Posts Tagged ‘Bonnie Raitt’

14 Oct

Wear Your Music

Posted by Andrew Mersmann in Inspiration. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Holiday gift ideas are starting to creep up…just like merchandise in stores…waaaaaaaayyyy to early. Remember when Halloween came and went before twinkly lights and fake snow filled the shelves? Now the glowing embers of the Fourth of July have barely cooled before Santa stakes out a corner of a store. This gift idea, however, is a perennial, and would make a great birthday, graduation, anniversary, etc. gift while also doing some profound good.

Wear Your Music gets guitar strings donated by some of the greatest rock and roll players in the world (Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, etc) and then crafts the strings into simple bracelets. 100% of the profits from this oh-so-simple enterprise, go to the musician’s favorite charity of choice. Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, for instance, chose Reverb, a non-profit focusing on musicians and fans taking a stake in a sustainable future. Peter Frampton chose the Music Resource Center of Cincinnati. Jason Mraz profits go to the Surfrider Foundation. Clapton—Crossroads Drug Rehab. Dolly Parton—Imagination Library. Santana—Milagro Foundation, and so on.

It is a great way to embrace music and further the charitable goals of the artists you respect (and find a whole bunch of new foundations and charities as well as you peruse the website).

18 Dec

Redefine Christmas

Posted by Andrew Mersmann in Inspiration, Opportunities. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I love that there’s a real, tangible movement these days to open hearts and exchange some of the materialism of the Christmas season for a greater sense of charity. Of course there is an annual lament for the way the holiday gets branded into oblivion and how red and green department store decorations show up before Halloween candy is even stocked, but there’s a nice, attention grabbing celebrity movement encouraging us to give charitably this year.

Redefine Christmas (also connected to Just Give and Changing the Present: The Thought That Counts) not only brings us video and audio messages from stars encouraging us to ask family and friends to replace at least one gift they might normally purchase for us with, instead, a donation to a charity…there are also user-friendly ways to do just that from the website(s). Send an electronic message/card suggesting the idea to your loved ones, look for your favorite charity or cause or peruse the databanks to find a new passion, and easily spread the word via social networking. Encouragement comes from the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Martha Stewart, Sting, Bonnie Raitt, Jessica Biel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harry Connick Jr., and more.

You may be wrapping up (literally) the last of your shopping, however…one less gift under your own tree may not make much of a difference in your living room, but can completely shift the world for another.