May 22nd, 2009 by Jen

(Alternative title: And then I found five dollars. And gave it to Jen’s mom.)

I have a favor to ask!

My rockin’ mom is raffling off this stained glass fireplace screen (above). She designed and made it herself. (more photos here)

WHY she’s raffling it off is even cooler than the thing itself. All the money is going to an organization called Love146, which works for the abolition of child sex slavery. As nightmarish as it is to imagine, there is actually a “sex tourism” industry in which people from the U.S. and elsewhere go to places like Cambodia, the Philippines, etc., specifically to have sex with children. To meet this demand, more than a million kids are trafficked each year. Some of these kids are around the age of 7 or 8. Seriously.

Love146 works to stop it, rescues kids out of it and builds safehomes to nurture these kids back to healthy lives. All the money from my mom’s raffle is going to run a new safehome in the Philippines.

$5 gets you six tickets. If you want to buy $5 worth, awesome. If you can buy $10 or $15, I will dance with joy. Her goal to raise at least $1000!

You can either PayPal the money to me (my account is under jen@forgeriverdesign.com) or mail me a check. Let me know how many you want to buy, and I’ll write your name on the tix and pop ‘em in the bucket. Let me know your phone number, too, so she can call you if you win. Even if you don’t like stained glass, maybe YOUR mom would like it.

Thanks, guys. You are truly an Elbow of Justice, the reverberations of which shall free and restore the enslaved. WHOMP.

May 7th, 2009 by Shantastic

How can he be quarantined if he’s the only one?

May 5th, 2009 by lucas

So I got hired for a new job in Michigan.  I’m gonna be a Park Ranger on Isle Royale.   I start at the end of May.  So if you don’t hear from me I haven’t dissappeared I’m just out in the middle of Lake Superior.

May 1st, 2009 by Hiland

Friends- it’s time we all lived together once more in elbow-smashing glory. And I found just the place: