John Quincy Adams - the first Tweeter

The Massachusetts Historical Society has since 2009 been tweeting a line a day from the journals of the 6th President of the United States, John Quincy Adams.


President Adams fils (son) has kept a journal since boyhood, having been encouraged to do so by his father, President John Adams, who also kept a journal and authored many essays and letters. In fact, this Adams family has been a goldmine for scholars of the early history of the United States of America since members in this family (including the women) documented many aspects of their lives - domestic and political, which at times were one and the same.

It turns out even further that President Adams fils also mantained a journal where he recorded what happened in his life, but only using about one line a day - clearly the ancestor of tweeting. It is from this journal that a project was set up to actually tweet these lines on the date that they were written (some 200 years to the date later) daily.



The Twitter handle is: http://twitter.com/#!/JQAdams_MHS.



The link to the Massachusetts Historical Society project: http://www.masshist.org/adams/jqa.php.

Why I participate in the Walk For Hunger – anyway I can

The Walk For Hunger is an annual event organized by Project Bread, one of Massachusetts’ premiere organizations working on the frontlines to combat hunger in the state.

It began as a way to raise funds to support Project Bread’s work way back in 1969, by a small but intrepid group.  Almost 43 years later, the Walk For Hunger raises raises hundreds of thousands of  dollars through its walkers, which is no longer a small and intrepid group but a huge and intrepid group.
I count myself as one of the them.

Ever since the day a representative from Project Bread came to my high school and told us about hunger in Massachusetts and how we mere high school students could take action to help in the fight against it, I’ve walked all 20 miles, collected money, volunteered with registration and spread the word about the work that Project Bread and other organizations that fight hunger.

It never gets old for me, though at times it can be hard.

I hate that while we have made strides in how we deliver food to people in need and that we are being more nutritionally responsible to those who receive that food, the demand increases every year.
I hate that the more people try to get ahead, the more people have to decide between food and shelter, let alone food and dreams.

Nevertheless, the fight goes on and I am committed to it.  We are all just one job, one wage cut, one medical expense, one catastrophic event away from hunger.

Please give to Project Bread to support it’s work to make sure that residents in Massachusetts of all walks of life are little less hungry today than they were yesterday:
http://www.projectbread.org/site/PageServer?pagename=donate_main

Hiding

People are surprisingly good at hiding.  We hide because we have an image to maintain.  We hided because we don't want to spend years trying to take back our identity from identity thieves.  We hide because we fear things like the truth or being confronted with the truth. 

Sometimes hiding is necessary.  Sometimes you need to hole up and come out renewed again. 

Many times hiding is just delaying the inevitable: the inevitable reveal, the day or event that you fear.

The one of the tricks as always is knowing when to hide and when not to.  A larger trick is knowing that all the hiding in the world will not make the world go away so you have to deal with whatever stuff is left behind.