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Posted in And now for something completely different, Blog
Tagged funny nonprofit, funny nonprofit tshirt, funny nonprofit tshirts, Land of Nod, land of nod tshirts, land of non, non-profit tshirt, non-profit tshirts, nonprofit gear, nonprofit merch, nonprofit tshirt, nonprofit tshirts, The Land of Non
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Jew Venalia (or, Disregard the Beauregard)
The church is stuffed beyond the brim
and I must sit upon the floor
behind the final pew.
The ground is cold beneath my hand
and gleams beneath a thick shellac
no bead of sweat could pierce.
And as I sit, my thoughts begin
to wonder if my blood would stain
the floor or wash away.
Some migrant maid, unseen for now,
perhaps would bring her bucket down
to wipe away the grime.
My wrist would slit, the church would clear,
my kids would not be welcome here,
but no stain would remain.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Christian poem, disregard beauregard, Disregard the Beauregard), Jew venalia, poem, poet, poetry, religious poetry, rhymed poem, rhymed poetry, veinal sin, venal, venal sin, venalia, venial sins
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My wife the Super Lawyer!
Super Lawyer Natalie Gregg
It’s official… my wife Natalie Gregg was chosen as one of the top 5% of practicing attorneys in the state of Texas!
Texas Monthly just included Natalie as one of their “Rising Stars” in area of family law. Check it out here:
http://www.superlawyers.com/texas/lawyer/Natalie-Gregg/b6dcb7e3-068d-474f-ab33-c8b0e0777fb7.html
“The Law Office of Natalie Gregg is exclusively focused on the practice of family law, and our mission is to provide North Texas families with the support, guidance and advocacy that they need to overcome the complex emotional and financial issues associated with family law.
Natalie Gregg has dedicated her career to the practice of family law. She is an experienced litigator who combines a great sense of compassion with a dedication to delivering results for her clients. Her collaborative approach also saves clients a significant amount time and money while producing superior results for their entire family — especially for the children.”
While I hope that you will never need my wife’s services, please contact her at 469-519-1026 if you or anyone that you know needs:
- Divorce
- Post-divorce modification
- Child Custody
- Child Support (including renegotiation/modification of current child support)
- Mediation
- Other family law matters
To learn more about The Law Office of Natalie Gregg, please visit http://nataliegregg.com. The sites also includes a host of free legal resources on family law matters.
You can also follow Natalie on Twitter at https://twitter.com/greggnatalie
Reading Christian Wiman’s Latest while My Daughters Play in the Sand (#poem)
digging in
the playground
my daughter
lifts
a solid clump
of sand
aloft
and laughs
then
throws it
away
to see it smash
within the sunshine.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Christian Wyman, Christian Wynan, Me and My Girls, poet, poetry, shadow portrait, wiman, wyman
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Who will win the nonprofit sector’s 10 million votes?
More powerful updates from the inimitable Robert Egger, founder of the DC Central Kitchen, and the V3 Campaign … which has been reborn as the even more awesome, and far more powerful CForward (a PAC aimed at endorsing and supporting political candidates who have a strong platform for engaging the tenth of the economy known as the nonprofit sector):
The nonprofit sector employs around 10 million people.
The sector engages another 90 million people as volunteers.
Collectively, the sector controls about 10% of the GDP. In Texas, the nonprofit sector employs more people than the oil industry.
And yet – none of the politicians asking for our vote have ANY plan for how to engage us, our creativity, our passion, our entrepreneurial spirit . . .
Not YET, at least.
Watch this video from CForward. Then join me in donating to support their work.
Anniversary Poem (after reading Matthew 25:35-36)
Love fills the space between our souls and keeps our hearts from longing;
Love pours across the garden and our blossoms never fade.
Love welcomes us beneath her roof and warms us by her fire;
Love enwraps our naked babes and keeps them safe and warm.
Love salves our wounds with words whose truth drives out all pain and sorrow;
Love erupts in prison walls and frees those locked inside.
