Dougy Center at the Hollywood Theatre

At last month's meeting of The Dougy Center's board of directors, I got a chance to preview a short DVD that speaks to the mission of the agency: to support grieving children.

Tonight that same video, "Understanding Suicide, Supporting Children," will be shown at a premiere screening at 7 p.m. at the Hollywood Theatre. A Q&A with parents and youths who appear in the video will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Suicide is a grim topic, I know, but after seeing this video, I wasn't depressed -- I was inspired. I was impressed by the intelligence and the resiliency of these teenagers and young kids, some as young as 6, who speak movingly and honestly about dealing with a suicide death. Too, I was proud to be associated with The Dougy Center, which was the first program of its kind when it was established in 1982 and has since has become an international model.

I'm also proud of Lori, who recently began training to become a group facilitator for youths who meet at the center to speak of their loss and support each other. All services are free and children can attend as often as needed, whether it takes weeks, months or years.

Our executive director, Donna Schuurmann, is fond of saying that no one ever gets over grief. Rather, they get through it. Seeing this video helped me understand that yet again.

If any Rough and Rede readers would like to attend, I'd love to see you there tonight.

The birthday celebration continues

In front of the Hawthorne Bridge

Ok, so it wasn't a weeklong staycation, but I'll take it: An overnight stay at The Nines in downtown Portland that was the last of my month-ago birthday gifts.

Lori made the reservation late last year, so I had been looking forward to it for some time. The experience did not disappoint. We rode the bus downtown, checked in at 6, had a delicious pan-Asian dinner in the 15th floor restaurant (Departure), caught a fine new movie ("The King's Speech,") and then settled in for the night in a luxurious room. Today we slept in, had breakfast at the trendy Urban Farmer inside The Nines, had an hour-long walk along the riverfront and stopped in at the new H&M store in Pioneer Place, where I found a very affordable shirt as a souvenir for the weekend.

Nothing better than strolling arm-in-arm and having the guy who stopped his bike ride to take our picture ask: "Are you two married?"

Postscripts

Non-working meter in Oakland

Earlier this month I wrote about...

The "Most expensive breakfast ever," in which I told the sad story of being nailed with a $55 parking ticket while meeting a dear friend for breakfast in Oakland, California. On top of the $55, I was notified that I was being assessed a $25 "administration fee" by a company acting on behalf of Avis, as I'd been using a rental car during the time I'd gotten the ticket.

Good news: The third-party company notified me recently that it had waived the $25 fee. Whew.

A "Neighborhood fundraiser for Dougy," in which I noted that my neighborhood Peet's coffee store had agreed to host a week-long fundraising event for The Dougy Center, the Portland nonprofit that for nearly 30 years has provided ongoing peer support groups to children experiencing the death of a relative or friend. I showed up for a couple hours on Christmas Eve morning and joined fellow board members in greeting friends and strangers alike.

Good news: Customers contributed nearly $2,000 and Peet's followed through with its $1,000 pledge in matching funds so we raised about $3,000 for the center. Nice.

Christmas Eve shorts

Stuffed mushrooms

A grab bag of thoughts and observations...

-- Spent two hours this morning at the Peet's coffee store at N.E. 15th and Broadway, helping to raise money for The Dougy Center. Pretty painless. You sit there at a table with some literature, chat with a fellow board member (Diane) and her daughter (Shawna), smile at folks as they walk in the door, and thank those that drop some cash or a check into the glass jar on the table. Peet's is matching donations all week long at that store, up to $1,000.

Bonus: I got to greet my bowling buddy (John) and his family (wife Andrea and son Austen), spend some time chatting with friends (Kay, Lakshmi and Raghu), and say hello to a former Grant Park neighbor I hadn't seen in a while (Sandy) and her older daughter (Julia), who used to babysit our kids.

Double bonus: Diane told me that before I arrived, the scruffy homeless guy sitting outside on the sidewalk came in and approached the table. They tensed up, wondering if he'd make a grab for the money in the jar. Instead, he pulled out a dollar and dropped it in there. Sweet.

-- Came home and helped Lori (in a very small way, to be sure) with preparations for the traditional hors d'oeuvres dinner that we have on Christmas Eve. Our guests tonight: Nathan and Sara, Jordan and Jamie. Simone and Kyndall are in Washington state visiting with Kyndall's relatives, due to return Sunday night. Lori is amazing in terms of her planning, cooking, baking and decorating. I'm a lucky, lucky man, to be married to her. She is, no question, the heart and soul of our family.

