Asking For Donations Quotes

It is the apathetic person that sees the cause while the charitable person sees the need.

What sealed the deal for me was that the cloak wouldn't come off without a generous donation of my tears. Those used to be almost impossible for me to summon, I admit, until I watched Field of Dreams. When Kevin Costner asks his dad at the end if he'd like to have a catch, I just completely lose my shit.

No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that you're nothing on your own and you're a dangerous freak if you disagree. The truth is, if you don't exist without someone else, you don't exist at all. And that doesn't just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few heads, I'd do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved good-bye and walked out of my life tomorrow, I'd still be the same person I am today.

What took you so long?” Nash asked, as he slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed. “I stopped to donate all your underwear to the homeless. You’re gonna wanna take care of those tighty whities—they’re all you’ve got left.” He leaned against the door, either too tired or too drunk to sit up. “And to think, most people don’t understand your sense of humor.” “Fools, all of them.

Okay, calm down, we'll pay,"said Vee, reaching into her back pocket. She stuffed a wad of cash into the bowl, but it was dark and I couldn´t tell how much. "You owe me big-time," she told me. "You're supposed to let me count the money first," Marcie said, digging through the bowl, trying to recapture Vee´s donation. "I just assumed twenty was too high for you to count," Vee said. "My apologies." Marcie's eyes went slitty again, then she turned on her heel and carted the bowl back into the house. "How much did you give her?" I asked Vee. "I didn't. I tossed in a condom." I lifted my eyebrows."Since when do you carry condoms?" "I picked one up off the lawn on our way up the walk. Who knows, maybe Marcie'll use it. Then I'll have done my part to keep her genetic material out of the gene pool.

I left the bank because they wouldn’t deposit my cheque of poems. So I went to the store, but they didn’t accept my currency of words. So I boxed all my stories and took them to charity. But they refused my donation and asked me to give blood instead. I opened the notebooks and made them look, 'What do you think I wrote these in?

Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight. The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl’s IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, “How soon until I start to die?

Sloan & Dex... “You skipped puberty didn’t you?” Dex let out a wistful sigh. “It wasn’t for me.” Sloane laughed as he carried Dex out of the room. “You’re hopeless.” “I’m also nonrefundable.” “Surely there’s a return policy.” “Forget it. You’re way past the thirty-day refund period. You’re stuck with me now. And before you ask, I’m also nontransferable and nonexchangeable. If you donate me to charity there’s no tax write-off because technically that would be considered Human trafficking.” “Wow. You’ve got your bases covered.” “You bet. Should have paid more attention to the Dexter J. Daley boyfriend agreement.” Sloane dropped him onto the counter and stepped between his legs to pull him close. “I don’t recall this boyfriend agreement.” “You might have been sleeping at the time, but sleep during the reading of the DJDBA is covered in the fine print. As long as you have a pulse, you’re considered present and accounted for.” “Duly noted.

The gender binary is like a party guest who shows up before you get the chance to set the table. Before a baby is even born, well-meaning well-wishers will often ask, “Is it a boy or a girl?” The baby only becomes real to most people once they know the gender. But there are so many more important questions to be asked when a child is born, such as: “How’s your baby doing?” or “How can I support you during this time?” or “Why is it so expensive to raise kids?” Or maybe even “Where can I donate to help?

to my father’s amazement, was an ancient but clearly recognizable painting of Marco Polo, who must have visited Huai’an during his thirteenth-century travels about China. The priest asked my father to donate a picture of Jesus for his collection, and, after thinking about it, Daddy did.

I hope my message has at least jarred you into rethinking the standard and conventional approaches to living one’s life—get a good job, work hard through endless hours, and then retire in your sixties or seventies and live out your days in your so-called golden years. But I still ask you: Why wait until your health and life energy have begun to wane? Rather than just focusing on saving up for a big pot full of money that you will most likely not be able to spend in your lifetime, live your life to the fullest now: Chase memorable life experiences, give money to your kids when they can best use it, donate money to charity while you’re still alive. That’s the way to live life. Remember: In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories. So what are you waiting for?

I had asked Mr. Forsberg for a suggestion as to where to donate the three hundred dollars, and we had agreed that Chris would want it to go to support nature conservation in Alaska. I put my head down amongst the collection and wept.

blaming people is absolutely the worst way to motivate them. Make someone ashamed to their core, tell them that their very being is inimical to life and the best thing they could do for the planet is die, then ask if they want to make a donation?

It's not really your land," Merripen had told him, "until you've put some of your own blood and sweat into it." "Is that all?" Leo asked sarcastically. "Only blood and sweat? I'm certain I can find one or two other bodily fluids to donate if it's that important." - Merripen & Leo

No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that you're nothing on your own and you're a dangerous freak if you disagree. The truth is, if you don't exist without someone else, you don't exist at all. And that doesn't just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few heads, I'd do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved goodbye and walked out of my life tomorrow, I'd still be the same person I am today. I live inside my own skin. Anything that happens outside it doesn't change who I am. This isn't something I'm proud of; as far as I'm concerned, it's a bare minimum baseline requirement for calling yourself an adult human being, somewhere around the level of knowing how to do your own washing or change a toilet roll. All those idiots on the websites, begging for other people to pull their sagging puppet-strings, turn them real: they make me want to spit.

If you hate asking for a donation, you don’t understand your donor. You’re stealing their joy.

if only people stopped acting like they've been asked to donate a lung every time somebody asks for something the world would be a better place

Shane grudgingly donating blood - "Yeah about that...could you get us a human ?" Shane asked. "It creeps me out when a guy`s draining my blood and I hear his stomach rumble.

A town[…]asked him to donate a church bell, he told them to forsake the steeple and build a library, for which he sent "books instead of a bell, sense being preferable to sound.

Education about Yemen will come through customers’ engagement with the product. And in the meantime you’ll employ actual Yemeni people. And you’ll do something tangible. And you’ll make a living. And you won’t have to ask for donations. And it won’t have to be about Islam. You’re not selling Islamic coffee beans. Sell Yemeni beans. Do that, and do it well, and the rest will follow.

Doesn't it matter how you ask the question? Or if the tone of your request is closer to a fist than to an open palm? Can the nature of the request corrupt the purity of the gift, the donated sleep?

The overthrow of the communist regime is clearly its objective, but how far is it willing to go? While the Fraternity asks for donations to help refugees, these funds may possibly be going toward a Movement of armed refugees in Thailand. Rumors are that the Fraternity has invested in certain businesses whose profits it reaps. The most disappointing aspect of the Fraternity is the false hope it peddles to our countrymen that we can one day take our country back through force. We would be better off if we pursued reconciliation peacefully, in the hopes that one day we in exile can return to help rebuild our country.

The shower invitation—engraved from Crane’s—asked, at the behest of the parents, for donations to the clean-well-water charity Ana-Sofia founded—Gushing.org, the name of which brings to mind a particularly bad menstrual period, but which raises funds for wells in Africa.

3.  Once people are asked to donate, the social pressure is so great that they get bullied into giving, even though they wish they’d never been asked in the first place. Mullaney knew that number 3 was important to Smile Train’s success. That’s why their millions of mailings included a photograph of a disfigured child in need of cleft surgery. While no fund-raiser in his right mind would ever publicly admit to manipulating donors with social pressure, everyone knew how strong this incentive was. But what if, Mullaney thought, instead of downplaying the pressure, Smile Train were to highlight it? That is, what if Smile Train offered potential donors a way to alleviate the social pressure and give money at the same time? That’s how a strategy known as “once-and-done” was born. Here’s what Smile Train would tell potential donors: Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again.

It starts innocently. Casually. You turn up at the annual spring fair full of beans, help with the raffle tickets (because the pretty red-haired music teacher asks you to) and win a bottle of whiskey (all school raffles are fixed), and, before you know where you are, you're turning up at the weekly school council meetings, organizing concerts, discussing plans for a new music department, donating funds for the rejuvenation of the water fountains—you're implicated in the school, you're involved in it. Sooner or later you stop dropping your children at the school gates. You start following them in.

