Imprint-TV Official Blog

4th Grader Raises Thousands for WWII Vets

2010-03-22T11:43:00.002-04:00

Justin Peterson is a 9-year-old with an apparent knack for fundraising.

The Chewelah boy has raised more than $3,689 since late last year to help the region’s Honor Flight program with its mission: sending World War II veterans to Washington, D.C., to see their war memorial.

“I’m just really surprised because I didn’t think we’d get this much,” Peterson said. “At first my goal was only $600, but we well cleared that. Now I like $4,000.”

He has persuaded people to donate through public speaking engagements, a letter campaign, a loose-change drive and a taco feed.

Recently, his efforts got a mention on a local radio station, said Tony Lamanna, a Spokane police officer and regional Honor Flight director. That prompted a $1,200 pledge from an anonymous donor.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” said the boy’s mom, Elizabeth Peterson. “We’ve been receiving a couple checks per day from area VFW posts.”

Justin Peterson’s inspiration came after he started interviewing World War II vets for a school project at Gess Elementary School. The fourth-grader has talked to seven or eight vets now, he said.

“One of them, he was a mine sweeper. He blew up mines so his fellow ships could come in,” he said. “That’s one of my favorite stories. I have so many.”

Peterson has raised more by himself than all of Greenacres Middle School in Spokane Valley ($1,400) or all of Willard Elementary School in Spokane ($2,200), Lamanna said.

“We are going to be taking five or six trips this year,” Lamanna said. In all, about 200 veterans will be able to see their memorial.

Justin’s fundraising effort will support six veterans, Lamanna said. “It’s phenomenal.”

-Jody Lawrence-Turner [The Spokesman-Review]

Story Link: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/mar/19/9-year-old-a-fundraising-phenomenon/?print-friendly

Woman Donates Tax Return, Wins Lottery!

2010-03-22T10:04:00.002-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Renee Green of Bellevue, Washington, recently donated her tax return to the Haiti relief efforts. What happened to her in return for her good deed? She won the lottery - $50,000 to be exact! Check out the video to learn more!

Meet the "Indiana Jones/Mother Teresa" of the Amazon

2010-03-19T10:38:00.001-04:00

Historic Choice - Woman Named H.S. Football Coach

2010-03-16T12:39:00.003-04:00

CNN Story Link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/03/11/woman.football.coach/index.html

(CNN) -- A high school in Washington, D.C., on Friday named a former women's professional football player as its head varsity football coach, a move that a national women's sports advocacy group calls historic.

Natalie Randolph, 29, a science teacher at Calvin Coolidge Senior High School, was introduced as the school's head football coach Friday in a press conference.

"We needed to find the best leader, role model, coordinator and instructor for our young men," Coolidge principal Thelma Jarrett said. "Natalie passed our first test -- she's proven herself as a great organizer, a leader who is knowledgeable about the sport as a player and a coach."

Students and faculty, along with Randolph's loved ones and former D.C. Diva teammates were on hand for the announcement as Mayor Adrian Fenty decreed March 12, 2010, "Natalie Randolph Day" in Washington.

Randolph was a wide receiver for the D.C. Divas women's pro football team and a standout sprinter and hurdler at the University of Virginia. She has experience coaching boys, having been an assistant football coach for Washington's H.D. Woodson High School in 2006 and 2007.

But now she's stepping into the head coaching role, extremely rare for women in high school football, though It's not clear how many women have been head coaches for boys' high school football teams.

Randolph said gender would not make a difference in her new role.

"While I am proud to be part of what this all means, being female has nothing to do with it. I love football, I love football. I love teaching. I love these kids," she said Friday.

"My role as head coach is to do all that I can to help these young men, these students, reach their goals. I want to make their families, the school, the city proud of us as a team, not me."

Randolph said she had already sought out some members of her coaching staff.

In a Thursday story about Randolph's hiring, The Washington Post reported that another Washington teacher, Wanda Oates, was named head football coach at a different Washington high school in 1985. But she was removed a day later after coaches who didn't want to coach against her pressured the school district, the Post reported.

Clell Wade Coaches Directory Inc., a company that keeps a database of interscholastic coaches, doesn't keep track of gender, owner Karen Wade-Hutton said.

But Wade-Hutton, whose family has been keeping track of interscholastic sports through the company for 50 years, said that although she's heard of women who were assistant football coaches at high schools, she's "never heard of a female head coach at a high school football team."

The New York-based Women's Sports Foundation "congratulates Natalie Randolph on her historic mark," the group's CEO, Karen Durkin, said in an e-mailed statement Thursday.

"Girls and women -- along with their fathers, sons and brothers -- now have clear evidence that the gridiron ceiling can be broken. Natalie's hiring will serve as a much-needed catalyst for women in leadership positions across all sports," Durkin said.

Rich Daniel, the Divas' general manager, said Randolph will win over anyone skeptical about her ability to coach in an almost exclusively male sport. He referenced her assistant position at Woodson, where she worked with wide receivers.

"I know their passing game was one of the best in the league," Daniel said. "She went through some of the same things she'll go through now: Do you know how to coach? Can you play? But you can ask that of males, too. That's not unique to her being a female.

"People will have that initial reaction, but they'll realize she ... really knows what she's talking about."

Randolph's attorney, Lawrence Wilson, said, "I think everybody is pretty excited about it, not just because she's making history, frankly, but I think they're just excited about having Natalie Randolph."

Wilson, who knew Randolph at Virginia, where he also was a track and field athlete, said she is a "soft-spoken teacher -- and I'm sure a coach -- with a swift sword."

"She has a quiet demeanor about her but has no problem getting respect from people," he said.

Giving the Gift of Time - 5 Inspiring Stories

2010-03-09T10:45:00.003-05:00

From Real Simple Magazine:http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/gifts-of-time-00000000030604/index.html

Empowering Girls
Jocelyn Allen
Age: 40
Hometown: Farmington Hills, Michigan
Single mother of one son

Whether she’s attending a Detroit Pistons game, strolling through a museum, or playing golf, Jocelyn is hard to miss, what with the 30 tween and teen girls she has in tow. Jocelyn, the vice president of public affairs for OnStar, heads up Divas4Life, an organization for girls between the ages of 8 and 18 that encourages them to become, in her words, “determined, inspired, victorious, and adventurous.”

The idea came to Jocelyn in 2002, while she was volunteering as youth director at St. John Evangelist Temple of Truth, in Detroit’s beleaguered Northend community. A longtime member of the congregation, Jocelyn had witnessed parents struggling to provide the basics for their families. “Detroit’s youth are the ones hardest hit by the problems that plague this city,” she notes. “I have been tremendously blessed, and I felt I could be a good role model for young girls.”

In 2003 Jocelyn started Divas4Life to provide her students with “access to mentors who look like them, have overcome the odds, and are giving back to their communities,” she says. Word spread through the neighborhood, and soon Jocelyn had dozens of girls eager to join.

From that point on, Jocelyn, with the help of her all-volunteer board, has arranged weekly field trips for her girls. One week they might go horseback riding; the next, they might attend a performance of La Bohème. Occasional etiquette lessons and money-management and college-prep courses are offered, as are lunches with successful African-American women. (The costs of Divas events are funded by board members or by donations from local companies.) “With everything we do, I want the girls to learn a lesson,” Jocelyn says. “I don’t want them to sense any limits.”

Since Divas began, more than 75 girls have participated in the program (pictured here, six current members). Many become high achievers; this year’s group boasts honor students, violinists, and sports stars. Shyniece Hardwick, who joined Divas when she was 12, is one such success story. “After my mother left, I had no female to guide me,” says Shyniece, now 21, who was raised by her father. “Divas taught me what’s right, what’s wrong―and it’s why I’m in college today.” Shyniece considers Divas a lifeline, so much so that she now works for Jocelyn as the group’s first intern while completing her senior year at Eastern Michigan University.

No matter how busy Jocelyn is at work or with her son, Michael Davis Jr., 17, she says she never tires of running the organization. “It’s rewarding to be there when the girls need someone to listen to them, to tell them they are worthy,” Jocelyn says. “I may not be able to save the whole world, but I can make an impact on these young women’s lives.”

Copy & paste this link to read about 4 other inspiring stories: http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/gifts-of-time-00000000030604/index.html

Man & Dog Reunited & It Feels So Good

2010-03-08T10:46:00.001-05:00

Story from The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/after_two_years_apart_portland.html

The story of the man, his dog and the lost and found began on a spring day two years ago near an open field in Chicago.

Roger Mallette was playing with his black lab, Ike, when his cell phone buzzed. Mallette turned around, took the call and Ike took off.

"It was extremely painful," Mallette said Sunday at his office in Southeast Portland. "I never got over it."

For the longest time, it seemed to Mallette the story would end right there and he'd never see Ike again. It seemed like all he could do was nurse his broken heart and tell friends about the dog that got away. But then, late last year, Mallette got a phone call and the whole story changed.

Mallette, who is 45, found Ike on Craigslist in 2004 when he lived in Seattle. He went to pick him up and found his new friend in a muddy backyard, bounding around, full of energy. This did not bode well.

Ike is a runner. If he's not on a leash, he'll sniff around and take off. Mallette estimates that in their first few months together, Ike ran away five or six times.

But Mallette always managed to find his dog. He gave Ike a rabies tag and had a microchip implanted between Ike's shoulder blades, both of which identified Mallette as his owner.

Together, in early 2007, Ike and Mallette moved to Chicago. It was there, in spring 2008, when Mallette took that fateful cell phone call.

He'd taken Ike off the leash to play ball with him in a grassy lot. One minute, Ike was running around, chasing the ball. The next minute: gone.

Mallette put up fliers and placed an ad on Craigslist. No luck. He eventually gave up, too distraught to get another dog.

In late 2008, Mallette moved to Portland. He owns and operates a company that makes cycling jerseys and he wanted to be in the sport's epicenter.

This is where he met his fiance, Elizabeth Everman. He told her all about Ike.

"I'd heard all these stories about him," said Everman. "Roger, whenever we saw a lab, would almost tear up."

That's where the story stood in early December, 2009.

Then early one morning, when Mallette was asleep, he got a phone call. It was a woman from a dog shelter southwest of Chicago. She had Ike, she said on the voice mail. Call us back.

"I about fell out of bed," Mallette said. "I was in utter disbelief. I was so caught-off-guard I was hoarse. I could barely talk."

Apparently, Ike had run away again and someone in Romeoville, Ill., southwest of Chicago, called the animal control department. An officer came and picked Ike up.

After the microchip and the rabies tag confirmed that Mallette was the owner, Mary Helton gave him a call from the shelter.

"He started crying," Helton recalled.

With help from a friend, Mallette had Ike flown to Portland several days later.

Now when he tells the story about his dog, it has a happy ending.

"I have to say man, it's the coolest thing," Mallette said. "The greatest gift the universe has ever given me."

-- Stephen Beaven

Grace Groner, A University Angel

2010-03-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Lake Forest College received a more than generous gift from a woman whom some are calling “Amazing Grace.” When this 100 year old Lake Forest graduate died in January, she donated her entire estate to the college, totaling $7 million! In the past, Groner donated $180,000 to the school towards a scholarship program which allows at least 1,000 students to get internships and study abroad. In 1935, she bought $60 shares of Abbot Laboratories where she worked as a secretary for 43 years. Over the next 70 years made when the shares split, Grace made investments which allowed her original stock purchase to turn into a huge fortune. Her modest home is donated to the school and will be named “Grace’s Cottage” and used as a place to live for woman who received scholarships. See her amazing tale at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/35722825#35722825.

Scientists Make a Giant Leap in Discovery

2010-03-05T11:02:00.001-05:00

In Australia, the Yellow-spotted Bell frog has been rediscovered after scientists thought it was extinct for 30 years. Luke Pearce, a fisheries conservation officer saw the frog when he was walking down a stream doing research in 2008. He returned to the same spot in 2009 and other experts confirmed a colony of 100 Yellow-spotted Bell frogs. In order to protect the frogs from environmental dangers such as poaching, the discovery was kept a secret, until now. According Mike Tyler, to a frog expert, around a dozen species of Australian frogs are critically endangered. David Hunter, a threatened species officer says, “it gives us hope that a lot of other species that we thought were extinct aren’t actually extinct-we just haven’t found them.” Original article at http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/yellow-spotted-bell-frog-species-rediscovered-in-australia/19383321

Treat First, Charge Later - Chicago Doctor's Slogan

2010-03-04T13:06:00.003-05:00

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBSNews.com:
(CBS) His work takes him to Chicago's meanest streets. But at seven feet tall, cruising in his 500-horsepower Dodge and wearing black leather -- he knows no fear.

He may spend some nights playing the blues with his band, but by day, Dan Ivankovich is all business: a bone doctor with a heart as big as his frame.

The tall guy with the hard-to-pronounce name gave drummer Jimmi Mayes a new hip when he didn't have insurance. And he did the surgery that gave Patricia Wilson her groove back.

"You really feel like this person is really going to do something for you," Wilson said.

It was during his residency at Cook County Hospital (the place that inspired the TV show "ER") that the orthopedic surgeon first saw the need and realized his calling.

"Patients were on waiting lists for five years for basic stuff, colonoscopies, mammograms," Ivankovich said. "And I thought, this is America?"

He decided to treat first and charge later. In a city where hundreds of thousands live in poverty, he's therefore always on call.

"On any given day, it might be three, four, five different hospitals, multiple surgeries," Ivankovic said.

Ivankovich does as many as 800 surgeries a year, twice the number for most orthopedic surgeons. And he makes roughly half as much because at least one-third of his patients are uninsured.

"I've never let something like resources, poverty, money, get in the way," he said. "When you see something that's just blaring at you, how do you keep going and say it's OK? It's not."

"You see a child that's crippled. You see a 50-year-old in a wheelchair, and I can fix it. Why wouldn't I?" Ivankovich asks.

As outgoing as he is about his work, he's deeply private when it comes to his family - other than to admit they pay a price.

"What are you gonna do? I mean this is what I do, this is who I am," Ivankovich said. "It's very, very tough, You give up a lot.

But he refuses to give up the mission that gives his life meaning.

Up with Chile

2010-03-02T12:24:00.002-05:00

Chile’s president-elect Sebastion Pinera brings hope and encouragement in efforts to rebuild the nation after the devastating 8.8 magnitude quake that hit this past weekend. He calls this reconstruction project, Up With Chile, and is meeting with current president Michelle Bachelet to discuss the response effort. Pinera will be the first conservative leader in Chile in 19 years since Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, but says, “These are times when we have to act with a sense of national unity. It is not the time for conflict between government and opposition.” President Bachelet has done many positive reforms within the country’s economy and social efforts. However, under Chile’s constitutional term limits she is unable to run for a second consecutive term. Sebastion Pinera will be sworn in on March 11th. Article from http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/28/chile.pinera/index.html

Google Helps to Find Missing Loved Ones in Chile

2010-03-02T11:46:00.002-05:00

Google isn’t only used to search the web and find books. This Internet mega house may be the missing link between you and misplaced family members and/or friends who are victims of the massive Chilean earthquake on Saturday. North Carolina residents, particularly those in Charlotte, are using Google Person Finder, a free service, to search for loved ones in Chile and other disaster areas. You can also post any information about other missing persons. Currently Google is tracking more than 56,900 records. To use Person Finder specifically for Chile, visit http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com. Original article from

http://www.examiner.com/x-28830-Charlotte-Healthy-Living-Examiner~y2010m3d1-Google-Person-Finder-may-help--locate-those-missing-in-Chile.

Video Game Hopes to Empower Africa

2010-03-01T11:20:00.001-05:00

Story from CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/01/evoke.game.africa.poverty/index.html

(CNN) -- Some people think of online gamers and see gaunt loners huddled in dark rooms, the sad blue glow of the computer screen on their faces as their lives pass them by.

Game designer Jane McGonigal sees "superheroes" with untapped potential that can be used to fix vexing real-world problems.

"Gamers are willing to work hard all the time if they're given the right work," she said. She calls them "super-empowered, hopeful individuals," and includes herself among the bunch.

