Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

If you are a regular reader of the Dodge blog, you know that we’re constantly encouraging you to join us on Facebook and on Twitter too. And not just because we want to share Dodge Foundation & Poetry Festival information with you. We see these social media tools as a learning opportunity for us – we love to hear about the work our grantees and partners are doing across the state. Moreover, we want to share your ideas, information and success stories as broadly as possible. We welcome your comments, conversation and links on our Facebook page, and we look forward to following you and hearing from you on Twitter.

So consider this is an open invitation – particularly to all current Dodge grantees – to email us at blog@grdodge.org if your organization has a Facebook fan page and/or you are on Twitter. We want to connect with you. In the coming weeks, we will share who is using these tools so that you can connect with them too.

I’m going to get you started. Here are environment groups – recent or current Dodge grantees and all members of the New Jersey Keep It Green Coalition – who are on Facebook:

American Littoral Society
Appalachian Mountain Club
Bayshore Discovery Project
Clean Ocean Action
Conserve Wildlife Foundation
Edison Wetlands Association
Greater Newark Conservancy
Hackensack Riverkeeper
Heritage Conservancy
Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance
Isles, Inc.
Land Conservancy of New Jersey
Natural Lands Trust
New Jersey Audubon Society
New Jersey Conservation Foundation
New Jersey Future
New Jersey Highlands Coalition
Passaic River Coalition
Pinelands Preservation Alliance
Regional Plan Association
Skylands CLEAN
Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association
The Nature Conservancy
Trust for Public Land

We love the preservation success stories that Keep It Green shares on Facebook.

Becoming a fan is just a click away!

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Patricia Smith’s reading of her poem “34” reminds us that poetry comes out of an oral tradition that predates written language by tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.

We know the epics and sacred texts that built the foundation for all the literature that has followed were originally composed on the tongue. They were passed on, generation by generation, through the oral tradition.

It has been argued that the truest histories have been written by our poets, who capture the human costs of those momentous events that the official histories tend to abstract and glorify.

The Iliad chronicles one of the great disasters of its age: a war that raged for a decade and ended in the destruction of a once beautiful and flourishing city. In the centuries since, poets have striven to understand the catastrophes of their own times.

This is never more so than in those cases when vast human suffering seems the inexplicable result of our own folly. For Homer, it was the fall of Troy; for Patricia Smith, it is the fall of New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

In Blood Dazzler, her book-length sequence of poems from which “34” is taken, Smith assumes the personae of countless participants in and victims of the disaster. We would like to make sense out of such an event, but we also know its survivors can never fully explain why it happened. To hear Smith read one of these poems is to enter into their unending dilemma. In writing and reading these poems, Smith pulls us directly into her struggle to understand.

A biography of Patricia Smith can be found in the 2008 Festival Poet Pages.

Return to Poetry Fridays in the weeks ahead, when we will feature video clips of readings by Kevin Young, and others.

Become a fan of the Poetry Festival on Facebook and follow the Dodge Foundation on Twitter!

Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

I did it again.  I just spent an hour surfing the web.  My intention was to write a blog about some of my favorite technology and social media bloggers, and before I knew it, I was clicking from link, to link, to link, to link, to link, to link, to link. So beware: if you have any interest in learning about social media for non-profits you might find yourself on your own clicking spree.

Let’s start off with Beth Kanter who is one of the most popular bloggers on social media for non-profits. Her blog provides no nonsense information on everything from Facebook to Twitter to Flickr. She is curating the Nonprofit Technology Network’s (NTEN’s)  ”We Are Media: Nonprofit Social Media Starter Kit,” an online community of people from nonprofits who are interested in learning and teaching about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.

Check out Beth’s blog about Facebook’s New Fan Page, something that every nonprofit should investigate and decide if they want to implement.

Wild Apricot is a for-profit software company for small associations and non-profits. I haven’t checked out their software, but I have become a fan of their primary blogger Rebecca Leaman who writes on a wide range of technology topics. Check out these great posts:

Facebook Applications for Your Non-Profit
New Guide Helps Non-Profits Choose Donor Management System
What Makes a Successful Online Community
Social Media for Non-Profits:  26 Great Slideshare Presentations You Can Use

So, start clicking your way to understanding social media. But be forewarned, you are guaranteed to get “click happy.”

Photo: Vangelis Thanaidis