In the late afternoon, Lily approached Ian as he reclined on the couch sketching. “I’ve got something to ask you,” she said, the tiniest waver in her voice betraying her nervousness. Ian went on high alert and placed his pad and pencil on the coffee table. “What is it, sweetheart?” he managed to get out, keeping his voice even. Lily wrung her hands. “Okay. Now, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, okay? I promise I’ll understand if you say no. Really, I will.” His shoulders slumped in relief and he rescued her hands from each other before either was damaged. “Darlin’, you needn’t be afraid to ask. I would love for you to take me to bed and spend the rest of the day making wild, passionate love to me. Tonight and tomorrow too, if that would make you happy,” Ian assured her. Lily blinked and frowned uncertainly. “Umm…tempting as that sounds, no, that’s not it.” “Need an organ donated, then? I’ve got one in mind just for you.” “This is serious.” She giggled, thumping him on the chest. “Damn right it is. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve seen you naked?” he said, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “How the hell am I supposed to get better under these horrific conditions? I may end up in therapy yet. See, look, my eye’s already starting to twitch…

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of “prayer”, as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self–cancelling. Those of us who don’t take part in it will justify our abstention on the grounds that we do not need, or care, to undergo the futile process of continuous reinforcement. Either our convictions are enough in themselves or they are not: At any rate they do require standing in a crowd and uttering constant and uniform incantations. This is ordered by one religion to take place five times a day, and by other monotheists for almost that number, while all of them set aside at least one whole day for the exclusive praise of the Lord, and Judaism seems to consist in its original constitution of a huge list of prohibitions that must be followed before all else. The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her “as she is.” Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created. It’s just that, if he is truly almighty, the achievement would seem rather a slight one. Much the same applies to the idea that prayer, instead of making Christianity look foolish, makes it appear convincing. Now, it can be asserted with some confidence, first, that its deity is all–wise and all–powerful and, second, that its congregants stand in desperate need of that deity’s infinite wisdom and power. Just to give some elementary quotations, it is stated in the book of Philippians, 4:6, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that “he is the rock, his work is perfect,” and Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “Now O Lord, thou art our father; we art clay and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” Note, then, that Christianity insists on the absolute dependence of its flock, and then only on the offering of undiluted praise and thanks. A person using prayer time to ask for the world to be set to rights, or to beseech god to bestow a favor upon himself, would in effect be guilty of a profound blasphemy or, at the very least, a pathetic misunderstanding. It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens religion to the additional charge of corruption. The leaders of the church know perfectly well that prayer is not intended to gratify the devout. So that, every time they accept a donation in return for some petition, they are accepting a gross negation of their faith: a faith that depends on the passive acceptance of the devout and not on their making demands for betterment. Eventually, and after a bitter and schismatic quarrel, practices like the notorious “sale of indulgences” were abandoned. But many a fine basilica or chantry would not be standing today if this awful violation had not turned such a spectacularly good profit. And today it is easy enough to see, at the revival meetings of Protestant fundamentalists, the counting of the checks and bills before the laying on of hands by the preacher has even been completed. Again, the spectacle is a shameless one.

When women ask me what I do for a living, I’m going to tell them I earn money the old-fashioned way. Then I’ll go on to explain that I somehow managed to get my name added to an African Charity list, and generous Americans donate eight dollars a month so that I can afford to feed myself, but that I spend it all on my new Twitter blue check.

You can donate marrow for her, Alice Faye, you can’t cure her. You can win a poker tournament, but that won’t make her want to live. So I’ll ask you again: Who are you, and what are you doing here? Because Munny sure doesn’t want you to be her, and she wants someone to be out in the world living since she’s got the market cornered on dying right now.

George Muller, that remarkable man of such simple yet strong faith in God, a man of prayer and Bible reading, founder and promoter of the noted orphanage in England, which cared for hundreds of orphan children, conducted the institution solely by faith and prayer. He never asked a man for anything, but simply trusted in the Providence of God, and it is a notorious fact that never did the inmates of the home lack any good thing. From his paper he always excluded money matters, and financial difficulties found no place in it. Nor would he mention the sums which had been given him, nor the names of those who made contributions. He never spoke of his wants to others nor asked a donation. The story of his life and the history of this orphanage read like a chapter from the Scriptures. The secret of his success was found in this simple statement made by him: “I went to my God and prayed diligently, and received what I needed.” That was the simple course which he pursued. There was nothing he insisted on with greater earnestness than that, be the expenses what they might be, let them increase ever so suddenly, he must not beg for anything. There was nothing in which he took more delight and showed more earnestness in telling than that he had prayed for every want which ever came to him in his great work. His was a work of continuous and most importunate praying, and he always confidently claimed that God had guided him throughout it all. A stronger proof of a divine providence, and of the power of simple faith and of answered prayer, cannot be found in Church history or religious biography.

prisons, and through Mark Vermilion, who ran Baez’s human rights foundation Humanitas. When Jobs donated some computers to them, he asked if he could meet Baez. A few weeks later he and Baez had lunch in Cupertino. “I wasn’t expecting a lot, but she was really smart and funny,” he recalled. At the time, he was nearing the end of his relationship with Barbara Jasinski. They had vacationed in Hawaii, shared a house in the Santa

Come, ye dull, ignorant, and illiterate, ye who think yourselves the most incapable of prayer! Ye are more peculiarly called and adapted thereto. Let all without exception come, for Jesus Christ hath called all. Yet let not those come who are without a heart; they are not asked; for there must be a heart, that there may be love. But who is without a heart? Oh come, then, give this heart to God; and here learn how to make the donation.

Have a seat in a liberal restaurant, and you’re assaulted with all sorts of rules and information. No substitutions. Everything organic. They’ll tell you the name of the farm the lettuce comes from, the variety of tomato in the salad, and probably even the name of the hardworking chicken who donated the eggs. But they won’t ask you how you want your steak. They won’t ask you anything, actually. At liberal restaurants, they tell you what you’re going to have.

In her everyday work, comfort was more important than looks, which was why she always wore blue jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. But that morning she’d made an effort to make her grandmother proud, pulling her hair back into a sleek ponytail, putting on lipstick, and wearing the black suit she referred to as her “begging outfit” because she used it only when she had to ask for donations of money and time. She thought it made her look like a serious professional.

In trying to comprehend and judge moral dilemmas of this scale, people often resort to one of four methods. The first is to downsize the issue. To understand the Syrian civil war as though it were occurring between two foragers, for example, one imagines the Assad regime as a lone person and the rebels as another person; one of them is bad and one of them is good. The historical complexity of the conflict is replaced by a simple, clear plot.4 The second method is to focus on a touching human story that ostensibly stands for the whole conflict. When you try to explain to people the true complexity of the conflict by means of statistics and precise data, you lose them, but a personal story about the fate of one child activates the tear ducts, makes the blood boil, and generates false moral certainty.5 This is something that many charities have understood for a long time. In one noteworthy experiment, people were asked to donate money to help a poor seven-year-old girl from Mali named Rokia. Many were moved by her story and opened their hearts and purses. However, when in addition to Rokia’s personal story the researchers also presented people with statistics about the broader problem of poverty in Africa, respondents suddenly became less willing to help. In another study, scholars solicited donations to help either one sick child or eight sick children. People gave more money to the single child than to the group of eight.6

An hour into the meeting, Bossie said, “We have another big issue.” “What’s that?” Trump asked, seeming a little more wary. “Well,” he said, “80 percent of the donations that you’ve given have been to Democrats.” To Bossie that was Trump’s biggest political liability, though he didn’t say so. “That’s bullshit!” “There’s public records,” Bossie said. “There’s records of that!” Trump said in utter astonishment. “Every donation you’ve ever given.” Public disclosure of all political giving was standard.

Each person must decide for himself what his obligations are to his respective friends, family, and community. Before donating his time and money to those outside his immediate family and close circle of friends, he must decide what he can afford, without depriving those closest to him. When taking these things into consideration he must be certain to include himself among those who mean most to him. He must carefully evaluate the validity of the request and the personality or motives of the person asking it of him.

[Harriet Tubman] also looked out for other African-Americans in town, opening the first home in the country for elderly and indigent blacks. When Dorothy and Ros were small, the elderly Tubman rode a bicycle up and down South Street, stopping to ask for food donations. If she had specific needs, she sat on the back porch and waited for the lady of the house, with whom she would chat and ask for bedding or clothing for her residents. One of Ros's nieces said, "Mother had coffee with Harriet and would always leave a ham or turkey for her for the holiday.

Leta walked to the door and opened it with a ready smile for Colby Lane. And found herself looking straight into the eye of a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in thirty-six years. Matt Holden matched her face against his memories of a young, slight, beautiful woman whose eyes loved him every time they looked at him. His heart spun like a cartwheel in his chest. “Cecily said it was Colby,” Leta said unsteadily. “Strange. She phoned me and asked if I was free this evening.” His broad shoulders shrugged and he smiled faintly. “I’m free every evening.” “That doesn’t sound like the life of a playboy widower,” Leta said caustically. “My wife was a vampire,” he said. “She sucked me dry of life and hope. Her drinking wore me down. Her death was a relief for both of us. Do I get to come in?” he added, glancing down the hall. “I’m going to collect dust if I stand out here much longer, and I’m hungry. A sack of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries doesn’t do a lot for me.” “I hear it’s a presidential favorite,” Cecily mused, joining them. “Come in, Senator Holden.” “It was Matt before,” he pointed out. “Or are you trying to butter me up for a bigger donation to the museum?” She shrugged. “Pick a reason.” He looked at Leta, who was uncomfortable. “Well, at least you can’t hang up on me here. You’ll be glad to know that our son isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t speaking to you, either, or so he said,” he added. “I suppose he won’t talk to you?” he added to Cecily. “He said goodbye very finally, after telling me that I was an idiot to think he’d change his mind and want to marry me just because he turned out to have mixed blood,” she said, not relating the shocking intimacy that had prefaced his remarks. “I’ll punch him for that,” Matt said darkly. “Ex-special forces,” Leta spoke up with a faint attempt at humor, nodding toward Matt. “He was in uniform when we went on our first date.” “You wore a white cotton dress with a tiered skirt,” he recalled, “and let your hair down. Hair…” He turned back to Cecily and grimaced. “Good God, what did you do that for?” “Tate likes long hair, that’s what I did it for,” she said, venom in her whole look. “I can’t wait for him to see it, even if I have to settle for sending him a photo!” “I hope you never get mad at me,” Matt said. “Fat chance.

