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I was delighted to see that Spotlight Radio replayed its wonderful segment about Daily Mitzvah today. Welcome, Spotlight Radio listeners! (And thank you to Feedjit for providing such excellent visitor stats.) For those who aren't familiar with it, Spotlight Radio online has a Special English program (the BBC used to do this, too) with clear and not-fast English language programs for listeners around the world. (I wish I could find a program like this in Special French so I could improve my own language skills.)The radio segment is called “Acts of Kindness.” It talks about why I started this blog and also mentions some of my posts.
Listeners: To find the posts that the program mentions, just click here.
This made my day. Thank you, Spotlight Radio!
I was taking a break from grading a massive pile of papers and checking out the blog stats — I like to see how folks get here — when I noticed a visitor all the way from Brazil had arrived via a link to Daily Mitzvah on Spotlight Radio. Being a radio fan myself (and also childishly delighted when someone links to the blog) I skedaddled right over. It turns out Spotlight Radio has a Special English program (the BBC used to do this, too) with clearly enunciated and not-fast programs for listeners around the world. (I wish I could find a program like this in Special French so I could practice, but that’s another story.)Anyhoo, Spotlight Radio did a very sweet segment on Daily Mitzvah, called “Acts of Kindness,” talking about why I started this blog and mentioning some of the posts. You can check it out here.
This made my day. Thank you, Spotlight Radio!
I didn’t learn about Earth Hour until Friday, when an email message arrived from M’Powering Madison. But it was still fun to participate — a Reuters article suggests we weren’t the only ones: 380 towns and cities in 35 countries, including 3500 businesses and up to 30 million people tuned off non-essential lights for an hour yesterday, to call attention to global warming. I also noticed Gooogle pitched in by “going dark” on their search page (with an all-black background and a link to an event description) to draw attention to the event.
A contrarian blogger noted candles emit more C02 than the average bulb. I wasn’t sure I believed this, but I decided we would forgo candles as well. For light during Earth Hour at my house, we just used a crank-powered flashlight propped up on a table. The nice part, though, was the opportunity to bring out a hand-cranked radio I received for Christmas a few years ago. It worked great — we even received Radio Havana’s English service on a very clear signal on one of the radio’s shortwave bands. After the international news from Cuba, we explored the dial and stumbled upon a CBS Studio One radio play from the 1940s: Marcel Pagnol’s “Topaz.” The local NPR station runs Old Time Radio Drama on Saturday nights — I have to say, we were immediately hooked and extended Earth Hour an extra half hour to hear the end of the program!
It was easy — and fun — to unplug everything and just chill out with the radio. I also loved that our light and radio were running on hand-cranked power. Now I’m curious to find out if I can locate some solar-powered or other non-electric lights, even small ones, so we can do this more often.
Today’s mitzvah: How might you make energy reduction fun today?
I was delighted to see that Spotlight Radio replayed its wonderful segment about Daily Mitzvah today. Welcome, Spotlight Radio listeners! (And thank you to Feedjit for providing such excellent visitor stats.) For those who aren't familiar with it, Spotlight Radio online has a Special English program (the BBC used to do this, too) with clear and not-fast English language programs for listeners around the world. (I wish I could find a program like this in Special French so I could improve my own language skills.)