-- Got off work last night and plopped down on the couch with a burrito and a beer, all set to enjoy a mindless comedy we ordered off Netflix. Turned out to be, quite possibly, the worst film ever made: "Hot Tub Time Machine." Somewhere along the way I'd heard it was a goofy. sophomoric film, not unlike "Old School" or any other Will Farrell film. Wrong. It was goofy and sophomoric -- but it was badly done goofy and sophomoric.

Lori bailed out after 10 minutes. I hung in there for about 20. It had just about everything not working for it. Gratuitous profanity. Puerile dialogue. A despicable lead character (actually, he was one of the main three). Women as bimbos. And on and on... I could only wonder why John Cusack, a guy with a decent reputation as an actor, would have agreed to be in the film.

Neighborhood fundraiser for Dougy

Do you drink coffee? Tea? Lattes? Do you like a pastry with your beverage of choice? No matter what your preference, bring your business to Peet's Coffee and Tea at the corner of Northeast Broadway and 15th Avenue during the days leading up to Christmas.

The Peet’s store at that location has selected The Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families to be the recipient of its annual holiday donation program. According to Brennan Wood, director of development and communication at The Dougy Center:

"Each of the Peet’s stores chooses an organization to raise money for during the week of Christmas. They give out free drip coffee and tea all day on Christmas Eve and encourage customers to donate any amount of money. Peet’s matches customer donations up to $1,000. They will be raising money for us from December 17^th to December 24t^h. They selected us because one of the employees at that location has utilized our services."

I've been on the Dougy board of directors for two-plus years and this partnership speaks to the center's reputation in the community, as a well-run nonprofit that provides a vital service -- support for children, teens, young adults and their families who've experienced a death.

If all goes according to schedule, I'll spend an hour or so at the Peet's store on Christmas Eve helping to represent the Dougy Center and talking to customers about our programs.

A grief that never ends

Two weeks ago today, friends and co-workers joined me at a fundraising lunch for The Dougy Center, the Portland-based nonprofit that has been a pioneer in providing services to grieving children and families after a death.

It was an event typical of The Dougy Center's organization and efficiency: A spacious hotel ballroom with a healthy lunch; lots of volunteer greeters to steer you to the right table; a concise program with engaging speakers that started right on time and ended precisely one hour later so people could get back to work. The lunch raised $75,000 and introduced hundreds more people to the important work that the center does and which has been replicated at 500 sites around the world.

It all began in 1982 after the death of Dougy Turno, who died of an inoperable brain tumor at age 13, but not before he inspired the idea of a center where kids could talk about openly about death and dying. Today The Dougy Center provides peer-support groups that serve nearly 400 children a month, all free of charge. I've been on the board of directors of The Dougy Center for about three years now, and while I obviously support its programs I've always felt slightly apart from most staff and board members in that I haven't experienced the trauma of losing a parent or sibling as an adolescent or adult.

How narrow my thinking has been. Just a few days earlier, I was in California. There I spent a day with my mom and drove her to the cemetery in Salinas where we put fresh flowers on the graves of four relatives I never had the opportunity to know: my brother, my twin sisters and my maternal grandmother.

My grandma Mercedes was killed in a car-train accident in 1953 at age 47 when I was barely 6 months old. My oldest sister was born in 1947 and I came along in 1952, followed by my younger sister in 1955. In between, my mom gave birth to a boy in 1949 and twin girls in 1950. Beverly Jean and Barbara Ann died one day after their birth. Robert Joseph was born Oct. 19 (the same birth date as my younger sister) and died Oct. 21 (the same birth date as my mom).

It must have been a good 10, if not 20 years, since I'd been to the cemetery. Standing there on a Sunday afternoon with my mom, who's now 82, I witnessed how deep the pain still cuts some 60 years later. No wonder her birthday brings a mixture of joy and sadness, knowing it's the day she lost her first-born son. To carry those babies as best she could, only to have them die as virtual newborns, before the medical advances that might have kept preemies alive, had to have been crushing. And yet she had the courage to get pregnant again -- and again.

If her babies had lived, would my younger sister and I have been conceived? That's probably an unanswerable question. Had they lived, how different would our family dynamics have been? I would have had a big brother to look up to and been No. 5 in a family of six.

All this was coursing through my mind as I sat at the table during that lunch two weeks ago. I guess I do have more in common than I realized with my Dougy Center colleagues.