People here talked about the pre-1967 borders. To tell you the truth this is astonishing. Whatever happened to the (Palestinian) cause we had before 1967? Were we lying to ourselves or to the world? Thousands of martyrs fell before 1967. What for? How can you say that Palestine was occupied only in 1967, and that (Israel) must return to the pre-1967 borders? Does Palestine consist of only the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? If so, it means that the Israelis did not occupy it in 1948. They left it to you for twenty years, so why didn't you establish a Palestinian state? Wasn't the Gaza strip part of Egypt, and the West Bank part of Jordan? The Jews left them to you for twenty years - from 1948 to 1967. If that is Palestine, why didn't you establish a state there? What is the justification for all the wars, the sacrifices, and the economic embargo on Israel before 1967? The Israelis can sue the Arabs now, and demand billions or even trillions in compensation for the damage caused them in 1948-1967. You Arabs admitted that the (Palestinian) cause began after 1967. So the Israelis can ask: "Why did you fight us before that?" They will demand Arab compensation for the so-called embargo on Israel, and for the economic damage caused to the Israelis. If the Israelis sue you, they will win. They will say: We suffered an injustice. We are like an innocent lamb surrounded by wolves. We've been saying this since 1948. Now the Arabs themselves have admitted that Palestine was occupied in 1967. Now they demand that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders, saying this will resolve the problem, and they will recognise Israel. Why didn't you recognise Israel before 1967? There is no God but Allah. By Allah, this is unacceptable. It doesn't make sense. You say that you will recognise Israel within the pre-1967 borders?! Maybe Israel will occupy more Arab land in, say, 2008, and a few years later, you will demand that it return to the pre-2008 borders, in exchange for recognizing Israel. This is exactly what's going on now. We gave negotiations a serious try. The Jews used to say: "Meet with us only once for direct negotiations, and we will resolve this issue." This is what they used to say in the 1950s and 1960s. They used to say: "Please, Arabs, sit down with us just one time, and our problem will be over." But you saw what happened. We met with them a thousand times - from the stables of (camp) David to Annapolis. We've been through all these negotiations - the stables of (camp) David, the Oslo negotiations of our brother Abu Mazen... He was, of course, the hero of Oslo - just like Sadat was the hero of the stables of (camp) David. When Algeria was fighting, donations and volunteers were coming in broad daylight - from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. From here, from Syria, Dr. IIbrahim Makhous came with a group of volunteers, and fought alongside the Algerian Liberation Front. They were not considered terrorists, and no measures were taken against Syria.

The next time you make a donation to charity, don’t just think about the good turn you’re doing, but take a moment to consider that one day you may need to receive charity yourself. As far as we know, Seneca truly lived these words. Just a year or so after writing this letter, he was falsely accused of plotting against Nero. The price? Seneca was sentenced to commit suicide. As the historian Tacitus relates the scene, Seneca’s closest friends wept and protested the verdict. “Where,” Seneca asked them repeatedly, “are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparations of so many years’ study against evils to come? Who knew not Nero’s cruelty?” That is: he knew it could happen to him too, and so he was prepared for it.

The Unravel process is like cleaning out that garage. Before I could park a car in that space, I had to go through everything that was occupying that area and separate out what needed to be kept and what needed to be thrown out. I had to pick up the garden hose and see if it was still usable. I had to go through every box and investigate what was in it. I had to go through all the miscellaneous stuff and decide if I needed it, if it could be donated, or if it should be thrown out. I asked myself why I was keeping some of the things I had piled up. I realized that some of it was being kept out of a sense of loyalty or sentimentality, and some of it was being kept because I was afraid that I might need it and wouldn’t have it.

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it. Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they’re about money. The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates’ charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching bands, those people have concrete needs. They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, antitrust waivers and dozens of other things. They mostly don’t care about abortion or gay marriage or school vouchers or any of the social issues the rest of us spend our time arguing about. It’s about money for them, and as far as that goes, the CEO class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation. They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population. The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything. They get everything from the Republicans because you don’t have to make a single concession to a Republican voter. All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants pulled down or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some dingbat like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are. Call it the “Rove 1-2.” That’s literally all it’s taken to secure decades of Republican votes, a few patriotic words and a little over-the-pants rubbing. Policywise, a typical Republican voter never even asks a politician to go to second base. While we always got free trade agreements and wars and bailouts and mass deregulation of industry and lots of other stuff the donors definitely wanted, we didn’t get Roe v. Wade overturned or prayer in schools or balanced budgets or censorship of movies and video games or any of a dozen other things Republican voters said they wanted.

But why bother with guests at all? The virtual community is larger and less trouble than the relatives and friends upon whom self-fundraisers had been drawing. The pioneers in using the Internet to ask strangers for money patterned themselves on the causes of reputable charity—such as donating toward education or helping the ill—except for designating themselves the sole beneficiaries. A breakthrough was achieved when it was discovered that asking for money for luxuries also brought results. These practices are no less vulgar for having become commonplace. There is no polite way to tell people to give you money or objects, and no polite way to entertain people at their expense. Begging is the last resort of the desperate, not a social form requiring others to help people live beyond their means.

Is there a difference in the amount donated—based on the "suggested donation" you list? Desmet (1999 ["Asking for Less to Obtain More." Journal of Marketing Research, 29(4), 430–440.]) found it depends on which suggestions you manipulate. Suppose you have the following "suggested donations": •$15 •$30 •$50 •$75 •$100 Desmet's research suggests that changing the $30, $50, or $75 will have little effect, but raising the top or the bottom number will have significant results. In his research, raising the top number led to overall larger donations. Strangely, raising the bottom number led to significantly lower response rates. Why would raising the $15 cause fewer people to donate? The dropoff came from previous donors who had contributed a small amount. Desmet cites an "aversion to the extremes," whereby donors do not want to contribute the smallest or the largest amount on the list. So adding a $125 choice would increase the number of people who donate $100. But if the lowest number shown becomes $30, then people who donated $30 before would now be donating the lowest amount listed—which they don't want to do. Instead, some of them may choose not to donate.

Your grandfather should not be allowed on social media,” Caroline went on. “He just did a quick and dirty post asking if anyone wanted to go owling with him, and never noticed that autocorrect changed ‘owling’ to ‘bowling.’ And before I noticed it and posted a correction, several dozen people signed up.” “Good grief,” I muttered. “And once I corrected it, we started hearing from any number of people saying how deeply disappointed they were about our canceling the bowling—as if you could cancel something that wasn’t even scheduled in the first place. So he told me to go ahead and organize some kind of bowling event. Open to anyone in the Brigade, no cost, but donation to one of the Blake Foundation’s environmental projects suggested. Brigade members love events like that. We’re sure to get way more donations than it costs to rent a few bowling lanes. Now I just need to figure out how to deal with his other typo, which won’t be quite as easy.” “Why?” I asked. “What was the other typo?” “He intended to say that we’d wrap up the event by singing around a campfire,” Caroline said. “I have no idea why autocorrect changed ‘campfire’ to ‘vampire.’ Or why anyone would suppose he’d be planning to serenade one. Am I really expected to provide a vampire on top of the bowling?

How do you commit the perfect crime in science? We’re handicapped from the start because it’s a question we never ask. For more than thirty years, Frank taught me and many others to record our data accurately, compare them with collaborators around the world, discard the outliers, and come to a consensus. We understand there are variations, but if the bulk of the evidence goes in a certain direction, we are confident we have a better understanding of human biological processes. If only that were what happened in the real world. In the real world there are corporations, be they pharmaceutical, agricultural, petroleum, or chemical companies, that have billions of dollars at stake in the work of scientists. If one has billions of dollars, he can use the dark arts of persuasion to hire public relations firms to tout your products, sow the seeds of doubt about those who question your products, buy advertising on news networks so they don’t publicize negative stories unless they have no other choice, and donate to politicians of all ideologies. Then, once those politicians have been elected, they can write laws for the benefit of their generous donors. As it was put so eloquently in the seventeenth century by a prominent member of Queen Elizabeth’s court, “If it prospers, none dare call it treason.

From your perspective today, Kathy, your bemusement is perfectly reasonable. But you must try and see it historically. After the war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after another so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask the sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most...By the time people became concerned about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well, by then it was too late...How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. For a long time you were kept in the shadow...[and if people think about you], they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter...Do you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human.

