There was a time in my life (you can probably guess that I was quite short) when I spent an abnormal amount of time carefully crafting cakes of mud. Their purpose: to be cakes of mud; nothing more, nothing less. I’d head out into the field after a wet night or early morning, taking great care to use collapsed cornstalks as walkways lest I lose a shoe, which I did very often, for I knew where to find the best mud.

The best mud, it just so happens, is open to interpretation, and I found my mood shifting day-to-day. The really smelly shit didn’t bother me, since I knew that its smell was simply rotting plant matter, and I often found myself gravitating towards it. Other days I’d make a beeline for the really smooth mud – the stuff that had, only hours before, been very fine dust. This dirt+water was the real deal: smooth, zero gravel, no plants – the edge of a previous week’s in-field pond.

As any good mud-crafter knows, you can’t simply grab a handful of mud, slap it into a round shape, and pray to Christ that it magically sets into a proper mud cake there in your hand. You need to practice a bit of filth-alchemy.

Especially with the smooth mud. It would be fine if left alone to set, of course, but it needed…something more. A little extra kick. I’d throw in a handful of sand from my sandbox, maybe some ground-down dried mud from a previous collection of mud cakes, and mix it all together with hands or sticks or a small plastic shovel, like the kind that comes with a small plastic bucket in a set of beach toys. The only beaches near my farm were the edges of the in-field ponds after rain.

The mixing was a careful activity – too much dry matter and the cake would not hold. Too little and it would flatten out and be impossible to scoop up. I usually carried an assortment of mixing vessels: old plastic buckets (from the aforementioned beach-themed set), enamelware that had stopped being useful, and many garden appliances. Once combined, the mud had to be shaped, placed, and set.

Since I didn’t have a kiln and couldn’t be trusted with the power of fire (having once nearly burned down the garage), the sun was my only tool. In my humid Midwestern climate, this could take another day or two, during which I would hope and pray that the rains wouldn’t return and transform my shaped cakes into their constituent elements. This required me to sometimes take precautions.

I’d carry a long board with me into the field, usually a 1×10 about twice my length, and use it as a sort of mud cake stretcher (or palanquin, depending); I could fill the whole board at least twice, perhaps three times before quitting the field for the day and returning to “base”, or my barn. Here I could hide the newly-formed mud cakes under the awnings, away from the rain (provided it fell straight, which it never did).

I had a series of these long boards which I used to transport the soon-to-be mud cakes back to the farm. They tended to fill up quickly. I’d place them on the concrete where the sows used to have their stinking pen and leave them be. If I could manage, I’d come back to check on them every few hours, depending on the available sunlight. I didn’t have to worry about pests or scavengers – mud has no natural predators. If done right, I would eventually return to the boards to find my beautiful mud cakes, now a much, much lighter shade of grey/black, arrayed in neat rows on the boards.

After some years (months?) of this, I found myself supplementing the cakes with other accoutrements: sticks and long pieces of field grass and rocks were all valid additions. I learned how to “weave” pieces of hay through a still-wet mud cake in order to create something that might hang on the wall of some Primitive’s hut.

The rocks made designs, the sticks strengthened the cakes, and the grasses that I inserted into the mud made for a fantastically crafty result. I was well-pleased with my mud cake empire.

But of course, once one has created a vast series of mud cakes with different styles and, truly, differentiated techniques, the habit is to…well, I’m not sure.

I don’t know what actually became of any of the mud cakes that escaped the rain or over-baking (which happened quite often in a childhood world of distractions), nor am I absolutely certain of when or even why I ended my mudsman apprenticeship. I faintly recall throwing completed mud cakes at the side of our corn crib, and that towards the end, my creations more resembled missiles and bombs (complete with different species of interior “explosive” mud) and other weapons.

For whatever reasons, I outgrew the mud cakery that had defined part of my childhood in the fields. Now mud is dirty and often dangerous – piloting a motor vehicle or bike through slick, wet dirt is always a bit tense for me – and I don’t enjoy it at all. But then again, I haven’t truly played with it in years.

I’ve written before about Calacanis’ misguided attitudes online, especially in regards to the way that he spends his money, and I know that I’m not alone in criticizing him. Normally, I would just bitch to a few other techie friends, but this time it’s personal. Here’s a section of a Calacanis Rant (we should trademark them) where he describes Millennials as  generation whose members have “never lost in their lives”:

I am 26.5 years old. Do I count myself as a Millennial? Yes. I’ve blogged about Millennials and the internet before; it’s something that’s important to me. If blog posts can take the temperature of my generation, I would swear for half of the time that Gen Y is the most selfish, self-involved, and low-achieving group ever; and for the other half that Gen Y is the last, best hope for mankind. Which is it? I’m inclined to think that it’s a mix of both. Jason Calacanis, who is 39 years old and thus not a Millennial, is not of the same mind. He says that we’ve never lost, that we are in fact losers, and that all the great dreams that we have are junk because we are morally and spiritually and imaginationally bankrupt. Watch the video again – his sputtering is positively 19th-century.

