There, I did it – added a new blog entry.

P.S.  Thanks so much to all of you who contributed to my “Birthday for a Cause” fundraiser last month.  We were able to raise over $700, which means seven women in the Congo will be given the skills needed to start their own business and provide for their families.  Awesome.

The combination of social movements or advocacy and music isn’t anything new…. as long as there have been causes people are passionate about, someone will be right there to write a song about it.  Sometimes though, the meaning behind a song as the original lyricist wrote it isn’t always the way it will be most remembered.

For my birthday this year Lydia got me tickets to “The Killers” concert in Seattle coming up later this week.  The Killers have become a favorite of mine over the last few years, often being my “go to music” regardless of mood or setting.  If you haven’t heard the band’s newest album “Day in Age“, go take a peek, every song stands on its own and is fun to listen to. It should be a great show…. you’ll have to ask me how it goes!

The social justice movement “Invisible Children” is focused on exposing atrocities around the world, specifically the exploitation of children in third world countries.  One of their main focuses and subject of the film that initially launched the whole organization is regular abduction of children in northern Uganda by a local terrorist group. This group then uses these children as soldiers in their long running conflict with the Ugandan government. As a response children between the ages of 3 and 17 will walk up to 12 mi daily from internally displaced person camps to larger towns in search of safety. In 2006 Invisible Children organized an event across the United States in order to draw US Foreign Policy attention to this issue, thousands of people in over 40 cities commuted to a central location in their town and slept outside. The demonstration drew significant media attention and was a powerful kickoff to the groups new voice in advocacy.

Merging the two: After the 2006 event Invisible Children created a online video to connect with those who participated, and recap what had been done. The video features a Killers song entitled “All These Things That I’ve Done” in which the anthem line ‘I got soul but I’m not a soldier’ is lip-synced by students in the US, along with children in Uganda. It takes the song from being background music to becoming the driving force behind the video, giving new meaning to the lyrics as it goes – making the song about the children in Uganda who struggle every day to avoid becoming a soldier in a war they don’t want to fight. Watching this video on the Invisible Children website a few years back was the first time I had heard the song and was thrilled a few months later when listening to “Hot Fuss” and realized what the connection was.

Take a look at the video below, its pretty sweet.

links:

(click here) for more info on Invisible Children, their movie and upcoming events

(click here) for full lyrics to “All These Things that I’ve Done” by the Killers

(click here) for more info on the band “The Killers”

You may notice the the new look here at northslope, along with the facelift I merged the blog with the front page.  You can find a past and future blog posts right here, along with photo updates and all the other usual fun northslope stuff!

I know its shameless to plug a website of your very own….but take a look at iditablog.com. Even though we aren’t in Nome this year, heck we aren’t even in Alaska this year, I’ve still got Iditarod on the brain. I’m posting multiple times a day and will attempt to keep those who are new to the Iditarod updated throughout the race.

For more information and to read my commentaries, head over to iditablog.com

Take a swing over to Extraordinary, the northslope blog for a brand new feature every friday. Each week I’ll be attempting to post a new photoblog entry. I got this idea from the google blog. Hopefully you’ll find the photos interesting and enjoy a auctual look into life in western Alaska.

(click here) for the northslope blog RSS feed
-(use utilities like bloglines.com to manage your blogs!)

(click here) for northslope audio updates via RSS (podcast)
-(use ipodder for auto-downloads)

If you aren’t reading the daily northslope updates for Iditarod 2005, you’re missing out. I’ve been down in Anchorage all week providing YOU (and the radio station that I was comissioned by) with daily coverage of this year’s race. Head over to the BLOG and check it out.

i’m not one to toot my own horn very often, but I would like to show off something that I’m proud of! Check out the new Crossroads Community Covenant Church website! Its the covenant church down in Yelm, WA. I created the site this summer, and its been up and running for a while now!

“The Partial Observer: an online journal of opinion”. This site features the regular work of Pastor and published author, Greg Asimakoupoulos. Greg is visiting Nome right now, and is a long time family friend of my parents. Greg is in town for a book signing of his recent release: “Ptarmigan Telegraph The Story of Radio Station KICY”.

I’ve got everything figured out with gallery, so things should be back to normal… look for some new albums coming soon. Also, speaking of the gallery, take a look at the sommermans gallery, the link is over in the ‘navigation’ menu.

well, a friend of mine (and regular visitor to this site) has decided to enter one of the pictures I took on his camera into a photo contest for me. I’m excited to see how it does.

said photo can be viewed here