BUYING OFF THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS Where are the environmentalists? For fifty years, they’ve been carrying on about overpopulation; promoting family planning, birth control, abortion; and saying old people have a “duty to die and get out of the way”—in Colorado’s Democratic Governor Richard Lamm’s words. In 1971, Oregon governor and environmentalist Tom McCall told a CBS interviewer, “Come visit us again. . . . But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.” How about another 30 million people coming here to live? The Sierra Club began sounding the alarm over the country’s expanding population in 1965—the very year Teddy Kennedy’s immigration act passed65—and in 1978, adopted a resolution expressly asking Congress to “conduct a thorough examination of U.S. immigration laws.” For a while, the Club talked about almost nothing else. “It is obvious,” the Club said two years later, “that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size and growth rate,” even more than “the number of children per family.”66 Over the next three decades, America took in tens of millions of legal immigrants and illegal aliens alike. But, suddenly, about ten years ago, the Sierra Club realized to its embarrassment that importing multiple millions of polluting, fire-setting, littering immigrants is actually fantastic for the environment! The advantages of overpopulation dawned on the Sierra Club right after it received a $100 million donation from hedge fund billionaire David Gelbaum with the express stipulation that—as he told the Los Angeles Times—“if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”67 It would be as if someone offered the Catholic Church $100 million to be pro-abortion. But the Sierra Club said: Sure! Did you bring the check? Obviously, there’s no longer any reason to listen to them on anything. They want us to get all excited about some widening of a road that’s going to disturb a sandfly, but the Sierra Club is totally copasetic with our national parks being turned into garbage dumps. Not only did the Sierra Club never again say another word against immigration, but, in 2004, it went the extra mile, denouncing three actual environmentalists running for the Club’s board, by claiming they were racists who opposed mass immigration. The three “white supremacists” were Dick Lamm, the three-time Democratic governor of Colorado; Frank Morris, former head of the Black Congressional Caucus Foundation; and Cornell professor David Pimentel, who created the first ecology course at the university in 1957 and had no particular interest in immigration.68 But they couldn’t be bought off, so they were called racists.

Two men were advancing towards the car along the cross track. One man carried a short wooden bench on his back, the other a big wooden object about the size of an upright piano. Richard hailed them, they greeted him with every sign of pleasure. Richard produced cigarettes and a cheerful party spirit seemed to be developing. Then Richard turned to her. “Fond of the cinema? Then you shall see a performance.” He spoke to the two men and they smiled with pleasure. They set up the bench and motioned to Victoria and Richard to sit on it. Then they set up the round contrivance on a stand of some kind. It had two eye-holes in it and as she looked at it, Victoria cried: “It’s like things on piers. What the butler saw.” “That’s it,” said Richard. “It’s a primitive form of same.” Victoria applied her eyes to the glass-fronted peephole, one man began slowly to turn a crank or handle, and the other began a monotonous kind of chant. “What is he saying?” Victoria asked. Richard translated as the singsong chant continued: “Draw near and prepare yourself for much wonder and delight. Prepare to behold the wonders of antiquity.” A crudely coloured picture of Negroes reaping wheat swam into Victoria’s gaze. “Fellahin in America,” announced Richard, translating. Then came: “The wife of the great Shah of the Western world,” and the Empress Eugénie simpered and fingered a long ringlet. A picture of the King’s Palace in Montenegro, another of the Great Exhibition. An odd and varied collection of pictures followed each other, all completely unrelated and sometimes announced in the strangest terms. The Prince Consort, Disraeli, Norwegian Fjords and Skaters in Switzerland completed this strange glimpse of olden far-off days. The showman ended his exposition with the following words: “And so we bring to you the wonders and marvels of antiquity in other lands and far-off places. Let your donation be generous to match the marvels you have seen, for all these things are true.” It was over. Victoria beamed with delight. “That really was marvellous!” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.” The proprietors of the travelling cinema were smiling proudly. Victoria got up from the bench and Richard who was sitting on the other end of it was thrown to the ground in a somewhat undignified posture. Victoria apologized but was not ill pleased. Richard rewarded the cinema men and with courteous farewells and expressions of concern for each other’s welfare, and invoking the blessing of God on each other, they parted company. Richard and Victoria got into the car again and the men trudged away into the desert. “Where are they going?” asked Victoria. “They travel all over the country. I met them first in Transjordan coming up the road from the Dead Sea to Amman. Actually they’re bound now for Kerbela, going of course by unfrequented routes so as to give shows in remote villages.” “Perhaps someone will give them a lift?

When you have an honest heart, you do not get engaged nor get involved with any smear campaigns nor black propaganda! When you have an honest heart, you do not malign nor take advantage of generous people who helped and trusted you! When you have an honest heart, you do not shit on people whom you used and abused for three years! Do not fall into a political naïvety and become a victim or a doormat nor have your generosity and honest heart be used and abused by unscrupulous political movers, abusive, aggressive political harridans who scam gullible generous hearts by asking donations, funds, services, foods, urgent favours, and after using you and abusing your generosity, trust, and kindness; whereby these unscrupulous and deceptive political movers, abusive, aggressive political harridans intentionally and maliciously create forged screenshots of evidence convincing their audience or political groups that you are a mentally ill person, a brain-damaged person as they even brand you as "Sisang Baliw," or crazy Sisa, a threat, a risk, a danger, they maliciously and destructively red-tag your friends as communists, and they resort to calumny, libel and slander against you, to shame you, defame you, discredit you, blame you, hurt you, make you suffer for having known the truth of their deceptive global Operandi, and for something you didn’t do through their mob lynching, calumny, polemics mongering, forgery, and cyberbullying efforts. Their character assassination through libel and slander aims to ruin your integrity, persona, trustworthiness, and credibility with their destructive fabricated calumny, lies, identity theft, forged screenshots of polemics mongering, and framing up. Amidst all their forgery, fraud, libel and slander they committed: you have a right to defy and stop their habitual abuse without breaking the law and fight for your rights against any forms of aggression, public lynching, bullies, threats, blackmail, and their repetitive maltreatment or abuse, identity theft, forgery, deceptions fraud, scams, cyber libel, libel, and slander. When you defend human rights, you fight against corruption and injustice, help end impunity: be sure that you are not part of any misinformation, disinformation, smear campaigns and black propaganda. Do not serve, finance, or cater directly or indirectly for those dirty politicians. Those who are engaged in abusively dishonest ways do not serve to justify their end. Deceiving and scamming other people shall always be your lifetime self-inflicted karmic loss. Be a law-abiding citizen. Be respectful. Be honest. Be factual. Be truthful. You can be an effective human rights defender when you have clean and pure intentions, lawful and morally upright, and have an honest heart." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Calunniatopia Book 1, Stronzata Trilogy Genre: inspirational, political, literary novel © 2021 Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn

Breanne, I'm asking you nicely to please reconsider. Mom and Dad are coming to the game. They have a suite reserved and Mom is expecting you." Jayson almost sounded as if he were begging. I wasn't buying it. "Take Belinda or one of those other women," I huffed. "I don't do much in the leather department. I'm a vegetarian, remember?" "Mom loves that about you." "I'm sure she does. Her son, however, finds me grossly inadequate and walks away whenever he gets a chance. As much as I like your mother, I don't feel good about stringing her along. I'm just a front for you—admit it." "Bree, I'll invite Hank to come, too. I promise one of us will be with you." "Sure. That sounds so comfortable," I said. "Your mother will wonder what the hell is going on when Hank pays more attention than you do. Frankly, I don't want anything from either of you." Jayson was still trying to convince me to go to the basketball game the following evening, and he'd shown up at my front door to do it. I'd been grumpy ever since I'd come back after saving Teeg San Gerxon's ass. Sure, it would put the Campiaan Alliance in chaos, but for a blink, or maybe half a blink—I'd considered saving Stellan and his brothers and leaving Teeg behind to be flayed and swallowed by a sandstorm that had destroyed most of Thelik. "What can I possible do to convince you to come? Donate to Mercy Crossings or some other charity? What?" He'd arrived at my front door as if he'd been invited. I made him stand at the door instead of inviting him in. "Give Trina a raise. That car she's driving really needs to be retired." "What?" Jayson almost shouted. "Okay, the price just went up. Buy her a new car." Did I realize he'd take the bait? No. "All right. I agree, that piece of crap needs to go to the salvage yard. I'll buy her a new car." "A good one. She doesn't want a TinyCar, I know that much." "You think I'd let anybody out of the driveway in one of those things? I saw yours and almost gagged." "But since I'm nobody important to you, I can drive whatever the hell I want," I pointed out. "Besides, I got my car from a vending machine. Put in a dollar and it dropped out. It was too bad, too—I wanted a soda." The corners of Jayson's mouth threatened to turn up. Schooling his face, he said, "I never pegged you for an extortionist," instead. "I never pegged you for an asshole, either, but disappointment abounds. Sell that Mercedes you have and buy four decent cars with the proceeds. See? Everybody's happy." "That's a Mercedes McLaren," Jayson howled. "Then buy eight decent cars." "If you weren't so smart and my mother didn't like you so much," Jayson threatened. "You'd what? Have one of those bigger, taller, better-endowed women beat me up? Jayson Rome, feel free to bring anybody you want against me. They won't last ten seconds." "You'll come to the game? I still plan to invite Hank. I usually sit courtside, but since Dad's coming and bringing Mom," Jayson didn't finish. "Just don't make an ass out of yourself this time." I shut the door in his face before he could sputter a reply.

People keep asking me what they can do to help Japan. And while I am all about donations, spreading the word, organizing charity events and the like, I realize not everyone has money to give—and no one seems to have the power to stop the media from sensationalizing the stories while ignoring the victims. To support Japan, what I would say is this: Simply do what you do every day, but do it better. Go to school or to work but with passion and energy. Engage your neighbors or community but with more sympathy and compassion than you ever have. Let these historic moments move you, inspire you and invigorate you for as long as the feeling lasts because, believe me, that initial adrenaline and humanitarian solidarity will wear off. Ride it as long as you can. Let it make you be a better person, and let it wake you up from the complacency in your life.