McGonigal's latest online game, called "Urgent Evoke," launches on Wednesday. With it, she hopes to channel the obsessive focus online games create into something more productive than conquering monsters and earning virtual weapons.

She wants to push people in Africa -- a long-troubled continent where people might feel less empowered than elsewhere -- to solve problems like environmental degradation, lack of food, water scarcity, poverty and violence.

To do this, the Urgent Evoke game -- classified in the emerging "alternate reality" genre -- straddles the online and physical worlds. Players, a few hundred of whom are in Africa, earn points and power-ups by completing real-world tasks like volunteering, making business contacts or researching an issue, then submitting evidence of their work online.

At the end of the game, McGonigal expects some players to have business plans about how they will improve the world.

Play a game, get a job

Depending on how well the game goes, Urgent Evoke could influence the future of alternate reality gaming and spur innovation in Africa.

Bob Hawkins, senior education specialist with the World Bank Institute, said one big reason people in African countries aren't as entrepreneurial and innovative as those in the West is that they don't feel as empowered to create change. That's largely why his international development group is funding McGonigal's project to the tune of $500,000.

"There have been studies, for instance, in South Africa that the public investment in universities isn't producing the types of new ideas and innovation that industry wants," he said. "What happens is that industry is importing ideas from outside the continent and outside of South Africa."

He hopes Urgent Evoke will empower people in Africa to change their own futures. This game will act as a kind of hyper-engaged online social network, he said, setting people in the developing world up with contacts in Europe, the United States and elsewhere who may offer insight or even cash.

An unannounced number of game "winners" will be given mentorships, internships, start-up money and scholarships for playing the game.

Responding to an 'Evoke'

At first, none of that may sound especially game-like.

But McGonigal, the game designer, said the power of Urgent Evoke is that it doesn't feel like work when you're immersed in the story and working with other gamers around the world to chase bite-sized goals.

Video: Watch McGonigal explain her gameVideo

Urgent Evoke gamers follow a story that's presented each week like a comic book online. The central figure of the Evoke narrative is a mysterious character who spots the world's big problems and sends out "Urgent Evoke" messages to a team of game playerson Wednesdays, asking for help.

A new challenge, such as a famine or water shortage, is presented to players at midnight for 10 weeks. Players earn points by accepting the challenges and then responding with evidence that they've used their real-life "superhero" powers to help. A person might, for example, contact a community organization that specializes in environmental issues, or try to provide meals for someone in their neighborhood.

Players catalogue their activities and submit the evidence in the form of a blog post, a video or a photo, which players post on the Urgent Evoke Web site.

Other people in the game network read these posts and, if they feel the player has done a good job, can award them further power-ups in a number of categories like creativity, collaboration, sustainability and courage.

Players with the most points at the end of the game win, but McGonigal and Hawkins said the experience of playing is what's most valuable.

The game will "open their eyes to the range of challenges that they could roll up their sleeves and take on," Hawkins said.

Potential for addiction

McGonigal makes the controversial argument that if people played more online games like Urgent Evoke or World of Warcraft, our society would be better equipped to battle big problems.

That's because gamers are trained to believe they can win, and because they're matched with tasks that are fit to their skill levels, based on what level they've achieved in the game, she said.

McGonigal wants to see people exhibit the same level of enthusiasm and optimism they display in games in their real lives.

People spend a collective 3 billion hours per week playing online games today, she said. That number must be 21 billion -- seven times the current amount -- for our society to realize its innovative and creative potential, she said.

Not everyone thinks that's a good thing.

Kimberly Young, a PhD psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, argued that online games, educational or not, are an addictive force in our society.

People can learn and develop skills in online worlds, she said, but "they do that to the exclusion of developing those skills in the real world."

Internet access

Even those who support the Urgent Evoke game admit it faces a number of challenges.

Chief among them is that the online game is designed particularly for people in Africa, a continent where people have less Internet access than anywhere.

About 400 of the 3,500 people who have signed up for the game so far come from Africa, said Hawkins. He said the World Bank is launching an ad campaign in South Africa to encourage people to play.

Many university students have access to computer labs with the Internet, he said, and the game is designed so it can also be played over SMS text messaging or on mobile phones that use the Opera Mini operating system, which is popular on the continent.

"Even if you never get to a computer, you could do everything that you would need to do in the game on your cell phone," McGonigal said. "Pretty much everyone that we would be trying to reach through this game has cell phone access."

People outside Africa are also encouraged to play, and the game has a "mentorship" program so people all over the world can give guidance.

Lasting impact

The other nagging question is to what extent the online game actually can inspire lasting change in the real world.

McGonigal's previous work shows some degree of lasting change may be possible.

In 2007, she created an online game called "World Without Oil," which challenged people to re-imagine their lives without their dependence on fossil fuels. McGonigal did not conduct scientific focus groups with the game's 1,700 players, but she said she has gotten feedback from many of the players. They reported their energy consumption habits changed during the game and that they've kept those changes up in the years that have followed, she said.

For Urgent Evoke, McGonigal said she plans to conduct surveys of participants to see if the game actually led to real-world change.

She said she will measure success by how involved people are in the game, whether they stick with the story until the end and if they've joined organizations or taken real steps to create change in their communities.

If all goes well, the World Bank may sponsor an Arabic version of the game next year. There are also tentative plans to hold sequels in Africa.

Fashion With A Cause - FEEDing Hungry Children

2010-02-25T12:12:00.002-05:00

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Susan Burton, A Hometown Hero

2010-02-23T12:20:00.000-05:00

Susan Burton was able to turn her life around after serving time in prison and is now encouraging other women to do the same. She offers newly released women a warm bed and a family atmosphere. See her story here:

Good News - Today is Free Pancake Day at IHOP!

2010-02-23T10:59:00.002-05:00

Celebrate National Pancake Day! Go to any participating IHOP today from now until
10 pm, and receive a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes! On your way out, be
sure to make a donation to local children’s hospitals through Children’s Miracle Network or other local charities. Eat good, while you help out a great cause! Visit www.ihop.com for more information.

5th Graders' Campaign Lands Honor for Ruby Bridges

2010-02-22T10:50:00.002-05:00

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/84829237.html
By Erin Richards of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Feb. 20, 2010 |(9) Comments

The efforts of about 15 first-graders who sought to raise awareness of an African-American civil rights pioneer were rewarded with the ultimate Black History Month activity Friday: a personal visit from the very heroine they have championed for a year.

Ruby Bridges - who, as a first-grader in 1960, was the first black child to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans - flew to Milwaukee on Friday to personally thank Barton Elementary School and the group of students who petitioned the federal government to recognize her integration efforts 49 years ago.

Based on the awareness campaign launched last year by teacher Laura Floryance and her students, Congress passed a resolution this month honoring Bridges for her bravery and recognizing Nov. 14, 1960, as the first day of integrated schools in New Orleans.

The House resolution was sponsored by Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee), while a Senate version of the resolution was sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin).

The legislators pushed for the resolutions because of Floryance's first-grade class, which gathered 2,213 signatures on a petition between February and May 2009.

Floryance said she teaches about Bridges every year because her predominantly African-American students identify with a child their age who did something remarkable. When plans for a Bridges video project fell through last February, however, she asked the children what they should do instead.

"What do you think people need to know?" asked Floryance, who now teaches in Georgia.
Kids start petition drive

The children settled on gathering signatures on a petition to send to President Barack Obama, asking for national recognition for Bridges. News of the project spread, and signatures of students from all over the district and across the country poured in. Although they never heard back from Obama, Floryance received a call from Feingold's office in November.

"I told him the kids would be thrilled with just a letter back commending them for their efforts," Floryance said. "And he said, 'We're going to push for a resolution.' "

Floryance, who still makes frequent trips back to Milwaukee and Barton, said they hope to keep pushing the Ruby Bridges story to see if they can make Nov. 14 a national day of celebration, to get it listed on popular calendars.

"If it weren't for this group of kids, most of America would still have no idea who Ruby Bridges is," said Barton Principal Brian Babbitts, who added that even he hadn't heard much about Bridges until the project snowballed and attracted the attention of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Gov. Jim Doyle and lawmakers in Washington.

"It's been an educational experience for these students to educate others, as well as a lesson on civil rights," Babbitts said.

According to Bridges' accounts of her experiences, she and five other black students were chosen to attend white schools after segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional in 1954. On Nov. 14, 1960, Bridges walked through angry crowds to William Frantz and spent the entire first day at school in the principal's office with her mother, while protesters yelled at them through the window.
Norman Rockwell moment

Bridges' experiences became the subject of a famous Norman Rockwell painting, "The Problem We All Live With." The scene depicts a black girl in a white dress being escorted to school by U.S. marshals, with tomatoes splattered on the wall behind her.

Eventually, Bridges married and became Ruby Bridges Hall. Now 55, she runs a foundation in New Orleans and is rebuilding the school she integrated almost half a century ago. William Frantz, located in the lower Ninth Ward, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

"It's been a major campaign to get that school rebuilt," Bridges said at Barton on Friday. "I want to reopen the school and have it be focused on social justice and community service."

Bridges said the visit to Barton was different from other school visits, when she normally gives students a serious lecture about her experiences with racism.

"I find that kids know who I am, but adults often don't," Bridges said. "I'm geared to one group, and that's only been kids. Now we have to build a campaign to remind adults about this."

Savannah Anderson, 7, said she was excited to see Bridges in person after working on the petition last year. Thursday night, she laid out a fancy polka-dot dress and her good shoes to wear to school the next day.

Kim Anderson, Savannah's mother, said her daughter got very interested in the project. "So many other civil rights leaders have overshadowed (Bridges) for some reason, but her story is really important."

After dozens of photos, hugs and endless requests to sign various books about her story, Bridges said the event was a great way to kick off what will soon be the 50th anniversary of the first day she attended William Frantz.

In November, Bridges said, she's hoping to have a celebration in New Orleans. If all goes well, she said, she hopes the students at Barton who pushed for Congress to recognize her efforts will be able to attend.

Dance Teacher, 80, Still Moves to the Beat

2010-02-22T10:22:00.002-05:00

VIDEO LINK: http://www.jsonline.com/general/37714089.html?bcpid=8725036001&bctid=67318038001

By Photo And Text By Angela Peterson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Posted: Feb. 21, 2010 |(0) Comments

You might say that dance is in Roey Pokrass' genes.

As a child growing up in Chicago she remembers her grandmother dancing and exercising. Grandma Jenny on her father's side danced on the stage, and Grandma Ida would get up in the morning and exercise. Her mother, Elva Stein, was a dancer as well and in 1948 taught body dynamics, a form of breathing and exercising, in Chicago.

"My mother said I was always dancing in my playpen. She had us (she and her younger sister, Barbara Becker) enrolled in ballet, tap and acrobatics as a child," she said.

Stein continued dancing until the age of 103. Her mother died in 2006 at 105.

And Monday on her 80th birthday, Pokrass, of Milwaukee, continues doing what she loves most - dancing.

For more than 30 years she has taught group exercise classes for the Fitness Firm in a style that features a variety of dance movements.

But her age doesn't define her speed. Quite the contrary. It is Pokrass who sets the pace for the class, and slow is not on the dance card for this mother of two and grandmother of five.

"Roey's an excellent teacher," says Claire Marks, 62, of Fox Point, a member of her class for 27 years. "And even though she's older, she still moves so beautifully. You get the beat of the music. It's not just exercise, it's dancing."

But when Pokrass first started teaching in 1978, the dance routines weren't quite as effortless as they appeared on a recent visit to her class at Range Line School in Mequon.

"I was a wreck," she says of that first class in which she subbed for an instructor. "There were about 45 to 50 people in the class. I didn't know how to run the tape machine or do anything electronically. I apologized before and after the class."

Her sincerity and love of dance have endeared her to those like Marks, who follows Pokrass no matter where she teaches in the area.

The Mequon-Thiensville Recreation Department, her third teaching venue, includes her class as part of the senior program. It attracts about 20 regulars. The youngest member in the class is 60 years old, and Pokrass is the elder in the group. She leads the class through at least 10 different 3- to 4-minute exercise/dance segments.

As a group fitness instructor myself for more than 12 years, I came to the class with hopes of bootlegging a few of her steps to take back to my class, but I couldn't keep up as she transitioned from one routine to the next. Just as I thought I had snagged a move, she was on to the next - step brush, right left right left, x-hop back, step left right, vine right left, heel walk up, jazz kick 4, disco strut 8.

And just when her regulars get the routine, the choreography changes every eight weeks. The Fitness Firm provides the new teaching material via DVDs and CDs, and Pokrass passes it along to her followers. To keep herself on track with the wide range of material, she tapes posterboard-size cards on the wall in front of her as she teaches.

"Those are some of the routines in case some of the girls want to look at them, or in case I have a sudden senior moment," she says with a wide smile.

"She's a perfect example of how to age gracefully," says Sue Kimmel, 71, of Mequon, who has been a Roey Rockettes member since 1999. The group gave itself the nickname in honor of Pokrass.

"I promised her when I retired that I would start taking her class," Kimmel said. "It's been a terrific experience. I feel stronger and healthier."

Pokrass may need a little more assistance these days with those cue cards on the wall, but she's far from contemplating her own retirement.

"My daughter, Ellen, said to me this year, 'Mother you know it's time (to slow down),' " Pokrass said.

"And I said I figured I'm going to bop until I drop."

Home Again

2010-02-19T17:09:00.001-05:00

100 year-old Rose Cosey was a Hurricane Katrina evacuee. She recently returned to her home in New Orleans that was built by her late husband 47 years ago. Community members and volunteers made it possible for Cosey to return home. See this heart felt story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35322209#22185071

Julia Mancuso Wins Big

2010-02-19T17:02:00.002-05:00

Julia Mancuso is making history in this year's Winter Olympics. She has won the most medals by a female alpine skier in U.S. history. Check out her phenomenal story! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35322209#35484699.

Fashion for Relief

2010-02-19T14:56:00.001-05:00

Fashion icon Naomi Campbell spreads awareness and raises massive donations for Haiti through her charitable organization, Fashion for Relief. Check out this star-studded event! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35322209#35480606.

Saving the World One Video Game at a Time

2010-02-16T13:16:00.000-05:00

Video game designer Jane McGonigal, thought of a new way to help save the world, one online game at a time. Her goal is to create games that allow the gamer to solve real world problems. One of the ways she plans to implement this idea will be through the release of her game EVOKE, developed by the World Bank. It’s set to launch March 2010 and teaches skills such as networking, courage and entrepreneurship. If all ten missions of the game are completed, the World Bank will then certify the player as a Social Innovator, class of 2010.

Flying Nun Soars Over Fundraiser

2010-02-16T12:23:00.001-05:00

Man Feeds Families in Local Community

2010-02-16T11:38:00.004-05:00

When President Obama talked of hope and change in his 2008 campaign speech, one Tucson, Arizona man knew he could make the same impact in his own local community. For 57 weeks now, Peter Norback has been collecting can goods and other food items from local neighbors and donating them to his town Community Food Bank. So far, he has contributed 9,000 pounds of food. Pauline Hechler, the food bank’s development officer says, “The demand for food in Tuscan has increased 40 percent over the past year,” and the Community Food bank gives out 48,000 meals per day. Norback keeps track of his weekly progress on an email and blog post.

Luckily, Peter’s good deeds have been catching on in other cities as well. When Carol Reed, a former resident of Tucson, son heard of Norback’s One Can a Week program, it motivated him to start a similar drive in his own area of Wake Forest, North Carolina for local veterans. To date, they have raised over 800 pounds of food! To help build a One Can a Week Program in your community, visit Peter Norback’s s website at http://onecanaweek.blogspot.com. To see the entire story visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/15/yes-he-can-one-can-a-week_n_462827.html.

