Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. In my opinion, people have attached themselves to this holiday in a way that makes single people sad, those in relationships nervous, and those in marriage pressured. No matter what your status, I invite you to give love in a powerful, new way this year.

On Tuesday, January 12th, 2010, the peninsula nation of Haiti was devastated by the worst Earthquake to hit the world in generations. Hundreds of thousands are dead and Millions are displaced. They are only one hour off the shores of our mighty country and they need our support more than ever.

This Valentine’s Season I invite you to take action as a world citizen and contribute to our less fortunate neighbors. Here are a few ways to do so:

Donate Over the Web:

Free The Children – “Children Helping Children Through Education.” Having been working in Haiti for more than a decade they were fast to respond. Their primary objective is making sure children are safe, sourced, and have a future to look forward to. (This organization was founded by a 12 year old by the way. Of all the groups I’ve met and worked with – these guys move me like no other. They are my inspiration for being in action.) Please give generously.
http://www.freethechildren.com/haiti

InterAction is the largest coalition of U.S.-based international, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on the world’s poor and most vulnerable people. Collectively, InterAction’s more than 180 members work in every developing country. Member organizations are large and small, faith-based and secular. They have a special link for Haiti.
http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti

Google is also maintaining a page with information on what you can do to help. This is trusted source for reputable organizations you can contribute to such as the International Red Cross, UNICEF, and Doctors Without Borders.
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/

Donate by Text Message

Yele Haiti – The Non-Profit, created by Haitian born recording artist Wyclef Jean (who I had the pleasure of meeting at “We Are The World”) is accepting $5 donations when you text “Yele” to 501501 or $10 donations when you text “Haiti” to the same number. Charges will appear on your cell phone bill.

Or Donate with a Phone Call:

You can make a phone call and donate to any number of organizations presently bringing relief to Haiti. Here are a few:

If there was ever a place I dared to go where people actually cared what I was wearing, it is the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Last year I enjoyed the fresh fitted look of a Prada suit and received a “best dressed” nod in the New York Times.
The Verdict: Stylish - Yes. Inspiring - Not really.

So this year I enlisted the help of Bahar Shahpar, an expert in sustainable fashion, to find out what alternatives I had on this night of nights. The result was an Eco-Tux – a suit made fair (for earth and earthlings alike) in every step of the manufacturing process

The Suit is EcoGir from Simon Carter, made of recycled polyester (consisting of 25 plastic water bottles) & wool.  The best part is you can just throw it in the washing machine.

The Beautiful Lapel Pin is a symbol of marriage equality; A silver fist – a common symbol for civil rights. No other union serves to protect your loved ones as strongly as marriage does and I’m tired of my gay friends in long-term, loving relationships being denied the same freedoms I have. Gays & Lesbians are still treated as second-class citizens and that sucks.

The certified organic cotton dress shirt is by Culturata. This Italian company relies on old world tailoring - hand crafting shirts with modern innovative fabrics. 

The Osborn Design Shoes were my lady-killers for sure. Hand crafted in Guatemala, these Fair-Trade shoes are one of a kind. Osborn works with the artisans directly. Each pair is signed and numbered by the cobbler.

The belt by Parabellum (unseen) was Reservation Bison – made after the beast had passed naturally of course.

The Sonic Fabric tie was the icing on the cake. Made out of recycled cassette tapes, I fed it into my tape deck after the show and listened in homage to last year’s nominees, still trying to figure out what Viva La Vida is about…

Everything I wore to the Grammys was intended to transform the bling-typical scene into a place of new possibility - where everyone can be a winner. I imagine my suit offsets the 12 pounds of Grammy I’ll be receiving in the mail soon – thus making my overall experience a carbon neutral one.
Final Verdict: Stylish - Yes. Inspiring - Yes!

There is so much to share about this weekend’s festivities surrounding the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. I found out I won both awards while bouncing from press commitment to press commitment on the red carpet. Much like Taylor Swift’s fantasies reveal, it is an impossible dream to accept, therefore being handed two wins at once is even more avant-garde. While I am truly present to the blessing that is this incredible acknowledgment, I miss having been able to publically accept either award. 