I asked a Chinese official, ‘Did the family die for nothing?’ He said I should contact the Red Cross to arrange donations.

graciously held them for her and even convinced her to change into the newer clothes so she could donate her travelling clothes. She disappeared into another room, taking Wisteria with her. “How do I look?” Amanda asked as they re-emerged. She

The Blind Man A woman was just about to step into the bath when there was a ring at her door.  “Who is it?” the woman asked. “Blind man,” a voice said. The woman felt in a charitable mood so she grabbed her purse without bothering to put on any clothes and went to the door to give the blind man a donation. She opened the door and the man gasped a little and said, “I’m here to deliver your blinds lady.  Where do you want me to put them?

remember when we saw Gideon’s Fleece in the Bedouin camp?” she asked. “Yes. Someone had used it to wrap the golden ephod that Gideon owned.” Sam frowned. “That ephod was worth millions. Why did he own such an expensive plaque?” “It was a reward from the men of Israel. They wanted to honor him. So he asked for them to donate the gold taken as war spoils. The ephod was made from the golden earrings, ornaments, and pendants that the soldiers had collected in battle, after they won the war against Midian.” Achava smiled. “It reminded the people that God won the war for them.” “Tell me about Midian. Where are those people now?” asked Sam. “They intermarried with Arabs.” “Maybe they are Bedouins now.” “Who knows. If so, it is good that they have Gideon’s fleece and ephod. Maybe they are the rightful owner.” “Maybe.

pity narrative comes in the form of a music video made in South Africa in 2012 that has over 2 million hits on YouTube. It is a song for a campaign called Radi-Aid and it turns out to be a satire on Live Aid, Band Aid and all the other celebrity-driven “aid-for-starving Africa” campaigns. It features a dozen African musicians asking their fellow Africans to donate money to buy radiators—heaters—to help freezing Norwegians survive the gruesome Nordic winter. The narrator, a concerned pop star, peers through the misted-up windows of a snowbound home where a blond Norwegian family is huddled around a crackling log fire. “Africa, we need to ship our radiators over there, spread some light, spread some warmth, and spread some smiles,” he intones. The joke is clear—stop thinking of Africa as a place of helpless people in need of your pity; it would be ridiculous if we were to do the same to you.

She remembers in 1940 when the city’s population had been called upon to donate all the metal objects they could spare. Married women were asked for their wedding rings. Florence’s piazzas were thus heaped with enormous piles of tarnished rusting metal objects. There was something almost touching about the slapdash poverty of the contribution. Candelabras, door handles, pipes, bits of engines, tools. It later occurred to her that these bits of waste metal would in all probability be melted down and fashioned into weapons, ammunition maybe. That the candelabra she was looking at might end up lodged in someone’s chest in the form of a bullet, someone who would never know that a household ornament of mysterious provenance would cause his death.

Unfortunately, this insurance did not include the special blood donations, which Maggie needed due to her illness. There was a need to turn to other factors for blood donations, and so Isaac initiated contact with Ezer Mitzion Association, a volunteer organization that worked to help patients and their families. The organization offered help and expressed their willingness to recruit people for blood donations. Isaac settled for modest help. He asked them to send him warm meals during his stay with Maggie at the hospital. For the blood donations he enlisted his colleagues from Israel Electric Corporation. Employees traveled in small groups of up to five people, from Tiberias to Hadassah Hospital, and donated the blood needed. More volunteers were not lacking, among them were neighbors. Everyone chipped in and enlisted as one for the task. They had all the blood units needed, to be delivered to the hospital.

Asking a Republican candidate about Iran is almost as good as giving him a large campaign donation: It gives him a chance to show “toughness” and “seriousness” (meaning reckless belligerence) on foreign policy issues; appeal to the Israel lobby for votes and money (it is a quadrennial spectacle to watch the candidates outbid each other to the point of getting to the right even of Israel’s Likud government);

The Delhi Sultans and the Mughals may have arrived from abroad, and their progenitors might initially have harked back to distant cities in the Ferghana Valley as their idea of ‘home’, but they settled in India and retained no extraterritorial allegiance. They married women from India and diluted their foreign blood to the point that in a few generations no trace remained of their foreign ethnicity. Akbar’s son Jehangir was half-Rajput; Jehangir’s son Shah Jehan also came from an Indian bride; Aurangzeb was only one-eighth non-Indian. Of course, the Mughal emperors were all deeply aware of their connections to Ferghana; they would ask emissaries from there about the conditions of their ancestors’ Chingisid tombs and donate money for their upkeep. The past was part of the Mughal identity, but their conceptions of themselves in the present and for the future became more rooted and embedded in India. The British, in contrast, maintained racial exclusivity, practised discrimination against Indians and sneered at miscegenation. Yes, the Mughal emperors taxed the citizens of India, they claimed tributes from subordinate princes, they plundered the treasuries of those they defeated in battle—all like the British—but they spent or saved what they had earned in India, instead of ‘repatriating’ it to Samarkand or Bukhara as the British did by sending their Indian revenues to London. They ploughed the resources of India into the development of India, establishing and patronizing its industries and handicrafts; they brought painters, sculptors and architects from foreign lands, but they absorbed them at their courts and encouraged them to adorn the artistic and cultural heritage of their new land. The British did little, very little, of such things. They basked in the Indian sun and yearned for their cold and fog-ridden homeland; they sent the money they had taken off the perspiring brow of the Indian worker to England; and whatever little they did for India, they ensured India paid for it in excess. And at the end of it all, they went home to enjoy their retirements in damp little cottages with Indian names, their alien rest cushioned by generous pensions provided by Indian taxpayers.

What happens when you pray? God is all powerful in every realm. He can do things in a variety of ways, but one way in which He works is to "move" in the realm of men's minds. God can place an idea in a person's mind. He can cause someone to feel a strong "urge" or "conviction" to do something. So when we pray for a certain amount of money, God can cause one person to reach for a cheque-book and send that amount, or He can cause a dozen people to send odd fractions of that amount, causing the total to be exact. You may not believe that He does this, but I am simply saying that when I talk about praying for money, this is what I mean. Yes, usually the result is that other human beings give "donations," but they have not been asked to, and they have not received an envelope to fill, and they have not had human pressure put on them to give. They give because they feel God has led them to give, and often their having been led gives them an exciting feeling of having been in communication with God, in the same way as it does when the "answer" comes to prayer, and you know God has heard and acted in space, and time, and history. You know then that your communication has not been an airy-fairy sort of psychological communication into the atmosphere, but that you have contacted a Person, who has replied.

Happy birthday, dear Maria,” sang Lizzie, along with everyone else. “Happy birthday to you!” Lizzie gave Maria a special smile as she sang. There were a lot of kids at the party — almost everybody in their class was there — but everyone knew that Lizzie Peterson and Maria Santiago were best friends. They sat next to each other in class, played on the same kickball team at recess, and always ate lunch together. They had the same favorite color (purple) and the same lucky number (eight). They both loved fudge ripple ice cream, cool socks, snowstorms, and reading. Most of all, Lizzie and Maria loved animals. That was why Maria had decided to have her birthday party at Caring Paws, the animal shelter where she and Lizzie both volunteered. It was Lizzie’s idea: she had gotten all excited when she had read about a boy who had his party at a shelter. “Instead of presents,” she’d told Maria, “everybody brought donations for the animals.” Maria wasn’t so sure at first. “Why don’t you do it for your birthday?” she’d asked Lizzie. “I will, but mine’s not for months and yours is coming right up. I know your real birthday isn’t until Monday, but we can have the party on Saturday. Come on, it’ll be fun! We can play animal-themed games, and decorate the meeting room with colorful paw prints, and have a dog bone–shaped cake, and everything.” Lizzie was full of ideas, and she could be very convincing. “It’s a great Caring Club activity, too. Think of all the donations you’ll get for the shelter. Ms. Dobbins will be very happy.” Ms. Dobbins was the shelter’s director. When Lizzie had started the Caring Club, Maria had been one of the first to join. Caring Club was for kids who loved animals and wanted to help them. Maria’s favorite animals were horses. She loved to ride, and she spent a lot of time at the stable. Lizzie had gone with her a few times, and had even taken riding lessons for a while, but she had never learned to love horses as much as she loved dogs. Lizzie really, really loved dogs. In fact, Lizzie was dog-crazy.

I would really ask everyone, please ask yourself first, what is something that you really care about? What is something that is really resonating for you as an issue, as a concern in this moment. And then please look locally at who is addressing this issue? Where can you support? And ask yourself, “how can I support?”– whether it’s time, whether it is a donation, whether it is spreading awareness, whatever it is.

Congressional and press questions about Dr. Fauci’s personal financial stakes in the IL-2 drug forced Dr. Fauci to pledge to donate his royalties from the scheme to charity. HHS thereafter changed its royalty policies—a little—limiting royalty payments to contract employees to $150,000 per year, per employee, per patent. In the thirty years since, no member of the media has ever asked Dr. Fauci how much money he made on IL-2, or to which charity, if any, he directed his donations.