Nelson Mandela's Prison Release Celebrations

2010-02-12T17:24:00.006-05:00

Celebrations are underway to mark the 20th Anniversary of South African leader Nelson Mandela's release from prison. This honorable activist fought for equal rights for Blacks in the nation, along with opposing an apartheid government. Friends and other South African community leaders were at the Drakenstein prison to mark this monumental occasion. Take a look! http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/18107768;_ylt=A0wNcnpsw3VLm1MBnAD_SpZ4

Mystery Gambler Gives Away Riches to the Less Fortunate

2010-02-12T12:06:00.002-05:00

A professional gambler makes a big difference in the lives of others. But who is this mystery man? He goes only by the name of Robin Hood 702, and like the well-known tale Robin Hood, he unselfishly gives his winnings at high-stakes Las Vegas blackjack tables to individuals and families who need it the most. His website, robinhood702, is packed with stories of people in unfortunate circumstances that need his assistance. Robin Hood 702 says, this unconventional way of giving back is in honor of his mother's memory. The Kegler family in Detroit, Michigan, asked for Robin Hood's help last year as they struggled to pay their daughter's medical bills when she was suffering from brain cancer. He granted their wish by giving them $35,000 and a trip to Las Vegas! Robin Hood also gets help from donors. He is certainly giving back in a big way! To learn more about how Robin Hood 702 could help you or someone you know in need, visit www.robinhood702.com. See the entire story and video at http://www.aolnews.com/philanthropy/article/mysterious-gambler-gives-winnings-to-the/902502?icid=main%7cmain%7cdl1%7clink6%7chttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.aol.com%252Fphilanthropy%252Farticle%252Fmysterious-gambler-gives-winnings-to-the%252F902502.

Man Returns Fortune

2010-02-09T11:50:00.002-05:00

It was a normal day for traveling dental assistant Barry Stringer, until he found two green bags on the side of the road when leaving his job at a nursing home. The bags were marked Bank of Dickson, and Stringer says he didn't immediately open the bags because he planned to return them after his last appointment. However, when he arrived at the bank that evening, it was closed. Stringer took the bags home, opened them, and found a deposit slip for $72,000; over $30,000 in cash and the rest in checks. He then saw the money belonged to the same nursing home he worked for that day. The next day, Stringer returned the money to the nursing home staff members who were thankful and happy to get it back. See the entire story and video at http://www.wkrn.com/global/story.asp?s=11953743.

Barking Dog Saves Family

2010-02-09T11:37:00.002-05:00

Thirteen year old Tyler and his sister Heidi are now safe and sound after a fire suddenly sparked in their Genesee County, NY home. The two heard their family dog's repeated barks, which alerted them to leave the house. Neighbors soon heard the dog's cries and called 911. The house was completely destroyed by the time firefighters arrived. Investigators believe the fire started in the laundry room, but are not yet sure. See the entire story and video at http://see%20the%20entire%20story%20and%20video%20at%20http//www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/Barking-dog-warns-family-of-house-fire.

Pack the Pounds for a Good Cause

2010-02-05T13:40:00.002-05:00

Rebecca and Scott Rothney of North Carolina have a passion for wildlife tours and often make trips to Kenya, South African and other African countries. During one particular tour, they came across a group of boys playing soccer with a ball of rags tied together by a string. Rebecca then got the idea to pack deflated soccer balls in her suitcase to deliver to the young men on a future trip. The simple thought of making a little extra room in one's suitcase for a small items that could in turn make a big difference, gave Rebecca the idea to launch, "Pack for a Purpose." This non-profit organization works with travelers to pack needed educational materials and medical supplies for children around the world. They have started a list of lodges and safari companies worldwide, where local people can benefit by small donations bought by travelers. Before taking off, travelers can visit the Pack for a Purpose website to find participating lodges where they are visiting. Then, the lodges will collect the items and distribute them to the local community. One of cooperating organizations, Wildlife Safaris, in South Africa says, "The idea is a brilliant one- it costs almost nothing on the part of the donor, just a great deal of kindness and a small amount of effort." Travelers wishing to participate or suggest lodges that would be willing to participate in a program should visit http://www.packforapurpose.org/. See the entire story at http://http//abcnews.go.com/Travel/pack-purpose-helps-needy-africa/story?id=9744358&page=1

Green Opportunities in the Inner City

2010-02-05T11:27:00.002-05:00

Majora Carter saw the potential for a green community in a place where most would least expect it...Bronx, New York. One day while Carter was walking her dog along the Bronx River, she came across an industrial wasteland. Instead of ignoring it like so many others, Carter envisioned this dumping ground as the perfect site for a park. With hard work and support, she was able to obtain and organize the community in order to make her dream a reality. The Bronx now has a new green park and Carter continues work on the space in hopes to turn it into an 11 mile green way. Carter believes that no community should have to suffer environmental burdens more than experiencing the environmental benefits. One of the entrepreneur's ultimate goals is to build a national brand of locally grown produce to restore fresh food, jobs, and hopes to the cities that need it the most. Watch this amazing story at http://http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35206820#35225485

Boston Locals Help Haiti in a Big Way

2010-02-02T15:32:00.002-05:00

Jim Ansaras and his wife Karen knew it was their duty to assist Haitian victims after the devastating earthquake. For several years, Jim Ansaras built one of the country's largest construction companies, Shawmut Design and Construction until he decided to sell the company in 2006 to his employees. Jim knew he wanted to do more than simply manage money; he wanted to change the world. Recently, the couple donated $1 million of their personal funds to aid in relief efforts in Haiti and Jim rushed down to Port-au-Prince four days after the quake to immediately set up working generators in hospitals. Karen created a Haiti relief and development fund through the Boston Foundation, and stayed behind in Boston to encourage donors to match their gift, and get the local community involved with recovery efforts.

This isn't the first time the Ansaras' have been avid philanthropists. They first got a look at third-world poverty when they adopted three Ecuadorian girls and created the Ansaras Family Fund in Boston. Jim Ansaras is also building a 180-bed hospital in Mirabalais Haiti with Dr. David Walton, a physician at Bringham and Woman's Hospital. Ansaras says, "I'm a little different from other people who have sold businesses and made some money...I wanted to do something that had an impact in the world." Ultimately, Jim and Karen hope to reach a $2 million goal through their Haiti recovery and rebuilding fund. See the entire story at http://http//www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2010/02/02/couples_two_front_battle_aids_haiti/?page=2..

2-Year-Old Hero Helps Injured Mom

2010-02-02T12:01:00.001-05:00

Ursula M. Burns, Making Strides

2010-02-02T11:02:00.001-05:00

Ursula M. Burns is the first African-American woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. She is the CEO of Xerox Corp. and the second highest placed African-American woman in last year's Fortune magazine's, 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, only second to Oprah Winfrey. Burns started at Xerox in 1980 as a mechanical engineering summer intern earning a respective degree from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU and a master's at Columbia University. See her complete story at http://www.thegrio.com/black-history/thegrios-100/thegrios-100-ursula-burns.php.

ShelterBox Recognized for Ongoing Haiti Relief Efforts

2010-02-01T09:51:00.001-05:00

From CNN.com:

(CNN) -- Aid is getting to Haiti but it's not as simple as getting a direct flight to the quake-battered nation.

CNN followed one aid container from the headquarters of ShelterBox in Cornwall, England, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to see the hurdles aid groups face.

Minutes after the earthquake struck on January 12, the ShelterBox crew sprang into action. The international disaster relief organization is the brainchild of Tom Henderson, who was recognized as a CNN Hero in 2008.

"If you've lost everything as they have in Haiti, it's all about shelter, warmth, comfort and dignity," says Henderson. "That's what ShelterBox is."

A ShelterBox container -- containing relief supplies including a 10-person tent, water and blankets -- is designed to be easily carried by two people and stackable for easy storage.

To get to Haiti from Cornwall, the box went on four flights and one overland trip over five days before being distributed to a mother and her newborn baby.

Once in the Dominican Republic -- Haiti's neighbor -- there were delays because of security concerns and a national holiday that meant local help was limited.

The ShelterBox was one of 720 boxes eventually loaded into a four truck convoy in Santa Domingo for a U.N.-escorted drive to Haiti.

The drive from Santo Domingo to the Haiti border took about 11 hours because of poor roads and a puncture.

Twelve ShelterBoxes are being used to build an emergency field hospital at the airport, said Mark Pearson who is in Haiti for the charity.

Each ShelterBox contains individual survival equipment like water carriers, a tool kit and a children's pack containing drawing books, crayons and pens.

By February 1, Shelterbox hopes to have more than 7,000 boxes in Haiti, housing up to 70,000 people. But Henderson acknowledges there is much more to be done.

"There are thousands of people dying every day. That's what drives us forward. This is not a job for us. It's a passion."

Want to get involved? Check out ShelterBox's Web site and see how to help.

Brightest Full Moon of the Year Tonight!

2010-01-29T12:23:00.002-05:00

Tonight will be 2010's biggest and brightest full moon! A Native American monkier, also calls this "wolf moon," stating that hungry wolves used to howl at the moon on cold winter nights. The shape of the moon will be an ellipse, causing it to reach the closest point to Earth, therefore making it more brilliant than others to come. According to http://www.spaceweather.com/, tonight's moon will be about 14 percent wider and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons of the year. Be sure to see if you can spot the man on the moon! Story from http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100129/sc_space/biggestandbrightestfullmoonof2010tonight

Poland Pooch Gets Rescued

2010-01-29T11:05:00.002-05:00

Sailors among a boat in Warsaw, Poland got an unexpected surprise when they saw a dog floating on a block of ice more than 100 miles up a river, headed towards the Baltic Sea. As the crew got closer, they saw the dog trying not to fall into the icy waters. Crew members aboard the Baltica, rescued the poor dog and are now in the process of finding its owner, or possibly, a new home. See the entire story and video at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35098616/ns/world_news-wonderful_world/

Detroit Teens Give Back

2010-01-26T15:48:00.005-05:00

Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, these four courageous teens experience tough circumstances in their own lives everyday. However, they made the unselfish decision and committment to feed local families in need through an organization called buildOn. Check out this amazing story!
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/35058256#35058256

New Year, New Opportunities

2010-01-26T13:18:00.003-05:00

Jobs can sometimes be hard to come by in today’s economic recession. But don’t worry we’ve got some tips to help you stay on the employer’s radar.

1. Temporary Staffing
In research done by the American Staffing Association, studies show that temporary hires increase as the economy rebounds from a recession. The American Staffing Association’s website www.americanstaffing.net, has a database of over 15,000 staffing firms to be searched by location or specialty. Be sure to apply to several different firms. Seasonal jobs are available as well, especially during the holidays.

2. Healthcare
There is always a constant need for doctors, nurses, home health aides, pharmacists, etc. Companies like CVS and Walgreens say they are hiring for pharmacy positions nationwide. If you don’t have medical training, places like Career Stop One, Workforce One, or CareerOneStop.org have information about places that offer training in several areas of healthcare.

3. Federal Law Enforcement
There is a forecast of 50,000 new federal jobs from positions for the Transportation Security Administration, to special agents in the Secret Service. USAJobs.gov is a website that breaks down the process of applying to federal positions.

4. Try a start-up company.
According to the Commerce Department, 64 percent of all new jobs in the past 15 years have been created by small businesses. These companies may offer interesting positions, but it can be difficult to find these names initially. However, website Startuphire.com adds about 4,000 new jobs a month to the site.

5. Be Aware of Steep Competition
Starwood hotels had 10,000 applicants apply for only 300 positions in their newest Washington D.C. location. These numbers may be alarming but don’t let them stop you from applying. This is an incentive to stay sharp at all times.
Complete story found at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/JobClub/tips-find-job-january/story?id=9650636&page=2

Young Earthquake Victims Get a New Home In America

2010-01-26T12:59:00.005-05:00

The future looks a bit brighter two young Haitian earthquake victims. Bettenia and Dieunette, last names unknown, were among 53 children rescued from the earthquake rubble of their group home in Port-au-Prince. The girls now share a home with their new adoptive parents, Kristin and Scott Heaton of Omaha, Nebraska. After the family’s biological daughter Victoria learned of the country’s poverty-stricken areas, she encouraged her parents to help. The Heatons first met Dieunette in Haiti when she was 6-months-old and the family volunteered to sponsor her for a brain surgery in 2008. The young girl first entered the orphanage when a hurricane swept through her home town, leaving her mother unable to care for her. Kristin Heaton visited Haiti every three months over the last several years to check on Bettania and Dieunette and take supplies to their orphanage. The Heatons had been in the delayed process of adopting both girls over the past three years, but on January 18th, the United States decided to loosen its Visa requirements on Haitian children, left parentless, in near-final stages of adoption. This affected 900 children awaiting adoption. “We can’t think of anything we’d rather do than raise these children and make a difference,” Kristin Heaton said. Bettenia and Dieunette are still getting used to their new home. Since Dieunette speaks little English, they plan to home school the girls until they are ready to interact with their peers. In the meantime, Kristin says their goal is to, “just spoil them rotten.” For the full article, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/26orphans.html?ref=us.

"Man's Best Friend" - Saying Proves to Be True For Homeless Men

2010-01-26T09:08:00.004-05:00

From the Boston Globe [Reporter: Meghan E. Irons]

Anya was neglected, and finally abandoned. Most of the two years of her life was spent locked in a garage. When humans approached, the large, gentle Leonberger-golden retriever mix cowered in fear.

Stewart Thorpe spent 30 of his 55 years on Boston’s streets, bundled in depression. He used to sleep in subways and on sidewalks. When Pine Street workers eventually reached out to him, he was too fearful to look them in the eyes.

These two homeless creatures - man and dog, both shadows in life - are finding that they have a lot in common - a history of abandonment, trauma, and distrust.

Over the past year, something remarkable has happened to Thorpe and Anya and a handful of other homeless men and dogs in a Pine Street transitional home.

Anya is finding out what it means to be cared for in a loving home, while Thorpe and 10 other men are discovering what it means to live again.

“I’ve committed myself to doing something again,’’ Thorpe said. “I’m thinking of something other than me.’’

Anya is the latest of six dogs once considered unadoptable who have had a foster stint at Pine Street’s Stapleton House, a four-story South End dwelling for men entrenched in homelessness.

The program tries to get men housed first, before addressing their medical, long-term housing, and emotional needs. The men, in their 50s through 70s, learn basic life skills such as sharing common space, caring for themselves, and looking people in the eye.

Barbara Davidson, who heads the effort, has spent years helping the homeless who struggle with paranoia and other psychiatric issues. The men she helps do not cause trouble, but they do not want help and do not talk about their lives - which makes assisting them difficult.

A year ago, she was working with a paranoid man who was refusing treatment. But he loved dogs. To put him at ease, Davidson and her client began volunteering at the nearby animal shelter. Soon he wanted a dog for himself.

“I told him that we could bring in dogs that, like everyone else here, don’t have homes, and work with them just like we do the humans,’’ Davidson said.

Dogs are the ultimate ice breakers. They teach the men to build trust and open up about their hidden lives, so the staff of five can get the humans the help they need. The dogs learn to accept love and temper their aggression. On their daily walks, the dogs are conversation starters with strangers.

These may be small feats in the annals of daily life, but for men and dogs who have spent much of their lives in the grip of homelessness, these encounters are giant leaps to newfound independence.

Amy Marder, a veterinarian with the Animal Rescue League who is not connected with the effort, said both dog and man are connecting and helping each other through their shared histories of isolation.

“It’s also saying to the homeless men that it is OK to get help,’’ she said.

So far, it is working. Five of the dogs have been adopted to homes across the state, and six men are getting the treatment they long shunned. One has his own apartment, and at least four are on their way to getting their own home.

“A lot of people are very secretive about their lives and histories, but if you talk through the dog, you begin to know the person,’’ Davidson said.

The bond between dogs and humans has long been documented, with studies showing how canines reduce stress, boost happiness, and brighten one’s outlook, said Katenna Jones, an animal behaviorist at the American Humane Association’s office in Rhode Island.

Across the country, specialists have been providing dogs to inmates and parolees as well as to children and elders who have difficulty coping with grief or loneliness. Pairing dogs with the homeless is new, though, she said.

