ken atchity door to door: May 2012

Book Review: Comeback: Overcoming The Setbacks In Your Life by Rick McDaniel

By Luanne Stevenson, BLOGCRITICS.ORG

Comeback: Overcoming The Setbacks In Your Life is a quick read. Only 105 pages, it

shares what Rick McDaniel, the author, believes is needed for making a comeback after a loss or painful life event. Published by WestBow Press, the book is written in a conversational style but has many references to the Bible and God, which may turn away some readers.The author is a pastor in Richmond, VA and writes in a way that is not at all preachy, but definitely in a tone that conveys his belief that God has to be part of the "comeback" process.

His chapters identify what he believes is needed to move from setback to comeback which include: changing your mind (attitude); changing your heart (see things from a new perspective); restoring your confidence (not staying "stuck" in the event that caused the set back; letting go and moving forward); gaining momentum and leaving survival mode (when one "checks-out" after a setback, it's important after reflection to "check-back-in"); and restarting your dreams again. McDaniel also talks about dropping the setback mentality in order to realize that setbacks are temporary and don't define you as a person.

Throughout the book, McDaniel gives examples of people who have found success after loss. These passages might inspire someone who is faced with starting over after job loss, divorce or health problems. I was disappointed that every highlighted example was that of a male and most of the time the example was that of an athlete. Not once was a woman's story highlighted to inspire.

He mentioned Robert Downey Jr., Kurt Warner, and Lance Armstrong among many others, but I had to ask why he forgot to mention any female who had made a comeback? Didn't he know Lucille Ball was told to try another profession because she didn't have what it takes to be a Hollywood star? Or how about Oprah Winfrey, who has shared publicly the abuse she endured in her childhood and the other challenges she has had to face to get to where she is now? She was even fired from one television job because her boss said she was "unfit for TV." She certainly had the "come-back" mindset.

Despite the dominant male angle found in his writing, I had to buy into most of what McDaniel was saying. Although he outlines his ideas simplistically and very quickly moves from one point to the next, he does make some strong points that are worthwhile to the reader, who is most probably reading the book to become inspired.

For example, he stresses that it is important to learn lessons from our setbacks, and his quote taken from Warren Buffett on page 22 is a good one. "Setbacks teach lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity." I also agree with his belief that "A negative attitude will never lead to a comeback."

He tells the story of Tom Smallwood who got laid off from General Motors two days before Christmas in 2008 and how Smallwood decided to take this setback as an opportunity to chase a childhood dream for becoming a professional bowler. He quotes Smallwood on page 38, "Getting laid off was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. But it led to the best result." Smallwood, one year after losing his job with General Motors, competed in the PBA World Championship and won, earning him more money than he ever did in one year at his old job with GM.

My favorite chapter in the book, Chapter Six, "Mr. Comeback," is the interview he had with Frank Reich, a former football player. One powerful quote from Reich; "When the circumstances, when the scoreboard, whether it's life or football, seem overwhelmingly against you, the lesson I've learned repeatedly is one play at a time, one day at a time."

What I took away from the book is that making a comeback is a process, and as McDaniel says throughout his writing, "Part of the process is keeping focused on where you want to get to and not giving up for any reason. Don't allow the many distractions in life to keep you from your goal."

If you know someone who is dealing with one of life's setbacks, this book might make a thoughtful gift and like a coach's pep talk to his team after a long losing streak, it will remind every player the value of getting back in the game and remaining hopeful.

View the original article on blogcritics.org

Can you name this strange old tool?

Do you know what it is?

Look below, read and learn.

Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit

Tobacco Smoke Enemas (1750s - 1810s)

The tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient's rectum for various medical purposes, primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims.

A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum.

The warmth of the smoke was thought to promote respiration, but doubts about the credibility of tobacco enemas led to the popular phrase "blow smoke up one's ass."

"Gracias Madre India 2012" Día Anual de Ayuda Global

Love in Zimbabwe [via Nina Reznick]

These delightful set of photos was sent to Nina by her good friend Colleen Taylor who lives in the Vumba outside Mutare.

UK Border Authority orders Heathrow to suppress evidence of massive customs queues [via Nina Reznick]

By Cory Doctorow

The UK Border Authority has ordered Heathrow Airport's management to stop handing out leaflets apologising for the gigantic customs queues at its terminals and advising them to contact UKBA to complain. UKBA has also ordered the airport to stop passengers from documenting these queues with photographs. I came into Heathrow T5 on April 13, and was stuck in an hour-long line just to get into the customs hall, where we were sorted into EU/non-EU passports, and took a picture or two. At the time, uniformed employees were telling us that non-EU passport holders could expect to wait five hours to clear customs. The Guardian's Ben Quinn reports:

The airport operator was also told to prevent passengers taking pictures in the arrivals hall, according to the Daily Telegraph, which obtained correspondence from Marc Owen, director of UKBA operations at Heathrow. Pictures of lengthy queues have been posted on Twitter by frustrated travelers.

