For a recent fundraising event in New York City, we reached out to BabyCakes, a vegan bakery offering gluten-free options in Soho.

BabyCakes NY
248 Broome Street (Btwn Orchard & Ludlow)
212.677.5047

Dear BabyCakes,

Surfers Healing organizes day surf camps for kids with Autism. The event is free for the whole family; food and goodies for everyone, and each child has a designated half-hour to go tandem surfing with a professional surfer.

On Saturday, September 26th we’re teaming up with Quiksilver Foundation to throw a fundraiser/soiree at their SoHo store. 100% of the money raised by our fabulous auction will go to Surfers Healing. As I’m sure you know, many people with autism adhere to a strict gluten-free diet. The community is so grateful that amazing bakeries like BabyCakes provide a way to satisfy the sweet tooth and still stick to the rules.

It’s a bit last minute, as our invitation to join Quiksilver was extended last week, but we’re hoping to partner with a gluten-free shop to provide goodies that all attendees can enjoy, and raise awareness about the gluten-free diet choice many families dealing with autism make.  You guys came to mind immediately and we would be so honored if you’d join us for this event.

The event follows a screening of Quiksilver’s CLAY MARZO: JUST ADD WATER at the New York Surf Film Festival. Clay is one of surfing’s most talented athletes, and was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at 17 (more info @ http://blog.quiksilver.com/?p=5994). Items up for auction at our fundraiser include a board signed by Clay and the kids and surfers who participated in Surfers Healings’ New York event this past Wednesday, a skate deck signed by Tony Hawk, a surfboard signed by Lisa Andersen, and many, many more.

We would be delighted if you could join us on Saturday. If it’s just too much, we would be so appreciative if you might give a gift card or some other item to be auctioned or raffled off at the event. We really want to introduce our supporters to gluten-free shops in the area and would love to include you guys some way, some how.

Attached please find invitations to both the fundraiser and the screening. I’ll give your office a call tomorrow to follow up. Thank you so much for considering our cause!

Best,
Melissa Ryan
www.surfershealing.org

(c) www.outstandinginthefield.com

Hiking Runyon last weekend, a friend and I had a long talk about what it takes to make it in the workplace these days. It seems for our generation (and the entertainment industry, especially), the only sure bet for job stability and growth is to be a true innovator. It’s about establishing worth to your company; finding a niche and becoming that niche’s expert. Constantly thinking ahead – not just as a problem solver but as a ground breaker.

Which is hard, terrifying, especially at this entry-level adjacent point we’re at right now. I’m two years into my career, which comes with this true sink or swim moment – move too slowly and you’ll fall behind your peers. But the only way to really break ahead and be meaningful is to create, create, create. Don’t get me wrong – this is an exciting new perspective and it’s opened my mind even just in this past week. It’s also sent me on a search for innovators and tastemakers in other industries, in an effort to learn more about focus and change. And that’s how I happened upon Jim Denevan, a slow artist and founder of Outstanding in the Field. My mind? Blown.

Outstanding in the Field “sets the long table” at farms, in gardens, on mountaintops or in sea caves; on islands and on ranches. Sometimes indoors (a barn, a greenhouse, even a museum), but mostly outside, Outstanding in the Field’s mission is to re-connect diners to the land and the origins of their food, and to honor the local farmers and food artisans who cultivate it.

Founder Jim Denevan started in 1999 with the vision of putting the spotlight on the organic food in his hometown of Santa Cruz. Word quickly spread throughout Northern California, and by 2004 his tour was reaching coast to coast.

In 2009, Jim, his crew (led by field manager Katy Oursler) and an army of servers, farmers/producers and chefs – each team different from place to place – held 54 dinner parties throughout the US and Canada. The 2010 tour schedule goes live tomorrow (March 20) and will likely sell out within the day.

To support Outstanding in the Field and your local chefs and producers, check for your area’s dates here: http://outstandinginthefield.com/

(personal blog: http://firstshotlife.wordpress.com)

I had come and gone through the customs house before. After signing out of the port, I crossed a dusty yard to get to the street where I could hail a rickshaw. As soon as I stepped out of the shed the children swarmed around me, they became my giant skirt and moved with me as I clutched my bag and shook my head at their begging.

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” I learned to say, because if I gave anything to any of them, the rest would race in closer, asking “please”, and tapping at me with their little fingers. The more charming ones were sweet; they’d bat their lashes and tell me jokes in awful English. As soon as smile broke across my face, they’d hold out their hands, laughing. “Please now!”