“These relationships are mutually successful for the humans and the dogs,’’ Jones said. “The contact is nonjudgmental. . . . It’s something that you can’t necessarily get with another person, especially people with social anxieties and phobias and people who have a hard time interacting with others.’’

Different breeds have stayed at Stapleton House, most of them from All Dog Rescue, a Natick-based volunteer group that places abandoned dogs in foster homes.

Brady, a mixed breed with heartworm and depression, was the first dog at the house. Now he’s living pretty in a new adoptive home, Davidson said.

Spike Lee, a miniature poodle mix, had a bad attitude. “He was the meanest little street dog ever,’’ Davidson said. But the men calmed him down.

Then there was King, a cocker spaniel found wandering the streets with part of a backyard chain around his neck.

Something about King evoked a childhood memory for William S. Collins, 56, an Army veteran.

Collins doesn’t say much - but the homeless man has undergone a dramatic turnaround. When he came to the transitional house, he was severely depressed and hardly spoke, said Jacqueline Swanson, a case manager there.

It was a slow process, but the staff helped Collins get the right medication to treat his depression. Months later, he completed a janitorial training program and is on the waiting list for a job and an apartment.

“He stuck with it, he followed through, he didn’t give up,’’ Swanson said.

Collins didn’t give up on King, either. The dog reminded him of the German shepherd he had when he was teenager.

There have been other success stories, too. A man in his 70s finally began talking about his life after two years at the house, revealing that he had been an electrician for a big company. With the staff’s help, he is now awaiting his first Social Security check.

In the past few weeks, the men have been fostering Anya, who follows them around or finds one of them to curl up next to - her soft, brown eyes melting their hearts.

She has some aggression issues with other dogs, but the men are helping her with that.

Her new best friend is Michael O’Brien, who has a history of roaming from shelter to shelter. O’Brien, 61, thought some of the other dogs were too depressed or too yappy.

But Anya, he said, is just right for him.

“I like her the best,’’ he said. “I didn’t know about having a dog before. . . . She’s just good company.’’

7 Year-old raises $160,000 for Haiti

2010-01-25T11:39:00.001-05:00

Charlie Simpson waves during his five mile cycle ride around South Park, west London, Sunday Jan. 24, 2010. A young British schoolboy has raised nearly 100,000 pounds ($160,000) for Haiti's relief effort. Seven-year-old Charlie Simpson was so upset by the devastating images of Haiti's deadly earthquake that he asked his mother if she could help him set up a sponsored bicycle ride around his local park in west London. Charlie originally hoped to raise 500 pounds ($800) for UNICEF's Haiti appeal with Sunday's 5-mile bike ride but his Internet page was flooded with donations.

Full Article @ link: http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/01/25/uk_7_year_old_raises_tens_of_thousands_for_haiti/

5 Year-Old Haitian Found Alive 8 Days after Earthquake in Haiti

2010-01-22T11:04:00.001-05:00

A miracle rescue has happened eight days after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti when a 5-year-old boy was pulled out alive from his collapsed home.

Though the boy is suffering from severe dehydration, he suffered no broken bones, according to his doctors. Unfortunately, his mother was killed and his father is still missing.

Don't Despair, The Forecast is Looking A Bit Brighter

2010-01-20T10:23:00.003-05:00

You could say times appear to be tough. The earthquake in Haiti, the slumping global economy, unemployment rates going up, the lack of food and clean water throughout the world, a Hollywood-obsessed culture being fed a false reality - and the list can go on. But according to Oprah, even though things may be rough at the moment, there are 100 people, places, ideas and things we have to get excited about. Bright spots, she describes, in the horizon. We'll give you 10 of our favorites courtesy of Oprah.com. Check out the other 90 at: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/100-Things-That-Are-Getting-Better.

(1) Your chances of visiting the moon
Numerous astronauts and several animal species including a squirrel monkey named Gordo have made it up there, but the average earthling has been stuck on the sidelines until, well, soon: Richard Branson's latest venture, Virgin Galactic, aims to be the first to book civilian trips into space, for $200,000 a head, a price the company hopes will fall dramatically over time. Multiple competitors are tinkering with tourist spaceships, and the FAA has already released its set of space travel regulations.

(2) Poetry
Dear reader, you may feel a twinge of trepidation,
But poetry is key to modern conversation.
In classrooms, poet laureate Kay Ryan makes
A case for passing time with Bishop, Frost, and Blake.
Or Keats—Jane Campion's Bright Star garnered rave reviews
For conjuring the young Romantic's passion for his muse.
Great poets—Robert Graves and Ogden Nash, e.g.—
Inspired Leave Your Sleep, Natalie Merchant's CD.
Even Stephen King has found a poet's perch.
He channels Coleridge in the epic "The Bone Church."
Those Levi's ads, meanwhile, attract both praise and venom:
Blasphemy or genius, Walt Whitman pitching denim?

(3) Definition of the good life
It used to mean ostentatious designer bags, stock options, and second homes; now we're spending $11 billion annually on goods and services that champion self-improvement. Voluntourism and spending time with the family are up, and socially responsible investing—in communities and eco-friendly companies that don't profit from tobacco, oil, or sweatshop labor—is at an all-time high, totaling about $2.7 trillion. The good life just got better.

(4) Oak Street, New Orleans
Ransacked by looters during Katrina, historic Oak Street is back in action. Businesses like Ace Hardware, the Maple Leaf Bar, and the legendary Jacques-Imo's Café have reopened, and new ones are popping up: Blue Cypress Books, two yoga studios, and a day spa for pets (nothing says "We're back!" like a day spa for pets). A $5.4 million overhaul helped, as has the annual Po-Boy Preservation Festival.

(5) Wind power
Change is in the air: We now produce enough wind power to run seven million homes. The goal is to generate 20 percent of our power from wind by 2030, which would mean a 25 percent reduction in CO2 emissions.

(6) The news
In 1973, the year Rachel Maddow was born, only about 5 percent of TV newspeople were female. Now we're up to 42 percent, with those glam truth-tellers Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer leading the charge.

(7) Breast cancer survival rates
Keep kneading those breasts, ladies: A recent report from the American Cancer Society found that since 1990, breast cancer mortality rates have been steadily dropping—by 2 percent a year among women 50 and older, and by 3.2 percent a year among women younger than 50; we all have early detection, healthier lifestyle choices, and improved cancer treatments to thank.

(8) Prosthetics
A spring-loaded artificial knee called the XT9 means that above-the-knee amputees can now snowboard and rock climb; microprocessor-controlled prosthetics have sensors that anticipate your every step; and the bionic i-LIMB responds to muscle signals.

(9) EPA
A shot of much-needed vitality and resolve has come to the Environmental Protection Agency courtesy of Lisa Jackson, its first-ever African-American chief. In her crosshairs: greenhouse gases, hazardous waste sites, climate change, tailpipe emissions, protection of our waterways, clean air standards.

(10) You
You've just got this glow about you—some combination of wisdom and inner peace, plus a lovely self-awareness. You're not sweating the small stuff; you know what feels good, feels right, and you simply don't muck around with the rest. You're not a kid anymore, and we mean that as a high compliment. There's a new kind of lightness about you. And your hair has never looked better.

One Million Acts of Kindness - You Up to the Task?

2010-01-19T09:55:00.005-05:00

One Million Acts of Kindness is an incredible mission founded/created by Bob Votruba, a father of three college kids. His goal - to encourage people to individually perform one million acts of kindness in their lifetime. He said his motivation came from contemplating the kind of world kids are currently living in which sparked great concern. He believes in an effort to create a safer, more loving world, people should purposely commit acts of kindness. A sort of "paying it forward"-type of outlook.

To get this process going, Votruba bought a bus, decked it out with the help of more than 50 friends and family members, and took off on a 10-year journey with his Boston Terrier, Bogart. He's traveling throughout the country, visiting college campuses, hoping to promote a kindness movement. He started in August 2009. Be sure to check out his blog which is updated with each stop he makes along the way. And get ready to spread the word about Kindness Week which takes place February 8-14. Check out Bob's website to learn more: http://www.onemillionactsofkindness.com/.

How YOU Can Help Haiti Earthquake Victims - GET INVOLVED

2010-01-13T09:54:00.003-05:00

From CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/13/world/main6090814.shtml?tag=topnews

Here is a list of charitable organizations helping the victims of the earthquake:
Americans seeking information about family members in Haiti should call the U.S. Department of State, Office of Overseas Citizens Services, at 1-888-407-4747 or 202-647-5225.

• American Red Cross
• Action Against Hunger
• AmeriCares
• American Jewish World Service
• CARE
• Beyond Borders
• Catholic Relief Services
• Direct Relief International
• Childcare Worldwide
• Doctors Without Borders
• Feed My Starving Children
• Friends of WFP
• Haitian Health Foundation
• International Medical Corps
• Hope for Haiti
• International Relief Teams
• Medical Teams International
• Meds and Food for Kids
• Mercy Corps
• Oxfam
• Operation USA
• Partners in Health
• Samaritan's Purse
• Save the Children
• UNICEF
• World Concern
• World Vision
• Yele Haiti
• Wyclef Jean's grassroots organization: Text Yele to 501 501 to donate $5 via your cellphone

The U.S. State Department Operations Center said Americans seeking information about family members in Haiti should call 1-888-407-4747. Due to heavy volume, some callers may receive a recording. "Our embassy is still in the early stages of contacting American citizens through our Warden Network," the U.S. State Department said in a statement. "Communications are very difficult within Haiti at this time."

For those interesting in helping immediately, simply text "HAITI" to "90999" and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill. (For more information, go to the Department of State blog.)

Aid Groups Join Forces to Help Haiti

2010-01-13T09:50:00.002-05:00

From CBS NEWS:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/12/world/main6089607.shtml?tag=nl.e875

The International Red Cross and other aid groups said Wednesday they were preparing a major disaster relief effort in Haiti after a powerful earthquake struck the capital.

ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno said the agency was preparing to send a relief team from Geneva to help hospitals deal with casualties caused by "massive destruction in all the main neighborhoods of the city."

Schorno said that Haitian Red Cross staff were completely overwhelmed and that there was little or no coordinated aid effort at this point. He said there was "very little information about the scale of the disaster."

The U.S., Britain, France, Mexico, Venezuela and Taiwan have pledged to send aid teams.

The United States started its disaster response efforts Tuesday at the Department of State, according to spokesman Philip Crowley, as President Obama ordered U.S. agencies to begin preparations.

"It is the poorest country in the hemisphere and clearly will need an enormous amount of assistance," Crowley said. "And as the President said, we are standing by to do whatever we can."

A spokesman for the French foreign ministry said Wednesday that two airplanes carrying humanitarian aid would depart later in the day for the Haitian capital. He said the main airport in Port-au-Prince was able to accommodate landing aid flights.

While communications between Washington and the U.S. Embassy in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince were spotty, officials there reported "significant damage."

The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. Southern Command started to coordinate on Tuesday.

The Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance will be assembling a team to send to Haiti, Crowley said, including search and rescue experts from the U.S.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere subcommittee, said, "This is the worst possible time for a natural disaster in Haiti, a country which is still recovering from the devastating storms of just over a year ago."

Engel urged the administration "to do everything possible to help" the Haitian people recover.

Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said his office and the rest of the U.N. system were monitoring the situation. He pledged relief, rebuilding and recovery assistance to Haiti.

South Florida's large Haitian-American community reacted with worry after learning that their homeland had been hit by a devastating earthquake.

West Palm Beach firefighter Nate Lasseur was desperately trying Tuesday to reach family and the firefighters he trains in Port-au-Prince. Lasseur says land lines, cell phones and Internet connections are all down.

Lasseur was training firefighters in Port-au-Prince in November 2008 when a school collapsed, killing nearly a hundred people. He described a chaotic scene then and feared the Port-au-Prince fire station would be overwhelmed by debris from the capital's many unsafe buildings clogging the narrow roads.

Honoring Miep Gies, Who Helped Hide Anne Frank

2010-01-12T12:42:00.002-05:00

From the Associate Press/NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122469287

Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary, has died, the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam said Tuesday. She was 100.

Gies' Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until Aug. 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

The Diary of Anne Frank was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.

"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909, in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam in 1922 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.

In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.

As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.

"I answered, 'Yes, of course.' It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn," she said years later.

Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.

In her e-mail to the AP last February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland's unsung war heroes. "He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she wrote.

Touched by Anne's precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought Anne books and newspapers while remembering everybody's birthdays and special days with gifts.

"It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts," Anne wrote.

In her own book, Anne Frank Remembered, Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.

A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. "Bep, we've had it," Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.

After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks' release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.

After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.

After Otto Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health as she approached her 100th birthday.

Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving "a sizable amount of mail" which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows.

Her husband died in 1993. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

Let's Embrace Change!

2010-01-11T12:34:00.003-05:00

From CNN.com & REAL SIMPLE Magazine:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/01/11/rs.10.ways.embrace.change/index.html

When it came to change, my father had it licked. His motto was simply "Don't let it happen to you."

He proudly wore the same tie he'd had since college. He moved house just three times -- ever. But his town and his life were epicenters of low upheaval.

For most of us, change is an unavoidable fact, something I (re)discovered when, several years back, I lost my job in a shrinking industry. Far from ruining my life, that seismic shift gave me the chance to do two things I had always hoped to do: live in India and learn a new language (Hindi).

In the process, I discovered a lot about how to survive when head-rattling transformations are thrust upon you. Here are some of the tricks I picked up along the way.

1. Don't just do something; sit there. If you're facing a massive rescaling of your life, your first impulse will be to go into a whirring spin of activity, which is exactly what I did right after I was fired.

I later discovered there's a lot of value to sitting quietly instead. In the realm of language learning, there's a stage called the silent period: Adults may try to avoid going through it, but if you take a kid and plop her down in Paris for a spell, she'll naturally clam up for a few months. When she opens her mouth, her French will have flowered. Making sense of a major change is a lot like that. You need to allow yourself a fallow period before you can blossom.

2. Mother yourself a little. When familiar routines suddenly dissolve, it can seem as if all your supports are gone. For a while after I lost my job, I had the sense that I was in free fall. It's crucial, while absorbing the shock of the new, to make yourself feel well taken care of. Prepare nutritious meals for the week ahead. If you can spare the cash, have someone come in and clean the house.

Yes, you need to take some time for yourself, but don't let the pizza boxes pile up.

3. Ignore your inner reptile. There's a part of the human mind that is often referred to as the "lizard brain," because it existed in even the earliest land animals. The lizard brain is concerned with survival; it likes the tried and true, so it's likely to pipe up right now, flooding you with adrenaline warnings of "Danger!" as you veer off course.

This was a handy function to have when deviating from the familiar path to the watering hole may have led to an encounter with a saber-toothed tiger. But in the modern world it's like a misfiring car alarm: pointless and annoying.

4. Silence your inner know-it-all, too. When I interviewed the eminent linguist Alton Becker, I asked what makes someone good at languages. It helps not to be too smart, he said, explaining, "Smart people don't like having their minds changed, and to learn a language, you have to change your mind."

If you're so smart that you can't rethink your positions, all your IQ points won't do you much good when your life is turned upside down. Becker's advice applies across the board.

5. Seek out new perspectives. Zen practitioners cultivate the "don't know" mind; they work to assume they don't know anything and in that way see the world fresh. This is a great way to approach change -- as an opportunity to start anew, to consider all possibilities.

Ask naive, wide-eyed questions of anyone who is doing anything you might be interested in trying. Listen seriously to arguments you might once have dismissed.

6. Try something new and slightly scary. Why? Because now is the time to explore what it is that you really like. Catch yourself off-guard and see what happens.

At a time when I was feeling most stuck, I spontaneously volunteered to get up onstage at an open-mic storytelling evening in New York City. The experience was elating and terrifying and showed me that I wanted to lead a more creative life.

7. Be skeptical of common wisdom. It's dangerous to live in the aggregate, especially when you're trying to figure out your next move. One year, everyone knows you need an M.B.A. to succeed at anything. The next, they're saying that there are no jobs out there anyway, so don't even try. In my case, everyone but I knew that you can't learn a language at age 43. But since no one alerted me to that fact, that's what I set my sights on.

