the Half Fund blog.
I woke up to the sound of birds and faint traffic. It was a beautiful morning in Port au Prince, which, to be honest, I never would have imagined I would ever experience. The shower had better water pressure than I have had at most U.S. hotels, a rather nice surprise. I got dressed, checked [...]
"Danny, we're goin' to Haiti." Todd Newton called my phone. He did not bother to say "hello" when I answered it. And, I thought he was joking. "Excuse me? We're going where?" "Haiti. We're going with Soles4Souls." I could hear the smile in Todd's voice. It was not reciprocated on my end. "With who? To [...]
"How'd you like to lose weight, Fat Ass?" asked my friend Subash right after Christmas this year. The holidays had not been good to me. Scratch that -- the holiday food had not been good to me. Without my realizing, and we never realize, I had crept up my weight again. And I was doing [...]
"Honey? Can I see the back of your shorts?" Stephanie and I were standing at the edge of a wave pool in suburban St. Louis County yesterday, watching Sam and Ben play with their friends James and Peter. They were playing "Baywatch," doing chest compressions by standing on each others stomachs. "What?" "Can I see [...]
I am a homebody. My idea of a kick-ass Saturday night is to sit in our basement with Steph and our boys and watch any Harry Potter flick while eating popcorn and chocolate, and drinking a nice glass of vino. This is especially true when I'm asked to do something that doesn't include Steph. She [...]
When I was young, I was a pleaser because I thought that was the key to happiness. Someone would need something and I would say "yes," no matter what the personal cost. I wanted to be that go-to person because, honestly, I thought it would get people to like me. It started out innocuously enough [...]
I was playing around on Facebook when my partner in The Half Fund, Joe Farmer, sent me a PM. "Did you hear about Stuart Scott?" He didn't have to go any further. I immediately started crying for so many reasons: for my blindness, for my hypocrisy, for my conversion, and for my anguish. When my [...]
My friend Jeremy is an amazing soul. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met and always knows how to take a conversation just one step too far. He also has an amazing heart, never failing to help me and everyone at The Half Fund to further our mission of lifting the veil on [...]
"Dad! You've gotta see this!!" Those are never words that strike a particular sense of calm in our house. They're usually followed by a loud noise of some variety, and possibly a form of toxic ooze consisting of precisely nothing relating to the periodic table. "See what, Sammy?" I replied meekly. Before he could answer, [...]
I should not be here today. There is not an "if," an "and," or a single "but" about it. I've been thrown out of a moving Jeep at 60MPH. I survived stage-three cancer. I can't begin to tell you how many scrapes I dodged, ducked, dipped, dived and dodged out of throughout my teenage years. [...]