Half Dot Brooklyn

Caught up on quite a bit of reading in the waiting room this morning. A quarter of the way through Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, The Lacuna, and I find myself especially intrigued by her depiction of Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo in their most peculiar (and simultaneously fascinating) studio home.

It’s an understatement to say that I am fortunate enough to wake up every morning and work on something I really enjoy. It’s so exciting to transform an idea into a finished piece, and see a child bundled up in it having fun. But I’m quickly humbled when I think about how there are people who do what they love and at the same time have a meaningful impact on the lives of many others around them.

We stopped by the Feast Salon the other night, to listen to a series of short talks on “empowering good.” The main idea of the discussion that evening was to find an intersection between doing what you love and doing good – exploring how non-profits, for-profits, and entreupreneurs could come together to help others. I was reminded that we are all so good at talking, but that talk is nothing when it is not followed by action. That sometimes doing what you love can indirectly have an incredible social impact (which is what endeavor.org seeks out and helps to invest in). And that “helping others” is such a broad concept: empowering people to express their ideas. shape those ideas into something tangible, and recognize them for their work (as Ben Kaufman of quirky.com has done) is so important.

Via my friend Amy, I just read about Goods of Conscience’s Father Andrew O’Connor whose work in fair trade and labor is picking up quite a bit of attention. He works closely with a Guatemalan town where fabrics are made and woven, and then he oversees their production into apparel at a workshop in the South Bronx. Cameron Diaz sports a pair of Goods of Conscience shorts in Vogue’s June 2009 photoshoot. This reminds me of my neighbor at Bubble earlier this year, Jennifer of Chapter One Organics, who sources sustainable materials and has them cut and sewn into children’s clothing by a workshop that hire women who would otherwise face significant barriers to employment.

I am so amazed by what these people have done. So far, I’ve just listened and talked. I hope that in a few months time, when I look back at this post, I’ll be doing more than that.

Our little guy is growing up fast. Each week we have a new pile of clothing and baby gear that he has outgrown. While we are keeping some things for kiddo number two (in a year or so, we hope) and giving some things to friends with babies, we have also accumulated quite a bit of stuff that we’d like to donate to families in need. For a while, we’d been toting those things (along with random household items) over to Goodwill, but I kept thinking there had to be a better place for those essential baby items than sharing shelf space with Aunt Mildred’s old percolater and an ice-cream making machine.

I recently came in contact with Baby Buggy, a New York City-based organization that provides equipment, clothing and products for families with infants and young children. They can arrange courier pick-up of your used baby goods for a fee, but we decided to skip the hassle of scheduling a pickup time and instead just filled a big box with baby clothes and bedding that we sent out by UPS Ground for fifteen bucks. It’s comforting to know that each of the things we put in the box is going to a little child who will use it.