I love year end lists. Love reading them, love writing them. Something about listing music in particular captures the spirit of the year in a bottle. So here's mine. I don’t have many thematic insights this year, except the fact that in some years my favorite artists let me down and this was not one of those years. I think Calexico, Protomartyr, and Sleater-Kinney of all bands, put out records at the top of their body of work. And some surprises from bands like Jamie XX and Grimes, who I was only a little into before but blew me away this year. And of course, all of the runners up, mostly because I just haven't had a chance to listen enough—Titus Andronicus, Beach Slang, Eskimeaux, a Mount Eerie record I somehow completely missed. So without further ado.
Read MoreSorry Bill Gates, But Billions for Energy Research Is Not How to Win the Climate Battle
Originally published in Inside Philanthropy, December 4, 2015. Bill Gates has rounded up a squad of billionaires to save the day when it comes to climate change, using their investment wisdom and bank accounts to further energy tech. Too bad they aren’t putting their money where it would really help — advancing policy and grassroots efforts.
Not long ago, we issued a challenge to a set of mega-donors to pour billions of their collective wealth into the problem of climate change. Now, it seems that Bill Gates, one of our biggest targets, has rallied 28 investors behind a two-pronged plan to devote a pool of private funding to clean energy breakthroughs, and to convince governments to do the same.
I’m not quite self-aggrandizing enough to think Gates read our post and decided to start such a coalition, but this is great news, right?
Yes and no. While Gates deserves praise for moving money on the issue, banking on a tech breakthrough to save us is not where we really need the world’s billionaires to focus at this exact moment...
Blue Line 14: Hartland
in Blue Line
Mix of mostly instrumental, electronic, ambient music and other sounds, including the frogs and crickets of rural Vermont this round.
Le Goudron, Brigitte Fontaine
Focus On Sanity, Ornate Coleman
Scud Books, Hudson Mohawke
Ages Upon Ages Upon You, Prefuse 73
Pandi, The Bug
Nattoget Spokelser, Dirty Knobs
Sweet Slow Baby, The Field
Total Strife Forever I, East India Youth
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The Chaos Behind Closed Doors: Zero History, The Cabinet & airbnb
Originally published on Blue Ant, August 31, 2015.
Victorian English literature is filled with angst about what chaos lies behind proper and unassuming exteriors. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow says Brussels always reminds him of a “whited sepulchre,” a biblical reference to hypocrisy by which things “appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
William Gibson’s London puts a psychedelic twist on this notion, with all manner of sinister weirdness lying in wait behind plain facades. This is most true in Cabinet, the hotel and private club that serves as home base for our heroes in Zero History.
Cabinet is “(h)alf the vertical mass of an eighteenth-century townhouse, one whose facade reminded her of the face of someone starting to fall asleep on the subway,” with the interior decor “ragingly, batshit insane.”
Read MoreA New Program Is Using Yoga to Enhance Social Work
Originally published at Boston Magazine online, September 3, 2015. Rosie’s Place, the first women’s shelter in the United States, recently awarded Roslindale social worker Theresa Okokon the Kip Tiernan Social Justice Fellowship—a $40,000 grant. Through the grant, Okokon created LEGIT.yoga, a new program that will bring yoga classes to local shelters.
Legit will use a method called trauma-sensitive yoga, which uses the practice to help people deal with traumatic stress.
Read MoreA Pitch to Billionaire Climate Donors: You Made the Pledge; Let’s Get To It
Originally published in Inside Philanthropy on October 12, 2015. Billionaires, we’d like just a moment of your time.
No, not you David Koch or John Paulson, this probably isn’t your kind of thing. We’re talking to a specific set of business titans, here—you guys who have more than a billion in the bank, have pledged to give most of it away, and are deeply concerned about climate change.
Namely, we’re talking to Mike Bloomberg, Eric Schmidt, Tom Steyer, Jeff Skoll, and Paul Allen. Here’s our idea. Sorry, we don’t have a slide deck.
The Elevator Pitch
You five have made it clear that you know climate change is a serious and imminent threat. We’re at a pivotal moment for action and curbing the worst effects, but things aren’t happening fast enough. Collectively, you have unique access to many billions of dollars, plus you’ve publicly committed to giving most of it away before you die. Some of you are already funding climate change efforts in a big way. But you all need to go bigger. We want you to give at least 10 percent of your wealth to fight climate change in the next five years, start a historic movement, and help save the world.
Problem/Opportunity
We recognize that is a big ask. For Mike Bloomberg alone, that’s a $3.8 billion check. But this is a big problem, an existential threat the likes of which neither philanthropy nor industry have ever encountered before...
Read the full article at Inside Philanthropy.
And the first post in this series on Climate Change and Philanthropy: Dear Climate Funders: The Clock is Ticking. Use Your Endowments
Blue Line 13: A Wonderful Day
in Blue Line
Mix of mostly instrumental, electronic, ambient music and other sounds. Why wouldn't you take the opportunities presented to you? Someone is going to. Someone has to.
Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 (Withheld), Bang on a Can All-Stars
Motherless Child, Romare
Lonely At The Top, Holly Herndon/Beatrice Pt. 2, The Dead Texan
Aluminum, The Thing
Window Seat, Portico Quartet
While the Cold Winter Waiting, Trentemøller
Morning Sun, Holly Herndon
Wish, Flying Saucer Attack
A Wonderful Day, Bag on a Can All-Stars
Blue Line 12: 17 Years
in Blue Line
Mix of mostly instrumental, electronic, ambient music and other sounds. Feeding on xylem fluids from the roots of deciduous forest trees in the eastern United States.
Gosh, Jamie XX
Expect, Balam Acab
A Little Long Way, Woo
Before Tigers (Gold Panda Remix), Health
Interlude
Folie a deux, Nicolas Jaar
diskhat ALL prepared1mixed 13, Aphex Twin
The Wizard, Albert Ayler
Klimek - ruined in a day (buenos aires), Pop Ambient
Peace Piece, Bill Evans
Summer Cicada Sound, Escape to Nature
For Surdna, Infrastructure is Where Sustainability and Justice Cross Paths
Originally published June 26, 2015 on Inside Philanthropy. Infrastructure. It's not exactly the first word that comes to mind when you think of environmental grantmaking. But as the Surdna Foundation sees it, future metropolitan infrastructure decisions go beyond which bridges and roads to fix; they determine how equitable and sustainable a city is for generations.
Surdna is a medium-sized, national foundation with assets of just over a billion and annual giving of $46 million in 2014, derived from the wealth of the Andrus family (Surdna, get it?).
Helen Chin, Surdna’s Sustainable Environments program director, recently shed some light on the foundation’s green giving in an interview with Inside Philanthropy, including the thinking behind this unique approach to sustainability.
Read MoreFree the 990! Why Searchable Tax Forms Are Way More Important Than They Sound
Originally published on Inside Philanthropy on June 22, 2015. Named one of the Five Best Ideas of the Day by The Aspen Institute, cross-posted on Time.
One rabble rouser has been trying to get the IRS to make individual nonprofit tax forms available in an electronic format anyone can easily search. What may seem to a casual observer like a minor battle would actually be revolutionary for the entire sector.
Quick disclosure: I hate 990s. Not the concept of them, of course, as they are the chief method of accountability that nonprofits entities must file annually in exchange for tax exemption. But I hate just about everything else about them.
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