Finders, Harvest Partners, Food Forward, Seed Savers, safe toddles, Anti Recidivism Coalition (i found out about them thru their ride home program).

december 2023 donation

 

this month I donated to OpenSecrets, which I learned about from npr podcast civics 101. "Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, OpenSecrets is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Our mission is to track the flow of money in American politics and provide the data and analysis to strengthen democracy."

unrelatedly, the civics 101 podcast is actually from new hampshire public radio, which also produces Outside/In, which I sometimes listen to. I know i've said this before, but I really can't believe that I didn't listen to podcasts until only like 4 years ago and now i have it on all the time. often in place of a tv (cause sometimes you just want a little noise on in the backgroud), and I very rarely listen to music anymore either. anyway, all hail podcasts and public radio! i also listen to podcasts from kcrw, wnyc, west virginia public broadcasting, michigan public, north carolina public radio, and others!

november 2023 donation

 

this month i gave to GiveDirectly which is kind like kiva in that you give directly to those in need, not to third parties that provide services or whatever to those in need. it's sort of like privately funded ubi, which i'm very much behind. 

thanks to econtalk, which is how i heard about this org early last year.

speaking of kiva: mit technology review - What happened to the microfinance organization Kiva?
i too was turned off kiva a couple years ago. it was mostly due to my mistake but why is it so much easier to donate to kiva itself rather than to the people they're trying to help?

matchy matchy

podcast - articles of interest - chromophobia

the whole podcast was interesting but the first bit, especially so. avery talks to a man who blind, but he dresses in colors and has a person create outfits for him. it's so interesting! at first i was like, would i care enough about other people to try to match my clothes? i would like to say that i would wear things that *feel* good (corduroy, silk, velvet, etc.) regardless of anything else, but who knows? i might try to keep to a neutral or black/white/grey palette so that i don't clash too much. not that i could see it, but i guess it might bother others and i would probably care because, well, most of us just don't want to stand out too much.

j has been trying to change up his style lately. he's gotten into the look of a chore jacket and has also started wearing gold chains, and occasionally a neckerchief. he's also taken to wearing beater tanks as undershirts (mostly because t shirts have crew necks which can visually interfere with neck accessories), but in the whole time we've been together i think i've seen him in a sleeveless shirt maybe twice, lol, so it's different!

i've also been thinking about my look. mostly cause we're planning to move soon and i won't be able to bring so much clothes. also, on my trip to tennessee with the girls, i noticed so they all looked pretty good, whereas i mostly wore my schleppy travel clothes. i'm leaning towards more collared shirts. i actually really like the style of jenna lyons who was the creative director of j crew for a number of  years. i've always liked the preppy look, but in the last few years have really given into gorpcore, which i still like, but it's mostly synthetic materials which i'm trying to get away from.

anyway, back to the beginning of the post. how do you think you would dress if you were blind?

october 2023 donation

 

this month i donated to radiotopia. i mostly only listen to articles of interest, which isn't my most favorite podcast or anything, but i do really like it, and also, honestly, i just love podcasts! how did i only start listening to these a few years ago! oh man have i missed out, lol.

also, i'm realizing the importance of independent media, especially when it comes to news, but certainly for everything else as well.

refocus

this month I went to Tennessee with the girls. we had planned to take a trip together for our 30th birthday, but for some reason or another, we didn't do it. we did manage this year tho! we took about a 8 day trip, which included nashville, gatlinburg, the great smoky mountains, and knoxville. ac and i extended our trip two extra days to visit memphis.

this trip was great fun! it was our first time all traveling together and i think it went real,ly well! sure, there were little frictions here and there but i think all those smoothed over quite quickly. it was really interesting since while we grew up together, we haven't spent that much time together as a total group since school. even in college or after, we would reunite for a few hours for someone's birthday (or a wedding!) but nothing ever more than overnight.

i do fairly frequently say that we're friends now because we were friends then. but if we had all met now, we likely wouldn't be friends. certainly not all five of us, and i wonder if any pair of us would be real friends if we met now. it's not just the geographical thing, but we're all really quite so different.