Love is the light that drives away the shadows from our blindness –
Love is the song that cracks the stone around our earless hearts –
Love is the scent that wakes us from the slumber of our dullness –
Love is the salt that saves our lives, whose savor is our savior –
Love wraps its wings around us;
Love fills our every pore.
Love has given us nine years: may love bring ninety more!
———————
Happy anniversary, Natalie. I love you deeply, dearly, without end.
On Destiny (#quote from J.R.R. #Tolkien)
J.R.R. Tolkien
“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
Posted in Quotes
Tagged destiny quote, destiny quotes, J.R.R., J.R.R. Tolkien, JR Tolkien, JRR, JRR Tolkien, quote, quote from J.R.R., quote from J.R.R. Tolkien, quotes, Tolkien, tolkien destiny, tolkien destiny quote, tolkien destiny quotes, tolkien on destiny, tolkien quote, Tolkien quotes
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“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden, with audio (#poem #quote)
“
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.”
———–
RELATED: Hayden’s longer piece, “Middle Passage,” is read aloud by the author here (link includes text of poem)
Posted in Quotes
Tagged audio poem, Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass robert hayden, hayden, hayden audio, hayden Frederick Douglass, hayden reading, hayden winter sundays, poem, poet, poet quote, poetry, poetry audio, poetry reading, quote, quotes, robert, robert hayden, robert hayden Frederick Douglass
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Skunk Hour, by Robert Lowell (#poem #quote)
For Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
Nautilus Island’s hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she’s in her dotage.
Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria’s century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.
The season’s ill–
we’ve lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.
And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he’d rather marry.
One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind’s not right.
A car radio bleats,
‘Love, O careless Love . . . .’ I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody’s here–
only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.
I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air–
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.
Posted in Quotes
Tagged bishop lowell, lowell, lwoell, poem, poet, poet lowell, poet quote, poet robert lowell, poetry, quote, quotes, robert lowell, skunk hour
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We are all prisoners (#poem)
The Cleveland Correctional Facility
You are in prison.
Bars block your hands as they reach for freedom.
The air is your arteries — constricted — thumping — heated by the fire of life fighting an undeniable death.
Your dreams slumber beneath the terror of now.
Your thoughts turn not to those you love, nor to those you hate, nor even to yourself — but to the unseeable abyss that lies before you.
Indefinite.
Inescapable.
There.
Your sweat itself is scared and sad and scurrying –
your tongue, too swollen to sing, throbs in your mouth like a dying bird –
your eyes begin to glaze with tears –
your fingers stretch for keys they’ve never seen, but know are there;
you know they’re there.
God almighty – Christ almighty – we know you’re there.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged a prisoner's prayer, cleveland correctional, Cleveland Correctional Facility, cleveland prison, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, faith, god, I was in prison, Mathew 25, Matthew 25, Matthew 25: 36, Matthew 25:35, matthew 25:36, pep, pep poem, PEP poetry, poem about being in prison, poem about prison, poem from prisoner, poem from prisoners, poetry, poetry from prisoner, poetry from prisoners, prayer from prison, prayer from prisoner, prison, prison entrepreneurship program, prison poem, prison poet, prison poetry, prison prayer, prisoner prayer, we are all prisoners
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I am going to prison
I am going to prison in February.
Like each one of you, I am a broken person. My life is filled with bad decisions, poor excuses and moral failings. I was handed an amazing life — a life that I did not deserve — a life that I constantly took it for granted.
I messed up. I made mistakes.
And now I am headed to prison.
But unlike the other 2.3 million people who are currently behind bars, I will be able to leave.
Why? Because I am going there to work.
After months of prayer and conversation with many of you, I am accepting the role of Chief Development Officer for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program. I have been involved with PEP as a volunteer since 2007, and have worked very closely with them in my role as Executive Director of The PLAN Fund. In fact, nearly 40% of our loans went to graduates from PEP (click here to learn more).
I have never seen an organization that can so effectively transform the lives of both its supporters and its clients. That is why I am making this change:
- Nearly 1% of the US population is incarcerated — the highest percentage on the planet.
