Guess Who's is Quoted in Make It Better!

Do you read Make It Better? It's a wonderful magazine with the sole mission of making it easy for people to make the world better. In fact, to date, the magazine has made 67,173 lives better and helped to raise $1,464,657 for its partner non-profits, according to the Make It Better website.

I enjoy reading Make It Better, follow the magazine on Twitter, and am a fan on Facebook.

A few months ago, the magazine posted the question "Who or what on the North Shore makes you happy?" on its Facebook page and I commented that I love "sitting on the swings on the beach in Lake Forest."

It's true. I do. I love swinging on the swings at the Lake Forest Beach. It's been one of my favorite activities since my days at Lake Forest College. Looking out over the water while swinging always brings me a sense of calmness and allows me to release all my stress. Swinging on the swings is a simple pleasure from childhood that I think most adults don't do enough of, but put a swing set in front of me and I'll hop on. I don't care where it's located, but it's it's on the beach, I dare you to try to get me off the swings.

Anyway, this month, Make It Better selected nine of its favorite responses to print in the magazine. One of my co-workers brought my new fame to my attention a couple of weeks ago. I honestly had no idea my happy place was being shared with readers all around the North Shore.

Frankly, I'm relieved they didn't shorten or revise my quote. Just think how "swinging on the Lake Forest Beach makes me happy" would have sounded! ;)

You can read my quote on page 86 below. And yes, that's Julia Sweeney formerly of Saturday Night Live on the cover. She lives in Evanston and writes a delightful blog.

Open publication - Free publishing

Jessica: The Movie

Now, I fully realize that the title of this blog post scares the living daylights out of a few of you, but it's true. I have a movie!

Truthfully, I didn't know anything about it until my blog buddy and Facebook friend, Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein (seriously, go read this man's brilliant blog) sent me an email yesterday with a picture of the movie poster.

Jessica (1962) starred Angie Dickinson. Here's the Netflix summary:

When the men of a Sicilian village start obsessing over ravishing blonde midwife Jessica (Angie Dickinson), angry females revolt by refusing to have sex with their husbands. As the local priest (Maurice Chevalier) tries to encourage procreation, Jessica falls for a tricky recluse (Gabriele Ferzetti). An adaptation of a Flora Sandstrom novel, this charming comedy also features Noel-Noel as a matchmaking old-timer.

Almost surprisingly, it doesn't appear to have won any awards.

But check out the poster. I'd say it sums me up nicely...

Bizarre Facebook Ads

You know those ads in the sidebar on Facebook that everyone ignores? Well, okay, I ignore them. Not once have I ever clicked on one of them, partly because they never apply to me (so much for their targetted advertising), but more because I never click on banner ads for anything.

The ad below caught my eye tonight.

Nursing School Online

Too busy to go back to school? You can graduate from school online. Finish your degree at your own pace. ClassesUSA.

I have to be honest. This ad simply frightens me. It's not that I'm a snob and think the only acceptable way to get an education is to sit in classes in some ivy-covered building. I don't think that. In fact, I think that it's great that there are so many options for people to further their education these days and have even taken advantage of online classes myself.

What scares the living daylights out of me is the picture in the ad. I don't know about you, but I don't want to wake up in a hospital with that guy standing over me ready to give me a shot of anything. Maybe it's just me, but that face doesn't scream "I've got a warm and fuzzy bedside manner."

Do you think?

Lake Forest Day on Facebook

Today is Lake Forest Day on Facebook. Inspired by the generosity of Grace Groner '31 last week and the way that story went viral on the internet, in the media, and especially all over Facebook, my friend Derek at the College has organized a day for all alums, friends, faculty, and families to show their own love for LFC through donating to the Annual Fund and then bragging about it on Facebook.

As Derek said in his email, "Grace made a tremendous gift that will help some of our students realize their dreams of studying abroad. But there are many other programs that need funding, and for that, we rely on hundreds of smaller gifts from people like you."