outside of everything, for me, this trip made me want to refocus my work back into environmentalism, or at least environmental adjacent.

most everyone in my life now is so "normal" in their consumerism. j, of course, not withstanding. most everyone else (my family, friends, coworkers) seem to only not buy things because they can't afford it. need barely factors. i don't even mean real actual need, but just regular need.

being with my friends that week, being with them all day, i got to see habits like what, how, and when we eat and what we buy and for how much. it was interesting. the last few years, i've seen people around me live their lives and each time i feel a little void between us. that trip, being with them all week, i felt more of that void than ever. it made me wonder what i was doing, and why, and if it was really what i wanted.

and, honestly, yes; it is what i want. i want to be actively engaging in conscious decision making. and i want to be a good person, doing what i can to create a better environment around me. (environment not just used in the nature / green sense) and that environment means the people i surround myself with. i want to be more with people who inspire me to do better, be better, live better. not people who make me question my morals.

i certainly won't be throwing off my friends or family because they unthinkingly use single-use plastics or anything like that. but i can choose to engage more with the "green" community, whether thru social groups or professionally. and because i don't really like making new friends, making them thru work would be the easiest thing to help keep me on track.

so while i wanted to get away from environmentalism after algalita (because emotionally it was hard to see 8 years of work "down the drain", i think i may be ready to return again. the work at hbcfl makes me feel good, certainly, but it is a bit too far removed for me as well. i need to find a better balance of professional and personal fulfillment. i think, when possible, i would like to volunteer with food orgs when we're away. i really do hope to use this time to explore, not just the country, but myself. i want to know myself better and better myself as well.

september 2023 double donation

this month, I did my annual giving to algalita for their long beach gives campaign. i've been wanting to help out more but, honestly, i've been too lazy to volunteer. plus, i don't have that many saturday mornings open either. but last month they put a call out for two types of volunteers: 1. for dsi kits and 2. to help proof their wayfinder society website. i wanted to do both, but the dsi kits were mostly being assembled during normal work hours so that was out for me. but i did put in a good number of hours testing their website, so i feel pretty good about that.

my time at algalita wasn't all great all the time, especially the last year + but i do still really value my time there and still feel very lucky to have worked there with so many passionate people. it was a life changer for me in many ways. 

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gave another $26.62 ($25 plus the credit card transaction fee) this month to the moore institute for plastic pollution research, which is algalita's sister org. moore institute focuses on research, and algalita on education. 

algalita blew thru their $5k goal (with $8,746 raised as of 9/22 at 9:30am), but moore institute is really struggling with only $396 raised of their $2000 goal. :( that $396 includes my donation, btw. tho i wish i had paid better attention when donating and i would've chipped in an extra $5 to get them over the $400 mark.

august 2023 donation

this month I donated $25 and a few other things to norfside long beach which is a group of "North LB locals providing resources to our unhoused neighbors." gave them the tent above plus a tarp, a cap, some toothbrushes, and menstrual products. i'm hoping that my mom will be able to part with at least some of her stash of hotel toiletries and guest toothbrushes, etc. 

i like that they seem to have a reasonable amount of transparency on their instagram about how much money has been donated lately and how much they've spent, etc. they post photos of receipts which is pretty cool. i hope they're able to use the things, altho, unfortunately, the tent and tarp are both no longer waterproof. :( still, it's probably better than nothing.

july 2023 donation

this month i donated to PBS. why? because it's pbs!!! i recently thought about them because the throughline pbs sesame street episode rerun. sesame street was a pretty big part of my childhood, i think like for many kids

june 2023 donation

this month I donated to LA ist, which I only recently found out has a local radio station! I know I'd visited their website before, though not too often. but anyway, they also play NPR which I'm a big fan of altho, honestly, I don't really listen to too much, lol, since I have my many podcasts to get through. though some of my favorite podcasts are from NPR. it's kind of strange, I think, how little I used to listen to public radio since it totally seems like my kind of thing, but anyway, j listens to it all the time so that's where I developed more of an appreciation for it. 

may 2023 donation

this month i donated $25 to border kindness. i heard about them thru npr's article about them. i had actually donated to water stations in march 2021, which does similar work. 

