I was so excited to discover that my favorite NGO, Burmese-run GHRE (recently renamed Foundation for Education and Development) is listed on Global Giving’s site. Well, to be clear, one of their initiatives — helping send elementary-aged children of migrant workers to attend school (GHRE-run “learning centers” in Southern Thailand) to prepare them for integration into Thai schools — is being promoted. This is really important because these kids otherwise have to go with their parents to help work on the rubber plantations or construction sites; and a lot of kids who attend learning centers still have to work after age 12, so it’s really crucial that they receive at least this limited education. PLEASE DONATE! Please please please!

I was there in 2006 and again in 2007, and visited many of the learning centers. They are really invaluable for these kids, especially for many orphans or children whose parents have been suddenly deported to Burma. Also, the lunches they provide (home cooked!) are awesome. The kids learn English, Thai, Burmese, Math, Health, and Buddhism in some cases. See DD’s photogallery to get a better sense of how amazing the schools and the children are, or my photos from my first GHRE visit. Note that most learning centers are thatched-roof, wall-less structures with donated desks and chairs, and they are usually somewhat hidden near rubber plantations so that the authorities won’t give them a hard time for helping the children of (often undocumented) Burmese migrants. I can’t urge you enough to support them! Make it a Christmas gift for someone!

UPDATE:
As per an email from the org director H.T., there is a deadline (12/23) and a fundraising goal ($4000), so act now!

FED-GHRE has been accepted to participate in the Global Giving
Challenge that runs from November 24th – December 23rd 2009. GHRE
needs to raise $4000 through at least 50 separate donors to gain a
permanent place on the Global Giving Website so we can gain further
support in all our worthwhile projects! Check out our website for more
information: www.ghre.org

Please help us by following this link and donating a minimum of $10 /
to our education project in the Khuk khak area that currently supports
265 students.

Oh, The Onion, you’re so funny.

How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son

*by DD, as part of our Living Room Studio series (upcoming on studiocrux.com)

Shameless plug: my friend J. recently put up a site of some of his photos, largely nature stuff. Check it out.

I feel like I’m in a vortex and kind of way behind on things and also surrounded by bubble wrap where everything looks a little fuzzy and I’m unable to move much. If that makes any sense.

Other than that, I am awed by the beauty of all these full trees that have turned completely bright yellow, and urban nature in general. Yesterday afternoon, passing from one MIT building to another, a large grey owl swooped down out of nowhere over my head and onto a tree branch. I got to watch it flap its wings slowly before it landed, and could almost feel the wind coming off its feathers. Perched high in the tree, I looked up at it, and it looked down at me, and I smiled, and we just stayed like that for a minute. And then I went inside because I had to. Autumn is flying but at least there are these perfect moments.

:: nunca seré un miserable, no. no lo lograras. y empezara…

While other people were helping translate a lot of my footage, I took a break from editing the epic Peru documentary, but now I’m back at it, importing transcriptions into FCP clip markers. I have yet to go through the additional footage from my Flip, the stuff I shot ostensibly ‘for fun,’ but here’s one: an HD still from the ocean view out my window in Lima, as reflected off P.’s bedroom window. I like it because it looks more like a memory than a physical location. I thought at some point the longing for this place would go away, but it hasn’t.

by J.L. Borges

We said goodbye on a corner in Once. From the other sidewalk I turned to look back; you too had turned, and you waved goodbye to me.

A river of vehicles and people were flowing between us. It was five o’clock on an ordinary afternoon. How was I to know that that river was Acheron the doleful, the insuperable?

We did not see each other again, and a year later you were dead.

And now I seek out that memory and look at it, and I think it was false, and that behind that trivial farewell was infinite separation.

Last night I stayed in after dinner and reread, in order to understand these things, the last teaching Plato put in his master’s mouth. I read that the soul may escape when the flesh dies.

And now I do not know whether the truth is in the ominous subsequent interpretation, or in the unsuspecting farewell.

For if souls do not die, it is right that we should not make much of saying goodbye.

To say goodbye to each other is to deny separation. It is like saying “today we play at separating, but we will see each other tomorrow.” Man invented farewells because he somehow knows he is immortal, even though he may seem gratuitous and ephemeral.

Sometime, Delia, we will take up again – beside what river? – this uncertain dialogue, and we will ask each other if ever, in a city lost on a plain, we were Borges and Delia.