I didn’t have a speech written that night. I honestly didn’t expect to win. I made-up the other nominees were way more relevant than I. I was perfectly happy just to attend the ceremony with my Dad – an award within itself.



Together he and I spent a few days tooling around LA, back and forth from San Diego a few times, dropping in on various events and charity functions. The highlight for me was watching my dad be a tripod for my friend, Detrick’s handheld camera while shooting a PSA for marriage equality. Having Dad be an activist too was a sign that my work was making a real difference in my family – proof that straight people engaging in this conversation does have an impact.

At the after party, Dad was just as at ease on the dance floor, mouthing the words to Poker Face while bumping and grinding on the dance floor with the likes of love-inspiring Carlos and Patrick.


…All else in between – from performing new duets with Colbie Caillat and Shawn Colvin, to singing harmonies with James Taylor, Elvis Costello, Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, and Dave Matthews, to being spritzed by Pink under her graceful Grammy performance – we were in constant communication with creation.


And now on with the Awards...

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance – Make It Mine

I would like to thank Jerry Lindahl, Jon Marro, Noel “Toca” Rivera, Matthew & Terces Engelhart and everyone at Cafe Gratitude for inspiring such a fun song to write and perform.

This song was originally written for a film and was rejected. There was a montage in the film that showed the main character going thru the process of realizing a dream – from the initial idea to it being fully expressed and all the work that goes into it - in under 4 minutes. One of the things I did to research this experience was call the aforementioned people and ask them “What’s the secret to sustaining happiness?” These people constantly inspire me to share myself as they share their lives with me. I felt these were the perfect people to represent in a song about living a tirelessly love-filled life.

I would also like to thank Bill Silva Management & Everyone at Atlantic Records for their patience, guidance, trust, and compassion on this lengthy project. It gives me a tremendous feeling to still be celebrating this song more than 2 years after it was recorded. I share this award in honor of your outreach and commitment to the quality of life, not only for myself, but for the people whose letters I’ve read that mentions “Make It Mine” as a song that wakes them up to their true potential.

And special Thanks to Engineer Dyre Gormsen & Producer Martin Terefe for holding space for me to sing an award winning performance. Score another point for Kensaltown!

Hooray for mi familia and the Hanover County Schools for the training. My win is a result of your talent nurturing and creating the possibility for this to even happen.

…And it goes without saying, This song would be empty without The Grooveline Horns’ insane spit-fire brass arrangement. Thank you Carlos Sosa, Fernie Castillo, and Reggie Watkins for the gift you have of making every song better. Somebody be sure to give Raul a high five for me.

Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals – Lucky

I first and foremost wish to thank my co-conspirator, Colbie Caillat for inspiring the song to begin with. It was her voice that prompted me to pick up the phone and call her, inviting the duet to happen.

I also thank Tim Fagan, the third writer on the track for keeping the story alive and building a bridge for us all to get over!

Thanks to Mikal Blue for producing the second round of Vocals; what became the final version you hear on the recording. I love your vibe mike. I always have.

Many thanks to Darren Doane for keeping the best kept secret in show business at the time - and then being the one to beautifully reveal it to all. You make me laugh. Even now.

And of course big thanks to Atlantic Records & Universal for seeing eye-to-eye on a project by two artists from different families. This could have easily been a Romeo & Juliet tragedy in the beginning. And now thanks to your involvement, Colbie and I get to add Grammy Award Winning before our names.

Thank you to all my fans. This has been an extraordinary ten-year overnight success.

Tune in Thursday and I'll give you the lo-down on my stylee Eco-Tux...

I like Wednesdays.
I especially like them when I wake up early.
Last night, I stayed up as late as one can possibly make a Tuesday. As I hit the sheets I declared strength for a successful awakening. One shot of the alarm at 7:37am and I was up and at'em again. This gave me time to hug my roommate and visitors goodbye, to catch what felt like a sunrise, and to recreate the world as new again.