Photo by Dharma Daylilies

The randomness of death

How strange. Yesterday I wrote about death -- but in the most positive terms. I took note of The Dougy Center's robust fundraising efforts to sustain peer support groups for kids who've lost a parent or sibling. And now, as I sit down to write on a Friday evening, I'm struck by the astounding randomness with which Death (yes, with a capital D) announces his arrival.

This morning I did a double-take when I read the headline stripped across the top of the Metro section: "Heart attack kills Lake Oswego chief." The poor guy, Dan Duncan, was 55 years old and had just announced last week that he was stepping down as police chief. He was found dead in his home Thursday. He was supposed to have had a retirement party at City Hall today.

"Cruel" is the first word that comes to mind. A guy works all his life in law enforcement, including 25 years in Lake Oswego, and leaves with a clean reputation, then keels over before he even has a chance to begin retirement.

"Ironic" is the second word that comes to mind. Lake Oswego has got to be one of the least stressful places to be a cop, given its affluence, low crime rate and embarrassing lack of diversity (they don't call it Lake No Negro for nothing).

I didn't know Duncan. But a day earlier, as I stumbled across the obituaries on the back of the Business section, I spotted a familiar face, that of John Jacob Sigurdson, the youngest of four children born to Icelandic immigrants who moved to the Northwest in 1935. He would have been 5 years old then. He died on Monday at age 79.

I knew him as Jack. When I joined The Oregonian in 1985, one of my first jobs was working on the regional desk, editing stories with rural datelines all across Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Jack was the layout editor for the Northwest pages (we'd call him a page designer today) and he was as old school as they come.

Jack wore a short-sleeved white shirt every day, with a plain vanilla tie. He brought a sack lunch every day and usually ate at his desk. He whistled while he worked (who does that anymore?) and he wore a No. 2 pencil behind one ear. In those days, as a young, ambitious editor, I was focused more on figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of the reporters I worked with and adapting to the substantially larger newsroom that I had joined. I honestly couldn't tell you a thing about Jack as a person and I doubt he knew a thing about me -- it's just the way it was in a big newsroom, with our given specialties and generational differences.

So now I come to learn that he graduated from high school in Seattle; that his college major was speech; that he was a religious man; that he had three children, 10 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren; and that he would have been married 50 years to the love of his life, Phyllis, had he made it to June 10th.

At age 57, I'm now three years older than Jack was when I began working with him and two years older than poor Dan Duncan, the police chief. Mentally and physically, I feel nowhere near that age. And yet, I'd be foolish to think my good health and a long life are guaranteed. Sure, I'd like to retire on my own schedule and still be in great condition so I can enjoy a life of relaxation and adventure with Lori. So, Death, if you're reading this, cut me some slack, ok? I've got a lot of living left to do.

Photograph: http://jameswoodward.wordpress.com/2009/03/

For a great cause

Today I spent my lunch hour (make it two hours) at a meeting of The Dougy Center board of directors. We met around a conference table in an insurance office in the Johns Landing area. And while the weather was unseasonably nasty -- you could see sheets of rain pounding the pavement on Southwest Macadam Avenue -- all of our spirits were raised during the financial and program reports.

First, the financials. Turns out the annual fundraising dinner on May 8 brought in nearly $530,000 from the auction and raffle, compared to $483,000 last year. These are gross figures only; we won't know the net proceeds until June, but it's a good bet they will come in at about $445,000 -- a figure equivalent to about one-third of the agency's budget. Those are great numbers in this economy, but they speak well to the reputation of The Dougy Center which, as I've written before, provides counseling services -- free of charge -- to grieving children and their families after the death of a family member.

Second, the program's reach. During April, 400 children, teenagers and young adults and their 271 family members were served in our 52 peer groups (26 for children and teens, 26 for adults) at three locations in the Portland metro area. These are the highest numbers ever, which attest to the ongoing need for these services in such critical moments. Astoundingly, there are currently more than 500 similar programs across the United States and internationally that are based on the Dougy Center model, including 189 so-called "network programs" that received direct training from the center's staff.