8. Learn to live with uncertainty. When I began learning Hindi, my teacher encouraged me to get out and practice with native speakers in New York. I wound up asking a waiter for love (pyar) when I'd meant to request a cup (pyala). But in that way I inched into a new language. That anxious feeling does not signal that you're doing something wrong, only that you're trying something new.

9. Say "really?" a lot. When you start to turn this sudden shift in your life to your advantage, you might shake up a lot of people, especially the ones who aren't happy with how they're living. To them, your efforts to move forward may feel like a glaring searchlight that needs to be switched off and fast.

To their descriptions of the terrible fates that will surely befall you if you dive headlong into a new life, respond with "Really?" Alternatively, "Oh, yeah?" works, too.

10. Shed your old skin. Discard physical clutter, tired ideas, old routines. Seeing things through another's eyes can help. I had that chance when the Hindi school I enrolled in asked me to list my daily requirements.

I could honestly have said, "For the past 62 days, I've eaten pineapple sandwiches for breakfast: toast, butter, canned pineapple (sliced, not crushed). Bedtime: white-noise machine (surf, not rain), four pillows (two hard, two soft)." Instead I wrote, "None."

It's only when you have cast off what has been weighing you down that you can finally move on.

Estonia’s Amazing Country-Wide Clean Up

2010-01-08T12:04:00.000-05:00

More than 50,000 volunteers from the small country of Estonia volunteered to clean up more than 10,000 tons of waste in just one day in 2008. Learn how it happened in this inspiring video.

7-Year-Old Girl Raises Money For Heifer International

2010-01-07T14:13:00.004-05:00

Seven year old Alyssa Ripley asked friends and family to make a donation to Heifer International in lieu of buying her Christmas gifts this year. Heifer is a nonprofit organization working to alleviate poverty around the globe by giving animals to people in need, thereby providing them with access to a steady income, food, clothing and more. So far, Alyssa has raised over $700 for Heifer. She has set her sights on raising $8,000 for the organization.

To help Alyssa visit: http://heifer.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=178641&lis=1&kntae178641=9FEF442CB4FE40A19C69E73DB151DC1B&supId=276464569

January is National Mentoring Month

2010-01-06T10:36:00.002-05:00

Know someone in your life that needs a little guidance? January is National Mentoring Month. There's no better way to start off the new year than helping a child reach his or her full potential.

Serve.gov is promoting the month's mentoring theme with a personal entreaty from General Colin Powell for Americans to become mentors in their own communities.

After 67 Years At White Castle, Woman Retires on Birthday

2010-01-05T10:29:00.003-05:00

From the Columbus Dispatch [Columnist - Joe Blundo]:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2009/12/31/1A_BLUN31_--_dec._31.ART_ART_12-31-09_D1_DOG1VIC.html

"Bill told me I never have to turn in my security badge," Elaine Miseta said with a hint of pride.

After all, if you can't be trusted after 67 years at a company, at what point can you be trusted?

Miseta officially retired yesterday -- on her 88th birthday -- from her job as an administrative assistant at the White Castle corporate headquarters. Her first day was June 8, 1942.

The Bill who let her keep her security badge is Bill Ingram, president and chief executive officer. She also served his father, Edgar, and his grandfather E.W. "Billy" Ingram, founder of the restaurant chain famous for its little hamburgers.

Miseta was at the company eight years before the latest president was born. They've always been on a first-name basis, given that he was a toddler when they met.

"It's great to have someone who has that historic knowledge," said Ingram, 59. "She's very organized and methodical, and remembers everything."

Miseta -- who was born near Montpelier, a village in the northwest corner of the state -- moved to Columbus to take a job that her father helped her get with what was then called the Ohio Bureau of Unemployment.

She hated it.

"So I transferred to the highway department," she said, "and that was just as bad."

Miseta found her place when she walked into the White Castle headquarters, 555 W. Goodale St., to drop off an application and found it buzzing with activity.

"I thought, 'This is for me.' "

She started in the stenographer's pool but wound up serving as the executive secretary to the company leaders.

Until recently, callers had to get past her to reach Ingram.

"They want to talk to Mr. Ingram," she said. "Everybody does. If they have a hangnail, they want to talk to Mr. Ingram. But he doesn't do hangnails."

Miseta had a routine: She would arise at 5 a.m., dress in a suit (don't get her started on "business casual") and be in the office by 6:15. By the time the phones started ringing about 9 a.m., she had accomplished a lot. She would leave for home in Upper Arlington about 4 p.m.

When told that was more than eight hours, she shrugged.

"They got their money's worth."

Miseta was married for 54 years to husband Frank, a lawyer who died in 2004.

They traveled the world together. ("We've never been to Borneo and the two Arctics, but we've been everywhere else.") The couple had no children -- one reason that Miseta kept working so long.

Her last day on the job was actually Dec. 4; she has been using up vacation time since then.

She had calls to screen, mementos to pack and goodbyes to say. She didn't cry.

"My mother tried to teach me not to be a bawl baby," she said. "So you just grit your teeth."

Retirement hasn't diminished her loyalty.

She still professes a fondness for her longtime employer's signature product: the Slyder.

But she admitted she hasn't recently bought a sack full of the little burgers with the big digestive effect.

"I don't eat them very often because I have to be careful," she said. "They're kind of high-powered."

7-Year-Old on Crusade to Help the Homeless

2010-01-04T11:27:00.003-05:00

From MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34623713/ns/local_news-chicago_il/
By Andrew Greiner & Natalie Martinez

He may be a little guy, but he helps homeless folks in a big way.

After seeing a homeless woman during a holiday trip to Chicago, Jonathon Slack, a seven-year-old boy from Orland Park, led a 10-day donation drive, collecting over four truckloads of food and toys for a Chicago shelter.

Jonathon was moved to tears when he saw the homeless woman standing outide of Macy's on State Street, holding a sign that said she and her son had no place to live. After he finished crying, he was moved to action.

"At home that night after I read to him and getting him ready to be tucked in, he started crying," said Heather Slack, his mother.

He told his mom, "That lady had no shelter, mom."

"He wanted us to drive back to the city so that he could give the lady the $6 he had in his pocket," Heather said.   

The Slacks weren’t sure that was a good idea, but they encouraged Jonathon to think of other ways to help. He thought of plenty.   

He was going to paint smiley faces on rocks and sell them. He was going to ask president Obama to take money from rich people and give it to poor people.   

His mother suggested starting a donation.   

So Jonathon wrote a letter asking his community to pitch in. He dropped off photocopies all around his neighborhood.   

The response was tremendous. The youngster managed to collect over four truckloads of food and toys, which he then sent to the Su Casa Catholic Worker homeless shelter in Chicago.

"We got started late and people only had 10 days to get their donations together," Heather said. "They ended up donating about four and a half trucks worth of stuff. We ended up filling their whole elevator with food."

Jessi Gauger-Kiraly, the volunteer coordinator at the Su Casa Catholic Worker House remembers the day well.   "It was really exciting because we had a lot people moving donations in and out of the house," Gauger-Kiraly said. "It’d be nice if people did this all year round."   

"I don't know where it came from," Heather Slack said of her son's selfless drive. "Last year we tried to get him to realize there were people less fortunate, and it wasn't working, and this year I'd like to think that it was Divine Intervention."

Donating Canned Goods To Avoid Library Fees

2009-12-31T12:43:00.004-05:00

"In the Illinois towns of Joliet and Palos Park, the economic downturn has pushed the public libraries into the grocery business, of sorts. Patrons with overdue books and hefty outstanding fines were recently given a way to clear their records: Donate canned goods or other groceries through the library to local shelters and food pantries."

The full story as published in the the New York Times is below....

New and Creative Leniency for Overdue Library Books
By SUSAN SAULNY and EMMA GRAVES
FITZSIMMONS
CHICAGO — In the Illinois towns of Joliet and Palos Park, the economic downturn has pushed the public libraries into the grocery business, of sorts. Patrons with overdue books and hefty outstanding fines were recently given a way to clear their records: Donate canned goods or other groceries through the library to local shelters and food pantries.

Dozens of library patrons in both towns jumped at the opportunity.

In Colorado, despite a multimillion-dollar deficit, the Denver Public Library has practically done away with fixed-rate fines. Now librarians there are free to negotiate a fee structure that feels fair to them based on individual cases, or to charge nothing at all.

Since the beginning of the economic downturn, librarians across the country have speculated that fines for overdue items are keeping people from using the library — particularly large families whose children take out (and forget to return) many books at a time. Some libraries learned that the fines, which are often as low as 25 cents an item per day, quickly multiplied for many people and were becoming an added hardship.

“We can’t push the cost to consumers because they’re also struggling,” said Richard Sosa, the finance director of the Denver system, which has $9 million worth of books in circulation through 23 libraries and two bookmobiles. “The library philosophy is: We do not want to restrict access to information. The use of fines or harsh collection tactics — and we could potentially do that — could essentially restrict people’s access to the library.”

And another thing: They need their books back.

As a result, libraries have been instituting amnesty days and weeks with increasing frequency this year, and offering programs such as “food for fines.” In Joliet, about 60 miles southwest of here, the program went well beyond groceries, and benefited a local social service agency that serves the needy.

“Toiletries, clothing — people could bring in just about anything,” said John Spears, the director of the Joliet library. “It went very well. I think these kinds of things are a win-win for everyone.”

The Conneaut Public Library in Conneaut, Ohio, has a list of more than 1,000 people who cannot use the system because of fines, and the staff has been contacting the long lost patrons to ask them to come back.

The food for fines program there, which started around Thanksgiving and runs through New Year’s Day, offers this deal: Take the amount owed, divide it in half, and give that number of items to the Conneaut Food Pantry. For instance, if a family owes $50, it can donate 25 canned goods to the pantry, and the fines will disappear.

“Behind my circulation desk, I have boxes and boxes of food that people are stumbling over,” said Kathy Pape, the library’s executive director. “The response has been overwhelming.”

Other libraries are accepting any amount of food in exchange for returned materials. And the ones that are offering amnesty require nothing at all.

“We service an area that’s extremely depressed, in the foothills of East Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains,” said Aliceann McCabe, the director of the Audrey Pack Memorial Library in Spring City, Tenn., where an amnesty week ended Dec. 18. “Our computer use has tripled thanks to unemployment claims and things. This is our Christmas present to the people who use our library. We don’t want to ding them with fines.”

Ms. McCabe recounted the story of one woman who had $196 in outstanding fines forgiven. The library, for its part, got her 10 books back in circulation. For a country library that only has 27,000 books in its collection, “that’s a lot,” Ms. McCabe said.

The Monterey County Free Library system in Monterey, Calif., has reclaimed more than 1,000 books since offering end-of-the-year amnesty to patrons in November and December.

“We thought, People are suffering, having a hard time, so let’s give them a break and get our books back,” said Jayanti Addleman, the county librarian.

But Ms. Addleman and others said they often faced a common-sense question from users and management: Why not raise fines to make money and serve more people?

The librarians say the new leniency makes sense. “What’s going to keep my library doors open is the bigger picture,” Ms. Pape said. “It isn’t going to be a hundred-odd dollars here and there.”

Mr. Sosa, in Denver, added: “A certain level of fines and fee structure is important to have people realize that these are important public materials, and that’s how libraries work in a democracy. But at the same time, we’re trying to figure out, when does a fee prohibit someone who’s on the brink economically from using our service? We’re cognizant of what we’re doing.”

In Pelham, N.H., the public library director, Robert Rice, offered a food-for-fines program during November.

“We will probably continue that policy once the new year starts,” Mr. Rice said. “The loss in terms of money was maybe $20 a day. We well made up for it with the amount of food that came in.”

He continued: “We got our materials back and did something positive for the community. Use is up greatly, and budgets are being cut. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re keeping the doors open.”

Article @ link - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/us/29library.html

Holiday Miracle - Mom & Baby Come Back to Life

2009-12-30T10:25:00.002-05:00

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Girl Scout Inspires Unemployed Mom to Start New Business

2009-12-29T10:36:00.001-05:00

In the Spirit of Christmas, Man Gives Away All His Possessions

2009-12-23T13:23:00.003-05:00

Dennis Stevenson had a ton of stuff he didn't need. So, for last Christmas, he opened the doors to his home and allowed those who couldn't afford gifts to come and take what they wanted. It was such a hit, he's doing it again this year, but in a shop on the Gold Coast of Queensland.

Patrons are thrilled to take part, not just because of the free goodies, but because of how Stevenson is celebrating "the spirit of Christmas." (Excerpt from Impact page Huffington Post.com)

Full Story from Australia's Courier Mail below:

Dennis Stevenson gives away all his possessions

Hannah Martin
August 23, 2008 11:00pm
.DENNIS Stevenson lives in one of Brisbane's wealthiest suburbs and yesterday opened his front door to give away the contents of his home.

His washing machine, dishwasher, clothes and a computer were snaffled up in half-an-hour.
You couldn't wipe the smile off the face of the 62-year-old small business consultant, who struggled to explain why he decided to give away his life's possessions.

"The best way to answer that is, 'Why not?' " Mr Stevenson said at his Hamilton home in Brisbane's inner north.

"I was going to sell it, but had this idea that it would be fun and nice to give it away."

There were tears of gratitude and plenty of hugs for Mr Stevenson, as people from as far away as Toowoomba thanked him for their new goods.

Items up for grabs included a new silk suit, jugs, a microwave, fans, books, golf clubs, sporting equipment, a roof antenna, plastic storage containers, shelves and a television cabinet.

"Lucky I don't (own the house), I'd probably give it away, too," Mr Stevenson said.

"There were so many people here, people who needed things, (and) I think people really only took things they needed."

So, what's next for Mr Stevenson?

"Interestingly enough, I haven't decided. I'm looking forward to waking up in the morning and seeing where the day takes me," he said.

Mr Stevenson lives on his own, after caring for his elderly mum for several years until her recent death.

Luke Anthony and his friend Jamie Lee, who live near Aspley in Brisbane's north, were grateful for Mr Stevenson's washing machine, television, books, some grinding tools and new clothes.

"I think (the giveaway) is typical true blue Aussie and it's a dying trait. It's dead and buried, but Dennis has revived it," Mr Anthony, 40, said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/australian-man-opens-free_n_400960.html

For the Homeless, Sweet Music Lightens the Load

2009-12-22T10:04:00.002-05:00

From the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/arts/music/19soup.html?adxnnl=1&sudsredirect=true&adxnnlx=1261494248-nxNeS1QFU4SJ0+0aGrneQQ

Just three blocks from Lincoln Center, they arrived at the concert on Thursday night by shelter bus, not taxi or limousine. They took their seats around scarred, round folding tables. The menu was chicken curry and rice served on paper plates.

These concertgoers were eight tired, homeless men who had been taken to the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church shelter for the night. They listened to the latest performance by Kelly Hall-Tompkins, a professional violinist who has been playing in shelters for five years under the banner of Music Kitchen.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins is not the only do-gooder in the classical music world. Orchestras nationwide took part in a food drive this fall, and Classical Action raises money for AIDS programs through concerts and other activities. Hospital Audiences brings musicians and other performers into wards. But most classical music institutions — orchestras, opera houses and conservatories — pour their philanthropic efforts into large-scale music education for children, supported by hefty fund-raising and marketing machines. They organize youth orchestras; play concerts in poor, urban schools; and provide lessons.

Music Kitchen has a catchy motto (“Food for the Soul”), T-shirts with a logo and a pool of donors. But the operation is essentially Ms. Hall-Tompkins, 38, an ambitious New York freelancer who plays in the New Jersey Symphony and has a midlevel solo and chamber music career.

“I like sharing music with people, and they have zero access to it,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said of her homeless audiences. “It’s very moving to me that I can find people in a place perhaps when they have a greater need for, and a heightened sensitivity to, beauty.”

She invites musician friends to play and uses her networking skills to cajole prominent soloists into joining. They include Emanuel Ax, the pianist, and Albrecht Mayer, a principal oboist of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Hall-Tompkins asked Mr. Ax to take part when he was playing a concerto with the New Jersey Symphony, and she encountered Mr. Mayer in a Tokyo hotel hallway while both were on tour.

