Good Tidings We Bring

I got a little 'calculator" thing from the Red Campaign. You plug in the Red campaign items you've purchased and it tells you what you bought has really bought. Then you get a card:

So by pandering to my greed and sense of style, I've been able to help two hundred women. By tapping into my sense giving rather than receiving this Christmas, I've COMPLETELY paid for pre and post op care, surgery, some education and a new set of clothes for two women in Africa. It took so little and changed almost nothing in my life. That makes you really consider, doesn't it, how great the need is when one can do so little and yet impact so many.

That has motivated me to come out of my blogging reclusiveness to post that good news. I'm not dead, I merely have a post traumatic concussion issue which makes me excessively tired. I sleep very hard these days and I definitely am getting better but it's not easy for me to write. I got home relatively early this evening (if 7 is relatively early) and began burning DVDs to clean out my overburdened TiVo. I transferred last year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction for U2. I loved Bruce Springsteen's brilliant and very entertaining speech, which you can read here if you are so inclined.

But a part of Bono's speech brought me to tears, I'm not sure if I ever really noticed this part the first time I saw it. I probably should have saved this post for MLK Day but I frankly probably won't remember to do it (I have a broken brain, after all). What brought me to tears is I either already knew this story (which I don't believe I do) so much as I knew what the point of the story would be. At this point in his speech, Bono had used 'Kodak moments' to describe each member of the band but was saving the best for last - Adam Clayton. This Kodak moment is centered around the song "Pride", which I typically refer to as a "cookie break" song (so overplayed that it's time to have a cookie rather than sit there and watch/endure it). The third verse which Bono refers to in this speech is (with poetic license against historical facts)

Early morning, April four

A shot rings out in the Memphis sky

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

Anyway, this is from Bono's speech at the induction:

Third Kodak moment. 1987. Somewhere in the south. We'd been campaigning for Dr. King, for his birthday to become a national holiday. In Arizona, they are saying no. We're campaigning very hard for Dr. King. Some people don't like it. Some people get very annoyed. Some people want to kill us. Some people are taken very seriously by the FBI. They tell the singer that he shouldn't play the gig because tonight his life is at risk, and he must not go on stage. And the singer laughs. Of course we're playing the gig. Of course we go onstage, and I'm singing "Pride (In the Name of Love)" -- the third verse -- and I close my eyes. And you know, I'm excited about meeting my maker, but maybe not tonight. I don't really want to meet my maker tonight. I close my eyes and when I look up I see Adam Clayton standing in front of me, holding his bass as only Adam Clayton can hold his bass. There are people in this room who'd tell you they'd take a bullet for you, but Adam Clayton would have taken a bullet for me. I guess that's what its like to be in a truly great rock and roll band.

OK, I'm going to land of nod now. InspiRED.