The Lemonade Chronicles III

I’ve been aware for sometime now that you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting some item with a pink ribbon on it.

Some folks say that the ever increasing awareness of this still life-threatening disease is a good thing and others think the whole pink ribbon phenomenon is a crass exploitation that confuses genuine charity with being trendy.

Since I have never once in my entire life been accused of being trendy (or even borderline fashionable) I’ve recused myself from this debate and just focus on having fun with the team.

I now own more pink stuff than I have in my life up to this point. And when I go shopping? Lord have mercy! Pink everything. Yogurt, M&M’s, Bagels, Shoes, Ships, Sealing wax, Cabbages & Kings.

And the sale of anything with a pink ribbon on it benefits breast cancer patients, right? Well, not always ~ but that’s for another day.

Today we are doing our first

PINK RIBBON PRODUCT REVIEW

Now Susan G. Komen is inarguably the name in breast cancer. But not the only name. And apparently they do not own the rights to the ribbon. (Which I suspect eats at them every day)

The product we are reviewing today does give 50% of the profits to a breast cancer charity. Like many charities there are layers or sub charities or joint charities, I don’t know. They give the money to keep-a-breast.org, but they do it through or with or nearby another non-profit called Generation Pink, which is not to be confused with Generation Pink, the Gay Pride magazine published in Manila. This Generation Pink is a group a three famous women I’ve never heard of.

One of the women is a former Playboy Model and as well as lending her name (Bebe Buell) to the cause she also lent her bosom to keep-a-breast.

The Keep-a-breast organization Mission Statement:

The Keep A Breast Foundation is a unique non-profit organization creating plaster forms of the female torso, customized by fine artists and auctioned to raise funding for breast cancer. Our mission is to produce art events that increase breast cancer awareness among young people and benefit breast cancer education, prevention and treatment programs in communities around the world.

There was more stuff but when people want to “raise consciousness” and use “symbolic artistry” I sort of doze off. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with what they are doing, not in the least. It all helps, I just personally want my money to go toward buying more Petri dishes and microscopes and stuff.

One interesting thing about the Keep-a-breast website is that their video (which starts playing the minute you hit the site, with music) (Man, I hate websites that do that. At least the pause button on their site is easy to find. On some sites it is impossible to shut the music off and so I have manually turn my speakers down, which means I knock over the stack of CD's on my desk, which knocks my Pepsi all over my keyboard. And older SNL fans know what happens then)

Sorry I seem to have wandered off again. Let me find my train of thought. (See, if we had music on this blog right now you would hear Johnny Cash singing, “I hear the train a comin, it’s comin round the bend. . . .”)

So anyway ~ the video on the keep-a-breast website shows how to do a Breast Self Examination. A BSE in the breast business. The Komen site has a good video, a female voice over and a live action 40 ish looking woman with medium sized breasts. The Keep-a-breast folks have a bunch of young people. I guess the young men are rock musicians from groups performing on the Vans Warped tour. So the video shows young women explaining different parts of the BSE, using young men as models. Some with their shirts on and some with their shirts off. Not a video I would have put together but we’ve already established that I am not the target audience here.

So now that we’ve explained where the money from this product is going, we probably ought to talk about the product itself – which most of you have guessed is a lemonade of some sort.

But we’ve run out of time and space (and probably your attention) for today so tomorrow we will review Emergen-C Pink.

Oh, and just for the record – I have never swung a cat, dead or alive. So you PETA people can just put your outrage back in your bag and step away from the blog.

Correction!

Sigh, my first mistake.

Okay - the first mistake anyone has called me on.


It seems I misquoted our fearless leader Jeannie.
She says her motto is

"trample the weak, hurdle the dead!!"

Silly me!
I guess she is afraid that my misquote,

"trample the wounded, hurdle the dead"

makes her sound too mercenary.

I'm sure we all feel better now.

Simply the Breast

Partners in Crime Charity!

Our Team Captain, Jeannie, is somewhat competitive. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Her personal motto - which we dearly hope she will suspend during the three day walk - is "Trample the Wounded, Hurdle the Dead" Before you start to think poorly of her you have to realize, she's from Texas. Not that there's anything wrong with that.



Anyway, Jeannie sees all the other walking teams as sisters sharing a common mission - but also as competition. So we were relieved when rather than throwing down a gauntlet to 'Simply the Breast' she actually agreed to team up with them!



We bring to the table an army of high energy women and they bring invaluable experience in fund raising. We will be joint hosting a Golf Tournament on September 27th. More details to follow but mark your calendars now!



If you think I'm exaggerating when I refer to our humble group of 8 women as an army - you ought to meet these broads. Jeannie is our Captain. As you can probably tell from my description above - she's the red head of the group. (Truly a red head? You'll have to ask Kevyn, her hairdresser!)



Jeannie is attractive without being vain, although she has her moments. Last week she was communicating with a person via email about some items we are selling via craigslist and she became concerned that the person she was dealing with wasn't entirely legit. I read the suspicious emails and concurred. So then I did a few simple Google searches only using the info that the suspect had on her. I sent to her the readily available information to underscore the idea of practicing good internet hygiene. She was moderately alarmed by the wealth of info just sitting out there but the thing she focused on the most was that the sources I found had her age wrong by two years!



Jeannie has her fingers in several pies at any given time. (Boy howdy I hope that's a common enough metaphor, otherwise it just sounds weird!) One reason I'm so happy for her doing this 3 day walk is that even though she was inspired by her mom's fight with breast cancer; she is doing this for herself rather than for the kids, or the school, or the husband, or the scouts, or whatever. Not that there is anything wrong with being a PTO volunteer or a Den mother or a lady's auxiliary anything - it's just that it is important to find our own fun. S'mores, knots, and crossing guard duty will only sustain a person so long, trust me!



And yes, I'm aware of the irony of claiming that a woman raising 2200 dollars for charity is said to be doing something for herself rather than others. It's part of the mystery of being woman.



Jeannie and Kristine together are like Lucy and Lucy. Which is cool as long as they don't look to me to be Ethel! Each claim that the other is the funniest. Maybe if we ever get video on this blog we'll let y'all decide. Until then it's a tie.



So join us in welcoming Simply the Breast to our kaffeeklatsch and we will see you at the golf tournament!