The concerts have an air of authenticity and directness that sometimes does not exist in concert halls. Not all the listeners are new to classical music. One woman at a concert said the experience had been bittersweet because it brought back memories of working at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and “how much my life has changed since.”

For the performers, it can also be bittersweet. “When I have people to play for, it means they are having really hard times,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. But the benefit is mutual. “The artists, I find, are just as moved as the people we’re supposedly trying to help.”

Music Kitchen concerts mainly take place at the Antonio G. Olivieri Drop in Center for Homeless Women and at Holy Trinity. Ms. Hall-Tompkins’s first concert was in 2004, when her husband, Joe Tompkins, a percussionist who volunteered as a cook at Holy Trinity, suggested she play for the men there.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins creates programs of beloved pieces that most string players know well, like the Schubert String Quintet, and she uses the concerts as dress rehearsals for works scheduled for more public performances. All the artists are paid —a token $100 — because Ms. Hall-Tompkins said that she believed in the principle that musicians should be compensated.

On Thursday Ms. Hall-Tompkins had managed to snare a prominent player, Mark O’Connor, the fiddler and composer, who came with manager, personal assistant and public relations man in tow. She and Mr. O’Connor — who has played at shelters around the country — are planning to play together, including a Sept. 11 performance with the Evansville Philharmonic, in Evansville, Ind.

Shortly before 8 p.m., the men quietly filtered into the basement of the church, at 65th Street and Central Park West, and picked out their bedding. They wheeled folding beds over to a wall and opened them. They took their seats around the tables under neon lights.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins introduced herself and Mr. O’Connor. “You have here one of the great violinists of our generation,” she said. “This is a guy who fills concert halls all over the place.”

They plunged into a duet by Mr. O’Connor, “Appalachia Waltz.” As the two violins wove nostalgic, homespun lines, the men watched intently, not touching their food. Mr. O’Connor went off to the side and sat on a platform, while Ms. Hall-Tompkins talked about the next work, Bach’s Partita No. 2 for unaccompanied violin.

“It’s based on a set of dance movements,” she said. “Of course, it’s not the dances we would do today.” Bach looked down on the proceedings from a framed poster behind her. One man in a blue hooded sweatshirt moved his head back and forth to the music.

Mr. O’Connor took over with a medley of traditional American tunes, like “Boil the Cabbage Down” and “Arkansas Traveler,” a journey through blue grass, jazz and blues country.

“You guys are fantastic,” one of the men interjected.

They joined again for the first movement of Mr. O’Connor’s Double Violin Concerto, a jazzy, glissando-filled dialogue, in which Ms. Hall-Tompkins played the straight man to Mr. O’Connor’s wilder lines.

The audience members applauded politely between each number and finished their food. Afterward, Ms. Hall-Tompkins opened a discussion. “How in the world did you end up playing the violin?” asked a man in a black watch cap.

Ms. Hall-Tompkins said she was influenced by a visit to her local orchestra as a child in Greenville, S.C.; by the music of Bach in her Lutheran church; and by Warner Brothers cartoons. “We’re talking Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd,” she said, and played snatches of Bugs’s favorites: the overture from the “Barber of Seville” and the Wagner theme set to the text “Kill the wabbit.” Several of the men laughed in recognition.

One asked about the musicians’ feelings about pop music. “I’m a rock girl,” Ms. Hall-Tompkins said. Another asked what was Bach’s “most famous piece.” Ms. Hall-Tompkins played some well-known excerpts.

The shelter coordinator, Omowale Adewale, said he rarely saw the men so lively. Often they collapse with exhaustion after eating. Some even skip the meal.
Mr. O’Connor said he was struck by how the men opened up after hearing the two violins in dialogue. “Maybe through this music there’s healing,” he said.

One man, who identified himself by his nickname, Cleveland, said music helped him relax. He had a tattoo of a G clef and several notes on his neck. “I look at music as something to get my mind focused off of the other things I’m going through,” he said.

Joseph Rucco said the music evoked childhood memories. “Classic music will never die,” he said. “I’m not stable right now. To hear them play, it motivates me to do what I have to do in the future.”

Ms. Hall-Tompkins scrupulously memorializes each concert. She writes a description of the event, takes photographs and has the shelter residents write down their thoughts on index cards.

“I get a crazy kind of pleasure documenting the whole thing,” she said.

In one card from Thursday night, a man who gave only his first name, Daryl, wrote: “It touched my heart to hear such nice tunes,” adding, “I will keep you in my prayers. You made an impact on me greatly.”

After the musicians left, the men went to sleep. The bus would be back at 6 a.m.

For Local Artist, Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

2009-12-21T10:31:00.003-05:00

From the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/arts/design/20herrera.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true

Under a skylight in her tin-ceilinged loft near Union Square in Manhattan, the abstract painter Carmen Herrera, 94, nursed a flute of Champagne last week, sitting regally in the wheelchair she resents.

After six decades of very private painting, Ms. Herrera sold her first artwork five years ago, at 89. Now, at a small ceremony in her honor, she was basking in the realization that her career had finally, undeniably, taken off. As cameras flashed, she extended long, Giacomettiesque fingers to accept an art foundation’s lifetime achievement award from the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Her good friend, the painter Tony Bechara, raised a glass. “We have a saying in Puerto Rico,” he said. “The bus — la guagua — always comes for those who wait.”

And the Cuban-born Ms. Herrera, laughing gustily, responded, “Well, Tony, I’ve been at the bus stop for 94 years!”

Since that first sale in 2004, collectors have avidly pursued Ms. Herrera, and her radiantly ascetic paintings have entered the permanent collections of institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Tate Modern. Last year, MoMA included her in a pantheon of Latin American artists on exhibition. And this summer, during a retrospective show in England, The Observer of London called Ms. Herrera the discovery of the decade, asking, “How can we have missed these beautiful compositions?”

In a word, Ms. Herrera, a nonagenarian homebound painter with arthritis, is hot. In an era when the art world idolizes, and often richly rewards, the young and the new, she embodies a different, much rarer kind of success, that of the artist long overlooked by the market, and by history, who persevered because she had no choice.

“I do it because I have to do it; it’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure,” she said of painting. “I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. So I just worked and waited. And at the end of my life, I’m getting a lot of recognition, to my amazement and my pleasure, actually.”

Julián Zugazagoitia, the director of El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, called Ms. Herrera “a quiet warrior of her art.”

“To bloom into full glory at 94 — whatever Carmen Herrera’s slow rise might say about the difficulties of being a woman artist, an immigrant artist or an artist ahead of her time, it is clearly a story of personal strength,” Mr. Zugazagoitia said.

A minimalist whose canvases are geometric distillations of form and color, Ms. Herrera has slowly come to the attention of a subset of art historians over the last decade. . Now she is increasingly considered an important figure by those who study her “remarkably monumental, iconic paintings,” said Edward J. Sullivan, a professor of art history at New York University.

“Those of us with a passion for either geometric art or Latin American Modernist painting now realize what a pivotal role” Ms. Herrera has played in “the development of geometric abstraction in the Americas,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Painting in relative solitude since the late 1930s, with only the occasional exhibition, Ms. Herrera was sustained, she said, by the unflinching support of her husband of 61 years, Jesse Loewenthal. An English teacher at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, Mr. Loewenthal was portrayed by the memoirist Frank McCourt, a colleague, as an old-world scholar in an “elegant, three-piece suit, the gold watch chain looping across his waistcoat front.”

Recognition for Ms. Herrera came a few years after her husband’s death, at 98, in 2000. “Everybody says Jesse must have orchestrated this from above,” Ms. Herrera said, shaking her head. “Yeah, right, Jesse on a cloud.” She added: “I worked really hard. Maybe it was me.”

In a series of interviews in her sparsely but artfully furnished apartment, Ms. Herrera always offered an afternoon cocktail — “Oh, don’t be abstemious!” — and an outpouring of stories about prerevolutionary Cuba, postwar Paris and the many artists she has known, from Wifredo Lam to Yves Klein to Barnett Newman.

“Ah, Wifredo,” she said, referring to Lam, the Cuban-born French painter. “All the girls were crazy about him. When we were in Havana, my phone would begin ringing: ‘Is Wifredo in town?’ I mean, come on, I wasn’t his social secretary.”

But Ms. Herrera is less expansive about her own art, discussing it with a minimalism redolent of the work. “Paintings speak for themselves,” she said. Geometry and color have been the head and the heart of her work, she added, describing a lifelong quest to pare down her paintings to their essence, like visual haiku.

Asked how she would describe to a student a painting like “Blanco y Verde” (1966) — a canvas of white interrupted by an inverted green triangle — she said, “I wouldn’t have a student.” To a sweet, inquiring child, then? “I’d give him some candy so he’d rot his teeth.”

When pressed about what looks to some like a sensual female shape in the painting, she said: “Look, to me it was white, beautiful white, and then the white was shrieking for the green, and the little triangle created a force field. People see very sexy things — dirty minds! — but to me sex is sex, and triangles are triangles.”

Born in 1915 in Havana, where her father was the founding editor of the daily newspaper El Mundo, and her mother a reporter, Ms. Herrera took art lessons as a child, attended finishing school in Paris and embarked on a Cuban university degree in architecture. In 1939, midway through her studies, she married Mr. Loewenthal and moved to New York. (They had no children.)

Although she studied at the Art Students League of New York, Ms. Herrera did not discover her artistic identity until she and her husband settled in Paris for a few years after World War II. There she joined a group of abstract artists, based at the influential Salon of New Realities, which exhibited her work along with that of Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and others.

“I was looking for a pictorial vocabulary and I found it there,” she said. “But when we moved back to New York, this type of art” — her less-is-more formalism — “was not acceptable. Abstract Expressionism was in fashion. I couldn’t get a gallery.”

Ms. Herrera said that she also accepted, “as a handicap,” the barriers she faced as a Hispanic female artist. Beyond that, though, “her art was not easily digestible at the time,” Mr. Zugazagoitia said. “She was not doing Cuban landscapes or flowers of the tropics, the art you might have expected from a Cuban émigré who spent time in Paris. She was ahead of her time.”

Over the decades, Ms. Herrera had a solo show here and there, including a couple at museums (the Alternative Museum in 1984, El Museo del Barrio in 1998). But she never sold anything, and never needed, or aggressively sought, the affirmation of the market. “It would have been nice, but maybe corrupting,” she said.

Mr. Bechara, who befriended her in the early 1970s and is now chairman of El Museo del Barrio, said that he regularly tried to push her into the public eye, even though she “found a kind of solace in being alone.”

One day in 2004, Mr. Bechara attended a dinner with Frederico Sève, the owner of the Latin Collector Gallery in Manhattan, who was dealing with the withdrawal of an artist from a much-publicized show of female geometric painters. “Tony said to me: ‘Geometry and ladies? You need Carmen Herrera,’ ” Mr. Sève recounted. “And I said, ‘Who the hell is Carmen Herrera?’ ”

The next morning, Mr. Sève arrived at his gallery to find several paintings, just delivered, that he took to be the work of the well-known Brazilian artist Lygia Clark but were in fact by Ms. Herrera. Turning over the canvases, he saw that they predated by a decade paintings in a similar style by Ms. Clark. “Wow, wow, wow,” he recalled saying. “We got a pioneer here.”

Mr. Sève quickly called Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, a collector who has an art foundation in Miami. She bought five of Ms. Herrera’s paintings. Estrellita Brodsky, another prominent collector, bought another five. Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, also bought several, and with Mr. Bechara, donated one of Ms. Herrera’s black-and-white paintings to MoMA.

The recent exhibition in England, which is now heading to Germany, came about by happenstance after a curator stumbled across Ms. Herrera’s paintings on the Internet. Last week The Observer named that retrospective one of the year’s 10 best exhibitions, alongside a Picasso show and one devoted to the American Pop artist Ed Ruscha.

Ms. Herrera’s late-in-life success has stunned her in many ways. Her larger works now sell for $30,000, and one painting commanded $44,000 — sums unimaginable when she was, say, in her 80s. “I have more money now than I ever had in my life,” she said.

Not that she is succumbing to a life of leisure. At a long table where she peers out over East 19th Street “like a French concierge,” Ms. Herrera, because she must, continues to draw and paint. “Only my love of the straight line keeps me going,” she said.

A Continental Dash

2009-12-18T14:50:00.002-05:00

By Imprint-TV Contributing Reporter: Sarah Denlinger

Last week, Charlie Barkowski set out to run six marathons, on six continents, within five days. Though he did not complete all six marathons due to a late flight arrival in Cairo, one can hardly say that he failed. You could consider him a modern day Pheidippides (coincidental that he hails from Greece, New York too) and the challenge that he faced would be daunting for even the most talented of athletes. Barkowski referred to his run as the “Dash of Continents” and his sole trek began in Sydney, Australia with stops in: Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, London, Cairo, and finally ending in Jerusalem. When it was all said and done, Barkowski logged 100 hours of flight time from city to city; 131.1 miles by foot; a total of 18,642 calories burned; and an average run time of 4:59.

This ultimately begs the question of: why? As someone who can barely make it to the gym three times a week, I was curious as to the motives behind Barkowski’s feat (no pun intended). According to his website, he ran for the charity Run FIT, Inc., which stands for Run For Israel Together and was “started for the purpose of helping families in Israel who have lost loved ones in acts of terror.” The group’s main method of raising both funds and international awareness is through running in different events around the world. Barkowski is one of only a few people to ever attempt running that distance in such a short time period, and also the first American to do so.

The marathon distance was recorded via a global positioning system that Barkowski wore along with a heart monitor (for those cynics that may think that he skipped out on the running and just drove the myriad routes). You can read about his journey on his website and facebook pages: dashofcontinents.net and Run for Israel, respectively.

Christmas Miracle: Once Was Blind, Now Can See!

2009-12-18T12:18:00.002-05:00

Brooklyn Mom, Blind for past Two Years, Has Eyes Repaired in Surgery

From the ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cassy Rivera calls it "a Christmas miracle."

A disease, uveitis, blinded Rivera two years ago. Now, surgery has repaired one eye - allowing the Brooklyn mom to see her toddler for the first time.

Rivera tells the Daily News it was like "touching the stars and the clouds and the moon."

Rivera's 7-year-old is her biggest fan. Alayza said she didn't need presents - she just wanted her mom to see again.

The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary donated costs not covered by Medicaid.

The chance of success was about 50/50. When the bandages came off, Rivera was so scared that she kept her eyes shut for 10 minutes. Then she screamed with joy.

"It was beautiful," she recalled. "I saw his (Doctor's) tie. I saw the computer. And then I realized, 'I'm going to get to see my kids today.'"

After Christmas, she'll have surgery on her other eye.

The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary donated costs not covered by Medicaid.

Copy & paste link for entire article plus video from the NY Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/12/18/2009-12-18_thanks_to_generous_surgeons_bklyn_mom_regains_her_sight__gets_to_see_true_meanin.html

Sacramento Man On A Mission: Volunteer For 20 Causes In 20 Days

2009-12-17T12:26:00.002-05:00

Via The Huffington Post:

Erik, a Sacramento man, is on a truly giving mission: he's dedicating himself to twenty causes over twenty days.

He explains that he's never volunteered before, and that he'd like to challenge himself and live outside his comfort zone, which is part of the reason why he came up with 20 Causes, 20 Days.

Erik's calendar of causes has included delivering two Thanksgiving dinners to needy families in the Sacramento area, singing karaoke for senior citizens, and sorting donated coats for kids as part of a drive with the Salvation Army. He's thoughtfully chronicled each day of volunteering on his blog.

Today marked Erik's 14th cause. Erik volunteered with the Sacramento Area Emergency Housing Center to celebrate the birthdays of children whose families used to be homeless -- at a party complete with cupcakes and presents.

Founded in 1972, the Center is a program that helps families transition from being homeless and serves 500 people each day through 14 of its programs.

