I read a lot. I always have. Moreover, I read virtually everything. I love the classics and comics. I escape into spy novels and detective stories. I am enthralled by science fiction and love short stories. Fiction or non-fiction it doesn’t matter. I learned to love the literary canon. Realized I would never be a Twain or Austen, Vonnegut or Heinlein. Kafka was prescient. Not me. I even adore the atlas, old ones and new; side by side they teach one so much about our changing world. I even read Playboy as a teen just for the articles. Cross my heart! The only thing my wife says I do not read are instructions, but we all know that is akin to a male asking for directions when he is lost. It is genetically impossible. So, that’s not my fault.
Now, I also read blogs from a great assortment of folks. Though, that is a tad risky, because everyone is an authority, pseudo or authentic; some with real worth, some worthless. Of course, this is a blog, so I fall somewhere along the pseudo-authentic continuum too. But this blog does not aspire to pillars of wisdom, or things you should do to improve yourself, or quaint anecdotes to store away for dinner conversation. It is not even designed to build readership (though it should be) nor to sell ads or gain notoriety. What it really is, is a blog about me and how I perceive the world and how that perception effects the way I think about things. That’s all. In fact, it is really not supposed to be a blog about what I think or feel, but more a way to bite off an interesting observation of what it is like to work for the Greater Impact Foundation. It is just that I haven’t been able to think of a more creative way to do it other than to relate it back to my personal experience. Like right now.
Two days from now I will be in southwestern Uganda in the Kisoro District with Raising the Village, www.raisingthevillage.org, a very interesting enterprise trying to help villagers living way off the grid steeped in poverty; trying to do it in a sustainable way that empowers the villagers. If all goes well we hope to welcome them into the GIF family. If all goes well I might even see a gorilla or two. This is the part of Africa where Dian Fossey did some of her seminal research before her untimely death in 1985. I also have heard there are other types of guerillas seen in these parts. I would be more than pleased not to bump into one of those.
By the way, I hate the word blog. It is one letter away from blob and all I think about when I see the word blog is the movie, The Blob, the original which is a b-rated quasi-horror film from my childhood. I hate horror films and by default horror stories unless it is the obsessed Mr. Poe. I know Stephen King is a great writer, but I do not read his books for the same reason I do not watch horror films. They give me nightmares. So, I guess I do not read everything.