Here’s a few observations about Gen Y that he may have missed while he was raking in cash and offering free iPads for new followers (http://twitter.com/Jason/status/11647997218 – on a serious note, this is a neat contest idea) while speeding down the road in his Middle East-less Tesla (let it be known that I would gladly pimp such a vehicle, given the chance):

1. Yes, Jason, Millennials have lost, big time. You cheerfully made up a statistic of 80% of Gen Y people being losers. I’ll cheerfully say that 20% of us were led to believe that participation was, in fact, important, and that winning was secondary to being in the game. Here’s the thing: 80% (another made-up number) of us lost, and lost often. Now, we’re set adrift in a jobs market that is going to affect our long-term income [negatively] forever. Even the 40% of us who were endlessly told that we were winners no matter what don’t seriously believe that. You’d have to be crazy to think that we’re that dim. We know that participation is not the key to “winning”, however you define it, but we do know that being a part of something is sine qua non for being productive and worthwhile.

2. Gen Y has “No motivation, no killer instinct, [and they're] all on some kind of antidepressant drugs, and they cry in their coffee all day, and they don’t want to win.” We  need to have a killer instinct because Gen Y has more motivation than you think; we know that we’re going up against other people who have used the internet and the information age to democratize the field of information management. We do cry. We don’t all drink coffee. We have to want to win because it’s the only way for us to succeed and outlive the previous generation (unlikely for the first time ever – thanks Gen X for dragging your feet and forgetting to tell your parents to give a shit).

3. Gen Y has a “good worldview, you want to save the planet, that’s all noble…being successful, making money, and being powerful will let you do more good in the world.” Mr. Calacanis, of all people, should know how much impact we can have, even without high levels of “power”, in a world as interconnected as ours.

4. Jason is so angry about the mystical 80% of Gen Y who are screwing up this country, but he’s also angry for them because they are “so stupid, and so lame.” Thanks dude. Super professional. We’re pretty angry, too. We’re angry that people like you, who don’t know who we are, think that you know what we’re about. Keep telling us. We love hearing about how sucky, yet potentially powerful we are.

5. We are losers. Jason has a new mission in life – he wants to take the 80% of Gen Y “losers” and turn them into the 20% of winners who have tech startups that he covers (for his daily bread) and change the world. Awesome! Start spending money to empower Gen Y social entrepreneurs instead of being an angel investor for tech startups whose social benefit is unknown. Help us help you. Here’s a quote from a Millennial friend of mine who works every day with young people focused on social change: “Perhaps he’s [Jason] spent too much time in the tech world.  I invite him to the ground floor to meet grassroots activists working their asses off, harnessing technology to do something useful instead of spewing nonsense.”

6. All of our jobs are going to “Eastern Russian countries”. Again, he’s a master of the geopolitical landscape. (Note: this is a cheap-shot. I also make mistakes when I’m talking quickly without thought.)

7. My mom and dad are “gonna die” and I therefore have no inheritance because they bought nice cars and went on fancy vacations. I cannot even begin to describe the anger and frustration that I feel with this portion of Jason’s rant. I grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. My mom and dad don’t, never have, and never will, make lots of money to buy nice cars. They have never gone on vacation. I watched them make sacrifices to send me to college and I made sacrifices of my own. I’ve never stepped on anybody to get where I am, and I don’t intend on starting. Don’t you goddamn try to tell me about who I am and where I came from.

In short, Gen Y suffers from an overabundance of opinion on both sides. One says that we’re destined for failure because we’re disconnected from reality. The other side says that we can’t possibly fail because we’re digitally empowered and we understand the world between us. I’m seriously inclined to believe that most of us (Jason’s magical 80%) live somewhere in between. We recognize our limitations but we know that we can do a lot to move beyond ourselves and change the world. Maybe do us a favor and stop telling us what we’re about – let us figure it out like your generation had to.

Jason even goes so far as to tell me about my tombstone – the only trophy that I’ll ever get for participation: “It’s not even going to be that big when you get it,” he says. Like many other Millennials, I plan on living forever through the good works and kind deeds and responsible life that I live.

I don’t need your stupid trophy.

I couldn't even bring myself to post a picture

For at least the past two years I have had the habit of creating what I like to call the “oh my god” smoothie. Its name comes from the phrase that usually escapes my lips when I taste what I have created. This is a drink that I make with my Breville IKON blender that I consume after long bike rides or awesome workout sessions. It has two basic ingredients: leaf spinach and beets (which are, sadly, usually canned).

