Comfortdoc on Squidoo

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore debut their Celebrity Pledge today on the Oprah Winfrey Show featuring more than 50 celebrities making a pledge from Eva Longoria Parker pledging to “plant 500 trees this year to help our planet,” or Diddy pledging to “turn off the lights” to Josh Groban pledging his support of the arts.

They hope to encourage everyone to take the pledge and support in coming President Barack Obama. As Ashton wrote in their press release:

“The Presidential Pledge is a platform for people across the nation and throughout the world to make a first-person commitment of service to our new president, articulating a specific intent or action to become an agent of positive change.”

Watch the video at The Presidential Pledge lens, join the pledge to serve all mankind and decide what you will do to help the president and be the change that we seek.

I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind.

Because together we can.

Together we are.

Together we will be the change that we seek.

The Presidential Pledge

Then post What’s Your Pledge? on the Presidential Pledge lens.

I am happy to announce that I’ve been chosen to join the Squid Angels. Being a Squid Angel comes with a great deal of responsibility.

The job of the Squid Angels is two-fold:

1. Blessing Lenses - To find the best of the best Squidoo lenses to bless (and help their rankings go up).
2. Cleaning up Spam - To keep the top 100 lenses free of junk and spam (and help their rankings go down).

I take the duty of being a newly appointed Squid Angel seriously. You can follow along with the Squid Angel Blessings Log (Blog) lens that I’ve created to monitor the lenses that I’ve blessed during my term as a Squid Angel. See the other existing Angels and the rest of the new angels on my Blessings Log lens.

You can see the type of lenses that I have determined are bless worthy and the list of criteria I plan to use when looking for lenses to bless.

I am likely to adopt the mode of stealth angel, slipping in when you least expect it to bless a worthy lens.

World AIDS Day 1999 - 2008

AIDS has already killed more than 25 million people world-wide since it was first recognized in 1981. World AIDS Day is a day to focus attention on this pandemic that is affecting more than 33 million people around the world.

NIDA and AIDS.gov worked with Bloggers Unite to encourage bloggers to blog on December 1 on AIDS. Working together, everyone can reduce the stigma of this pandemic through words, voices and actions.

Focus on Prevention. Know Your HIV Status.

Since there is still no cure yet for HIV/AIDS the best thing to do is to focus on prevention and knowing your HIV Status. A unique campaign has been developed using text messaging to promote HIV testing.

Mobile phone users can send a text message with their zip code to “KNOWIT” (566948). Within seconds, they will receive a text message identifying an HIV testing site near them. This mobile phone service connects users with CDC’s testing database found at www.HIVtest.org.

Find out more about World AIDS Day at 20, 1988 - 2000.

One of my favorite quotes that reminds me to be thankful comes from H. U. Westermayer. He noted:

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts.
No Americans have been more impoverished than these
who, nevertheless,
set aside a day of thanksgiving.

During difficult times like the ones many of us are living in now, it may be challenging to try and find something to be thankful for or a reason to give thanks.

The Give Thanks on Thanksgiving lens is a reminder of some of those things. It was also the main reason for creating a Month of Thanks Challenge.

You can Share What You are Thankful for in this Month on the Month of Thanks lens, the Give Thanks on Thanksgiving lens or post why you are thankful in the Month of Thanks thread in the Squidu forums.

P.S. I am also thankful that the charity work on Squidoo has not gone unnoticed. See today’s LOTD Blog Post.

The Month of Thanks Challenge was held over the month of November to give lensmasters a chance to be thankful, raise awareness about hunger and make lenses to benefit hunger related Squidoo Charities.

The challenge is being done to help us realize that even in the midst of everything that is going on, we still have a lot to be thankful. The month of November, the month of Thanksgiving is a good time to stop, take a moment and give thanks.

About the Challenge

We had a lot of great lenses submitted for a Month of Thanks and the five hunger related charities, over 60 lenses.

