Successful Blog

Change the World: When Someone Hurts

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Please Show Up as You Are Able

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I received a call last night from our friend, Jeff Brown. who relayed the tragic story of Aaron Anglin — a 24-year-old young husband and father killed in his car on his way to see his sister.

Lani, Aaron’s sister is a blogger. She’s a best buddy of our friend, April Groves. April tells the story of the accident on Lani’s blog and also points to the television reports. Her commentary explains how alive and joyful this young man was.

April also says.

Lani is my “BBF” – Best Bloggy Friend. Over the past months, we have become really close and her feelings are very important to me. Today, I ask them to be important to you.

Over at the Bloodhound Blog, where Jeff writes, the owner, Greg Swann has moved to action with April.

Aaron Anglin is survived by a wife and two very young daughters. The way I’m reading things, he died without life insurance, which puts those three ladies on a very hard road.
If you can spare something for them, put it in the form of negotiable funds — cash, cashier’s check or money order — and overnight it to:

Aleisha Anglin
c/o Lani Anglin
2719 Costa Azul Cove
Leander, TX
78641

April is working on setting up a donation account with Bank of America, and I’ll amend this post when that account becomes available. In the meantime, Jay Thompson has set up a donation system using PayPal.

But: I will promise you that there are people who will want to be paid now, and this young family will have immediate and ongoing needs. There was a time in your life when fate could have hit you this hard. Now is your chance to redeem that good fortune.

This morning Jeff emailed me this, the link at which you can get the button to support the family who survives young Aaron Anglin you see in my sidebar. Please, if you can, pick it up and place it on your blog and plass on the story. That small act matters a lot to one young family.

When the world seems so huge and all on my shoulders, I am humbled and heartened by the humanity of how we help each other when we are hurting.

Thank you April, Greg, and Jeff for being human.

I was asked to pass the word on, to ask the many people I know if you might help. So, now I do.

Will you help? Please. Someone hurts.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Love Animals and Learn from Them!

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For GP, Hart, and Whitney

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Sometimes we only have to participate in a small way to make a big change.

One of us, plus one of us, plus another one and we make a difference.

For all of our animals and all of our animal lovers . . .

Hart is looking for stories of how people saved animals. It happens all of the time. Save an animal. Save a life.

Whitney saves animals every day.

GP brings us the wisdom of two particular sages and role models both of whom are “interested and interesting.”

Animals help us live longer, know ourselves better, and appreciate things other than buildings and paper. When we understand that, we somehow expand as human beings. People around us notice.

We don’t have to stop a highway. We only need to appreciate our relationship with all creatures. The planet would be a lonely place, if we were left with only each other.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Make the Sky a New Color

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Suddenly Crayons Found Her

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A friend and I have an ongoing conversation about crayons and their powers. We’ve noticed how a mere mention of the waxy “creatures” gets people talking about positive experiences and ideas. On Mondays last year when the sky or events seems gray and without color, our early morning email conversation about crayons would get a little longer.

One night while we were talking, a miscue happened. I’m sure I don’t remember the story as well as I remember the fallout. Messages were sent and received. Feelings were misunderstood and confused. Even after it was sorted, things didn’t feel back to normal.

In a cold, gray next morning, I was still bothered. I went to a convenience store, bought a box of crayons, and walked down the street to a florist. I asked for a small bunch of flowers, and Would they include the crayons in the arrangement?

Okay, so the flower lady looked at me a little funny, but she did what I asked.

Sunset at Semaphore

I wrote in the card something like, When the gray Chicago sky sucks, color a new one. and signed it with love.

She called laughing saying that was the best idea.

The most amazing thing happened. One a week, near the train station, my friend found a crayon waiting for her — yellow, blue, green, blue again. I think that was the order.

Suddenly crayons found her. Now my friend has a whole collection of crayons.

Amazing things happen when you make the sky a new color.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Be Awe-Inspired

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Visual Stimulation

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Every year in publishing, the push for sales conference was brutal. My birthday was for most of my coworkers a “drop dead date.”

The focus, the hours, the living, breathing attention of an entire company were all centered on a week of product release. If we missed it, an entire year of sales was blown . . . gone . . . forever. The competition was mighty. Our customers were children. The product had to be exemplary.

We were pulled thin like copper wire — dead tired, not pleasant, and out of creativity. I didn’t realize the impact of such a relentless environment until we went to sales conference.