Never one to limit myself to what others might call reasonable smoothie construction, I often add little flourishes to the “oh my god” smoothie. Today, after biking out to the hills south of San Jose and back again, I built one of these drinks. Here is what happened:

1. Powdered green tea (matcha) along with some chai-style ayurvedic tea masala, a cup of raw walnuts, a stick of cinnamon, a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, and a half teaspoon of Celtic sea salt.

2. 6 ounces of tofu, one and a half teaspoons of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, 15 ounce can of beets.

3. Around/about two and a half cups of spinach.

4. Puree.

Folks, I’ve eaten some VERY strange things in my life (especially before I dropped meat from my diet) but this is beyond a doubt the strangest “oh my god” smoothie and definitely the strangest thing that has ever passed between my gums. I’m working on the last two cups of it right now. It’s light brown, tan really, and it has little flecks of green and purple and white and yellow (not sure where that came from) and red. If there was a monster that only devoured Christmas lights and Van Goghs, this drink would be its…excrement.

On the plus side, the cayenne pepper usually burns my taste buds dead pretty quickly, thus sparing me having to experience the rest of the drink. It’s going to take me a few more minutes to get this all down. I’ll be lucky if I survive the night.

O quam te memorem virgo…

STAND on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

Lady on the beach

California coastline - like a painting

Jackie and I decided to spend her last two days with me going on an actual vacation. After spending a summer apart (she in Kenya, me in other parts of Kenya, Tanzania, London, Chicago, Denver, etc.), it seemed natural to want to relax. We cruised up to Sonoma for their Vintage Festival, tasted some wines, visited the vineyards, and stayed in a beautiful little place along the Russian River.

The next morning, we drove through something like a redwood forest along the river’s edge listening to Fleet Foxes. The plan was to head out to the mouth of the Russian and then drive down the coastline along Highway 1. There’s more over at my Flickr page if you’re interested. We spent some time on Goat Rock Beach and then hopped in the car to head back to the highway. This is when my car decided to stop functioning correctly.

It sputtered and choked itself silly. We scooted back to the highway and managed to more or less coast down to Bodega Bay (where they filmed The Birds) and into a gas station. I tried a few tricks with the air filter, but to no avail. The car was broken. I tweeted my sadness, asking followers for pity. I got this little beauty from @NJav over in London:

The tow truck arrived and its operator, Dan, strapped my Neon down on the bed. Jackie and I hopped in the cab and we took off for the mechanic, 26 miles away. We explained how we were on a little vacation before she headed back to Denver. Dan asked me if, since I live in San Jose, I was somehow involved with the tech industry. I told him that I was concentrating on malaria. This got him talking.

His first question was whether malaria had made an appearance in California. He pegged it to a report he had read about global warming and the spread of the disease into places it had previously had not been. We spent the next 45 minutes engaged in a supremely interesting conversation with a supremely interesting man. Dan had lived in the area for many years. He was driving the tow truck as part of his retirement. He liked doing it and helping people out.

We talked about his time in the Vietnam War (he didn’t look a day over 50), about the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Jackie’s work in Kenya, my work in Tanzania, venous stints and angioplasty, vegetarianism (Dan hasn’t eaten meat since he was 20), water issues, and the fact that Hitchcock had filmed The Birds right there in Bodega Bay where my Neon came to rest. Dan had spent most of his adult life as a medical engineer. It’s rare for me to meet someone who really understands malaria, and he knew his stuff. At one point, Dan even gave us a wide-ranging history of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease). It was a fun drive through the beautiful countryside. In some way, I felt ultra-connected to the land with him by our side, even in the cab of that big truck. Once we started talking, all my worries about the car melted away.

As we parted ways, Dan expressed his gratitude that there are young people like us trying to make a positive difference in the world. Coming from someone with the kinds of experiences that he had was profoundly meaningful for us. And then he was gone, off to scoop up the next stranded motorist, and to regale them with fantastic stories and penetrating questions.

As I stood in the mechanic’s parking lot awaiting the hideously-expensive estimate, I thought back to the tweets that I had received after I broke down. @NJav’s tongue-in-cheek DM was forgotten, and I recalled this little gem from @Jean Russell/Nurturegirl:

We found Dan.

I hope this letter finds you healthy and happy. I’ve eaten a great deal of celery in the past week, a fact for which I have no explanation.