No doubt this year's fundraising efforts were helped by a special appeal based on the fact that a still-unsolved arson fire last year destroyed the headquarters building in Southeast Portland where the program staff was housed and peer groups regularly met. Since the fire, the staff has worked out of a smaller, adjoining building and the counseling groups have been held at a temporary, much smaller location in a hastily remodeled house at Northeast 20th and Sandy Boulevard. It's a credit to the volunteers and professional staff who facilitate these groups that they've been able to maintain the quality and quantity of services under the most difficult circumstances. And there's hope for the future, now that a recent settlement with our insurance company has allowed the board and staff to begin jointly planning for a new structure.

We are not deep-pocketed by any means, but Lori and I don't mind stretching ourselves once a year to help a great cause. Our friends, Colleen and Erin, joined us at the dinner two weekends ago at The Governor Hotel and we greatly appreciated their presence. Our modest haul from the silent auction: two bottles of wine, a new purse for Lori and, best of all, a framed 5 x 7 mirror made by one of the children who's gone through Dougy's grief counseling.

What better way to end this post than by quoting the Emily Dickinson poem so carefully inscribed in cursive by Madeleine:

Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all.

Photograph by Tucker Photography

Dealing with death

I put two sympathy cards in the mail this week. As usual, I tried to pick out something appropriate for a grieving wife and for a grieving husband. In each one, I took time to write a short paragraph that conveyed a personal memory of the person who had died.

I almost wrote "the person who had passed."

You'd think I'd get past the language issue, considering that I'm on the board of The Dougy Center, the pioneering nonprofit whose mission of serving grieving children and their families has been replicated around the globe. Yet the right words seldom, if ever, come easily in situations where someone has died.

I guess that's why I greatly appreciated the video that we watched at the end of our most recent board meeting last week. "Helping Teens Cope With Grief" is a locally produced DVD that features six teenagers -- five girls and a guy, ages 13 to 18 -- who have been in the Dougy Center's peer support groups. (The DVD isn't out yet, so I posted an image of a similarly titled book, one of a dozen also produced by the center.)

I was blown away by the wisdom, maturity and poise exhibited by the six teenagers. Four lost a parent to cancer, so they what was coming. The other two, though, had to deal with the shock of a fatal heart attack and a suicide, respectively.

In the space of 20 minutes or so, they confronted a half dozen topics with complete honesty: -- How they learned of their parent's death.
-- Coping with life after death.
-- When the surviving parent begins to date.
-- Changes in general (friendships, teacher relationships, etc.)
-- What grief looks like.
-- How you can help.

Each of the teenagers had something of value to say. And while they didn't parrot each other, they spoke of universal truths. For instance:

-- Losing a parent at a young age makes you grow up really fast. It's not unusual to become "the man of the house" or "the woman of the house" depending on which parent has died.
-- You tend to have fewer but closer friends. Some people just disappear fromyour life.
-- Grief lasts forever. Your dad is never coming back. Your mom is going to miss your birthday, your wedding, the birth of your first child.
-- You can help by just listening. Don't offer advice, unless asked. Let us cry, let us be sad. Understand we may change from day to day.
-- Remember to ask about the person who died, too.
-- Understand there are times we may want to grieve alone.

I was struck by the simplicity of their words andthe power of their insights. Listening to them and watching their composed faces -- allowing us into their lives -- made it feel as if I were receiving a gift. And for me, who has yet to lose either parent, these three quotes stayed with me the longest:

"I think differently. I think about life and death. It's the realization of how vulnerable we are."

"Even when the wound heals, there's still a scar. There are still things going on below the surface."

"Things do get better. But there's always going to be one puzzle piece that's missing."

Quick Takes

It's been a busy week so I'm only now getting around to what was a very eventful day Thursday.

It started innocently enough...

-- I altered my morning routine so I could start the day at the DMV getting some new license plate stickers and then stopped in at The Energy Bar for a latte. It had been weeks since I'd been there and what a pleasant visit it was to say hello to the proprietor, Mohammed, a guy who's served so many of us over the years at The Oregonian.

When the year began, I pledged to give more of my business to independent, small businesses like his versus the big corporate players, whether it was buying coffee, books or a meal out. With the realignment of bus routes and bus stops downtown, it had become much easier to stop in at Seattle's Best or Starbucks, so it felt good to give my dollars to Mohammed. Here's my public pledge (well, semi-public, I guess) to live up to the my word again.

...and it continued on a pleasant track...

-- At noon, I hosted a table at a fundraising luncheon for The Dougy Center. En route from the office to the hotel where the event was being held, I ran into two friends, which only served to remind me how small and familiar a place Portland can be, even in the downtown district.

