GIVING BACK

Grover, Cris and the boys gave me a book for Christmas last year. Opened, it has the most beautiful photos, most of people doing daily activities in India on the right side of the book and on the left side a saying-perhaps from ancient Hindu literature, perhaps from a Swami or perhaps from Gandhi. Each day has its own photo and saying.

I have read many phrases this year that resonated with me, particularly regarding the need for all of us to know ourselves, which is not an easy process. But the other night I read a saying, and I would quote it exactly if I was not typing this from a hotel in Illinois while the book sits on a table in Atlanta.

But while I can't quote it exactly, I can give you the guts of it and share with you how much it impacted me. It goes something like this:

"Never fear letting the gold that you acquired slip through your fingers like sand into the waiting hands of someone who needs it more. You need not fear that you will run out of gold by helping others."




Growing older is odd-I don't feel old. I have the same energy, drive, curiosity and "joie de vivre" I had when I was 30, but to many of you who read this Blog, I certainly seem old I am sure. A while ago I was 30 and focused on my career with intenseness and a passion that I have never understood, but which rewarded our family well. I often wondered what would happen when I became the "Old Guy" in business and I would decide it was time for me to move on.

I was fortunate, in that unlike many others, no one else made that decision for me. A little over three years ago, I decided that I was at the top of my game and I had done what I had worked for decades to do and so I chose my successor, announced that I would retire a year later and did just that. I knew I wanted to do something with the rest of my life giving back, but I was not sure what that would be.

I have spent the last two plus years since then working as the Chairman or a Director/Trustee of seven different Boards, all of which I enjoy, but only one which aroused my inner self the way my career had done for so many, many years.

That Board is Freedom From Hunger and it has inspired me, moved me, caused me to devote my energy and emotion to its mission and made me search my heart about the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" in the world. I am certain that some of my writings on the Immigration issue that are in this Blog are anchored in this growing discomfort within me that children are dying from hunger and must do my part to stop this.

Yes the world has wars we are dealing with. Yes we have environmental issues. Yes we have economic problems. But let's face it-should we really have children dying from hunger?

No one would answer that question in the affirmative yet we have over a billion people on this planet that are living on less than a dollar a day and their children are dying.

So, this Friday, September 28th, we will celebrate "Freedom from Hunger Day 2007", also designated as an Official Day of Awareness by the State of California.

I haven't asked all of you who read my Blog for anything other than to pray for
Katie last year and early this year when she was at the end of her time with us on earth.

But I am going to now.



Please, please, go to Freedom from Hunger now. Read what we do, turn up your volume and listen to the video notes with their wonderful stories of how our work has helped empower women across the globe. We empower women because we believe, and this is so, so important, that "There is no one more motivated than a Mother trying to feed her children".

Take a virtual tour of some of the countries where we are saving lives. Be sure and click on the link you will see by Jane Pauley, on the work Freedom from Hunger does around the world.

And before you leave the site, click on the right hand side under the Quick Links section where it says "Make a Difference" and give what you can. Because you will save lives by feeding people who do not have enough to eat. But you will do it not through charity, not through handouts, but by supporting a program that help Mother's feed their children by teaching and helping them open and build very small businesses while providing them with health and credit education.

Your tax deductible donation, be it five, fifty, five hundred or five thousand dollars, will not go for handouts. It will be used in our mission to help raise the income of Mom's to a sustainable level through education.

I am going to use all of my few talents, business acumen, experience and leadership skills to help them reach their goal of bringing 3 million women and their 16.5 million family members out of their current level of poverty by 2010. I hope you will join me in supporting that goal.

Thank you my friends. Peace.

Grover

WHERE THE BUFFALO AND THE THOMAS' ROAM

Well, after two weeks of vacation in Jackson Hole, it is back to work. We get home late tonight and I leave on business at 7am tomorrow and won't be back home until Monday night. Somewhere in that time I hope to go thru the nearly 1200 photos I took while out here in Jackson Hole the last two weeks and put a "few" of them on my Blog.

In the meantime, you can see some more on Andrea's Blog. And, you can see two of my favorites below. For a guy that is petrified of a spider, I cannot believe I got this close to a Buffalo this big. They are cranky and can run 35 miles per hour but he was having breakfast so he left me alone.

ANOTHER DEAD BODY EXPERIENCE

Back in June of 2006 I wrote in this Blog the story of Finding a Dead Body in my Hotel Room.

I had a similar experience here in Jackson Hole on Sunday and this time I have photographic proof. Except it was not in a hotel room. I had gone fishing with Grover and Lee on the Snake River, which in itself took all the courage I could muster with a name like that. Now, understand I didn't actually go fishing as there could be snakes near or in the water. But while they stood in the middle of the water casting away I sat in a folding chair I bought that day and just enjoyed nature. I found a chair at a local store here that had a built in footstool so I bought it as I as going to buy two chairs so I could put my feet up on one of them as I sat there.

I was planning on doing a nice meditation out there among all that natural beauty while the guys fished but I was concerned that if I got in a deep state a snake or spider could crawl over my foot and you might not ever read anything on this Blog again. So I went to buy the two chairs to solve that problem and discovered this great chair with a built in footrest.

Other than a brief torrential downpour, it was a great afternoon. The guys fished for a couple of hours and I sat on the edge of a tributary that fed into the river and so there was this wonderful sound of water rushing over the rocks, a warm sun after the rain had passed, the views of the Grand Tetons in front of me, birds chirping, a fish splashing, trees beginning to turn to their autumnal colors. You get the photo-true tranquility. I did a breathing meditation and could feel the energy from the earth flowing through me (yes, I know to those of you that don't meditate this sounds weird-but I also know several of you do).

It was a great afternoon and then we drove back to the house. A little later I had to go out to the garage to get something and I opened the garage door to get something from outside and that is when I saw the dead body.




I started screaming and was shaking like I had St. Vitas dance. The hair on my arms was sticking up like the spines of a cactus. I was sweating like a broken water fountain. I slammed the button on the garage door opener, ran into the house and half way up the stairs to notify everyone to call 911 when it dawned on me what happened. Grover had set his waders out to dry and since I only walked out part way before seeing it, I did not have all the available information to make a more rational conclusion. Even Cris, God bless her, said that she agreed it did look like a dead body. That does not mean necessarily that she condoned my reaction, but she did agree it looked like it.

Of course, when you are all the way out of the garage and look at it, as in this photo below, you realize that perhaps I may have overreacted a little for the first time in my life.