25 - Action Against Hunger
7 - Food for Everyone Foundation
15 - Heifer International
7 - Oxfam America
7 - Planet Gumbo

Topics ranged from serious, like the winning lenses for a Month of Thanks Feed The Hungry from pmolinero, to heart-felt like  Giving Thanks and Giving Back from Starving Artist (from Angelina) and even to “The Worst Lens Ever Made” (from Mortira).

The Winning Lenses

1. Feed The Hungry from pmolinero
2. Partnership For Safety from Big Jim
3. Action Against Hunger from Comfortdoc

Pmolinero plans to “donate $0.05 for every comment left on the Feed the Hungry lens from now until Thanksgiving, 27th of November 2008.”

Still Time to be Thankful

Even though the winning lenses have been announced, there is still time left in November to be thankful. You can Share What You are Thankful for in this Month on the lens or post why you are thankful in the Month of Thanks thread in the Squidu forums.

I am very thankful and grateful to all who participated in the Month of Thanks Challenge.

I had a lot of fun creating this 15 Squid Gifts lens. The lens was an idea that I came up with to celebrate lens # 100, but didn’t get it completed until I reached lens # 200.

Christmas Gifts for Squidoo Lensmasters and Squid Lovers was created:

First to honor reaching lens #200
Second to benefit Planet Gumbo and
Third and entry for the Month of Thanks Challenge.

If you have someone on your holiday list that is a Squidoo lensmaster or a Squid lover, there are 15 different categories of holiday squid gifts on the Christmas Gifts for Squidoo Lensmasters and Squid Lovers. You are sure to find something to please your favorite lensmaster or Squid Lover.

This was the question that I set out to answer in the Ways to Recycle Campaign Signs lens.

I was going to blog this week for My Green Doc Blog, but a post by Bonnie on the So You Want To Be A Giant Squid? blog spurred me on to create an entire lens.

You can view the lens and the other blog post, 12 Ways to Recycle or Reuse a Campaign Sign.

This lens benefits Heifer International and a Month of Thanks Challenge.

Image Source: Laura Hertzfeld. Obama Signs. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Probably my favorite Halloween lens that I created this year for Squidboo was the Green Your Halloween. This year even the skeletons were going green. I reused a skeleton puzzle when I went in to teach a bit on Bone Anatomy in my daughters’ classes at school.

In the Green Your Halloween lens I take a look at ways to reduce, recycle and reuse a lot for your Halloween festivities. Here are just a few:

Tips for Having a Green Halloween

P.S. On October 24, Green Your Halloween is featured on the Giant Squid Community Showcase. It tied with my “Easy Halloween Costumes” lens. The lens was also nominated by Chef Keem for Lens of the Day, twice.

I’ve updated my Dia de los Muertos - Day of the Dead for this year.

The lens was created as an introduction to the holiday, Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, one often confused with Halloween. Dia de los Muertos is often compared to Halloween in part because they both have skeletons and skulls as decorations. These two fall festival celebrations are very different, with very different origins.

This festival to celebrate the unity of life and death, is considered by many to be the most important holiday of the year in Mexico and other Latin American countries.  It is the time once a year, when the spirits of loved ones who have died, return to earth to celebrate this holiday with friends and family.

Keeping Memories Alive

Many people not raised with the tradition of the Day of the Dead find solace in this lighter, cheerful, family-oriented approach to the subject of death. Dia de los Muertos is a unique way of keeping the memories alive of those who have died. It might even be a helpful tradition for someone to adopt and begin celebrating for those who have lost loved ones.

I finished up two more SquidBoo lenses for the How Giant Squids Do Halloween Challenge. The last minute additions:

1. Spooky Halloween Meal about our family tradition of eating ’scary’ Halloween Foods. It includes a lot of fun recipes that we’ve fixed with the girls for the past 5 years.

2. Healthy Halloween Treats looking at Halloween from the perspective of a parent who teaches nutrition, this lens offers tips to enjoy Halloween, stay healthy and still survive the start of Candy Season.

The key is to encourage children to eat Halloween treats that fall in the healthier end of the spectrum, while showing them how to savor their sweets in moderation.

Make sure you take a look at all of the fun lenses that have been submitted to the How Giant Squids Do Halloween Challenge.