I sat with friends Kay Balmer, Debra Gwartney, Tom Krattenmaker and Lynn St. Georges -- all of whom have a writing background -- and enjoyed the conversation, the healthy meal (an entree salad) and the various speakers who attested to the good that The Dougy Center does in the community, across the country and around the world with its group therapy services for children and their families who are grieving a death. Turns out we raised $90,000 at the event, a tidy sum for a nonprofit that relies entirely on fundraising and program fees in order to serve its clients free of charge.
... but, boy, did it end on a sad and jarring note...

When I got back to the office around 2 pm, I was startled -- and sickened -- to learn of the horrific shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 people died and 28 others were wounded. What can I say that hasn't already been said about the cruel irony of servicemen and women being shot by one of their own on a frickin' military base, of all places? What can I say that hasn't already been said about the unfortunate circumstance of the shooter being a U.S.-born Muslim? I know the full story of this guy, Major Nidal Malik, will emerge in the coming days. And while there will be speculation about whether his religion or ethnicity drove his actions -- heck, there have been accusations from the moment the news broke -- I'm keeping an open mind.

Selfishly, I was thankful to know that Jordan was 500 miles away from the carnage, posted to Fort Bliss in El Paso. Still, I learned when I got home that evening that he had called Lori to express his shock and sadness. How devastating, how threatening it must be to our enlisted troops to accept the fact it was an Army officer, a psychiatrist for God's sake, who went off on them.

Honors for The Dougy Center

It's been a challenging summer, to say the least, for the staff and volunteers and clientele of The Dougy Center, the nonprofit board I'm privileged to be a part of.

An arson fire in June virtually destroyed the main building that housed the staff and grief support programs for kids and other family members coping with the death of a loved one. No one's been arrested. Meanwhile, the staff had to scramble to find smaller, temporary quarters, where grief counselors could continue holding therapy groups for children and their families.

So, it came as wonderful news recently to learn that The Dougy Center had been named to Oregon Business Magazine's inaugural list of the Best 100 Nonprofits to Work For in Oregon. Even more impressive, Dougy was recognized as the third-best nonprofit organization in the state in the "small" category (10-25 employees).

(It was equally cool to see two other nonprofits I'm familiar with make the top ten list: Portland YouthBuilders (No. 3, medium), one of the alternative high schools our daughter visits as a college/career counselor; and the Native American Family and Youth Center (No. 2, large), where a couple of friends work.)

The October issue of the magazine lists the winners, with a column on what makes the top programs successful. Read the press release and the winning workplaces sidebar, and check out Dougy's website: www.dougy.org

Here's what the magazine said about Dougy:

Healing help
No. 3 Small: The Dougy Center

Perhaps because the Dougy Center has provided grieving services and support to children since 1982, the dedicated staff was uniquely prepared to face a major trauma themselves — the near destruction of their main center in Southeast Portland in an arson attack in June.

But the 11 employees can also count on their leader, Donna Schuurman, executive director of the center. The team has remained as tightly knit as ever and not a single employee was lost, thanks to her efforts. “Times of crisis pull people together,” she explains. “We have a mission and we are going to find a way.”

Schuurman believes that mission is what makes her employees — some of whom have been with the center for more than 18 years — persevere, even though 12 now have to share a space designed for four. But employees also enjoy ample insurance coverage, flexible schedules and periodic retreats such as kayak trips.

Schuurman says her staff has spoken at length over the years about how helping families deal with the heavy burden of death is enormously fulfilling. Instead of bringing them down, it has the opposite effect, helping them all appreciate life. “We get to see a lot of healing and progress,” she says. “It’s quite an honor.”

The first week of July

I got back from Georgia last night. There's so much to tell about that trip that it can't possibly fit in a single post. In the meantime, I needed to come up with a catch-all headline for a few other things that I want to take note of.

In no particular order...

1. Eat a cupcake and help The Dougy Center at the same time. Tomorrow, July 7, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Cupcake Jones, a locally owned bakery in the Pearl District (307 N.W. 10th Avenue), will be donating 5 percent of its proceeds to The Dougy Center.

Last month, I wrote about the "suspicious fire" that destroyed the center in Southeast Portland. No arrests have been made, but friends and clients of the center, along with board members and staff, are pitching in to help raise funds so we can rebuild on the site.