- Around 45% return to prison after release (usually within 3 years).
- At the time of their arrest, nearly 90% of them are unemployed.
By contrast, less than 10% of PEP’s graduates will re-enter the justice system. 100% are employed within 90 days of release from prison. Best of all, PEP’s graduates have successfully launched around 100 businesses; some are generating over $100,000+ in annual revenues, and are now employing other PEP graduates.
I am deeply excited about this opportunity for me and my family. I invite you to join me in prison, where you can witness the transformational power of this organization within your own heart. I have a number of “Get INTO jail free” cards ready to offer to those of you who want to join me!
See you in prison!
Take 3 minutes to learn more about PEP at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcuFknerurk&feature=youtu.be
Posted in Blog
Tagged entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, ex-offender entrepreneur, greg prison, gregg pep, gregg prison, jeremy, jeremy greg, Jeremy Gregg, jeremy gregg pep, jeremy gregg prison, jeremy pep, jeremygregg pep, jgregg@pep.org, pep, plan fund pep, prison, prison entrepreneurship, prison entrepreneurship program, prison jeremy, prison MBA
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To My Daughter, Before She Turns Three (#poem)
I pat your back until you fall asleep,
then place my thumb against your shoulder’s edge
and stretch my hand until my fingers reach
the other side of your still tiny frame.
I rest my palm against the place where we
pretend that angels’ wings rise from your back,
and, in my mind, I see the day when you
will truly fly off from this nest we’ve made.
Tonight, the moon was shaped into a grin
that seemed to grow each time you called aloud:
“The moon! The moon! It’s smiling, Daddy! Look!”
And though I know the science of this scene,
I cannot help but wish that it were true:
that anywhere you’ll go, this moon will follow you.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged birthday, birthday poem for child, birthday poem for daughter, children growing up, fatherhood, fatherhood poem, growing up, Harper, Harper Gregg, parenting, parenting poem, poem, poem about child, poem about daughter, poem about parenting, poem for baby, poem for daughter, poem for girl, poet, poetry
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10 Things a #Nonprofit Should Know About Using Social Media
It’s almost 2012. I am not going to write about why your organization needs to integrate social media into its communications plan; if you can’t answer that for yourself by now, I can’t help you.
But if you’re like most nonprofiteers, you’re already doing this: you just want to do it better. If that’s you, then here are ten pieces of advice that should help you:
- Social media is about relationships, not transactions. Don’t expect to see donations immediately spike when you launch a social media campaign.
- These relationships are long-term, not short-term. You are going to need to put in a lot of time and energy to make them successful.
- Nothing is free. The time that you and your staff spend on social media is a direct cost associated with it.
- Integration is critical. There is no point to having a social media presence (a Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel) if it is not integrated into your company’s Web site.
- Blogging is social. Just because the world seems to be talking only about Facebook and Twitter, don’t forget about blogging. Some of the best ways to use Facebook, Twitter and others is to drive traffic to your company’s blog.
- Make sharing easy! On your blog and on every page on your company’s site (especially on pages that feature client stories/pictures/videos), ensure that you have buttons to allow readers to easily share on the major social networks.
- Create viral content. Try to use your social media efforts to create content that people want to share.
- Establish your subject matter expertise. Don’t just talk about yourself and how great you are; willingly share your knowledge about the industry in which you operate. This is a great way for donors to see that you are the real deal.
- Turn your donors into your fundraisers. Create campaigns that encourage your donors to recruit their own contacts to follow your social media sites; for example, have a giveaway/raffle to give a prize to one random follower once you reach 1,000 followers on Twitter. Maybe see if you can get a local company to donate one of their products in return for some PR — an iPad? A TV? A weekend at a hotel?
- Be authentic. No one wants to read a bunch of ad copy on a social media site. Have a personality to your tweets/status updates. It helps if you have one dedicated person to write the content in their own voice.
Thanks for what you are doing for your organization. Building engaging, long-term relationships with donors is not easy… but the next generation of staff/board at your organization will be grateful that you did it.