I found this story in my inbox this morning and I am inspired to share it. It is from my friend Katie, an exceptional person and an amazing friend in music, food, surf and travel (and sometimes all 4 at once) She is an inspiration to myself and all of our community. Please read this with a sense of relatedness to your own streets, streams/rivers, and environment. We all have spaces to share and places to care for - what are you doing to preserve it?

I admit it. I am Twitterly Challenged. It is all too often I view the Twitter world forum as a streaming version of a bathroom wall – a place to pee, see, and share; a place of clever poetry, shout-outs, offers, introductions and slams. This kind of mentality doesn’t get me very far and my drivel is reduced to just that – toilet humor.

So I am constantly reinventing it as a medium in which to share resourceful, inspiring and/or humorous ideas. I make-up that it can be a condensed version of a TED conference if we choose it, and yet I also make-up in my mind that the majority of Twitterers post but don’t actually peruse. I make that up because I am one of those people. Indeed, Twitter is my men’s room wall and in 140 spaces or less, I place my Sharpee where my spirit is and seldom look back.  God Bless all those who read it – who need it or not – And I pray you have a nice day.

Yesterday I Twitted – twittered – tweeted (which reminds me – I wish this powerful means of connection had been given a cooler name…  like Stall Street Journal or something more suitable and snooze-able) So yesterday in the Stall Street Journal I wrote a few of my perspectives on the Snooze Button – that device which offers a 2% chance of returning to your dreams and a 98% chance of non-fulfillment on your real ones. This morning as I hit the snooze alarm again, I got present to what it really is: a Procrastination Button.

If you’re like me and you set the alarm an hour early because you know you’re going to hit the snooze and sleep longer – I invite you to explore where else in your life that mentality shows up for you. Do you put off doing projects until the last minute? Do you often oversleep your project deadlines? Are your dreams altered by your scattered attention to more than one reality? Do you blame the alarm clock for not performing its function successfully? Who else do you blame?

Wake up and smell your finger.

It’s Monday - The perfect day to make bold new declarations - The best week ever to check in on your New Year’s Resolutions and Commitments. What else could you take on this week to make your life and the life of others Great?

All work on the new garden has been postponed on account of rain. My bulldozer sits in silt, patiently waiting for the ground to dry. As I’d skimmed off the top 6 inches of gravel and rock, the rain is exactly what I need to soften the area that I’ll be filling with fill-dirt, top and amended soil. Microorganisms are lining up to move in to this new development as we speak.

With all the excess unwanted gravel I created a new road around the perimeter of the farm to give the avocado growers better access to the land. It’s times like these

This is a picture of my proud new path as it’s being washed over by dirt washout from higher ground. We’d purposely kept the fence open in that area to allow this to happen. Water and dirt has to go somewhere. And When God Sends Rain – I Choose Rain.



One of the goals of this project is to keep everything on site, wasting and dumping none, and reusing whatever resources are already available to me here on the farm.

For instance, in the last week I’d unearthed a variety of rock, boulder, and building tile that I was able to craft into a camp-style fire-pit. I was inspired by something I had seen at the home improvement store but wasn’t keen to spend 300 dollars on the supplies. My new stylish pit cost me $0. I plan on using large tree stumps from old avocado trees as seats around the circle. As soon as the weather moves on, it’s vegan-weenie roastin’ time!



Your Water Conservation Tip for Today Relates to your Health and Finances: Stop Drinking Soda and Refill Your Water Bottle.

It’s still very necessary to encourage everyone you know to have a personal water bottle. This allows us to bottle from our own source and reduce the use of plastic. The best place I’ve found recently to get a free fill is at the soda fountain. Every gas station in the world has one, and usually connected to the Sprite is a little button for water. My favorite burrito shop also has one, as does every fast food restaurant in America. The water that comes from these fountains is not only super cold, but it's filtered, super fresh, and super free!

Thank you for taking it on.

Jason

I have a dream – That someday - Everybody shall be exalted…



The time is now to honor your inner MLK and encourage everyone you know to vote tomorrow in support of same-sex marriage.

May your choices be guided by the rising tide of Equality.

Free at last, Free at last,
Thank God Almighty I am Jason Mraz.