Owen said: "The leaflet … is both inflammatory and likely to increase tensions in arrivals halls especially in the current atmosphere. It is inappropriate in that it is not for you to display how to complain on our behalf. Please refrain from handing out [the leaflets] or I will escalate [the matter] with ministers who are likely to take a very dim view. I know there are copies in the hall and your troops are ready with them."

Jim Fitzpatrick, Labour's aviation spokesman, said: "This is a pure coverup. I can understand people wanting to take pictures of the queues. This is further evidence of Border Force trying to hide the severity of the problem.

"Passengers need to know how to register complaints and for Border Force to try to prevent them doing so is outrageous."

"Thank You Mother India" - Join Us for Our 2nd Annual Global Day of Support!

2011

For the cost of one yoga class, you can change a life.

Last year, over 750 people from around the world came together to
give back and express gratitude to Mother India for the gift of Yoga.
This year, join us!

"Thank You Mother India"

Yoga Gives Back's 2nd Annual Day of Global Support
Saturday, September 29th, 2012

Let's unite again to express our gratitude to Mother India for the gift of YOGA. On this special day, we call upon the karma yoga of all studios and teachers from every discipline of yoga, from every city and country, to join us in supporting women and children in India.

Yoga Gives Back’s programs now directly fund 103 women and children in India with micro loans and educational funds. Together, we can make a difference to positively impact even more lives.

This year, our goal is to raise $50,000! Join us.

There are two ways to get involved:

1. Host a special donation class/event on Saturday, September 29th, 2012. If you cannot host one on this date, please pick a date and let us know.

2. Pledge your donation level and become a "Thank You Mother India" sponsor. Platinum - $2500, Gold - $1000, Silver - $500. Fundraise to your pledged level by inviting your community to your Online Fundraising page, such as Firstgiving, pre-sell tickets to your event, raffle or in many other creative ways.

Level Sponsors will be featured in our press articles, all promotional materials and post TYMI 2012 video!!!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW!

AMAZING HANDS [via Nina Reznick]

Missing pet parakeet chirps his home address to police [via Nina Reznick]

Tale of lost bird has a tweet ending

By Meghan Neal / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

This tale of a lost pet has a really tweet ending.

A Japanese woman was reunited with her missing pet parakeet Tuesday when the bird began reciting his home address to police.

The parakeet, named Piko, went missing Sunday and was spotted perching on a guest’s shoulder at a nearby hotel, the AFC reported.

Piko was taken to the local police where he stunned the cops by chirping the street address of his home, near Tokyo.

The owner later explained she taught Piko how to say his address and phone number after losing a former pet bird, reported MSNBC.

Parakeets, a type of parrot, can be trained to talk by imitating human words. Savvy parrot owners have used this trick before: In 2008, also in a town near Tokyo, a lost parrot told the veterinarian looking after it "I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura." The bird also gave his full address, and the owner was found.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Future Entrepreneurs of America story [via Nina Reznick]

6 Year Olds! [via Mary Calhoun]

A 1st grade school teacher had twenty-six students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the 1st half of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. It's hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep in mind that these are first-graders, 6-year-olds, because the last one is a classic!

1.	Don't change horses	until they stop running.
2.	Strike while the	bug is close.
3.	It's always darkest before	Daylight Saving Time.
4.	Never underestimate the power of	termites.
5.	You can lead a horse to water but	how?
6.	Don't bite the hand that	looks dirty.
7.	No news is	impossible.
8.	A miss is as good as a	Mr.
9.	You can't teach an old dog new	math..
10.	If you lie down with dogs, you'll	stink in the morning.
11.	Love all, trust	me.
12.	The pen is mightier than the	pigs.
13.	An idle mind is	the best way to relax.
14.	Where there's smoke there's	pollution.
15.	Happy the bride who	gets all the presents.
16.	A penny saved is	not much.
17.	Two's company, three's	the Musketeers.
18.	Don't put off till tomorrow what	you put on to go to bed.
19.	Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and	you have to blow your nose.
20.	There are none so blind as	Stevie Wonder.
21.	Children should be seen and not	spanked or grounded.
22.	If at first you don't succeed	get new batteries.
23.	You get out of something only what you	see in the picture on the box.
24.	When the blind lead the blind	get out of the way.
25.	A bird in the hand	is going to poop on you.
And the WINNER and last one!
26.	Better late than	pregnant.

