philanthropy

My friend and former co-worker Matt Kelly had a piece published in the Boston Globe's Ideas section over the weekend:

MASSACHUSETTS HAS a tough reputation to live down with the rest of the nation: loony-left liberals, lousy drivers, failed presidential candidates. To top it all off, everyone thinks we're cheap bastards, too.

Blame the Generosity Index. Published every November since 1997 by the Catalogue for Philanthropy, a Boston-based group that promotes charitable giving, this index ranks states by average income and then by average donations to charity; the difference between those two numbers is a state's "generosity gap." When you rank states yet again based on that gap, Massachusetts inevitably places dead last or near to it, along with most of New England. ... but it isn't necessarily true.

I did my own small charitable thing today, actually. Unusual for me, I'm not usually much into the whole philanthropy thing. Over the weekend I picked up a couple magazines and some Starbucks coffee and today shipped the package out to a soldier in Iraq from this site. Figure it will get there well after the holidays, but still might be appreciated ...

In other news, I also bought a plane ticket to New Zealand today! I'll be gone Feb. 1 -22, visiting my mom & sister for the first time in two years.