April Food Day: Bloggers Fighting Hunger

In December, 2008 the number of Food Stamp participants in the US numbered 31,784,453, the largest number on record. It's also the latest figure available, it that count of nearly 32 million was an increase of over 700,000 from the previous month. That's an enormous number of people.

Food stamps don't come close to feeding someone with anything resembling a balanced diet and food stamp recipients have to make some odd food choices. Check out this video from CNN. A reporter, Sean Callebs, lived on a food stamp budget for a month and in this video he talks about his experience.

Embedded video from CNN Video

Food stamp recipients, and needy people who can't get food stamps, depend on the nation's food banks in ways no one could have imagined a year ago. But the good news is that a dollar in the hands of Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest) can turn into 10 pounds of food for the needy. The need's not unique to the US either. My Canadian readers can participate in April Food Day with a donation to Food Banks Canada. If you'd like to participate in April Food Day, all we're asking is that you donate a buck. That's it. A dollar in the hands of a food bank can turn into seven meals. If you're motivated to give more, know this: $25 will make 75 meals for your needy countrymen. It's not magic but it feels good to make a tangible difference.

You'll see this logo scattered around the Internet as a bunch of us are posting on the same topic today. Whether it's here or somewhere else or on your own in your own time, think about making a donation to the nation's hungry.

Many thanks to Meg Fairfax Fielding from Pigtown Design and Chris Cox from Easy and Elegant Life for putting all this together.

Now remember those links. It's Feeding America in the US, and Food Banks Canada for Canada, obviously. If you'd like to make a donation from or for somewhere else in the world, here's the link to Feed the Children.

Dacor's got a new incentive program

Appliances never go on sale. I've been repeating that for years and to the best of my knowledge, that's a true statement. Consumer-grade appliances regularly run rebate programs, but that's technically not a sale. Luxury appliances not only never go on sale, they never go in for incentives either.

Well in another sign that the times they are a changin', Dacor is running a pretty sweet incentive program through the end of April and they're calling it their All Fired Up promotion. Check this out:

If you buy an Epicure gas range, Dacor will give you a seven piece Dacor Signature cookware set.

If you purchase a cook top and a wall oven,

They'll throw in a free microwave oven

or a warming drawer.

If you purchase a cook top, a wall oven

and a free-standing refrigerator, you'll get either a free microwave oven or a warming drawer and $100.

If you purchase a dual-fuel range and a free-standing refrigerator,

you'll get either a ventilation hood,

a pop-up ventilator,

or an integrated ventilation system plus $100 cash.

If you buy a cook top, a wall oven and a built-in refrigerator, you get either a free microwave oven or a warming drawer plus $300.

If you purchase a dual-fuel range and a built-in refrigerator, you get a free ventilation hood, pop-up ventilator or integrated ventilation system plus $300 cash.

Dacor makes a great appliance, they're not more expensive for the sheer joy of charging you more money --they actually work better than the run-of-the-mill.

Reader question: How do I explain a bidet to a four-year-old?

Help! My husband, my son and I were over at my cousin's new house last weekend and while we were walking around the master bath and oohing and aahing over the size and decor it was hard not to notice that she had one of those things (I blush when I say the word) next to the toilet. I can't help it, every time I see one they just scream out to me "We have lots of s*x and don't shower afterwards." Anyhow, my four-year-old asked why they had two toilets in the bathroom. I was embarrassed and didn't know what to say, so I told him that there were two so that no one had to wait while the other one finished. He said "nasty" and didn't push it any further. But seriously, what do you tell the kids?

Mother of God woman! Part of me wants to be calm and reassuring but an even bigger part of me want to throttle you. I'm really floored by this. I mean really. What the hell kind of a question is that? Based on your description and your shame-based reaction to it, I'm going to assume what you're talking about is a bidet. There, I said it. Bidet. Repeat after me. Bi-day. See? Nothing happened. It's just a word.

Similarly, a bidet is an object and as such it can't good or bad, it just is. Whatever discomfort you feel about bidets is coming from your own sick mind. Bidets don't scream anything. They can't because they're objects. Sex is another word that's just a word. You might have a better grip on what to tell your son if you could bring yourself to spell out the word sex in an e-mail to a stranger. Similarly, penis, vagina and anus are just words. As words they can't be anything but neutral. As body parts they can't be anything other than morally neutral either. What ever meaning or significance they have, their rightness or wrongness, comes from you. They are also the body parts that get washed in a bidet. See? Simple words describing simple, every day acts. No big deal. No cause for alarm. No sweeping statements about my character for the simple act of describing something.

Your skittishness about spelling out the word sex or even writing the word bidet speak of much larger issues you have about your body, other people's bodies and the biological functions those bodies perform. For the sake of your son, please talk to somebody about this stuff. You owe it to him and more importantly, you owe it to yourself. How can you expect to be an effective parent if you can't call things what they are?

So to answer your question, "what do you tell the kids?" The answer is the truth. Tell them the truth about this and about everything else. Rather than making up a lie and getting the response you got (which by the way is the seed of your neuroses taking root in a new generation --good job!), you could have told him something as simple as "some people wash themselves in a bidet." That way, you could have called a thing what it is and you could have told him the truth at the same time. If it led to more questions, then you could have answered them. Truthfully. Pretty simple stuff, really.

And while we're on the subject of the truth, people do use bidets to clean themselves. Really. That's all they're for. Having one doesn't say anything, because it can't. It's a thing if you remember, and things don't talk. So do me a favor if you haven't already stopped reading. The next time you're in the presence of a bidet, climb on board. The Pause that Refreshes will take on a whole new layer of meaning, believe me.

'Tis the season for contests

Everybody's giving away something all of the sudden. Never one to be left out, the gang at Room and Board are running a contest of their own.

Room and Board asked Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, founder of the blog Apartment Therapy to pick four of his favorite Room and Board pieces for small spaces. Now Room and Board is giving away one of those four pieces for each of the four weeks in April. Check out the details here and enter, you may end up with a Jasper sofa for crying out loud.

Unfortunately, the Sawbuck chair I'm showing at the head of this post is by Hans Wegner and it's not one of the prizes. Pooh. I love Wegner chairs above all others.

Back to school

As of Wednesday I'm now a contributor to a blog called School. School is a brand of Igloo Studios, Inc., an LA-based digital media firm. Igloo Studios is an interesting, dynamic company who are heavily involved in the world of 3-D modeling. Under the umbrella of Igloo Studios, Inc. are four distinct brands.

The Blue Marble Project creates models for Google SketchUp and visualizations for Google Earth. Every wonder where all the stuff on Google Earth comes from or who makes many of the models in Google's 3-D warehouse? Well, now you know.

School is the brand closest to me. Igloo Studio's School is their Google SketchUp and Google Earth video training brand. School provides video podcasts, DVDs, live training and a web community for Google SketchUp and Google Earth users.

re:Source offers high-quality video and podcasts on topics surrounding sustainable design and building techniques. 

Igloo Designs is their architectural design services brand.

Igloo Studios is up to a lot of stuff and it's an honor to play a role in their new and improved website for School. You can read my column there, where it will appear regularly. My first installment is right here.