Summer Reading

I’ve been a little light on the blogging over the past couple of weeks but it’s summer, lovelies! Everyone should be out and about on wonderful holidays. I haven’t been jaunting too much since gay Paree but that suits me just fine. I’m enjoying NYC in all its sticky, humid grandeur.

So while the rest of you are lounging by the water in St. John, the Cape or your kiddie pool, here are a couple summer reading suggestions for you….

1. The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz

Perhaps a little heady for the summer months but this amateur economist likes it that way.

In the 1980s Novogratz set out as a young, idealistic girl with a head for figures to Africa where she worked within local communities and with prestigious organizations to develop some of the earliest microfinance programs. Her very plain spoken yet compelling tale spans decades and continents, having worked in Rwanda, Kenya, India and Pakistan, lending a personal perspective of some of the most dire events in modern history. (I was brought to heavy tears by her description of the Rwandan genocide. You should have seen me in Hotel Rwanda, a complete, bawling mess).

Dedicating her life to marrying financial know-how with a charitable spirit, readers begin to understand how positive change is possible from even the bleakest socio-political and socio-economic beginnings.

And as it relates to this blog, as it relates to me, me, me, I cherished her story because it reminded this New Yorker how so many across the world survive, subsist and flourish with so little. How on an income of a dollar or less a day, determined workers were able to make personal and social change with just a bit of entrepreneurial spirit. While ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ still reminds me of the Silicon Valley heyday, I realize that it is little more than the desire to do something in a better way when an avenue to do so doesn’t immediately present itself.

I live in a city that is at its core a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit (BTW: currently reading Island at the Center of the World) though I can easily forget the determination and ingenuity of the Dutch, English, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Jews, Poles and every other punchline-ready immigrant group who came here to make a better life when I walk on my fashionable street and agonize how I’m going to make my corporate salary stretch to include every haute meal I have in my social calendar.

Thankfully I haven’t fully succumbed to consumerism but the desire for More and Better can be as thick as the humidity, even among those with oh so much. (cough…Wall Street meltdown… cough…)

As much as I would like to justify an Indian getaway, a trip around the world isn’t required to view the world differently. From Novogratz’s experience even here in New York, it goes to show that we can recalibrate our perceived level of Need if we begin by viewing the city through the eyes of those with very little, as opposed to very much. And for those who care to help, the gap between the haves and have nots might diminish all the more quickly if we start by opening our eyes without fear of opening our hearts.

Stay tuned for your next assignment....