 
Delivered fresh on March 15th, 2010
Greetings!
I was reading an article today that suggested something I did not know: The one sure way to tell a fake diamond from the real thing is that a fake diamond will look perfect. The real thing, the diamond that has true value, will always be - flawed. Dana DANA DELIVERED! User's Guide: 1) Open up your Dana Delivered! email. 2) Choose an article from the menu on the left hand side or just start from the beginning and read all the way through. 3) If you are reading an article and want to finish, Click on "Read More..." and you will be taken to our website. You can finish reading and while there, have a look around. Note: Dana's Dailies changes, well, daily so come back often. 4) Click on any of the words highlighted in red and you will be taken right to our site, DanaRoc.com. In INSPIRING PEOPLE: Dana talks with Co-founder and Co-president of Ubuntu Education Fund, Jacob Lief. Jacob Lief's journey is quite an amazing testament to the fact that the tiny twists and turns of fate can amount to a big deal if we are willing to yield. Read Dana's EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Jacob as he shares about the path that has led to his success! Take a minute to read DANA'S WEEKLY INSIGHT and make sure that you listen to the AUDIO VERSION as well. There may be someone who needs you to pass that along. Check out DANA'S DAILIES for no other reason than to hopefully smile. And come back and visit the blog all week at www.danaroc.com/dailies. The special article FROM DANA'S GUESTS: this week is A Modern Day Hero, Stan Brock. Stan Brock is doing some of the most needed and important work in America today. He, along with several volunteer doctor's and nurses and everyday people who care, travel around the country and all over the world providing medical treatment to those in need. Read the article about Stan Brock and renew your sense of believing that one person can make a profound difference in the world. Check out AUGUSTE ROC'S MY TWO CENTS (For Whatever It Is Worth). There is something in it for YOU! While it may be "Two Cents" but you'll find it's worth a whole lot more. Feel free to email your comments to Auguste at auguste@danaroc.com. This week's THE GOOD LIFE : BOOKS selection is You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening by Gayla Trail. Urban gardening is really starting to catch on! It's fun, and healthy and great for the environment. Let Gayla teach you how to start your own garden no matter where you live! Something useful in THE GOOD LIFE : WEB SITES this week. Check it out! And there's more so sit back, grab a cup of coffee, relax and enjoy. As always, thanks for reading! Stay cool. Be hungry. Never look back. Always reach back. Fear not. Believe always, Dana Playing Catch Up
Don't you hate it when you get hit with something from out of left field that knocks the wind right out of your sail? I do, especially when I'm just minding my own business. I hate it when I'm just living my life, going about my day, not bothering anybody else, and seemingly out of nowhere - POW! I get hit, by someone else's - GOOD NEWS. Little did he know that the information he was so casually providing, was landing in my life like a bomb wrapped up inside of a time release capsule. It was a few years ago now, when Auguste ran into a friend that we hadn't seen in awhile. I remember it vividly because it was a turning point moment in my life. As the sun set warmly on a summer night, the two stood on the corner in the neighborhood we shared, and did a quick "catch me up" just so that he could come home and tell it all to me. I listened later, as he downloaded all of the benign and harmless details about their kids, their dog and their trips. All of this was standard fare - no need really for me to look up from my book. It was not until Auguste got to the part in the "catch up" where -- "He just signed a deal for his latest book" and "She has been busy working late these days because she is editing one of the most talked about and highly anticipated movies of that year" that I realized I had just been hit by a bomb, the kind that slowly releases itself over two or three days, exploding all over the self esteem, destroying all feelings of self worth. I hate that! Did you know that studies have been done that have determined that the most fundamental desire of human beings is to be admired and thought well of - more than even the desire to be loved? Imagine. Well, I was resisting the impulse to admire and think well of any of this stuff about new books and highly anticipated movies. I was covertly refusing to applaud their success because this punch in my stomach was making me feel sick. And then it really hit me -- Back then, I didn't have the bandwidth to admire or acknowledge or applaud anyone who was truly winning; anyone who was taking a bite out of life and experiencing the victories that go along with that because, back then, I didn't have a game of my own. Back then, I was merely going through the ho-hum motions of a hum-drum existence, surviving each day as it came and dying a very slow death. I was alive but not LIVING; I was living but not ALIVE because I wasn't playing a game that was worthy of my time. And you? Have you ever had the experience of being hit with something from out of left field when you were just minding your business? Don't you hate it when a punch in the stomach knocks the wind right out of your sail? For me, that day, everything was "O.K." until I found out that someone else's flower was blooming all over the place because that drew back the curtain that was hiding my profound complacency, leaving me exposed - to myself. I was confronted by the reality that I wasn't really playing and so finding out that someone else was winning made me feel, somehow, left behind. The pain of not feeling included woke me up to the hard and cold truth that I had no way to participate because - I didn't have a game. It is true that the most fundamental desire of human beings is to be admired and thought well of - more than even the desire to be loved, but sometimes its just hard to express admiration for another's extraordinary accomplishment. It's hard to feel good about others when you're not feeling so good about yourself. When you know deep down in your heart that you are not giving it all you've got, minding your own business but not taking care of it, you can count on the fact that you will keep getting hit with bombs from out of left field. Arm yourself today! Expand your capacity to be generous about an old friend's good news, by choosing to play turn up the volume in your life? Dana Have a great week!   Co-founder and Co-president of Ubuntu Education Fund, Jacob Lief