Put another way by Grace's attorney, Bill Marlatt, on Little Merry Sunshine last week, "You hit on the meaning of her gift when you responded with a desire to help the College. None of us are self made. We have all been helped along over the years. Groner Fellows will have an obligation to help and mentor other fellows coming after them. People sometimes ask who owns a college. Well it is owned by those who have graduated from it. It is strong when this shared resource is given to others." (emphasis mine)

Grace lived her life in such a way that her legacy will impact many future generations of Foresters. While her gift is impressive and makes us all proud to be Foresters, it's not enough. Even though we may not have $7 million to give today, we can each do a little. And when we each do a little on a consistent basis, that adds up to a lot and makes all the difference.

Even though I've already made my annual donation to the College, I'm making another one today because I believe so strongly in helping other students achieve their dreams. I've made no secret of the fact that I would never have been able to attend Lake Forest without the generous financial aid package I was given each of my four years. While some of my financial aid came in the form of loans and state and federal grants, a good portion of it came from Lake Forest College alumni who had generously donated over the years. As a result, I believe that I have an obligation to help other students have the incredible opportunities I had by supporting programs on campus through donations to the Annual Fund.

Sometimes, when I think back on my life and ask some of those "what if" questions, I wonder what if I'd gone to the other school I was deciding between rather than Lake Forest. How much more debt would I have had because all they offered me were loans? Would I still keep in touch with my professors the way I keep in touch with professors at LFC? Would members of the administration still know me by name all these years later? Would I have learned to take risks the way I did at LFC and graduated knowing how to have faith that the net would appear when I jumped and if it didn't how to pick myself up and start over? I have a number of friends who went to that other school I was considering and based on their experiences, I'd have to say the answer to each of those questions is no.

Lake Forest College holds a special place in my heart and I imagine it holds a special place in the hearts of other many Foresters, as well.

If you're one of those Foresters or if you're just moved by my love for my alma mater, please visit the Alumni Gateway and make a donation today. Remember, a little does a lot, so any size donation you make will have a big impact. Oh, and brag about it on Facebook*. Let's paint Facebook Red and Black today.

*When you choose to brag about your donation on Facebook, the post just says you made a donation with a picture of the College's logo. No one will know how much you donated.

Little Merry Sunshine is on Facebook!

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Little Merry Sunshine on Facebook

Life Imitates Art or Check Your Facebook Settings NOW!

Remember the song "Escape - The Pina Colada Song" by Rupert Holmes from the mid-1970s? You don't? I'm the only one who likes super-cheesy screwed up love songs from the 1970s? Oh, okay. You don't have to admit it.

Anyway, if you honestly don't remember or you weren't born then, let me refresh your memory. "Escape - The Pina Colada Song" is about a man who is bored in his marriage. Sitting in bed one night, he opens up the paper to the personals (These were in the Classifieds section of the newspaper, for all you young whippersnappers, and were the 1970s version of Match.com.) and found an ad that piqued his interest. The woman sounded perfect. She was everything that was missing from his marriage. He wrote a letter to the woman and set up a date to meet her at a bar. When he walked in to the bar, sitting on a barstool was his wife. Needless to say, it brought some magic back into their marriage, which is more than I would think would happen in real life, which it kind of did . . .

Fast forward to 2009. A husband and wife are both registered on Facebook and one day the husband opens up his Facebook account to see a sidebar ad for "Hot Singles Near You!" The picture in the ad? His wife. Oops.

Now this isn't a story about a wife (or husband) looking for love in all the wrong places (yep, I'm gonna squeeze in every single cheesy 1970s song reference I can!). It's actually a story about Facebook privacy settings. Check yours. You may be unwittingly allowing Facebook to use your picture in their ads, like the wife in this story. She had failed to pay attention to her Facebook settings and allowed Facebook to use pictures of her in their ads that were shown to her friends.

Personally, I don't want Facebook to do that with my pictures. I don't want to be endorsing things I'm not really endorsing. So I've opted-out of all Facebook ads and so should you. I mean, what if that happened to you and your boss saw it? It's probably not the message you want to send, even mistakenly. It's simple really. Just 6 short steps.

How to opt-out of Facebook ads:

1. Click Settings at the top right of your screen;
2. Choose Privacy;
3. Select News Feed and Wall;
4. Then Facebook Ads;
5. Almost done when you check Appearance in Facebook Ads;
6. Finally choose No one.

Fortunately, in this real life scenario, both the husband and wife had a decent sense of humor. It could have turned out badly.