At the most recent board meeting, June 29, the staff briefed us on plans to move forward without missing a beat as it pertains to group counseling sessions for children and family members who've experienced recent deaths. Afterward, it was an uplifting experience to see new playground equipment (already installed before the fire) dedicated in the name of a longtime volunteer. Read The Oregonian's story here: "Dougy Center, determined to rise from the ashes, dedicates playground"

2. The "Three Girls and Their Buddy" concert at Oaks Park was a wonderful way to chill before rising early the next morning to fly to Georgia. It was a warm, comfortable evening, with the performers seated on stage beneath towering trees and a near-full moon. They sang the first song together, then did five rounds where each artist took a turn singing her or his own song individually, before finishing with another group song and an encore.

Shawn Colvin sounded wonderful, better than Emmylou Harris in my book, but Patty Griffin rose above them both, earning the evening's only standing ovation for "Heavenly Day."

3. I've also written previously about Oregon's creative class and The New Oregon Interview Series.

This past weekend, in The Oregonian's Sunday Opinion section, we published a piece by Tiffany Lee Brown, director of the nonprofit organization New Oregon Arts & Letters, and a multidisciplinary artist. Tiffany's essay, "Riding out the recession," offers a valuable perspective on the challenges and rewards of making a living from art in contemporary Portland. An excerpt:

As an artist, freelance writer and newly minted adjunct college faculty, I'm struggling hard to make ends meet. Bitterness descends along with anxiety when I watch phenomenally inventive, talented people draw tiny audiences or lose money making their art. Even our more traditional institutions, like the Oregon Ballet Theatre, have barely escaped going under. We're broke, and we deserve better than this. I've been homeless before, I think darkly. I don't want to do it again.

Then I watch my creative community coalesce. The tiny group of people who support the more unusual aspects of my artwork step up with volunteer help, artistic participation and the kind of feedback that nurtures the soul. Friends and strangers alike put in long hours to help me curate a benefit event for a nonprofit group ...

It reminded me why I stay in this city ... I stay here for the people, our instinct to help rather than compete with each other. I stay here for the so-called livability and the precious sensation of freedom we still possess -- despite our higher profile in the world and the gentrification of our neighborhoods.

I commend her piece as a breath of fresh air, compared to the steady diet of columns and analyses on politics and macroeconomics that we tend to gravitate to.

It's all about money...or is it?

On Wednesday, I began my day at the Oregon Convention Center, where I attended a fundraising breakfast for Habitat for Humanity. I made a modest contribution and left feeling pretty good, knowing the money raised would go to help low-income people in Lents (Southeast Portland) and Rockwood (west Gresham) in need of affordable housing.

Later in the day, I received an email from a Big Brothers Big Sisters staff member, telling those of us on the Latino Mentoring Advisory Council that our regularly scheduled May meeting isn't going to be held because the agency needs to devote more of its resources right now to fundraising.

On Thursday (today), I spent my lunch hour and more at a downtown law office in the Wells Fargo Bank, listening with other board members to an update on preparations for The Dougy Center's annual gala and auction, the agency's major fundraiser. All of us have bought tickets to the auction and contributed other goodies, within our means, that are being packaged as a live auction item. All the proceeds will go to finance The Dougy Center's internationally recognized programs in grief counseling for children and families that have lost a parent or sibling to death.

There's an obvious thread here. Nonprofit agencies, such as these, have to spend more time than they'd like rustling up money to do their good works. Wouldn't it be nice if it were otherwise?

On the one hand, fundraisers -- whether they involve food or a fun activity (such as the Bowl for Kids' Sake event for Big Brothers Big Sisters) -- have an undeniable emotional appeal, when you see and hear adults and children give personal testimony to the difference that a helping hand can make. Who isn't touched by an expression of gratitude for the time someone makes to be a mentor or for the collective effort involved in literally building a house that's new, clean, safe and warm?

On the other hand, it can sometimes be weary to attend -- or just be invited -- to a seemingly never-ending list of lunches, auctions, receptions, scholarship dinners, etc. (And I'm not even mentioning direct-mail or telephone solicitations.) In this economy, everyone is tapped out. I understand that. At the same time, as someone who's privileged to serve on the inside with some outstanding nonprofits, I know how vital it is that we continue to ask -- individuals, corporations, foundations -- for contributions while also aggressively applying for grants.

In a society like ours, where capitalism and the education system and many other factors result in a a lot of haves but also a lot of have-nots, there will always be the need to provide direct service to people in ways that government cannot. I sound preachy, I know, but on behalf of these three programs and many, many more, any help we can get is appreciated.