I switched to email and checked to see if there was anything from Farmer. Still nothing. I fired off an email asking for an update and pulled up Facebook to check Ryan’s feed. Above the wedding day pictures there was a new post about the 10K run he was doing with Abbie, and a link to their JustGiving page. I clicked on it. Their fundraising total was up to £4,390, not far off their target, and near the top of the donation listing I could see why – a £1,000 donation from George Fitzgerald a few weeks ago with the message ‘I always said you were amazing, Abbie. Wishing you all the luck in the world. G xxx’. Wow. I knew George was loaded but hadn’t anticipated he would go quite this far. His donation was the biggest single gift by some way, three times more than I had pledged.

Roy Vagelos, Merck’s CEO at the time, asked the WHO to fund Mectizan, but the answer was no. He pleaded with the US Agency for International Development and the US Department of State. Still no. That’s why Roy urgently needed money. Roy then went to one final, and radical, source of funding – Merck itself. On 21 October 1987, Roy announced that Merck would give Mectizan away for free, ‘as much as needed, for as long as needed’, to anyone anywhere in the world who needed it. Merck established the Mectizan Donation Program (MDP), which brought together the WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF, dozens of Ministries of Health and over 30 non-governmental organisations to oversee and fund the distribution of Mectizan.

Take a look at the category piles and consider the quantities as you begin to downsize. For each item, ask whether it’s been used/worn in the past year. Knowing that we wear only about 20 percent of our clothes 80 percent of the time will aid the letting go process. Also note that over-stuffed drawers are the likely culprit when clean laundry doesn’t get put away. It simply takes too much effort to jam everything in, so make a goal to only fill drawers about two-thirds full. If you find anything that would be better off in another area of the home, place it into the relocation box for redistribution at the end of the project. Also keep on hand the fix-it box (for items that need repairing) and the donation box. 4. DECLARE A HOME Now that you can see what you actually have, start measuring. How much of the clothing can realistically fit in the closet? If it only has one rod across the top, you may want to consider redesigning the closet for maximum space efficiency. Or, simple, inexpensive modifications can be made by adding a double hang closet rod to double the hanging space. You may also be able to adjust shelves and rods to better accommodate space needs. Now, decide where each category of clothing will live. Remember, the closet works in tandem with any dressers, armoires, and underbed storage in the bedroom. Assign each item a home. Designate a shelf, section of rod, drawer, or container for each category

I love the church. I like the waxed candles that remind me people think of people. I love the bouquet of flowers on the altar that a group of grandmas grow in their gardens and pridefully donate every week. I admire the wooden statues of craftsmanship, of a mother staring at you with the kind of pure, loving look I forgot to ask from mine. I like the skinny man nailed to the cross reminding me that people are capable of sacrificial love. I like to stare at the art on the stained-glass windows, of angels, of lambs, and of fruit. I love running my hands over mosaics and tracing the lips of saints. I love the hymns and joy of the choir, who sing regardless if you’re too scared. I love watching the collective sway of bodies subconsciously comforted by their environment after finally saying “Peace be with you.” And most of all, I love being surrounded by people trying. They wear Christ around their neck and squeeze a rosary for dear life, admitting their weaknesses and sins. Tell me, where do you find that? There is an honesty in the church, spilling from kneeling persons, that gives me the hope humans can take care of each other and our planet can be a good one. Where else can I be exposed to the practice of morality on such an emotional level? I love everything about the church—the shiny pews, the smoky incense, the Bible and its purpose – because when all is considered, it makes sense. It is a template of discipline and thoughtfulness. Why call religious people idiots when they’re the few paying attention to their own lives? And there are other ways to be moral of course, but not many ways to practice. I’ve learned that to believe in God doesn’t subtract any life from you. It is additional. It is the world and God. If someone wears a jacket over their shirt, they aren’t naked. They’re double-layered.

Honourable Breeze - a behavioural haiku from the chapter, “Poetic Justice” Honourable Heart? You were spreading smear campaigns. Is that honesty? Honourable mind? You committed forgery. Your cyber libel. Honourable soul? You intentionally hurt, Con, scam, and slander. Honourable mouth? Your habitual offenses Fraud, lies, bullying. Dishonourable. Politicians’ instrument: Machiavellian. Justify your end? with your Machiavellian ways? Note: crime does not pay! Crowned thorny cactus, you pretend to be “yellow,” Ask funding from them. Thorny toxic lies, You discredit whom you scammed. Your: libel, slander. Manipulator, Fraud, bully, provocateur, Machiavellian! Politicians served: You’re a very good person. Thorny irony. People you slandered, Scammed, libeled, deceived, abused. Forgery you did. Your former victim, From twelve or ten years ago: said, “you’re a devil.” “Move away from her,” Your past victims had warned me. I thanked their warning. Warning was too late. Thorny, toxic harridan: you used and abused! Honourable Breeze? For people who benefit from your deceptions. Honourable Breeze? For dirty politicians, Donations and votes. Honourable Breeze? for needy politicians: delivered service. Delivered service? At the expense of others, you manipulate. Manipulations, your catch-me-if-you-can games, Your confidence games! Politicians’ smears, means won’t justify your end, Machiavellian bitch! ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Life Unfolds © 2021 Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn

Some people believe money is "the root of all evil" because that is what they were taught, yet the very same people or organizations who taught them that ask for donations.

In Give More Tomorrow, donors were also asked to increase their monthly donation, but it wouldn’t kick in until two months later. Donors who received the Give More Tomorrow request increased their donations 32 percent more than the donors who were asked to Give More Today. When it comes to our own self-control, we need to be careful about what we expect from our future selves. But when it comes to getting other people to commit their money, time, or effort, you can take advantage of the future-self bias by asking them to commit far in advance.

The newlyweds settled into the Kehoe farmstead, where Andrew continued to work his father’s land, while Nellie served as a surrogate mother to her ten-year-old sister-in-law, Irene. Nellie became a regular at the Tecumseh Catholic church, where Andrew’s family had been congregants. Andrew himself stopped attending after a reputed incident that, in retrospect, seemed like a harbinger of the madness to come. Not long after their marriage, a new church building was erected. To defray the expenses, donations were solicited from the congregants. Asked to contribute $400, Kehoe flatly refused to pay. When the parish priest showed up at his farm to request the money, Kehoe ordered him off his property and, according to some accounts, threatened him with physical force if he didn’t leave at once.6 From that day on, Nellie attended Sunday services alone. The reason for Kehoe’s churlish treatment of the priest is unclear, though it seems an early sign of his future psychopathology, his growing suspicion that his neighbors were out to take advantage of him. Eventually, this belief would blossom into full-blown paranoia.

The audience for Channel 28, the PBS station in Los Angeles, was demographically perfect for Trader Joe’s. In those days, however, PBS did not accept overt commercials. Alice had been quite active as a volunteer at the station. Through her contacts, we made arrangements to sponsor reruns of shows that tied to Trader Joe’s, such as the Julia Child shows, The Galloping Gourmet, and Barbara Wodehouse’s series on training dogs, which proved very effective! These reruns were not expensive compared with sponsoring first-runs and they had very good audiences. All we got was a “billboard” announcing that Trader Joe’s was sponsoring the show, but this was a cost-effective way of building our presence in the community. Another way we promoted ourselves on public TV was to “man the phones” during pledge drives. Our employees, led by Robin Guentert who was running advertising at that time (Robin became one of the most important members of store supervision after 1982, then President of Trader Joe’s in 2002), would show up en masse at the station. They loved being on TV, and we got the publicity. Promoting through Nonprofits Most retailers, when they’re approached by charities for donations, do their best to stiff-arm the would-be donees, or ask that a grueling series of requirements need to be met. In general they hate giving except to big, organized charities like United Way, because that way they escape being solicited by all sorts of uncomfortable pressure groups. At the very beginning of Trader Joe’s, however, we adopted a policy of using non-profit giving as an advertising and promotional tool. We established these policies: Never give cash to anyone. Never buy space in a program. That is money thrown away. Give freely, give generously, but only to nonprofits that are focused on the overeducated and underpaid. Any museum opening, any art gallery opening, any hospital auxiliary benefit, any college alumni gathering, the American Association of University Women, the Assistance League, any chamber orchestra benefit—their requests got a very warm welcome. But nothing for Little League, Pop Warner, et al.; that was not what Trader Joe’s was about.

For all of Melanie’s irreverence, though, there was one thing she couldn’t abide: visitors who asked, as they often did, “Are you a real Indian?” “I tell them, ‘No. I’m completely plastic.’ If I say yes, then they always ask if I’m a ‘full-blood.’ I feel like telling them, ‘No, I donated a pint last week so I’m a little short right now.” Melanie’s grandmother was a full-blood, but told neighbors her family was Cuban, which carried less of a stigma than being Indian. “Now people want you to be real, not a mix like everyone else in America. No one ever goes to the fort here and asks one of the colonial interpreters, “Hey, are you a full-blooded Englishman?” She poked at the fire. “When I have to fill out a form and they ask for my race, I put ‘human.

Supermarkets and fast-food restaurants donated all the food they could, and no one asked who was paying the bill.

passion of mine is volunteering in my community. It can be serving the homeless children, reading to shut-ins, or escorting the elderly to medical appointments or going for walks outdoors. I’ve made a great circle of like-minded friends who also enjoy supporting others in need. Volunteering not only helps those we serve but gives those of us in the support roles a great sense of gratitude. I also established years ago with my friends a ‘no gift-giving’ policy for birthdays and Christmas. Instead, I asked those who insisted in gifting me to donate several hours of their time in community service. It’s amazing the number of folks who initially hesitated and now have adopted the same policy. I’ve made a great circle of friends with this practice. Paying it forward. .