Born in New York, Jacob Lief first became interested in South Africa while growing up in London, England. In 1994 he traveled to South Africa to observe the nation's first free elections, with a delegation of teachers and students from around the world. Inspired, Jacob continued to pursue his interest in South Africa at the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Dr. Mary Frances Berry, Chairperson of the Commission on Civil Rights and a major figure in the Free South Africa movement. In his third year of University, Jacob returned to South Africa where he met Malizole Banks Gwaxula, a teacher living and working in the Port Elizabeth Townships. In 1999, Jacob and Malizole founded Ubuntu Education Fund (www.ubuntufund.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with the people of the Eastern Cape Province to develop quality education and healthy communities in the New South Africa. Over the past nine years, Jacob has served as President of Ubuntu and worked to develop Ubuntu from a small fund supplying basic educational materials to an international development organization creating sustainable health and education initiatives. Today Ubuntu provides over 40,000 orphaned and vulnerable children life-saving HIV support services and essential educational resources. Jacob Lief is someone that I would characterize as being charmingly unaware of the extraordinary contribution that he is making in other people's lives everyday. And yet, at the same time he seems painfully aware of just how urgently people need what he has to give and how so many more are still hoping. DR: Tell me about your life and your work. JL: To understand Ubuntu Education Fund and who I am as a person, I've got to look at my first experiences with South Africa. I am an American, although I was raised in the UK. I got involved with the Free South Africa Movement. In 1994, during their first Democratic elections, they were taking students from around the world to observe the transition and I went. We met with all of these incredible freedom fighters who had done time on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. We also met people on the far right who were trying to impose apartheid on South Africa. I'll tell you the story that changed my life... I met this woman in Orlando West in Soweto, one of the most famous townships in South Africa, outside of Johannesburg. Millions of people live there. I met this woman who was eighty five years old. She had been waiting in line for five days to vote. When I asked her how someone could wait in line for five days to vote, she just smiled at me, tapped me on the should and said, "Boy, it's been eighty five years, not five days". I just remember being there amongst all of those shacks that were people's homes and it just hit me right then that I don't think I'd ever really thought about freedom in that context. I could see that I took so much for granted. Right there I made a commitment to myself that I would become part of the new South Africa. I was only seventeen. I went on to...
 A Modern Day Hero, Stan Brock
As the healthcare reform debate rages on, there is, thankfully, a shining example, shedding a bright light on what this issue is really all about... Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care INGLEWOOD, Calif. - They came for new teeth mostly, but also for blood pressure checks, mammograms, immunizations and acupuncture for pain. Neighboring South Los Angeles is a place where health care is scarce, and so when it was offered nearby, word got around. For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday - starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours - for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor. Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients. When Remote Area Medical, the Tennessee-based organization running the event, decided to try its hand at large urban medical services, its principals thought Los Angeles would be a good place to start. But they were far from prepared for the outpouring of need...
 Tick Tock
I'd rather take a stand and risk being on the unpopular side of an issue, than to remain quiet, especially when somebody needs to know what I think. And, in a situation where my opinion is the one that is supposed to matter, I feel a particular obligation to speak up. It's confusing, counter productive and chaotic when the voice that is designated to make the call chooses instead, to be silent. Imagine having to wait and wait and wait and keep waiting for the umpire to call "you're out" or "he's safe" at the end of a critical play. What would happen if a quarterback kept his team in the huddle indefinitely because he was unwilling to say what he thought about what he wanted to do? Everyday, people everywhere are faced with the often uncomfortable prospect of having to take responsibility for an outcome by having to take a stand. And everyday, people everywhere choose to take the easy way out because - "they'd rather not". Complacency doesn't work, not when courage is what is required. When we choose to make the call and draw the line by saying out loud what it is that we stand for and why, regardless of where the chips may or may not fall - stuff gets done. And, that's my two cent's (for whatever it's worth). Auguste Roc
 Lost in French Translation
A friend of ours has a restaurant in our neighborhood. His Mom had been visiting him in New York for the last 2 months. His Mom is from Guadalupe and so, she speaks French. We met her when she first arrived in New York and we also had the pleasure of having her over as our dinner guest. We really enjoy her company in spite of the fact that she speaks very little English and we speak very little French. Well, she left to go back home this past Saturday morning so we went to our friends restaurant to have dinner with his Mom and to say "Au revoir". You know what it is like to engage in really polite small talk for two hours; have you ever done it with someone who is not fluent in your language and you are not fluent in theirs? Would you like to lose a few pounds and burn several left and right brain cells? Then I highly recommend this as an activity. Even though Auguste had his English-French handbook handy, we had to mostly rely on my recollection of College French. If I had known then that this night was coming, I would have studied a lot harder. We ended up having fun - a lot of fun. Le bon nuit! At this point I could now probably teach a French class. As we were finishing up, the chocolate cake that we were having for dessert, a woman who had been sitting across from us (and, I swear, listening in on our conversation), stood up to leave. As she passed by our table she stopped to comment on how delicious the gateau au chocolat was - and she started rattling off her big French words. Then she nicely corrected some of my French grammer and bid us "Adieu". I have since been trying to figure out how to say "Show Off" en Francais...  You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening
Why I am recommending this book: Because Gayla's passion for gardening is contagious and because urban gardening is really catching on. If you are serious about eating food that you grow with your own two hands but concerned about that fact that you live in the city and not “on the farm”, this is a great book to get you started! Click here to purchase this book.
Click here to purchase this book.
 Top Documentary Films
Why I am recommending Top Documentary Films: Because Top Documentary Films is an interactive site that makes it easy to browse and watch documentaries, comment on films and share ideas and build community with other documentary film lovers!
 
Envy destroys. It undermines respect and cooperation. It eclipses kindness. It suppresses love. Consider ENVY an intruder that must never, ever be entertained.
 
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