On My Mind: #MindsOnMain

In 2014 I worked with an almost singular focus to raise money for NAMI via Team TryJen, and hovered around $3500 the day before the walk. Team TryJen would ultimately take home the award for Top Friends & Family Fundraising Team(!).

Today, with under 5 days to go to the 2015 event, we total $215. I don't have the energy to campaign aggressively, these days. I spend most of my energy trying to avoid pain and flareups these days than anything else, and right now I'm trying to conserve energy in order do my part for the NAMI Mid-Carolina ‪#‎MindsOnMain‬ Parade & Block Party on Saturday so that I can walk 5 blocks AND volunteer during the party at Soda City NAMI Mid-Carolina serves such an important purpose in our state, and it relies on fundraising from this event for the majority of its operating budget.

#MindsOnMain Parade & Block Party, 5/2 at Soda City

If you, your employer, or someone you know can help us help the cause, please consider making a donation and/or sharing this post. EVERY dollar helps. Mental illness will touch the lives of 1 in 4 people in any given year [1], and it will do so without discrimination. Professional athletes [2], Beloved and award-winning famous actors [3], your little sister, your dad, your friend, yourself. Depression, anxiety, dementia, addiction, postpartum depression, autism, bipolar disorder... any of the nearly 300 disorders listed in DSM-V - will affect 20% of us PER YEAR. Organizations like NAMI Mid-Carolina are there when we are in need, but they can't be there without crucial funding.

Donate via or sign up to join Team TryJen.


1: WHO Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) 
2: Article by Hayley Wickenheiser, 5-time Olympic Medalist
3: Robin Williams, Suicide

Two Adult Cats Need New Homes After Owner Passed Away

UPDATE 5:10pm Thursday January 29, 2015: Sammy and Baby Girl are safe and adopted!

My friend Nick lost his mom right before Christmas. He didn't hear from her over a weekend, which was weird; they were very close. The following Monday, he went to check on her to find his mom's body; she died sometime early in the weekend. Nick is an only child. He lives alone, in an apartment, and he has a kitty of his own. He loves his kitty, his kitty mostly tolerates him, but his kitty will not tolerate any other cat... and neither will his landlords. Nick has until the end of January to finish cleaning out his mother's apartment, and as he does that, he's been visiting the cats daily to feed, water, scoop, and play.

Time is almost up, though. These two cats suffered the loss of their person, and now with 5 days to go they are losing their home with nowhere to go. We've been trying to home them for a month and a half, but nobody wants adult cats, and the shelters and rescues we've asked have regretfully declined - they're overpopulated with adult cats, as it is.

Please, if you can spread the word, share the post, if you know anybody who can take these cats in - please send them my way. Comment here, email jenniferbaileybergen at gmail, tweet @tryjen. These two don't even need to be homed together, since the tuxedo girl sort of totally hates the Maine Coon, but they need homes.

This is Sammy. He's a 10 yr old Maine Coon.

This is Baby Girl. She's a 6 yr old chubster.

We don't know what to do. These cats deserve a home where they will be loved, but we can't find anybody who has a place for them to go. We have offered donations of money and goods to local no-kill shelters, we've asked everybody we know... Nobody can take them. 

There are five days left until these cats are homeless. 

Ideas? Thoughts? Help? 

Try40

A year and a half ago, someone I love very much committed suicide. Years of untreated depression and alcoholism culminated in the loss of an incredible person who absolutely did not have to die. I can't go back and undo the terrible loss for a family and a worldwide community of friends and loved ones, but I can and will make a difference for the people in my own community who depend on services like those offered by NAMI Mid-Carolina.

Cocky cheering for the 2013 NAMIWalk

I live with depression and anxiety. I LOVE people with depression, anxiety, OCD, addictions, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and more. 1 in 4 Americans are living with mental illness - which means chances are, so do you... either yourself, or someone you love.

We're not in this alone, and funding the mental health services in our Midlands community can help ensure that nobody who needs help has to feel alone or go untreated.

Every dollar helps. Every step counts. All we need to do is TRY. I'l be using the hashtag #Try40 for my walk, as I try to make it the entire 5k at age 40. :)

Yes, that's right, I'm about to turn 40. If you are inclined to give me a gift, please consider making a donation to sponsor my first EVER 5k (at age 40!) instead. You can also sign up to join Team TryJen, and come out and walk with me at the last public event at the old Bull Street "Asylum" before it is demolished and new construction begins.

Sponsor me: http://namiwalks.nami.org/jbb
Join Team TryJen: http://namiwalks.nami.org/tryjen

THANK you.

Columbia, ABC Fixed A Problem

In my post Columbia, We Have A Problem on March 19, 2013, I did like we bloggers do when we can't get information or answers via regular channels: we take to our respective soapboxen and start making a lot of noise on the internet. Like Jerry Orbach said to Patrick Swayze in the Emile Ardolino magnum opus Dirty Dancing, if I'm wrong I say I'm wrong. My loud-mouthiness aside, let me tell you what I know to be actual evidence-based reality: ABC Columbia listened. ABC Columbia stepped up, fixed a problem, and in doing so they made important information available again. Not to mention they warmed my cold and blackened heart.

Fussbudgets, I am so happy to report to you that the previously identified problem has been resolved. ABC's interview with Emma Davidson of Tell Them and New Morning Foundation has been re-posted on YouTube (thus, the direct url has changed), and WOLO updated all of their various social media channels to reflect it:

ABC Columbia on Facebook
Good Morning Columbia on Facebook
@abc_columbia on Twitter

Watch the interview:

Thank you, ABC. You did a good thing today.

