Life, Music, Tornados, Food, and Stuff

The past few weeks have been insane. Both good and bad. And I’ll try to keep this as short as I can and not get into too much boring (for you) detail, while explaining a little of what’s been going on. Which has been a lot.

In my last TILT post, I mentioned that I was going down to Austin, TX to visit my friend John Elliott and attend his live record recording. (As I’ve said before, check out his music, you won’t be disappointed. I never am.) That, I did. Though, I took the train instead of driving, which was a much better idea. 10 hours of just reading comics and listening to music and looking at Twitter instead of boredly staring at the road. I stayed down there for the weekend and it was absolutely lovely. It felt so great to take a mini vacation and allow my brain to switch off for a couple of days. Oh, and I made cookies. And they were good. I also met up with my Twitter-friend, Jen at the show and I think we really hit it off. It’s nice to finally meet people that you talk to pretty regularly online. I feel like several years ago that would have been odd, but now it’s the norm. And I’ve met some of the best people via Twitter. Anyway. Austin trip: fabulous. Needed it. Would do it again in a heartbeat. I wish I had some cool photos to share, but dumbly, I only really took a photo of the sign at the train station, and my hair in the heat and humidity after rolling out of bed in the morning. C’est la vie.

The day after I came back though, shit hit the fan. There was a huge EF5 tornado that went through Moore, just south of where I live, in Oklahoma City. Last I heard, they were saying it was the worst one in history. It was terrible to watch happen live on the news, and the aftermath was even worse. I won’t go in to all the detail that I could, but suffice to say I spent the evening sobbing on the couch while watching the news – though my immediate surroundings were left physically unaffected, it was just heartbreaking to watch and left me feeling helpless.


Later that week, my friend Erin asked if I would be interested doing social media for a fundraiser event happening to benefit tornado victims. I jumped at the chance and I’m so happy that I did. It ended up being such a wonderful and fulfilling experience. It felt good to be putting my personal skills and talents to work in a meaningful way.

The fundraiser was a “pop-up restaurant” featuring many of Oklahoma City’s most famous chefs, and chef Daniel Bowien of Mission Chinese in New York City. The team was there for 2 days creating AMAZING food on a rotating menu, made from ingredients donated by local shops and restaurants. Outside, there was live music, and artists doing live painting. The art was auctioned off at the end of the night. (My friend Allyson did a couple of nice blog posts about it here and here) The goal was to raise $35,000 that weekend and we raised a mind-blowing $75,000, which went directly to the OK chapter of Red Cross!

Erin at CooperHouse made the gorgeous OK Chefs Relief website and did all of the branding. You can find out more information about the event there, including the chefs and artists who were involved. If you’d like, you can see what I was doing on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It’s hard to believe that the accounts grew as much as they did and and were as active as they were in just a few days – it was fast paced work! And very fulfilling.


Here is a wonderful video that Choate House made about the event. It’s worth a watch, trust me.

OK Chefs Relief from CHOATE HOUSE on Vimeo.

A couple of days later, I was asked by Tracey and Rob, who had managed the PR for OK Chefs, if I’d like to manage the social media for another fundraiser happening that week called Music 4 Moore – which was a benefit concert. I, of course, said yes. Once again, it was great to be putting my skills to work in a meaningful way. It was also so nice to be introduced to some good local music, because I’ve been complaining about the lack of it since I moved here. (Also the legendary “Queen of Rock”, Wanda Jackson performed. She’s absolutely adorable – you should look up some of her videos from the 50′s and 60′s) All of the proceeds, including ticket sales, parking, food and alcohol went directly to Red Cross and the event raised another $12,000 for tornado victims.

Again, if you’d like, you can see what I was doing on their Facebook page and Twitter.


If you watch this concert promo video, you can see some of the devastation that occurred from the storms, as well as short clips of interviews with many of the generous and wonderful bands that played.

Music 4 Moore // Concert Interview Video (2013) from Nathan Poppe on Vimeo.

Then we had another pretty scary EF5 tornado which took out some places west of us and it came much closer to where I live. Close enough that we were advised to get underground. This is the first time I’ve had to do this, and our house doesn’t have a shelter or a basement. Luckily our friend Marek invited us to come hide in her basement with something like 20 other people and 18 dogs. The tornado missed the majority of the city, but the storm caused a lot of flooding and power outages everywhere, which was kind of incredible to see.


Being from the West coast I am definitely not used to all of this weather… I hope it calms down, but that might be too much to hope for. We’ll see. So…. how have you been?

P.S. If you don’t live in the area, but would like to help, you can always donate online at redcross.org or text FOOD to 32333 to have a $10 donation to the regional foodbank added on to your regular phone bill.