"Border Kindness began in the fall of 2018 as a direct response to the “migrant caravans” leaving Central American countries on a quest for a better life. From our earliest days, we have provided asylum-seekers, migrants, refugees, and the displaced with comprehensive services that include food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and legal services."

also, i've said it a million times, but i do so love when non-profits accept donations thru paypal. it's so convenient! 

april 2023 donation

this month I donated to vice news because their reporting is actually pretty good. i follow them on instagram and occasionally watch some of their stuff on youtube. j and i like abandoned, tho it wasn't actually very good. but still, we do love abandoned places so... in any case, supporting media seems more important to me right now, so here we are. 

march 2023 donation

this month i donated to NPR because they had a huge budget shortfall and are laying people off, ending a bunch of podcasts, etc. it's horrible. it turns out also, that when you search "npr donation" you are given two options, to donate to NPR itself to a local member station. I don't actually listen much to KCRW, our local NPR partner station, but i do listen to a few NPR podcasts, so I donated to NPR itself. ...i'll probably donate to them again later this year, honestly, because I think NPR is important.

some of their podcasts I listen to:
throughline (one of my favorite podcasts)
rough translation
invisibilia (tho i preferred older seasons)

religion = mental gymnastics

for my birthday this year we spent the weekend at my parents' timeshare in escondio. we did a bunch of things but the thing i really wanted to do was visit the Creation & Earth History Museum & Bookstore and the Unarius Academy of Science. i purposely didn't do much research before going and i deliberately planned of us to visit them back-to-back. 

the Creation & Earth History Museum & Bookstore was very interesting! it has a surprising amount of science for a place that denies a lot of science, lol. and there was a lot of dinosaur stuff! basically tho, it was "this science stuff proves this stuff in the bible." and the science stuff that disproves the stuff in the bible is either wrong or not mentioned. there is also a big room full of physiology and human anatomy, basically using the watchmaker analogy to prove the existence of god. 

after that, we went directly to the Unarius Academy of Science which had much much less funding but was no less interesting. we were lucky enough that the man staffing the place was very happy to explain their beliefs and to give us a tour of their space. in a few words, this is a space cult that believes in reincarnation.

we really ran into to a full spectrum of belief that day! a number of the people in the creationist museum seemed to fully believe in it. and while there were only two people at the unarius place, we only interreacted with one, but he was definitely a believer in his religion. 

of the four in our party, it was t, who is some sort of christian (i don't know what sect, this is not a knock on her, just my lack of knowledge) and fairly devout; her bf i, who seems to believe some of the major tenants of christianity; j, who is agnostic and believes there may be some kind of creator; and me, an atheist who believes in neither creator nor afterlife.

i think besides learning about the religions themselves, it was really interesting to see what people accept and what they reject. t made some comments about how the museum got some things wrong in the bible, but the creationists would say the same of her, as they do say it about science! i think we all were a little more skeptical of unarians but like... why? give it 3000 years and it may become the most widely accepted religion, who knows? 

what i think is most interesting is how people scoff at other beliefs when they are only very short step away from the same thing. the mental gymnastics one must go thru to believe one branch of science but not another, one random book but not another, or to look at it all and sill turn away is really something. i am also closer to creationists that I'd probably like, because religious belief isn't so much a line as it is a circle. I don't believe in the bible, but i do fairly blindly believe in science that i don't at all understand.

really, as long as you really believe in something, you will believe in it, "facts" be damned. 

january & feburary 2023 donation

i did a two-month $50 total donation this time. I was coming out of Trader's Joe and was stopped by a nature conservancy solicitor. i was planning to only donate a month, but he said that it reflected negatively on them if people signed up for one month, then dropped it immediately so he asked that i do two months before cancelling. so, well, sure, why not. it's been a while since I've done an environmental group anyway and nature conservancy does do good work.