You can still see The 2nd Annual Doctors Without Borders Silent Art Auction at MCoffee in Half Moon Bay until December 29 at noon. At that point the bids will close. We are at around $1,500 so far, up $500 from last years event. Even if you are not in the market for art, please go take a gander at this terrific showing of 21 local coastside artists. Most of them took on the challenge to create a new piece over 30 days which focused on the idea of a “gift of peace”. Below you will see an art sampling slide show.

And just to give you an idea of what your donation to Doctors Without Borders can buy:

• $35 buys 2 meals a day for 200 children
• $50 buys vaccinations for 50 people against meningitis, measles, polio or other deadly epidemics
• $100 buys infection-fighting antibiotics to treat nearly 40 wounded children
• $500 buys a medical kit containing basic drugs, supplies, equipment, and dressings to treat 1,500 patients for three months
• $1000 buys emergency medical supplies to aid 5,000 disaster victims for an entire month

This video resonated with me. It is quite scary how art and music are being neglected in our schools.  

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.  

Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. It’s a message with deep resonance. Robinson’s TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006.

“Yet if the situation is logically hopeless, then we have arrived at a logistical threshold at which the need for a change and the thrust forward toward complexification can allow for the transformations  that could bring metasystems into being. It is when a situation is logically impossible that novelty and creativity, which always trancends logic, can arise.” – Edgar Morin, from his book Homeland Earth

Thanks Shirley for this quote!

I thought this was fascinating! Interesting input from the new generation. Mostly I love the creativity of these kids!

The Laptop Club 
When is your kid old enough to use a computer? Even “wired” moms are leery of letting the little ones go at it lest they become addicted, but now comes The Laptop Club, a bunch of 7-to-9-year-olds (mostly girls) at a North Carolina Montessori after-school program, who draw their own keyboards on construction paper and wear them out with constant use. These kids came up with this idea without adult coaching. “….the paper laptops have keyboard buttons assigned to “Barbie.com,” “best friends” next to “friends,” “HP [Harry Potter] trivia.”

Read more here: http://www.communityarts.net/blog/archives/2007/11/the_laptop_club.php