Screenshots:
YouTube: http://flic.kr/p/e53tHJ
ABC Columbia on Facebook: http://flic.kr/p/e53rx1
Good Morning Columbia on Facebook: http://flic.kr/p/e53rxh
@abc_columbia on Twitter: http://flic.kr/p/e53rDN

Columbia, We Have A Problem

About a month ago, my friend Emma sat for an interview with our local ABC affiliate, WOLO, for their "Corner of Main and Gervais" segment. Emma is Manager of Strategic Mobilization at New Morning Foundation, and she was there to discuss the billboards which Tell Them - a program of the New Morning Foundation - had scattered throughout town, as well as the forum to be held that night at Tapp's Art Center. The interview was broadcast and added to their youtube channel, like the rest of what they do. Lots of us involved with Tell Them shared the interview, and really appreciated ABC's awesomeness in broadcasting Emma's righteous baddassery.

Cool, right? Not so much. Read on:

I shared the video link on 2/21/13, its original air date. Today I went back to re-watch it, and found it was gone. Then, I attempted to share the link again, and found that while the video is "unavailable", its associated information still shows up. Moreover, I've since learned that the interview was taken down the very next day without explanation, and that several calls to the station to ask why have not been returned. My tweet to @abc_columbia on the topic has yet to be answered, but that tweet is only about 4 hours old as of this writing.

This might not sound like a problem to you, but it sure sounds like one to me. Tell Them is an important nonpartisan, mainstream voice of reason with more than 10,000 members across the state of South Carolina. Their billboard campaign and the message it is sending is a call to standardize reproductive health care in our state and ensure that those teaching the subject are themselves properly educated. So what's with hiding that information after the broadcast fact? At best it's poor Internet practice to delete news they've already shared, and at worst it's actively dishonest.

I would like an answer. Wouldn't you?

Screenshot of my original share and reshare attempt: http://flic.kr/p/e4wUN3
Screenshot of Emma's Interview YouTube URL as of 3/19: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rtcITxF15s
Screenshot of ABC Columbia's tweet: http://flic.kr/p/e4uh2x
Screenshot of ABC Columbia's YouTube channel, where February 21, 2013 no longer seems to have happened: http://flic.kr/p/e4A62L

About That #LiveLikeRick Tribute Video

James and George created this tribute to Rick Stilwell. James will say that he AND George made it; George will say that he just contributed a few bits but that James did all the work. He said/he said aside, this is a bittersweet video for those of us who knew Rick... It's nice to hear from him again, it's funny, he was funny, and he's just so missed.

The thing for me, though, is that this tribute video is especially important for me: It includes a bit of footage where Rick talked about me (!), suggesting that people should be following me on Twitter. Me! Of all people! I'm just some dweeb, and he was talking about ME! I seriously couldn't believe it. Rick was the coolest of the cool kids, and I was a total nobody... at least, an in-person nobody, and he was talking about me? That's why I'm here talking about him, to tell you not just about this video, but also about that day.

If memory serves, the day Rick recorded the bit about me was a blazing hot day in late August, 2011; it was the day when I finally got to meet Rick in person, on the steps of Cromer's Pnuts during Food Truck Food Court. I heard he would be there, and told The City Girl I wanted to meet THE Columbia social media guru. She made sure to find him; rolled me right up to him in the middle of his lunch, and made a proper IRL introduction (we'd known each other online for ages). That August day in 2011 was a big deal day for me in a lot of ways: It was the first time I beat back the social anxiety enough to attend any of the tweetups; the first time I met most of the "Real Twitterati". I was just standing up the social media department at work for real, and I needed to turn my virtual connections into real ones. Everybody who was anybody knew: RickCaffeinated was the guy you talked to about that in Columbia, SC.

So there I was: Sweaty, self-conscious, scared, nervous, and by the end of the day I had a raging sunburn, too. As it turned out, though, every single person I met was not only super fun and kind, but 100% welcoming and friendly, just as if we'd known each other forever... which, well, we had. Rick was so nice to me that day, answering tons of questions, inviting me to Social Media Club Columbia, and telling me he would happily tell me about how to do what he did, for his going price of a cup of coffee. :)

Anyway. I have been wondering what happened to that clip, and to find that not only did The Misters K and N locate it, but that they chose to include it in this tribute... well, that just means the world to me. In mid January 2013, the day after Rick died, I would go back to Cromer's - which now houses Jamestown Coffee Company - along with lots of the same people who were there that day in 2011. In 2013, we raised our mugs in toast to Rick, shared memories, and said our goodbyes to him.

Please take a minute to watch. Thank you.

Kindness and Local Happiness

Jim Sonefeld. Ring a bell?

You might know him as "Soni". You might know him as the drummer for a band called Hootie and the Blowfish. You might even know him from when he played soccer for the Gamecocks. Me, I moved to South Carolina from the West Coast at the end of 1996, and didn't really connect Jim with any of those things. I saw him around town over the years, but for the longest time I couldn't place him, I just always thought "I know I know that guy from somewhere!" (That somewhere eventually registered as having been MTV). See, when you live in Columbia, SC, the first thing you learn is that everybody knows everybody else, or knows someone who knows their mama. So I chalked up my feeling of deja vu as a part of that.