Nonprofits & PayPal

* I call on anyone associated with a worthy nonprofit to encourage provision of the convenience that I now insist on.
* Between Christmas and New Year's Eve, I attempt to support almost 60 nonprofits, those working to preserve and enhance aspects of civilization that I care about. In earlier years, I could do it with checks in envelopes. Now, I need the convenience of email and PayPal. Many of my target nonprofits don't provide this convenience, so they don't get my contribution. Instead, they get the note below sent to their CONTACT addresses.
* My Donation-Policy Note:
* In my senility (cataracts, arthritis), I no longer write checks to nonprofits, and I don't use a credit card on line.
* I respond to emails from organizations devoted to family planning and population restraint, provided they don't solicit via regular mail and provided their email solicitations have PayPal buttons. With these same provisions, consideration is also given to organizations that support local culture, help the needy, extend justice or those to which I have an obligation.
* In summary, I use only PayPal to contribute.
* Please, send no solicitations lacking a PayPal button.
* Please, no post-office mailings.
* I try to support more than 50 nonprofits, so I don't have time for paper or for typing my data.
* This year I supported about 23 nonprofits. The following are those that I attempted to support and would have supported if they had the PayPal button: American Indian College Fund, CEDPA, Common Cause, Cumberland River Compact, Davidson College, Engender Health, Fisk University, Friends of Radnor Lake, Friends of UNFPA, Friends of Warner Parks, Girls Inc, Guide Dog Foundation, Heard Library, International Bluegrass Music Museum, Legal Momentum, NARAL, NOW, Nashville Humane Assoc, Nashville Public Television, Nashville Opera, Nashville Rescue Mission, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Zoo, National Women's Law Center, PCI-Media Impact, Pathfinder International, Peabody College, Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, Population Action International, Population Connection, The Population Council, The Population Institute, Room in the Inn, Second Harvest Food Bank, The Seeing Eye, Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, United Way, Vanderbilt University, W.O. Smith Music School

Pride or modesty

* In my declining years, I've been wallowing in existential angst, questioning every source of pride and suspecting that much modesty and even some shame might be appropriate.
* The greatest generation and my generation enjoyed a golden age of resources and advantages which we squandered. Consider the Fleetwood Cadillac.
* We white male American Christians dominated and exploited every other kind of people not so specified, assuming that it was the natural order. I can remember greatly admiring the British empire, over which the sun never set.
* The opportunities for justice and peace that we had within our reach and wasted are enough to make one weep. Is our society or civilization the best that a society or civilization can be? If not, what would be?

Sustainable Earth

* It is high time for more people to begin imagining a sustainable earth, how to achieve and occupy it peacefully and happily, how civilization and the economy will differ from what they are today.
* In numerous parts of the world, forests, grasslands and farmlands are giving way to desert; rivers, lakes and aquifers are being emptied and/or polluted; and sea life is being depleted toward the point of no return. Humankind and the earth are out of balance - all this with about half of the 6 billion people living very-small-footprint lives.
* The world is getting flat, ie many poorer nations are catching up to the richer ones, acquiring or expecting the resource-intensive conveniences to which richer nations are accustomed. Therefore, even if world population were stabilized, over-exploitation will certainly accelerate, and this will be compounded by further population expansion.
* Ethical nations, religions, races, cultures, tribes and families will do everything possible to promote birth control and small families within and outside themselves. Unethical ones won't - believing that war, famine, pestilence and population dislocation are OK, inevitable or in God's hands.
* Population shrinkage is necessary but not sufficient for a peaceful and happy future civilization on an hospitable earth. Additionally there will need to be a variety of adjustments of expectations, individual choices and economic organization, inasmuch as our economic opportunities today depend significantly on such drivers as population expansion, GDP growth, luxury lifestyles and wasteful behavior. How can a satisfactory economy and satisfactory opportunities prevail in absence of these drivers? How will employment be distributed? How will hard jobs get done? What will be sources of self respect and contentment?
* I suspect that we will eventually recognize the need for rational regulation, incentives and coercion. We will need an anti-Reagan revolution. So far, no utopian society has endured, so our prospects aren't good.