7th Gen Blog

In case you missed this hot in-house news item… If you’ll look to the immediate left here, in the Captivating Column of Divinely Inspirational Thingamabobs (apologies for the technical jargon), you’ll see up top there that (cue thunderous applause and raucous cheering)...

That's right. The Inspired Protagonist has been nominated for the Blogger’s Choice Award for Best Corporate Blog. Now I know it’s a honor just to be nominated. But if nominations are an honor, what's it like to win? Let’s find out, shall we?

To do that, you guys are going to have to vote because that’s the way this one works: whosoever gets the most votes from their adoring public wins. There are no judges. No juries. Just a ballot box stuffed as full as we can all conceivably get it. So when you’ve got a second or two, head over to the Blogger’s Choice Awards and cast your vote for inspirational protagonism. It’s pretty simple. Just click the little gold “vote” button under our current “total votes” tally. A quick registration and an e-mail later, and you’re in. A couple of clicks after that, and you’re there. Enough clicks and we win. It’s simplicity itself.

Right now we’re #4 with a bullet and just three votes from the number #3 position. Currently, it looks like Google and Southwest Airlines are rallying the troops to maintain the number one and two spots, but they’re not nearly as inspired as we are. Let’s show ‘em how it’s done.

Lara’s post about our weekend in NOLA reminds me that Sheila, Our Grande Dame of Donational Doings, has lately been feeding me her own tales of altruism in action, and they’re well worth a recap. It’s great to be able to give deserving causes some much-needed help and to make smiles grow as fundamental part of doing business. After all, companies and individuals who fail to give something back to the communities that make their successes possible really can’t be considered a success at all. With that in mind…

We recently gave $2,000 to Bike Recycle Vermont This organization collects old bikes, trains disadvantaged teenagers and adults to repair and restore them,

We’re getting worried about the bees. And not just about the bees but about what the bees are trying to tell us.

If you haven’t heard, honeybees are mysteriously disappearing. Whole colonies just vanishing like some apian Roanoke. It’s deeply weird. All the worker bees in a hive fly off for a day’s work and never return. No bodies. No clues. No bees.

It’s Earth Day. That annual rite of spring where everyone becomes an environmentalist for at least a moment or two. For those of us who prefer to wear the label year-round (and increasingly that’s most of us), it’s a fitting occasion to pause for a moment, get out the imaginary camera, and take a virtual snapshot of sorts of today’s moment in time.

Such photos can tell us more than might be thought. For the big picture itself can often be found hiding in the details that the smaller image captures. So as we open the shutter and capture the light, what does our Earth Day photo say? That people are talking. People are thinking. People are acting. Awareness is reaching critical mass. That, above all else, is the reason to celebrate. Change is arriving. Here are the latest clues:

Let’s begin with a simple question: Why Earth Day? Here are a million wonderful, beautiful, magnificent, miraculous reasons you won’t find anywhere else. And that’s literally only about the half of it.

Weird weather? Melting mountains? Perspiring permafrost? Soaring sea levels? Color me officially concerned. Which is why it’s heartening to find our fellow Americans at last waking up and smelling the climatological coffee.