I made it to the street, where the rickshaw drivers lined up (the drivers practiced a slightly more sophisticated form of pleading; the same “Please, miss” but at least these men had a service to offer). Sami drove me around Chennai for most of the week I spent there. He picked me up my last morning, hoped I didn’t mind if he brought his girlfriend along to meet me. I hopped in the rickshaw, the children’s begging game over for now. They kicked at the dirt and waved goodbye.

Each afternoon I returned, and they picked up right where we had left off. They’d point to my bags of souvenirs and fabric, proof that I was a total liar and could definitely spare some change. An old woman, the bandleader, would usually sit under the shade of a tree but sometimes she joined them as they accosted sailors and travelers returning to the ships. She held a cane with both of her strong, knobby hands, and rarely said a word. She simply followed the children as they followed me, looking me in the eyes as we walked. She seemed to say to me, “I know, I know, they’re beggars. But what little choice they have.”

I took a Polaroid camera with me on the ship, but I only had three boxes of film so I was choosy about where and when to use it in port. My last day in Chennai, I spent my free time at an orphanage set up by Mother Theresa. I took the camera with me. I don’t know what I thought I was going to take photos of; the light was low as I rocked a child with one arm and no legs to sleep after lunch. The afternoon was memorable enough, the children and selfless nuns now forever a part of my experience. I forgot about the Polaroid until my rickshaw ride home.

Sami and his girlfriend waited for me outside the orphanage and we rode quietly back to port. When she asked me for five dollars, I smiled weakly and gave it to her. Leaving the orphanage I felt overwhelmed and exhausted by gratitude; that I had two arms and two legs, two loving parents, the luck to literally happen upon this trip around the world. She should have asked for fifty.

When I reached for my wallet I remembered the camera and took it out. We were pulling up to the port, and I had seventeen photos left. “May I?” I held the camera up to my eye; the universal sign for “take your picture so that I can remember how strange this world is?” She was ecstatic and hopped out of the rickshaw to stand by her sweetheart’s side. They smiled. I stood with them to watch the film develop. When the colors began to bleed into the photo, she took it from me and held it to her heart. “Yes?”

“Of course, but let me take another?” I stepped back a few feet and took a duplicate for myself. That’s when I noticed the storm of children coming for me again. But they weren’t looking for money.

“Me! Me!” A young boy’s chest swelled and he hooked his arm around a brother or friend, posing, ready for his close up. I laughed and slowly backed up, almost stepping on the kids who surrounded me to watch. The little boy patiently waited for his face to show up in the photo. “Aha!” He pointed, looking around for the approval of his friends. Then he left the group to examine his new belonging.

I tried to walk back to the customs house. A little girl tugged at my wrist, and smiled coyly. I held up the camera, “do you want?” The words meant nothing, she just continued to smile, her arms behind her, and she swayed left and right in her place. I stepped back and took her picture. A beautiful, dirty doll in a brick red dress. She looked up at me with wide eyes as I handed her the picture, then she ran away.

“Miss, miss, miss,” An older man waved me over to the side of the dirt yard, where his pick up truck was parked. He stood with one hand against the hood of the truck – it was his muscle car, his ’68 Mustang – the other hand on his hip. Such pride.

A man in a business suit was walking past the commotion and stopped to watch. Eventually he caught my attention, asked me to take his photo. He stood at the side of the road, fixed his tie, laid his briefcase at his side. In a moment of uncertainty, he picked it up again. When he took the photo from me, he bobbed his head in quiet thanks and continued home.

I ran through the seventeen pieces of film. Family, automobiles, a soft, over-washed navy blue suit, cuff links, backpacks, dirty hands on the hips of a marigold sari; they clung to their riches and smiled. They watched intently as the photos developed. Some of the littlest ones hung around my waist, nestling in as I photographed their friends, then perked up when the Polaroid spit out the film.

The photos we were taking… They became belongings, for some who had so little that they spent their days shaking down strangers for foreign coins. I thought of the stacks of albums in my parents’ living room back in New York – evidence of every celebration and vacation, something to look back through that told my life’s stories.

Now, here in Chennai, one photo to tell theirs.

When I was out of film I opened my bag – which I had held so tightly that morning – to prove that I had none left, nothing hidden like my hidden dimes and dollar bills. The children took turns peeking inside, then shrugged their shoulders and went back to kicking at the dirt. The adults went back to their businesses and conversations. I was left alone. I put the Polaroid back in my bag and took out my ship papers - proof of my employment and my ticket through customs.

Before I could make it there, the old woman, the bandleader, appeared beside me. She gripped the top of her cane with her right hand, steadied her weight. She reached out for my hands with her knobby left hand. A smile started in her eyes. She shook my hands twice. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She held my hands a moment longer, and then let go. She turned and made her way to the bench beneath the shade of a tree. I turned and walked towards the small green shed that stood between India and my next adventure.