Perigee "Super Moon" on May 5-6, 2012 [via Nina Reznick]

The full Moon has a reputation for trouble. It raises high tides, it makes dogs howl, it wakes you up in the middle of the night with beams of moonlight stealing through drapes. If a moonbeam wakes you up on the night of May 5th, 2012, you might want to get out of bed and take a look. This May’s full Moon is a "super Moon,” as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons of 2012.

The scientific term for the phenomenon is "perigee moon." Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon's orbit. The Moon follows an elliptical path around Earth with one side ("perigee") about 50,000 km closer than the other ("apogee"). Full Moons that occur on the perigee side of the Moon's orbit seem extra big and bright.

Such is the case on May 5th at 11:34 pm Eastern Daylight Time1 when the Moon reaches perigee. Only one minute later, the Moon will line up with Earth and the sun to become brilliantly
full. The timing is almost perfect.

Read Full Story Here

Morning Yoga Class at the Stella McCartney store to benefit Yoga Gives Back

The beautiful Stella McCartney store in West Hollywood is providing a morning yoga class to benefit Yoga Gives Back, June 5, 2012 at 10am. Kathryn Budig will teach and give a talk on nutrition. Yoga Gives Back Founder, Kayoko Mitsumatsu, will speak about the impact on the lives of the women we support in India. A fresh juice tasting will follow.

Please join us. Register at info@yogagivesback.org.

Emmanuel Kelly The X Factor 2011 Auditions [via John Reid]

He is living proof that the human spirit can rise above adversity to amazing heights.

SCOTUS Overreach? [Nina Reznick]

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Yoga Gives Back

Written by Kayoko Mitsumatsu

From Posture To Power: Microcredit Changes Lives On Both Sides of the Ocean

We can talk about making change. But affecting real change in the world comes from impacting the lives of individuals. It comes from empowering people to be independent and able to make a living on their own while at the same time being fully integrated in our interdependent global community. Sometimes it takes something that seems to be radical to make this change, but these shifts can be deceptively small. They can be even as small (or as large) as the cost of a Los Angeles Yoga class.

How could this be? In the practice of microcredit, lending seemingly small amounts of money to small-scale entrepreneurs allows them to succeed and change their circumstances. This is the fundamental basis of microcredit’s transformative power; it’s a revolutionary concept in finance. This practice shifts the emphasis from financial transactions being focused only about large loans and large scale businesses, which are out of reach of many one-person operations, institutions and organizations – to lending practices that actually make a positive difference in a person’s life. Microcredit practices based on social justice and empowerment operate through a combination of small-scale loans based on trust and community support, with structured repayment plans and programs that encourage savings. In these situations, people actually have the opportunity to solidify long-term change in their lives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Yoga Gives Back Team: Joel Bender, Leslie Hendry, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Kayoko Mitsumatsu (left-right)

In 2006, economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This award was in recognition of their revolutionary efforts to create this micro-credit model, support sustainable economic practices, and provide an alternative to what were exploitive norms. When a person is caught in a cycle of poverty, they may become trapped in the system, particularly since large banking institutions have historically ignored people without assets or credit histories, who are just starting out and who may not have already proven themselves. Most banks prefer to lend large sums of money that represent a greater profit margin and are set up only for large loans in order to make a profit themselves. And even making it more challenging, people at the bottom of the economic scale worldwide have had to rely on moneylenders charging usurious terms and interest rates to obtain funds to plant the next crop, buy inventory of new equipment, or upgrade a business in any way. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank and their affiliates are offering another approach. It’s one that has significantly impacted millions of people.

As Dr. Yunus described in an exclusive interview with Yoga Gives Back in May, 2009, “We started in 1976, and today within Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, eight million people borrow micro loans, ninety-seven percent of them women.” This represents an enormous potential for change and empowerment that just did not exist on a large scale in this form prior to 1976.

There is a social cycle in economics, and Dr. Yunus explained this: “Poverty is not inside the person. Poverty is forced from outside. Poor people are as capable [a] human being as anybody else. They have the same power and energy, same potential. But they are denied such facilities. They cannot express themselves. Money is one of the most important items missing in their lives. You need a dollar to catch a dollar. You cannot catch a dollar with an empty hand. So, that first dollar, nobody has given to her. So she remains dependent on someone else. She has to be hired, to slave; she has to work to make food available on the table. What we have done, we have put that first dollar into her hands as a banking proposition. Conventional banks never come to the poor people. They go to rich people to make more money. The person who does not have a dollar – she cannot get it. So we did it. We did it in a way that is affordable to her. Because we do not insist on collateral. There is no collateral.”

While that may seem like a radical concept, the Grameen Bank has proven that their success is much more than ideological. Dr Yunus cited statistics for us, “The repayment rate is almost 100%, without collateral or anything. This is the strength of microcredit which is now spread all over the world. There are by now at least 150 million borrowers in the world today. Bu it is still very small comparing to the need. We need more microcredit organizations in the world so that more people can be reached.”