She was arriving with an agenda—drop the suit against Robert, first, and agree to dissolve the association for the purpose of donating the lands to a trust—but coached herself that it would be wise to consider his concerns before she asked for anything. Archie wore a gilded cape of male vanity and would need it admired.

Once upon a time, somewhere miles and miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there lived a young octopus named Nina. Nina spent most of her time alone making strange creations out of rocks and shells. And she was very happy. But then on Monday the shark showed up. “What’s your name?” said the shark. “Nina,” she replied. “Do you want to be my friend?” he asked. “OK. What do I have to do?” said Nina. “Not much,” said the shark, “just let me eat one of your arms.” Nina had never had a friend before, so she wondered if this was what you had to do to get one. She looked down at her eight arms and decided it wouldn’t be so bad to give up one. So she donated an arm to her wonderful new friend. Every day that week, Nina and the shark would play together. They explored caves, built castles of sand, and swam really, really fast. And every night the shark would be hungry, and Nina would give him another one of her arms to eat. On Sunday, after playing all day, the shark told Nina that he was very hungry. “I don’t understand,” she said, "I’ve already given you six of my arms, and now you want one more?” The shark looked at her with a friendly smile and said, “I don’t want one. This time I want them all.” “But why?” Nina asked. And the shark replied, “Because that’s what friends are for.” When the shark finished his meal, he felt very sad and lonely. He missed having someone to explore caves, build castles, and swim really, really fast with. He missed Nina very much. So he swam away to find another friend.

When they destructively branded me as a threat, risk, a brain-damaged person, a mentally-ill person, and a danger: I became the target of their mob lynching and cyber bullying through calumny, defamation, threats, digital aggression, libel and slander. Afterwards, the financial scammer, con, coward, political, financial, habitually abusive harridan in the Land of Windmills, Dykes and Bikes, and her Machiavellian manipulators asked again for help, food, homemade meals, and groceries delivered to her residence, restaurant bills paid, car services, urgent favours and donations. Under the halo of magnetising advocacy, they played their Machiavellian games of manipulations, their video smear campaigns, and global financial, well calculated opportunism in the legal limits but not within the moral limits.” ~ Angelica Hopes, Calunniatopia Book 1 Stronzata Trilogy

- A specific working strategy (How we will reach them) - Finance (How much it will cost to reach them) and - Facilities (Where we will reach them) STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION It answers the questions: where do we begin, when, and with whom? This step involves determining specific action steps, deciding our priorities, setting deadlines and allocating tasks. MINISTRY CONTINGENCIES This process answers the question: How will we handle pleasant and not so pleasant surprises that could affect the strategy? Churches need to prepare for contingencies both harmful and helpful. Potentially harmful contingencies are: heart attack during the service, a mentally deranged person worshiping with us, an accusation of 419 or sexual molestation against a minister, an HIV/AID baby in the children church, an epileptic patient in the teens church. Pleasant surprises like: large financial donations, visit of a celebrity, General overseer, a revival etc. Even the smallest contingency, helpful or harmful, if handled poorly, could ultimately hurt the growth of a church MINISTRY EVALUATION It asks the question, How are we doing? Churches that do not evaluate what they are doing and the people doing it, will struggle to improve. What gets evaluated gets done, and usually gets done well.

And then I had to laugh, because it occurred to me that it was easier for me to donate an entire organ than it was to ask a woman to pose as my girlfriend and come with me to a few family gatherings.

When I asked Mom that night how she felt, she said, “A little guilty to be taking that much blood—but for fifty years I’ve donated blood to the Red Cross every time there was a blood drive, so I guess it’s okay if I take a little bit of it back.

I think all the good parts of us are connected on some level. The part that shares the last double chocolate chip cookie or donates to charity or gives a dollar to a street musician or becomes a candy striper or cries at Apple commercials or says I love you or I forgive you. I think that’s God. God is the connection of the very best parts of us.” “And you think that connection has a consciousness?” she asks. “Yeah, and we call it God.

My Book event was kindly arranged by Brendon books of Bath Place, Taunton on 14th March 2024 I concluded my talk with a verse :- The tropical island of Sri-Lanka was surrounded by a flood Which swept a train right off its rails and buried it in mud We had always loved the place and made there many friends So I went on a kind of pilgrimage to help them make amends I took with me my Brother's french Wife and Arthur's Brother Fred I wanted to help not just myself but friends in need instead Asked Arthur C. who I should help, aware there'd be corruption There are always unscrupulous people in disasters and disruption He put us on to Valerie, Wife of Hector Arthur's SCUBA diver We thus found someone trustworthy instead of some conniver She introduced us to Stefan Birckmann a German fellow there Who was working hard to help children and others in despair In Hospitals and Orphanages, German Stefan staged events Of traditional Puppets he'd revived in villages of tents The puppets were a psychological boost were so short of resource So I donated a thousand dollars to keep them on their course The Unicef stepped-in to keep them entertaining I found helping so rewarding and then came home to find it raining So spare a thought for others when they're in their hour of need Stop thinking of only yourself and banish selfishness and greed.

Their desire for your outreach is pent up. It’s as simple as asking them how they feel, why they donated, and how they want to be involved with your mission. Once you know the answers, it’s about showing them that you listened by providing them with opportunities for engagement that suits their needs. Doing it this way will ingratiate you to them. They’ll be more likely to meet you. They’ll be more likely to be open with you. They’ll be more likely to work with you to realize their philanthropic aspirations.

but there is no one way to participate in this re-storying. In her inspired and challenging memoir, Bless the Birds, nature writer Susan Tweit chronicled her husband Richard’s decline and death due to a brain tumor. Ever an educator in life, it was Richard’s wish that his body become a teaching cadaver for medical students. After his time teaching post-death, his ashes were returned to Susan. When I asked her about it, Susan said, “I’d always imagined our bodies ‘going to ground’ together and gently moldering back into earth, but if it gave Richard peace to donate his body, that was his decision.” As Rumi sang, “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The next day, a crowd in excess of 5000 (including many women) heard a local merchant speak of the simplicity of their home-town hero. The shawl Gandhi was wearing perhaps cost two rupees, he said, but due to wear and tear it was now worth less than two annas. However, since it had been worn by Mohandas Gandhi, he would pay 100 rupees for it. Gandhi handed over the shawl and asked the merchant to donate the money to charity.

A woman answered. She asked if we wanted to hear a story. My skin prickled. She was already talking when she picked up. It was like walking into a middle of a conversation. Then Becca said hello and she stoped. That's when she asked us, "Do you want to hear a story?" "Tell me you said yes." I gave him, a look, "Of course we did. Don't ask me what it was about though. I can't remember." It was true. Her story hit our brains like rain on dry dirt - cool and sweet, then gone. I wanted to write stories like that, tales that filled people up like a meal or a song they loved. The good kind of lie. The woman on the phone had inspired an entry in our goddess series. Me lying on a white-sheeted bed, surrounded by old phones we picked up at donation shops and thrift stores. My body would around with their cords, a book of fairy tales open in my arms. The goddess of open endings. James made a face, "Palmetto is a strange town, more than you think for a place that has two Chili's.

Tim Graham Tim Graham has specialized in photographing the Royal Family for more than thirty years and is foremost in his chosen field. Recognition of his work over the years has led to invitations for private sessions with almost all the members of the British Royal Family, including, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales, and her children. Diana had none of the remoteness of some members of royal families. Along with several of my press colleagues, I felt I came to know her quite well. She was a superstar, she was royal, but she was also very approachable. I have had various sessions with members of the Royal Family over the years, but those with her were more informal. I remember photographing Prince William at Kensington Palace when he was a baby. I was lying on the floor of the drawing room in front of the infant prince, trying to get his attention. Not surprisingly, he didn’t show much interest, so, without prompting, Diana lay down on the floor close to me and, using one of those little bottles of bubbles, starting blowing bubbles at him. Perfect. As he gazed in fascination at his mother, I was able to get the picture I wanted. I can’t think of many members of the Royal Family who would abandon protocol and lie on the carpet with you in a photo session! Funnily enough, it wasn’t the only time it happened. She did the same again years when she was about to send her dresses to auction for charity and we were sifting through prints of my photographs that she had asked to use in the catalog. She suggested that we sit on the floor and spread the photographs all around us on the carpet, so, of course, we did. I donated the use of my pictures of her in the various dresses to the charity, and as a thank-you, Diana invited me to be the exclusive photographer at both parties held for the dresses auction--one in London and the other in the United States. The party in New York was held on preview night, and many of the movers and shakers of New York were there, including her good friend Henry Kissinger. It was a big room, but everyone in it gravitated to the end where the Princess was meeting people. She literally couldn’t move and was totally hemmed in. I was pushed so close to her I could hardly take a picture. Seeing the crush, her bodyguard spotted an exit route through the kitchen and managed to get the Princess and me out of the enthusiastic “scrum.” As the kitchen door closed behind the throng, she leaned against the wall, kicked off her stiletto-heeled shoes, and gasped, “Gordon Bennett, that’s a crush!” I would have loved to have taken a picture of her then, but I knew she wouldn’t expect that to be part of the deal. You should have seen the kitchen staff--they were thrilled to have an impromptu sight of her but amazed that someone of her status could be so normal. She took a short breather, said hi to those who had, of course, stopped work to stare at her, and then glided back into the room through another door to take up where she had left off. That’s style!