I am back from Africa! In my work with The 1010 Project, I’ve spent a lot of time telling the stories of social entrepreneurs and community-based organizations in Kenya, and it was a real treat to finally meet the people for whom I’ve been advocating; I was connecting names with faces and voices in real life. I’d like to pretend that I wrote most of this Dispatch while I was on the ground, but the truth is that I was too busy with our work there to handle a simple email missive like this.

Our first week was spent across the various slums of Nairobi, meeting with our friends. We headed to western Kenya (a bit like rural Illinois, but with tea fields instead of corn) for a bit to meet with rural partners. We spent a few days at Lake Naivasha in order to act like real tourists – I saw hippos – and to climb a volcano in the Great Rift Valley. We then returned to the Nairobi area to conduct further impact assessments and finish up our visit.

Folks, I came face to face with crushing poverty in the slums of Korogocho and Kibera. Having spent nearly a year preparing myself, much of what I saw still came as a complete shock; rivers of sewage, sheet metal houses, and children crammed into schoolrooms the size of my apartment’s kitchen. Those things alone were enough to convince me of the need for the work that I’ve been doing. However, I also saw community groups and schools and churches making real strides to break the cycle of poverty and change their communities and society for the better. I met people who were dedicating their entire existence to improving the standard of life in Kenya and I was inspired by their strength.

As with any excursion overseas, there are far too many stories to tell. I’m still trying to sort out all the audio, video, pictures, and stories that I collected. I’m blogging now at http://timbrauhn.com, and I hope to provide more interesting insights and information for all of you. Has my cynicism regarding the developing world increased? Sure! I’ve seen some pretty depressing stuff. Has my hope for changing the situation increased? You bet your life! Progress can be made, and the work of humanitarian organizations like The 1010 Project is very important for empowering people in the developing world.

I leave for my new job with the Interfaith Youth Core and Tony Blair Faith Foundation in about two weeks. I’ll be training in London, Chicago, and Tanzania. The task at hand is eradicating malaria, a goal that can most assuredly be reached if we all work together. Rotary International reduced polio to a shadow; a grand interfaith coalition can do the same for malaria.

As always, I reiterate my thanks to all of you for your support and friendship as I do my best to make a difference. Stay tuned – I plan on making some waves in this world.

And of course, remember to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Regular exercise is also good.

The icons after my name in these emails link to my my blog, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts. You can use them to follow along.

All the best,

–
Tim Brauhn
Fundraising Coordinator
The 1010 Project
720.381.1096

4) Make Yourself Easy to Find on the Social Web

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (know about the new nonprofit call to action), LinkedIn and Flickr are becoming exceedingly important to any nonprofits online presence. It’s likely your organization is already using one or more of these social networks to engage with supporters, spread your message or raise money. Chris Brogan likes to call these places “outposts”. Your main website should highlight your presence on these sites so that your readers can connect with you in social ways online – they want to get to know you and they want to see that you are doing creative things in fundraising.

via Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Frank Barry, Guest Post: 4 Keys to Building a Successful Nonprofit Web Site.

In my experience, “outposts” can make or break a nonprofit’s web-presence.

I’m sure I’ll tweet this when we hit the road again, but if I had two words to describe the Kenyan countryside, they would be: “carelessly verdant.” Seriously, everything is either a strange mass of strange trees or a field of plants. Lots of farmers around here. We drove out to Western Kenya last week, almost to Lake Victoria, and slept under bed nets in an orphanage where one of our partners works.

In case you don’t know, I’m here with The 1010 Project, a Denver-based humanitarian organization that partners with social entrepreneurs in the developing world to break the cycle of poverty. Aside from two organizations that are based in the rural west, we have a number scattered across the slums of Nairobi. I’ll be heading to Korogocho and Kibera and Kayole and Matopeni in the coming days.

It’s amazing here, it really is, and I’m super-glad to be with The 1010 Project. I’m our Fundraising Coordinator, and part of our trip involves me implementing a grant that I wrote a few months back. Our partners are VERY happy to work with us on some specific income-generating projects.

Some highlights: Helped a 4 year old Luhya girl carry a 20-liter jerrycan of water through a cornfield to her home. She smiled. I addressed a crowd of what looked to be 40,000 street children in Matopeni, singing songs and dancing and telling stories. I thanked a baboon for laying the groundwork for the internet and Twitter. Got bit by a mosquito, which means a LOT more here than it does in America (check out previous posts, which I can’t link to now, about my work with the Interfaith Youth Core and Tony Blair Faith Foundation).

I’m likely to spend the first week of July writing a bunch of impassioned posts about these and other things and putting them up, but for now, I just wanted to check in and thank you all for following along with my work. You folks are a big part of the work I do – I see it in the congratulatory tweets as much as I see it in the smiling faces of orphans and entrepreneurs that we work with in Kenya. See you all soon.