OldSouth's GreenShoots Award For 2010

In the non-stop flow of venality, stupidity, hatred, bigotry, religious zealotry, poverty, and cultural cheesiness that seems to define so much of life in 2010, there are some real heroes, some people and institutions that work in ways large and small to transform the world around them. They apply large doses of imagination and perspiration to the situation at hand, and great things happen, even if not lionized by the world at large. HellBells y'all--the Oprah Winfrey Network (apt acronym OWN) is about to launch! We gots'ta pay attention to Oprah!

So, here we have OS's finalists:

Geert Wilders, for standing tall and saying things that need to be heard, even at the risk of being jailed for simply saying them.

The Acton Institute, which reminds us that only free and virtuous societies can prosper, and that Christianity is the fount of that virtue. Also something that needs saying, even at the risk of being ridiculed.

Alexandra Reau, a Michigan teenage entrepreneur who took a half-acre of the family's property, had her dad plow it for a garden, and set herself up in a tidy little business of growing and selling produce for her neighbors.

You go, girl!!

MIT engineers, who have created oil-spill-eating bots with technology at hand and a lot of ingenuity. They're cheap to build and operate, can run 24/7/365, and they work! Shhhhh! Don't let the gubbermint know! They'll ban them, for all the reasons listed above. They need failure, not success, to stay on their game. If there are solutions to oil spills, then there are few reasons to keep banning oil drilling, and continuing to impoverish the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Kaziah Hancock, the Utah artist who comforts families of fallen soldiers with portraits of the loved and lost. Words fail. If you view only one link, see this one.

And the 2010 GreenShoots Award goes to (sound of drumrolls, intake of breath, and tearing envelope): Santosh Ostwal of India, who created an ingenous irrigation control system rigged from mobile phone technology that...

...triggers irrigation pumps remotely – is saving water in India and helping more than 10,000 farmers avoid several taxing, dangerous long walks a day.

It's cheap to create, easy to use, works 24/7/365, and improves the lives of millions. Again, don't let the gubbermint know--they need the Indian peasantry to starve, so they can hold ConferencesOnStarvingIndianPeasants at Swiss ski resorts.

OS's charity of choice, to which he will donate in honor of Mr. Ostwal, is Heifer International. This organizations fights poverty one family at a time, with the simple tools of sound agricultural practice.

What a concept!

OS invites you to donate as well.

Happy New Year, ya'll. Stay sober, stay safe, and thanks for reading OS's scribble.