Art, Tie Dye, LouFest, and Running Totals

Busy weekend over August 24-26, 2012.  Hung out at the Midwest Salute To The Arts, The Shanti & KDHX Tie Dye Fundraiser, and LouFest.  Pretty neat.  Got to help out artists on Friday and Sunday and talk with them.  Got to meet a neat lady that makes didgeridoos.  Also tore down the event and consolidated rental equipment and electrical cords.

The Shanti and KDHX tie dye event was cool.  Got to tie dye a few shirts for other volunteer events.  Turned out pretty well.  Pretty simple process of scrunching up your shirt and wrapping rubber bands where you want them.  It's kinda cool knowing that I can now tie dye my own shirts.  The "tie dye" shirts you can buy at the store seem so generic.  They all look the same.  When you actually do your own tie dye you get the imperfections and that's the way it should be.  No two shirts should ever be the same.  Similar at most but very unique and different.  A lot like boomerangs in that regard.  No two boomerangs should ever be exactly the same, as much as they look like it.  Boomerangs should fly similar but different.  All part of the fun in tie dye and boomerangs.

Got to hang out at LouFest.  Saw Little Barrie, Son Volt, Phantogram, and Dinosaur Jr.  Lots of great music at the event.  Meet a lot of fans of KDHX as well.  Gave away a lot of stickers, fans, and station info.  Even wandered the crowds to give away stickers.  The musician were very melodious and gave me an idea for a new KDHX give away.  The idea has been passed up to the station folks and we shall see where it goes.

I do enjoy the process of spending a weekend volunteering at local events and radio stations.  It gives people a chance to meet their community.

On a side note, it does get me to wonder about organized service groups.  I am a member of the Kiwanis and frequently hear about Rotary.  Seems like they are all in need of members but I still never hear about them, at least from members themselves.  If I weren't a member of Kiwanis, I probably would not know about them, nor Rotary.  Attendance policy is another story.

Think I will try to include stats of how far I've gone hour wise with volunteering as I do them.  I'm not going to retroactivly update posts but I will continue them forward from here.  Therefore I will give the stats as of the details of this post.  Started logging at the 2011 Midwest Salute To The Arts last August.  Moving forward I will only post the cumulative for 2012 and then at some point stand out the year end total.

The totals as of the completion of these events are:
Event year (Aug 2011 to Aug 2012 Midwest Salute To The Arts): 330 hours
Cumulative 2012: 247

Change The World

Changing the world is not as hard as it seems.  It does not matter if you're the small fish in the pond or the top dog.  We can all do things that can have an impact on the world.  It can be the little thing such as picking up a piece of litter.  The little things count even if no one is around to observe it.  You can make a different.

The cool stuff I'm doing, you can do to.  You can have the influence over your world.  You can be the person behind the scenes too.  It does not have to start out as some big thing that you have to organize.  There are organizations out there that are out to improve situations of the community and the world.  The Kiwanis, Rotary, or United Way are all great places to start out volunteering and making a difference.  Alternatively if you feel shy and reluctant to meet up with new strange people you can work on it with the Toastmasters.

Anyway's I'm going to be at the KDHX radio station tonight (7p to 9p) and tomorrow (5pm to 7pm).  Give me a call and support a great radio station.  The number is 314-664-3688.