Friday Fun Flier XV
I'm headed off to Costa Rica (yesterday) and another great podcast!
Hello hello everyone! I’m writing this on Wednesday, which means that by the time you read it, I’ll have landed in Costa Rica! I’ll be writing about those adventures when I launch the exclusive content on August 1st! Follow along as I study movement and bumble my way through with sub-par Spanish. It’ll be fun!
Last week, I hiked Four Pass Loop near Aspen with some friends, more to come on my experiences in nature as the week goes on!
I just went for another run in the rain, I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a nice spritzy workout. Remember to choose discomfort this week, my friends! Happiness and community are waiting on the other side of your comfort zones.
A Podcast I’ve Been Loving:
No Such Thing as a Fish
One of my favorite things I’ve found in the last week (ironic, because that’s what the podcast is) No Such Thing as a Fish is hosted by the research team of the British show QI, where they present their favorite facts they’ve found in the last week.
There are fun facts from all corners of the world, and though each week follows some sort of theme, the presenters go all over the place.
Listening to this actually taught me something about my home state! I had never heard about the National Eagle Repository before, but it turns out that there is a building filled with eagle carcasses and confiscated animal-related contraband an hour south of me.
Highlighting a Hero for today’s News:
Olga Murray has got one of those classic American immigrant success stories that just blow your mind. She was born in 1925 in Transylvania, and her parents moved to the United States when she was six.
She was a star pupil in school and earned admission at Columbia University where she graduated with honors, going on to get her law degree from George Washington University in 1954. The whole time she was in school, she paid her way through by researching and writing for the columnist Drew Pearson.
There were very few female lawyers In the early 1950s, and most firms only wanted women to be secretaries. But Olga's star quality shone through, and she was offered the first job she applied for, working on staff for Phil Gibson, at the time the Chief Justice of California. Eventually, Murray was able to work her way onto the California Supreme Court, where she served a 37-year tenure, helping to advance the causes of civil rights, women's rights, and environmental policy.
She could have retired, but that's not who Olga Murray is. Towards the end of her legal career, she visited Nepal on a lark. She was already 66 years old.
"The minute I landed I fell in love with the country," Murray said, when interviewed years later. "The children, they held my hand, they laughed. They were just so delightful and they wanted to go to school. I said, 'Olga, you know what you're going to do for the rest of your life? You're going to educate the children.’”
I can relate to the love. As someone who did his Peace Corps service in Nepal, I can tell you that the country grips you right away. There's something loving and wonderful about the energy there, something that we don't often experience in the west.
Murray decided then and there to do something to help. In 1990, she started the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (the name has since been changed to Nepal Youth Foundation), a nonprofit focused on fighting poverty, building schools, and rescuing young women who have been trafficked or forced into servitude.
"We were going to not be the great white saviors coming in and saving them from this destructive practice. But we would train them to save their sisters, to liberate their sisters," she said of the beginning of her organization.
In the last 30 ½ years, the organization has build 72 hospitals and assisted in educating more than 50,000 kids. And Murray believes that she is far from finished.
"I don't think about stopping and, you know, as long as I have my marbles and I'm healthy, I'll just continue to do that," she said.
The woman is 96 years old. NINETY-SIX years old, everyone.
When possible, Olga Murray spends half of every year in Nepal, and the other half at her home in Sausalito, where she works to raise funds for the Nepal Youth Foundation’s programs.
If you’d like to find out more about the Nepal Youth Foundation or donate, you can do so here.
That’s all for this week folks! When I talk to you again, it’ll be from Costa Rica :)
Whoaa have fun, share pictures!