I’m shooting blanks, man. We all know that. I couldn’t get her pregnant if I wanted to.” “You don’t know that,” Paul says. “I do, too. I know in the very marrow of my bones that I will never have a child of my own.” I hold up a finger. “But,” I say, “Sky just happens to have three already, and they all need a dad, so I’m a pretty happy guy.” “Are you really?” Paul asks. His brow furrows. He grabs my knee and squeezes it. “You going to be satisfied with that?” I take another sip of my beer. “I’ll have to be, won’t I?” “You want a kid, man, we’ll all donate sperm for you. We could mix them all together so we have no idea who the father is.” Sam laughs. “There’s no fucking way I’d let one of you get Sky pregnant. No.” Absolutely not. “You ever need my sperm, you let me know,” Sam says. “Hell, I don’t have a girlfriend. I’d be happy to participate. Give me a magazine and a little plastic cup.” He makes a crude gesture with his hand. What’s bad is that he’s half serious. Any of them would do it for me, I’m pretty sure. “I’ll be happy with the kids we have. I already love Seth and Joey and Mellie.

The paper subsequently written by Amos with Redelmeier* showed that, in treating individual patients, the doctors behaved differently than they did when they designed ideal treatments for groups of patients with the same symptoms. They were likely to order additional tests to avoid raising troubling issues, and less likely to ask if patients wished to donate their organs if they died. In treating individual patients, doctors often did things they would disapprove of if they were creating a public policy to treat groups of patients with the exact same illness. Doctors all agreed that, if required by law, they should report the names of patients diagnosed with a seizure disorder, diabetes, or some other condition that might lead to loss of consciousness while driving a car. In practice, they didn’t do this—which could hardly be in the interest even of the individual patient in question. “This result is not just another manifestation of the conflict between the interests of the patient and the general interests of society,” Tversky and Redelmeier wrote, in a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. “The discrepancy between the aggregate and the individual perspectives also exists in the mind of the physician. The discrepancy seems to call for a resolution; it is odd to endorse a treatment in every case and reject it in general, or vice versa.” The point was not that the doctor was incorrectly or inadequately treating individual patients. The point was that he could not treat his patient one way, and groups of patients suffering from precisely the same problem in another way, and be doing his best in both cases. Both could not be right. And the point was obviously troubling—

As part of a French study, researchers wanted to know if they could influence how much money people handed to a total stranger asking for bus fare by using just a few specially encoded words. They discovered a technique so simple and effective it doubled the amount people gave. The turn of phrase has not only proven to increase how much bus fare people give, but has also been effective in boosting charitable donations and participation in voluntary surveys. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of 42 studies involving over 22,000 participants concluded that these few words, placed at the end of a request, are a highly-effective way to gain compliance, doubling the likelihood of people saying “yes.”[xcii] The magic words the researchers discovered? The phrase, “but you are free to accept or refuse.

Frankly, we hesitate to pile on the data, since even when numbers are persuasive, they are not galvanizing. A growing collection of psychological studies show that statistics have a dulling effect, while it is individual stories that move people to act. In one experiment, research subjects were divided into several group, and each person was asked to donate $5 to alleviate hunger abroad. One group was told the money would go to Rokia, a seven-year-old girl in Mali. Another group was told that the money would go to address malnutrition among 21 million Africans. The third group was told that the donations would go to Roka, as in the first group, but this time her own hunger was presented as part of a background tapestry of global hunger, with some statistics thrown in. People were much more willing to donate to Rokia than to 21 million hungry people, and even a mention of the larger problem made people less inclined to help her. In another experiment, people were asked to donate to a $300,000 fund to fight cancer. One group was told that the money would be used to save the life of one child, while another group was told it would save the lives of eight children. People contributed almost twice as much to save one child as to save eight. Social psychologists argue that all this reflects the way our consciences and ethical systems are based on individual stories and are distinct from the parts of our brain concerned with logical and rationality. Indeed, when subjects in experiments are first asked to solve math problems, thus putting in play the parts of the brain that govern logic, afterward they are less generous to the needy.

But there’s a difference between donating to charity (something many companies do, almost by rote), and fully committing to a cause. “We started asking ourselves, What more can we do?” Shaich says. “I felt like, I want to put our bodies on the line.” What gradually became clear was that Panera could provide not just bread giveaways, but a more complete dining experience for those going hungry. That extra level of involvement—“putting bodies on the line,” to use Shaich’s words—made the effort bigger and more distinctive than a standard corporate charity program.

he asked them. “Too long. Don’t be such a stranger. Stop by if you’re in our neighborhood. We would love to sit and chat. We can talk about the good old days and we got lots of pictures and stories from Tuscany.” “Will do. Enjoy the evening.” Jack turned and was face to face with their daughter, Patti. “Hi, Jack,” she whispered. “Great to see you again,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “It was so good to talk with you the other day. It meant a lot to see you.” He watched her as she started to walk away and turned to him and say, “I wanted to let you know that after we talked I gave my husband a phone call. Eric and I decided to get back together. We’ve shared a lot of history, and we’re at least going to give it one last try to see if we can make it work. Thanks for everything, Jack. Bye.” She kissed him on the cheek. Jack saw Hope walking across the floor. “She’s pretty. Who was that?” glancing at Patti walk away. “An old and dear friend. Both Charley and I had a crush on her when we were younger. I’ll introduce you to her and her mom and dad later. You’ll like her.” More people filed inside to an already full hall. Soon it was standing room only. Jack turned to Hope and whispered, “I can’t believe this. We’ve had over twenty businesses make donations to the veterans’ fund to help support job training and for overseas servicemen’s wives and families. We also got money from the Yankee Bookshop, the Woodstock Inn, the Billings Farm Museum, the bank, and Bentleys Restaurant. They all donated money.” “That’s great,” she said excitedly. “And we’ve received over thirty new membership requests for the Veterans Post and that’s just yesterday. This is better than I ever expected. And four companies have committed to hiring more vets locally, including King Arthur Flour Company. They’re planning to build a new distribution center just west of town. I can’t believe all of this is happening.” “You should,” Hope said. “I remember you sat down right over there at that table and laid out what you wanted to see happen and you kept working on it until it did. I’m so proud of you.” He hugged her close and kissed her. He never wanted to let her go. The distinct fragrance of fresh balsam, pine, and holly filled

since most of us just feel guilty or pressured when the cashier asks us to donate, we don’t even get a little hit of good feeling. We certainly don’t get a big hit of feeling good; the companies take all the credit for the giving they do with your nickels. The result is a form of pseudo generosity that is unfulfilling to both shoppers and society. It’s possible that the opportunity costs of these omnipresent products are a reduction in overall participation and contribution rates.

I continue to find it very strange that around 1930 Benjamin told at least two men (Max Rychner and Theodor Adorno) that only someone familiar with the Kabbalah could understand the introduction to his book on tragic drama—which for all practical purposes left me as the only reader who was close at hand. Each of the two men independently had heard him make this remark and asked me twenty years later whether this was correct and, if so, to what extent. But to me, who would have been, so to speak, the most likely recipient of such a message, he never directly expressed himself in this vein either in writing or in person, unless he did so implicitly in my dedication copy of his book: “To Gerhard Scholem, donated to the ultima Thule of his kabbalistic library”—as though that work somehow belonged in a kabbalistic library. Did he perhaps believe that this contiguity with ideas of the kabbalistic theory of language, even though greatly modified, should be obvious to me and required no explanation—which is true to a certain extent—or was he indulging in a game of hide-and-seek with me? Did he succumb to the temptation to indulge in some showing off, or did he wish to shroud the reproach of incomprehensibility that this introduction must have suggested to him, like few other pages in his writings, by referring to something even more incomprehensible (which is how the Kabbalah must have seemed to these men)? I do not know. I am reminded of one of my own statements, also from the thirties, that students of mine used to quote. Apparently I told them that in order to understand the Kabbalah, nowadays one had to read Franz Kafka’s writings first, particularly The Trial.

In the internal paper, the employee explained that Trump had outspent Clinton between June and November, paying Facebook $44 million compared to her $28 million. And, with Facebook’s guidance, his campaign had operated like a tech company, rapidly testing ads using Facebook’s software until they found the perfect messaging for various audiences. Trump’s campaign had a total of 5.9 million different versions of his ads, compared to Clinton’s 66,000, in a way that “better leveraged Facebook’s ability to optimize for outcomes,” the employee said. Most of Trump’s ads asked people to perform an action, like donating or signing up for a list, making it easier for a computer to measure success or failure. Those ads also helped him collect email addresses. Emails were crucial, because Facebook had a tool called Lookalike Audience. When Trump or any advertiser presented a set of emails, Facebook’s software could find more people who thought similarly to the members of the set, based on their behavior and interests. Clinton’s ads, on the other hand, weren’t about getting email addresses. They tended to promote her brand and philosophy.5 Her return on investment would be harder for Facebook’s system to measure and improve through software. Her campaign also barely used the Lookalike tool.