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization begun in LA, with the goal to provide a way for Western Yoga practitioners to give back to India, the birthplace of Yoga, which has given us so much. We’re heeding Dr. Yunus’ call to reach more people through expanded opportunities for and awareness of microcredit and have targeted India and Indian families, women, and would-be entrepreneurs, who would be otherwise stuck in the cycle of poverty that Dr. Yunus described. Yoga Gives Back supports microfinancing operations in India, through the Grameen Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC. Donations go directly to Grameen Koota, Bangalore, South India and our YGB awareness campaign focuses on the real stories of how poor women are changing their lives with small loans from Grameen Koota.

Ms. Vinatha M Reddy

Grameen Koota was started by visionary teacher and philanthropist, Ms. Vinatha M Reddy (pictured, above) in 1999, who learned about Nobel Peace Recipient Dr Muhammad Yunus’ microfinancing and immediately began exploring ways of replicating his work in her hometown. In 2000, she started providing small microcredit loans, averaging $25.00 a month, to fifty local women. Today, Grameen Koota’s work is reaching out to over 280,000 women in Bangalore, Mysore and many areas of Karnataka state, in South India, making real impact on these women’s lives as well as on the local economy.

Yoga Gives Back

The Los Angeles-based Yoga Gives Back has a worldwide reach and began out of the inspiration and dedication of my Yoga mentor Joel Bender and me. Our group has suddenly started growing almost daily and our mission is shared by a quickly expanding and loving Yoga community.

When I was growing up in Japan, which is a very middle-class society, I had never experienced or seen any real poverty, especially growing up in Tokyo in 1960s and 1970s, when Japan's post-war economic miracle was taking place. Then, I had a chance to live in Brazil in the late 1970s for two years, where as a teenager, I saw the divide between poverty and wealth, the reality of the real slums, kids on the streets begging every time you stopped the car at the traffic light, all very much like India. Social injustice hit me hard.

Once I started Yoga practice and feeling my life being so enriched by it , I felt a need to use my resources to help others. I was producing a documentary on Social Entrepreneurship and learned about microfinancing. I shared this information with Joel [featured in the teacher profile in this month’s issue of LA YOGA] who had been looking for the way he could give back to India since his first visit there – so we teamed up.

When I think about the growth of Yoga Gives Back thus far, I give a lot of credit to the entrepreneurship and volunteer spirit of Americans, willing to embrace and support a new grass roots campaign like ours.

Kayoko Mitsumatsu, co-founder of Yoga Gives Back, is a documentary filmmaker whose films deal with social justice issues, including First They Killed My Father a memoir of a Cambodia’s Killing Fields’ survivor.

A Life Changing Story of Microcredit: Jayashree

Jayashree

Jayashree lives in the suburbs of Bangalore and is married and the mother of two children. We visited her at her humble dirt floor one room home for the first time in 2007. We were touched by her warm smile and most generous hospitality, serving us hot tea and cookies.

Jayashree was born into a very poor family in Bangalore. When she was a child, her family’s financial situation became so severe that she had to drop out of school and work at a garment factory. She toiled throughout her childhood and after she got married at fifteen, her meager earnings had to support her ailing in-laws. She had two children. Her husband’s rickshaw business was not enough to pay her sons’ education or secure food for the family.

In 2007, Jayashree learned from her neighbors about Grameen Koota’s microcredit program and applied for her first loan. She was granted a first loan of 7,000 rupees ($175), and immediately bought her husband’s auto rickshaw. Owning their own rickshaw business increased their income significantly.

Jayashree was able to pay back her entire loan in one year and became eligible for her second loan in 2008. Having proven her diligence, her second loan amount doubled to 15,000 rupees ($375). This time, she bought a sewing machine and started stitching bags. The family’s earnings have now tripled and she is earning 150 rupees ($3.75) a day. In addition, she opened a small shop next to her house to sell her products which is earning her an additional 100 rupees ($2.50) a day.

She is sending her elder son to a medical school. Her son dreams of becoming a doctor and thanks his mother’s business for providing his education, their own home and daily food.

To participate in a Yoga practice where the proceeds support Yoga Gives Back and directly impact the transformation of not only your own life, but that of someone in India, start your Thanksgiving week at Yogaglo, Sunday, November 22, 10:00 A.M. - 12 noon. Some of the teachers include John Sahakian, Felicia Tomasko, Alexandra Aiken and Ally Hamilton; more to be announced. Yogaglo.com; yogagivesback.com.

For more information on Yoga Gives Back or to host a Yoga Gives Back class at your own studio or location, visit: yogagivesback.org or contact yogagivesback@earthlink.net.