Follow Erik on Twitter and stay tuned for the final six days of of 20 Causes 20 Days. http://20causes20days.com/

K9 Connection: At-Risk Teens And Shelter Dogs Get A New 'Leash' On Life

2009-12-16T13:14:00.002-05:00

Put these two groups together and unleash the healing power of the human-animal bond. That's what Katherine Beattie and Pat Sinclair envisioned when they formed k9 connection, a non-profit organization that educates and inspires at-risk teens through bonding with and training homeless shelter dogs.

k9 connection, located in Santa Monica, California, is a remarkable organization whose mission is to teach at-risk teens how to train homeless shelter dogs in basic obedience skills in order to increase their chances of adoption. Through the training they provide to the dogs, the teens benefit by learning how to be more responsible and accountable, the importance of goal setting, and how positive reinforcement offers an alternative to force and violence.

At lot of the lessons the kids learn by training the dogs can be applied to the various challenges they may face in their daily lives. In turn, the shelter dogs develop skills that allow them to smoothly transition into permanent, loving homes.

More information on the Huffingtonpost website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-patricia-fitzgerald/k9-connection-at-risk-tee_b_386702.html

The Spontaneous Smiley Project

2009-12-16T11:08:00.001-05:00

Here’s a project Imprint-TV has always loved – Spontaneous Smiley - an art project that that lives on the internet and involves thousands of people all over the world collecting and sharing their photographs of the Smiley Face as it appears in everyday objects. Spontaneous Smiley launched 2 years ago.

Recently they’ve partnered with OPERATION SMILE (a network of volunteers working worldwide to repair childhood facial deformities). Smiley uploads earn donations for Operation Smile. On Friday 12/11/09 they launched their very first Smile-a-Thon. An entire elementary school is going on a Smile Hunt. Like a Walk-a-Thon the kids will get people to sponsor them, but instead of by the mile the sponsors will pledge by the SMILE. Hundreds of kids will spend their Winter Break finding and photographing Spontaneous Smileys. If this pilot school goes well, Operation Smile and Spontaneous Smiley will launch the Smile-a-Thon nation wide!

Spontaneous Smiley will be on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric one day this week. Definitely take the time to learn more about this project, become a fan on Facebook and join the cause. This is an amazing effort by Ruth Kaiser, the founder of the organization, who has a passion for creating positive change!

Buffalo Soldier War Hero Gets His Day

2009-12-16T10:41:00.004-05:00

From the Spokesman-Review: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/16/war-hero-gets-day-of-his-own/
By: Alison Boggs The Spokesman-Review

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has proclaimed Thursday will be Vernon J. Baker Day, in honor of the St. Maries resident who is the only living African-American Medal of Honor recipient from World War II.

“I encourage Idahoans to honor this courageous citizen who is the embodiment of the true American hero and who ensures and reminds us of all that is wonderful about Idaho and this great country,” Otter wrote in the proclamation, signed Dec. 8.

Baker, who served for eight years on the state’s Human Rights Commission, turns 90 on Thursday. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997.

“Oh my Lord, thank you,” Baker said when he learned of the proclamation Tuesday. “I appreciate that very, very much. The only thing I can do about it is sit here and cry.”

Baker received the Medal of Honor for leading a two-day assault in 1945 against an Italian mountain stronghold occupied by German soldiers and securing it for American forces.

Baker also is the last survivor of the Buffalo Soldiers unit, the segregated 270th Regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division, the first all-black unit to see combat in World War II, according to a news release from the commission. Baker holds numerous other medals, including a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross.

In a personal letter, Otter told Baker that his valor and sacrifice “helped preserve the freedoms we cherish as Americans. You are an example to all of us, and Idaho is grateful for your service and humbled by your civic virtue.”

The proclamation was a great way to honor Baker, said Pamela Parks, director of the Human Rights Commission, the state agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws. “He added a great deal to the deliberations here … and was much admired,” she said.

Helping the Hungry - One Bowl At A Time

2009-12-15T11:03:00.002-05:00

From CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/15/gif.empty.bowls/index.html

Washington (CNN) -- In a warm, fluorescent-lit clay studio at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, students, faculty and a soft-spoken priest are embarking on a mission. Their goal: Create 500 bowls for a fundraiser to help feed the hungry.

"There are over 9,000 homeless people in the nation's capital," says the Rev. John Adams, who has been trying to break the cycle of homelessness and hunger in Washington for more than 30 years as president of So Others Might Eat.

The interfaith, community-based organization, which is in its 40th year, serves more than 1,000 meals a day and provides nearly 300 housing units to homeless and hungry people in Washington.

"We are in sight of the Capitol and still we have many, many homeless people who need our help," Adams said. "We've seen over a 10 percent increase in the meals we are serving this past year. We've seen a 17 percent increase in the people coming to our medical clinic. Our housing we provide is 100 percent full.

"[The recession] is really affecting the poor."
Each year, So Others Might Eat hosts an Empty Bowls event where, for a $20 donation, guests are served a soup supper and given a handmade clay bowl. The events raise thousands of dollars for the organization, with local potters, studios and schools making and donating the bowls, and restaurants and shops donating the food.

This year, for the first time, the group is partnering with the Corcoran to help supply bowls for the fundraiser in March 2010. The bowls are intended as symbols of hunger.

"It's a wonderful event to have these artists come here today to help feed the needy in our city," Adams says.

However, making bowls is no easy task.

"We are working on a collaborative effort with So Other Might Eat," says Bob Devers, coordinator of ceramics at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. "We promised to produce 500 bowls for their charity fundraiser."

The studio is busy at work, with students and faculty -- and even Adams -- cutting, kneading and spinning the clay into works of art.

Corcoran student Jeff Herrity has been working with clay for 10 years, but he's still excited to sit down and create bowls that someone will put to use.

"It's great to spend an entire day making bowls and thinking about what they will be used for, Herrity said. "We get to sit next to our fellow students and learn their techniques. It's a fun activity for us at the clay program."

Herrity sits on his stool contently, gazing at the clay shape as it opens up into a bowl, thinking about what will go inside.

"It's going to have a life after it comes off this wheel, after it gets fired and glazed, it will be used for something."

As Adams takes a break from designing his first bowl, he looks around and talks with students and faculty. He can't help but be impressed.

"We have great artists and great people here who are interested in helping people in the city," he says.

Taking time to donate their creative energies, especially during the holiday season, means a lot to Adams.

"The holidays remind us of giving thanks for what we have, but also the opportunities we have for reaching out to others that don't have," he says.

Stephen King to pay for troops' holiday trip home

2009-12-14T10:40:00.001-05:00

Author Stephen King and his wife are donating money so 150 soldiers from the Maine Army National Guard can comehome for the holidays. King and his wife, Tabitha, who are paying $13,000 toward the cost of two bus trips so members of the 3rd Battalion, 172nd Infantry Unit can travel from Camp Atterbury in Indiana to Maine for Christmas.

The soldiers left Maine last week for training at Camp Atterbury. They are scheduled to depart for Afghanistan in January.

Julie Eugley, one of King's personal assistants, told the Bangor Daily News that the Kings were approached about giving $13,000.

But Stephen King thought the number 13 was a bit unlucky, so the couple pitched in $12,999 instead. Eugley chipped in $1 to make for an even $13,000.

'Secret Santas' Give Instant Hope to Those Who Really Need

2009-12-11T12:23:00.004-05:00

A group of 'Secret Santas' randomly give to those in need this holiday season. If you're lucky a town near you - these red-capped Santa's may just had you a hundred dollar bill.

The Santas insist on anonymity -- but they're part of a growing network of wealthy business people, CEO's mostly, who together plan to hand out about $300,000 this year -- because they all share the same crazy notion: to make the world a better place.

CBS Evening News "Assignment America" has the full story below:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Girl's Fight to Stay Alive

2009-12-10T10:48:00.003-05:00

CBS News us the phenomenal medical story of Tiana Tillman. The toddler is one of many children waiting for heart transplants but she has hope because of an experimental device called the Berlin heart.

Tiana had been fighting what everyone thought was a cold. It turned out that her heart was failing. The doctors' grim prognosis hit harder than any tackle on the football field. They weren't sure if she would make it through the night.

The device takes over the heart's work of pumping blood. Tubes are implanted inside the heart. They emerge from small openings in the skin to enter the pump, which sends blood directly to the blood vessels that go to the rest of the body.

The Berlin Heart has been used more than 160 times in the U.S. since 2000. Each time, doctors have to get permission from the FDA, and have it flown in from Germany. It was the only hope for Tiana and her family.

CBS News brings us her story the video below:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Imprint-TV Original Story: New York City's Kids Ride Club

2009-12-09T10:22:00.001-05:00

You may have seen this group of kids whizzing by you down the streets of Manhattan. They’re members of New York’s Kids Ride Club. The organization takes many kids beyond their neighborhoods, by bike, for the very first time. Check out this Imprint-TV original story to learn more.

Youth Advocate Earns National Praise For Good Deeds

2009-12-08T10:15:00.002-05:00

From the Tampa Tribune: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/dec/07/na-boys-good-deeds-earn-national-praise/

By YVETTE C. HAMMETT

yhammett@tampatrib.com
A 12-year-old boy with a heart for the homeless and downtrodden in this world is among an elite list of humanitarians nominated for Most Inspiring Person of the Year.

Beliefnet, a Web site devoted to saluting people whose actions inspire others to live better lives, has named Zach Bonner as one of 10 nominees for the award. People can go online to vote for their favorite through Dec. 12 at www.beliefnet.com.

"It's simply breathtaking how one true act of selflessness can inspire and encourage an entire nation - sometimes even the world - in empowering and life-affirming ways," said Beliefnet managing editor Michael Kress.

"While this year has been a tough one for many, each of our 10 nominees has revealed an amazing inner spirit and sense of caring and concern for others," Kress said.

Zach, who is home-schooled, has collected more than $350,000 in donations through his Little Red Wagon Foundation, started when he was 7 years old. He has helped homeless youths and raised money for hurricane victims. His latest contribution went to A Kids Place, a new group home for foster children in Brandon, for construction of a playground.

Last year, the youngster made a 1,200-mile "My House to the White House" walk to raise money to house homeless youths. This year, he is doing a coast-to-coast walk in increments to benefit a Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles.

Zach, who could not be reached for comment, is thought to be on a leg of his walk to Los Angeles, a Beliefnet spokeswoman said.

The youngster was honored in October with a Caring Award from the Caring Institute, whose mission is to promote the values of caring, integrity and public service.

The 10 nominated for this award, including US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III, who safely piloted a plane into the Hudson River, and Kaleb Eulls, a Mississippi football player who tackled a gun-waving girl on his school bus, were first nominated by Beliefnet users.

Members of the Beliefnet community, which is much like the social network Facebook, submitted names, which were reviewed by Family and Inspiration Editor Laurie Sue Brockway and the editorial staff, then narrowed down to 10.

Other nominees include:

•Jill and Kevin's Wedding Dance, an inspirational video used as an anti-domestic violence fundraiser

•Jorge Munuz, a Queens bus driver who cooks for the hungry each night

•Boston Hospital CEO Paul Levy, who slashed his own salary and encouraged his staff to keep people working

•Air Force Maj. Tobin Griffeth and Capt. Katie Illingworth, fans of football rivals who rallied in support of Afghanistan families

•Michael J. Fox, the "incurable optimist" who advocates for a cure for Parkinson's Disease

•Danny Cottrell, a recession-weary Alabama pharmacist inspired by his community to pay it forward by handing out bonuses to employees with the understanding it had to go to charity and local businesses

•Iranians for Freedom, who took to the streets to protest what they perceived as an unfair presidential election

GreatNonprofits CEO Making a Difference This Christmas

2009-12-07T10:17:00.003-05:00

From USA TODAY: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/kindness/index

My family had about $100 when we immigrated and countless nonprofits helped us. If you look at photos of me when I was a kid, practically everything I wore – from my green corduroy jeans to my holiday dresses - came second hand from nonprofits. My cavities got filled for free at a nonprofit community dental clinic.

So I know how much the help of a charity can mean. This Holiday season, I'm giving donations in the names of my family and friends, in lieu of gifts. I'm saving myself the trip to the mall, the wrapping and shipping. And I'm giving my family and friends the joy of being connected to a cause larger than themselves.

To find charities that are making a difference and are highly-regarded by their community, I use a website that I run – GreatNonprofits . The website has listings of over 1.2M nonprofits listed and 18,062 reviews. The reviews are submitted by people who typically have had direct experience with the nonprofit – people served by the nonprofit, people who have volunteered there or donated there.

Some of the charities that I've found that I'll be supporting this year include:

Global Links: People in other countries are literally dying for what we throw away. Global Links takes old wheelchairs, IV poles and other hospital equipment and refurbishes them and sends them to hospitals in Latin American and the Caribbean. Global Links has collected over 3,000 tons of medical supplies and donated over $155 million worth of goods to clinics in 70 countries. One photojournalist writes: "I have seen with my own eyes and documented numerous times, actual lives being saved and bettered due to materials and equipment that Global Links has provided."

Project Homeless Connect: A one-stop clinic for homeless people where they can get groceries, free eyeglasses, see a doctor, sign up for SSI benefits, get legal counseling, and job placement. It has 4.5 star rating based on 86 reviews. One volunteer writes, 'I worked on a medical project to help homeless with lice problems. We were able to identify about 8 people with infestations. They received advice on how to get rid of them as well as treatment onsite under the direction of a physician. It was extremely worthwhile. I will be back."

Girls Write Now: A creative writing and mentoring non-profit, matching bright, creative teenage girls from the city's public high schools many of which don't teach creative writing, with professional women writers. One girls says, "It has completely changed my life in both implicit and explicit ways. I have become a noticeably better writer through workshops, but especially through the relationship I have built with my wonderful mentor who shares her talent and passion with me."

These are just a couple of nonprofits that are making a difference. To find nonprofits that may inspire you, GreatNonprofits offers Top Charities list by city and by cause at www.greatnonprofits.org.

Spare a Robber's Life, Get $50

2009-12-04T12:10:00.002-05:00

A story from July keeps getting better. Deli owner Mohammad Sohail was held up by a man weilding a baseball bat. Sohail pulled rifle from behind his counter and forced the would-be robber to drop his weapon. The robber pleaded for his life, saying he had no choice but to rob to feed his family, Sohail gave him some bread, $40, and sent him on his way.The story would be astounding enough if it ended right there, but the robber surprised Sohail again just this last week, with a letter containing thanks and $50

The letter discussed how the robber's life had improved since the incident:

"Now I have a new child and good job make good money staying out of trouble and taking care of my family. You gave me forty dollars thank you for sparing my life Because of that you change my life."
Sohail joked that the robbery ended up bringing him good fortune. "When you do good things for somebody, it comes back to you. I gave him $40 and he sent me back $50. It was a good investment."

Singer Maxwell's Challenge - 40 Cents A Day

2009-12-02T08:02:00.002-05:00

From CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/01/maxwell.aids.africa.solutions/index.html

Editor's note: On his current tour, R&B singer Maxwell is highlighting the impact of antiretroviral medication in fighting HIV-AIDS.

(CNN) -- Among the many blessings I've encountered in several years in the music business is the ability to use my voice to raise awareness for issues and to help others.

My greatest joy is in expressing compassion for others. It's so important to take time away from your own circumstances and try to walk in someone else's shoes or see the world through someone else's eyes.

As part of CNN's Heroes event last week, I got to see some of the most supreme examples of this from around the world. Tuesday is World AIDS Day, and I encourage all of us to put ourselves in the shoes of those battling this disease and especially consider some of the parts of our global community that are hardest hit.

Consider this: in many countries in Africa, AIDS is the leading cause of death. This is a preventable, treatable disease, but still of the 33 million people living with this disease globally, 22 million are in Africa, and it continues to kill 3,800 people a day on that continent. But the more important thing we should consider is that this is not hopeless. There is something that can be done, and there is a way to do it.