Our plane left through the beautiful skies of Austin, Texas, taking through time to Durango, Colorado. We didn’t interact much on the plane. I worked on my presentation and contemplated Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, thinking it wasn’t really about love.

It’s not like we’d had been working in a sweatshop. It’s not as if we were in a city devoid of beauty. Yet, with one step onto the tarmac — the Durango airport is atop a tiny mountain plateau. The world changed. I was surrounded by the luxury of space and beauty. It was a gift to be inside breathtaking mountain scenery.

The the view, the space, the sense of creation! How could I care about words on a page when THIS is waiting?

2912-01-06-018 amazing power of creation


My energy, my creativity, my personality showed signs of returning to the living.

So now I know, when I’m “with what I most enjoy content least,” the sky, the lake, a chance to lay back and look up into the leaves of a tree are what I need.

The world is majestic. How can we live here and ignore it? We only have to look a few seconds and we’re wired to be moved by it. It’s our home. It changes us to stop to recognize it. We’re filled up with what we need.

Be awe-inspired. Then show another person how to be.

We can change the world, just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Find the Promise

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Don’t Stop Believing in a Good World

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My friend, Jill, tells this story.

Jill and her daughters were riding the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios in Orlando. Lisa, age 11, sat near her mother. Annie, age 7, sat on the outside.

The ride was a machine that moved and rocked in a totally dark room. As the machine rocked and jolted, three-dimensional creatures of huge proportion — including all of the dinosaurs in the movie — appeared to be coming at Jill and her children. The experience was meant to be scary, multisensory, and thrilling.

For 7-year-old Annie, it was overwhelming and frightening.

Jill tried to talk to Annie, but the noise of the constant roaring swallowed up what Jill was saying. All Jill could do was pass a message. She said to her daughter, Lisa, “Tell Annie to close her eyes and cover her ears.”

Lisa did just as her mom told her. But Annie wouldn’t do it. She was in the dark, unhappy, and wanted none of the situation. She also wasn’t too sure of the messenger . . . anyone with older siblings can understand that.

“You’re trying to trick me,” Annie said to Lisa. “I want to go outside.”

The little girl was afraid to believe. She only saw things getting worse and worse. Lisa was devastated that she couldn’t help her little sister.

When they got outside, Lisa and Annie had a long talk. They promised to keep each other safe always.

We first learn the world by believing what people tell us. We ask questions. Sometimes the answers stay the same. Sometimes the answers match what we see around us. From all of that, we make our own belief of how the world works.

Then one day, the world offers up a Jurassic Park ride, and life gets confusing. We wonder what we should be believing. Could it ever possibly be right to close our eyes and cover our ears? Sometimes maybe it is the right answer.

Every Jurassic Park ride offers a promise.

If we go outside, we find the sky isn’t falling. The ground beneath our feet is steady. With a little love, we can fit that scary bit into our world view without destroying our vision of the universe.

Two little girls did that. Imagine the impact, if we all did the same thing.

We can change the world, just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Imagine You’re a Kid Playing Grownup

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Play Grownups

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My son, at age 5, used to sit at a little table on landing that overlooked our dining room. He called it his office, and his office had rules. Like any good office manager, he wrote them down, so that people would know what to do.

Visitors to my son’s office could read each rule in big printing on a separate signs. One had a misspelling that was too charming to correct. These are a few that I remember: Be nice to each other. . . . Don’t take stuff you don’t need. . . . Tell mean people to stop. . . . Write neatly.. . . Do things in order. . . . Don’t yell. . . . . and Water the planets.

(Maybe it wasn’t a misspelling. He sure liked the planets when he was five.)

The signs were so marvelous, I asked to borrow them. I took them to work, and at our next team meeting, we discussed what they might mean. How much fun was that?!!! We got to remember how kids view the world. We got to apply our kid-like reasoning to the complex issues that grown-up work brings.

Throughout that week and for weeks later, when we problem solved issues, we would use the vocabulary of my son’s office rules. We would say, “Do things in order,” when we meant follow the plan. We would say, “Water the planets.” when we meant pay attention to people, or details, or the conversation at hand. Every time we would laugh.

We were a bunch of grownups pretending we were kids playing grownups. It made the whole thing a delicious conspiracy of getting things done.

We can change the world, just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss