Maps

I've kind of realized my life is defined by obsessions. Is obsessions a bad word? Maybe. What I mean is that everything is intensified these days. I love passionately, get passionately angry, dedicate myself completely and wholly to something, or nothing at all. I'm hitting both sides of the spectrum pretty hard, with not a whole lot in between. That's a little weird, right? Anyway, my point was, maps. I am so obsessed with maps right now. Something about really old, wrinkly, brownish maps drawn in pen and ink has stolen my heart. I want an original, or a bunch of them, but turns out original maps from the 1800s are kinda expensive.

Anyway, I think this all started when perusing the library with a dear friend of mine, Morgan Brown, and I happened upon a book called The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. I took it home with me, and devoured it little by little until I was in love with science and cartography and children and secret tunnels and running away from home. This kid, although fictional, is an absolute genius!, and basically embodied the right kind of dedications that I wish I had. For instance, he does what he loves and it turns into art. A lot of me doing what I love turns into wasting a lot of time.

Anyway, for some reason this weekend I started thinking about these maps again, and how much I'd just love to completely wallpaper my walls with really old maps of explorations and the like. And then I found this.........American Memory from the Library of Congress. Clearly this website was sent directly to me from the heavens at a pivotal point in my life. Currently I am downloading maps like crazy and trying to find a cheap way to get them printed in ridiculously large sizes. Thus, wallpapering my walls with mystery and adventure, and of course, beauty. Because our world is beautiful and mysterious and full of love, and I am obsessed with all of these things.

Love, Jennifer

funds.

Just so you're warned, I'm about to get all preachy. Which I hate doing, but another thing I hate is the senselessness I often feel our country/the world is heading towards.

So sunday was the Super Bowl, just declared by ESPN to be the most watched TV show EVER. The main event (if you weren't aware) was all of the commercials in between the actual game, as a cost of approximately $3.1 million dollars per 30-second spot was spent on each commercial. By my best guesses, there were about 60 commercials, totaling the outrageous sum of $186 million dollars spent on trying to sell the American public some kind of product. One hundred and eighty-six million dollars. 1 8 6 0 0 0 0 0 0. (that's nine figures; that's a lot).

If there are 60 companies willing to throw away $3.1 million trying to get your attention for 30 seconds, fine. What just kills me is this...

ONE.org tells me there are approximately one billion (1,000,000,000) undernourished individuals in the world today. As one example, Ethiopia alone has 100,000 severely malnourished children. That's children alone, and only counting the ones who qualify as severely malnourished.

To put that in perspective, the $186,000,000 spent on advertising could be divided up to equal a contribution of $1860 per child. That's an astronomical sum considering current living conditions in Ethiopia. Another way to look at it would be giving each of these severely malnourished children a portion of lifesaving nutrient-dense food every single day for over five years. 100,000 people could be fed for five years.

If not Ethiopia, then 186,000,000 of the world's hungry could be given food for a day.

Or, if not food, disease prevention. At a contribution of 50 cents per person, 372,000,000 individuals could be protected against all seven Neglected Tropical Diseases (including things like bacterial and fungal infections), coverage that would last them an entire year. That's over a third (37%) of the entire world's current need. Check out this post on ONE, or this website (see comments) from an organization dedicated to eradicating NTDs.

I could keep going with all of this for awhile, but I think that'll do. With approximately 106,000,000 million viewers of the Super Bowl, an average of $1.75 was spent on each person, all to moderately entertain Americans for about 30 minutes total. Kind of ridiculous, no?

Oh, and let's not forget, this is for the 2010 Super Bowl alone.

ONE

UNICEF

Love, Jennifer

PS (Feb 9)... Corrected a couple of my facts. In my rush to make sense of a whole lot of information gathered from various sources I made a couple small mistakes. Fixed.