Word: medlock
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Today his work is enthusiastically supported by the timber companies, and, says Flowers, 59, "I can retire with an easy conscience." His experiment, though, cost him $12,000. That personal sacrifice caught the attention of Ann Medlock and John Graham, a married couple who run a small foundation in Langley (pop. 700), on picturesque Whidbey Island, 20 miles north of Seattle. And last year Flowers, savior of the bears, became a Giraffe...
...needs some explaining. The foundation is called the Giraffe Project, and its aim is to recognize people who "stick their necks out for the common good." Risk must also be involved: the chance of losing a job or being ostracized by a community. "Each of these individual acts," says Medlock, "teaches the rest of us important lessons about learning to cope in an unsafe world...
...Yorker Michael Greenberg, who every winter gathers, repairs and hands out gloves to the homeless. Consider Ray Buchanan and Ken Horne of Big Island, Va., who collect farmers' discarded potatoes and deliver them to the hungry. And consider lanky, 6-ft. 4-in. Graham, 46, and petite, vivacious Medlock, 55, who flirt with financial disaster to keep their project going in order to spread the word about good deeds in an unkind world. The object, says Medlock, is to inspire everyone "to stop being an ostrich...
...nomination of a New Jersey battered wife who founded a group to help other victims. Said Graham: "The pain of her experience was so far in the past that I don't see what risk she is taking now." He was loudly and raucously outvoted, and an indignant Medlock threw a cushion at her husband. "One man's Giraffe is another's turkey," grinned Medlock...
...this sounds very arbitrary, it is. "We're playing God, but then, we can because we invented the game," says Medlock. The result is ambiguities. The project's philosophies of "It's up to us" and self-reliance might sound conservative, but it is the workers for liberal causes who inevitably get recognition: antinuclear proponents, feminists and peace activists...