With two pills a day that cost as little as 40 cents, a person dying in Africa from complications from AIDS can be raised from near death and given a renewed chance at life. This transformation is called the Lazarus Effect.
These two antiretroviral (ARV) pills a day are more than just medicine. They are a person's chance to get up on their feet, go to school or go to work and contribute to their communities. This treatment helps people reach their full potential and allows communities and countries to create a future.

The issue now is how do we get this medicine to all who need it. When most of the people in these locations make less than a dollar a day, 40 cents is not easy to come by. And the trained medical staff and facilities are not abundant.

This is where (RED) and the Global Fund come in and why I tip my hat to U2's lead singer, Bono, and others like him who look outside themselves to see where there are problems in the world and how they can make a difference.

(RED) works with the hottest brands, such as Armani, Gap, Apple and Converse, to make unusual (PRODUCT) RED-branded products and direct up to 50 percent of their gross profits to the Global Fund to invest in African AIDS programs, with a focus on the health of women and children.

Since (PRODUCT) RED launched in 2006, it has generated about $140 million for the Global Fund. This money has been generated simply by giving shoppers a choice and asking them to choose (RED), at no cost to them. It's millions of small choices around the world adding up to big change.

This $140 million flows directly to AIDS programs in Rwanda, Ghana, Lesotho and Swaziland, the country with the world's highest HIV infection rate. It supports programs that not only provide ARV treatment free of charge, but creates access to testing and counseling and provides treatment to HIV-positive pregnant women to help ensure their babies are born healthy. These programs give people a chance for productive lives and children a chance to start life on the right foot.

This one small thing reverberates a cause with effects greater than humanly imaginable -- you should choose (RED), but there are so many other ways to give as well: educating ourselves about the issue, spreading the word or getting involved in whatever seems most personal to each of us. But what is most important is keeping in mind that there are worlds out there beyond our own and there is so much that can be done if we take a moment to walk in someone else's shoes.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Maxwell.

Short on Cash? Ways to Give Back When Times are Tough!

2009-12-01T09:27:00.002-05:00

From CNN.com/MONEY Magazine
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/30/pf/charitable_giving.moneymag/

(Money Magazine) -- Nancy Mccauley Branstetter, a former communications executive at Ford Motor Co., is passionate about a cause that feels especially urgent lately: helping disadvantaged children and families who live in the economically stricken Detroit area.

For the past decade she has donated a few hours a month and up to $2,000 a year to Starfish Family Services, a nonprofit agency an hour from her Highland, Mich., home that offers everything from a free Head Start program to temporary shelter for teens in crisis. She's even on the board. Says the married mother of two: "I want children to have the best shot at life that they can."

But last year Ford gave Branstetter a pink slip -- leaving her scrambling to find ways to continue her support. While she has ramped up the time she spends doing volunteer work for the charity as she job hunts, "I don't know how much money I'll be able to donate this year," she admits.

Even if you didn't lose your job in the recession, chances are you're worried about the economy and about your battered investment portfolio. Like Branstetter, you're wondering whether you can continue the level of giving you managed when times were flush. What makes the situation especially heart-rending is that charities need help more than ever. And nowhere is that truer than in Detroit.

As the metro area's unemployment rate has soared to 17.8% vs. 9.8% nationally, the amount of money that most charities there collect has plunged. For example, contributions to United Way for Southeastern Michigan fell 21% in its latest fiscal year. (That compares to a 5% drop for the average United Way.)

"There's definitely more competition among us for fewer dollars," says Kevin Roach, executive director of South Oakland Shelter, which assists homeless families in the region.

The good news is that plenty of people in Motown have risen to the challenge, coming up with smart ways to benefit worthy causes without digging any deeper into their own pocketbooks. You can get a lot of great ideas from what they're doing -- and apply them to the charity that means most to you.
Maximize your own resources

Dish out professional know-how, not just soup. While it's helpful to wield a ladle at a nearby local homeless shelter or stuff envelopes for a fundraising campaign, a charity could benefit much more from the professional skills you've accumulated. If you're an accountant, volunteer to help with the books; if you're a lawyer, offer to negotiate the charity's next contract.

Branstetter is using her public relations experience to help Starfish raise its profile among potential supporters, spearheading a marketing and communications committee comprising a half-dozen professionals.

"To hire a company to do the same thing would have cost Starfish thousands of dollars, easily," she says. (Remember to keep track of your travel to and from the charity: You can deduct it from your taxable income to the tune of 14¢ a mile.)

Clean out the garage, attic, basement ... Late Aunt Ethel's unused end table, the boxes of baby clothes for a kid who long ago ditched Barney for the Black Eyed Peas -- donate them to a local charity that distributes household goods to the needy. (You might also consider a branch of a national organization such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army.) You'll help families that could desperately use those items, and you'll get a tax deduction for their fair market value.

Why not just hold a garage sale and donate the proceeds? Because a thrift store does a much better job attracting those in need, says Michelle St. Pierre, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Michigan Division of the Salvation Army. "Many people who hold garage sales end up donating to us anyway," she says, "because they couldn't sell the items."

Put your plastic to work. Plenty of credit cards promise to send a particular charity a cut of whatever you charge. But most give a measly 0.1% to 0.5%. An exception: the Capital One Visa Platinum affiliated with the American Fertility Association, which gives 1% to the nonprofit plus a $25 donation after you make your first purchase. Bank of America's World Wildlife Fund Visa Signature gives that charity a generous $100 when you sign up, plus 25¢ for every $100 you spend. To find such cards, Google charities' names and "credit card."

If you charge up a storm and pay your bills religiously each month, you may be better off getting a cash-back card and using those rewards to make a deductible donation. One of the best: Schwab Bank Invest First Visa Signature, which gives 2% cash back (you must be a Schwab One brokerage customer).

Pick the right bank. You can do good and make money by parking your cash in a community-development financial institution: a bank or credit union that works with underserved people in a particular area or social group.

For example, First American International Bank in Brooklyn, N.Y., which offers a money-market account yielding 1.0%, aims to help develop the area's Asian community. "When you can do good so easily," says Jennifer Lazarus, a financial planner who specializes in socially responsible investing, "it's a no-brainer."

Find a directory of CDFIs at communityinvestingcenterdb.org. Then check bankrate.com to make sure an institution's Safe & Sound rating is at least three stars.
Get your employer to help

Snag a match. Charitable matching-gift programs haven't all gone the way of office ashtrays. About 30% of large corporations offer them, according to Hewitt Associates. Check your employee intranet or human resources department to see if yours does.

If the answer is yes, fill out some simple paperwork and you can double the amount of money your cause collects. Most such programs will match your donation dollar for dollar up to a ceiling of $500 to $5,000 a year (religious institutions and fraternal organizations are generally excluded). Some will match donations that occur only during a certain time of year, usually year-end. So get moving!

Ask for dollars for volunteer work you're already doing. An increasingly popular employer program -- available at about one out of every six companies that offer matching gifts -- is what's known as "sweat equity" or "dollars for doers," says Marianna Funk, senior researcher at fundraising advisory firm HEP Development. You put in a specified number of volunteer hours per year at a charity of your choice; your company matches your labor with cold hard cash for that organization. The usual formula: $250 for 20 hours of work, or $500 for 50. Ask HR for details.

Suggest your pet charity for a company project. When it comes to team-building exercises, nonprofit experts say many companies have jettisoned Outward Bound courses and "trust falls" in favor of having employees spend a day working together on a charitable project.

Don't just wait around for an activity to be assigned: Step up and suggest that the team work with a charity you support. While at Ford, for example, Branstetter helped establish a program that matches organizations seeking assistance with employee groups looking for projects -- and made sure Starfish was listed. One payoff: a group of Ford employees repainted a wing at the nonprofit's headquarters that is used for children's programs.

Your company may be willing to give you more leeway than you think. To raise money for the Michigan chapter of the ALS Association this fall, Tony Nuckolls, 36, a vice president at Quicken Loans' Livonia, Mich., office, found some creative ways to solicit donations from fellow staffers.

In return for a $10 contribution, employees could escape the corporate dress code for a day. Or they could have an executive valet-park their car in the company lot. Campaigns like this generate awareness as well as money, says Nuckolls, whose office raised more than $30,000: "It's a topic of conversation, like viral marketing."

Toot your own horn. Lots of companies honor employees' volunteer efforts by giving awards that include a cash gift to the winner's charity. Lundrell Harris, 36, scored such a prize from her employer, MGM Grand Detroit, in September. The charity for which she volunteers -- Think Detroit PAL (she coaches cheerleaders for a youth league team) -- won $1,000. So don't be shy: Check with HR to see if those kinds of awards are given at your company and how you can get nominated.
Rope in friends & family

Rethink your holiday wish list. This season, when your kids and pals start asking whether you'd prefer Santa's portrait or Rudolph's on your new sweater, ask for donations for your favorite charity instead. "Most people appreciate that," says Robin Ferriby of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. "You're helping to impress upon them what you value."

Throw a fundraising party. The next time you schedule a shin-dig, give it a charitable theme. Ask your guests to bring an appropriate donation, such as an old suit for Dress for Success (dressforsuccess.org), which outfits disadvantaged women around the country who are trying to enter the workforce. Or spend a few minutes talking about your favorite cause and gently put in a pitch for guests to volunteer their time or money.

That's what Susan Gailey Vincent, 52, general counsel for an insurance company, did. Last winter she co-hosted a wine-tasting party that raised $5,000 for the Detroit area Junior Achievement, which teaches kids financial literacy and other skills. Between the Merlots and the Cabernets, she and her co-host spoke about JA's mission and their involvement with the organization. "I think our friends enjoyed it and hopefully didn't mind being hit up a little bit for a contribution," says Vincent.

Lace up your walking shoes. It may be three decades since you last participated in a March of Dimes walk-a-thon, but it's never too late to raise money with a little physical endurance. For a list of walk-a-thons nationwide that you can join, go to charitywalksblog.com. They all work pretty much the same way: You ask people you know to "sponsor" you, promising to ante up, say, $5 for every mile you walk (or a lump sum for completing the entire challenge). Prefer to roll rather than hoof it? Google "bike-athon" or "charity ride" and the name of your city.

Create your own "a-thon." If the cause you support doesn't sponsor a run/walk/bike-a-thon of its own, set up your own mini-version. In October, Mike Juchno and Brad Feldman -- board members of the Detroit-area Junior Achievement -- raised money by running in a half-marathon. They solicited sponsorships from family, friends, even clients. "You've just got to be bold," says Juchno, 38, a consultant. "You say, 'Believe me, I'm extending myself to do this, so I'm asking you to extend yourself.' " Their haul: $6,400.

Certain Web sites can make such projects easier to organize, though they'll take a not-insignificant cut of the proceeds. Juchno and Feldman used Firstgiving (firstgiving.com), which makes it simple to set up a personal site complete with a photo and fundraising tools, such as messages from givers and the classic thermometer graphic showing how close you're getting to your goals. In return, Firstgiving takes 7.5% of online donations. Another service, Network for Good (networkforgood.org) -- which is used by the Causes application on Facebook -- charges a more reasonable 4.75% but offers fewer features.

Speaking of Facebook, if you're raising money you would be foolish not to tap your contacts in social-networking sites. Feldman, 36, a life insurance adviser, solicited donations on his Facebook page, adding a link to Firstgiving to make it easy for pals to give. "Twenty-five percent of my donations came from Facebook friends," he says.

Ask pals to roll up their sleeves too. Assembling your friends and family to volunteer together is another great way to magnify your impact. That might mean gathering several of them to work on a local Habitat for Humanity project, for example (go to habitat.org and click on Volunteer Locally). Or it might just mean recruiting the one person who has the perfect skills to help.

That's one of the most valuable contributions that Branstetter ever made to Starfish Family Services. Two years ago, it occurred to her that her then-colleague Ann Kalass, a top-level sales and marketing executive at Lincoln Mercury, might be a good fit for the nonprofit. She's now its CEO.

Beth Braverman contributed to this article. To top of page

She-ro Brings Mammography Screenings to the Uninsured, the Forgotten

2009-11-30T10:03:00.001-05:00

Rachael Ray Brings Thanksgiving to Wilmington, OH

2009-11-25T10:11:00.001-05:00

From ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT:
Rachael Ray heads to Wilmington, Ohio, to come to the aid of a local soup kitchen with a few celebrity friends.

Accompanying Rachael on the trip to ensure the community has a special Thanksgiving celebration are Nick Lachey, Carter Oosterhouse and Kahi Lee, who are adopting the local soup kitchen. They will be surprising them with a complete kitchen and pantry renovation along with a promise to stock their shelves for the year ahead.

The show will also help the community come together for a Thanksgiving feast filled with surprises at Roberts Convention Centre. Rachael knows times are tough for this town and for many others across the country, but the show is looking forward to sharing the blessings of the season and reminding the town of Wilmington that everyone has a reason to be thankful.

Like many towns in America, Wilmington is suffering a severe economic downturn. The DHL shipping center was the town's largest employer, but shut down in January 2009, leaving thousands unemployed with little hope of finding another job in the area. With no options left, hungry residents are turning to the town's only soup kitchen for help.

The special one-hour episode of "Rachael Ray" airs on November 25. Please check local listings at www.rachaelrayshow.com.

Literacy Freeze You Campaign

2009-11-24T10:08:00.002-05:00

The Center for Literacy in Philadelphia is leaving a powerful imprint on the city. The organization held its first literacy flash mob called The Literacy Freeze. More than 400 volunteers met at the Municipal Services Plaza for the event. They were joined by a solid mission - to bring attention to the impact of low literacy by standing completely frozen - in one place - for two minutes. UNESCO reports that one in five adults is not literate and 75 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out. A big shout out to Philly's Center for Literacy and its efforts to raise awareness on the empowering role of literacy in our day-to-day lives. Check out the video to learn more.

A No Judgement Spin to Dating - In the Dark

2009-11-23T12:54:00.001-05:00

New Imprint-TV Story: Love & the Recession

2009-11-20T11:40:00.000-05:00

Imprint-TV spoke with love experts of every kind who all say the tough economy has people wanting to find love. People are re-thinking the importance of material goods without having someone to share them with. A story just in time for the holidays.

Donated Cell Phones Keep Soliders Connect

2009-11-20T11:22:00.002-05:00

Brittany and Robbie Berquist were just pre-teens in 2005 when they read about an Army reservist who faced a $7,600 bill for making calls home from Iraq. They thought everyone should be able to call home without going bankrupt so they founded Cell Phones for Soldiers, a nonprofit organization that recycles unwanted cell phones and purchases prepaid calling cards for soldiers. In the last 5 years, they've handed out more than 400,000 calling cards, totaling over one million dollars worth of donated mobile phones.

You can print a free shipping label at the link below & send in your old cell phone http://www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com./shippingLabel_generic.html

Cell Phones for Soldiers sends 25,000 phone cards overseas every month. The organization also accepts Blackberries, chargers and batteries.

The group has received heartwarming letters from soldiers around the globe, expressing their appreciation for the calling cards and their pride in the young people who took it upon themselves to solve this problem.

Story above from: The Huffington Post @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/cell-phones-for-soldiers_n_364541.html

NFL Player's Show of Support

2009-11-19T17:21:00.002-05:00

Cleveland Browns receiver Josh Cribbs does a kind deed for a high school football player who lost his dad.The Pro Bowler traveled to Berea, OH to walk onto the field on senior night with Michael Drake, a senior receiver at Stow High School and the son of one of his former college coaches. He lost his father, Mike, in 2005 to lymphoma. He had assumed he'd be accompanied by his mother and sister for senior night introductions and was stunned when he saw Cribbs arrive minutes before the game.

Full Story Below:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Josh-Cribbs-walks-with-late-coach-s-son-on-his-s?urn=nfl,202608

Josh Cribbs walks with late coach's son on his senior night

By Chris Chase
In a dismal year for the Cleveland Browns, wide receiver/returner Josh Cribbs has proved to be one of the only bright spots. Last month he showed he's equally good off the field.
The Pro Bowler traveled to Berea, OH to walk onto the field on senior night with the son of one of his former college coaches. Michael Drake, a senior receiver at Stow High School, lost his father, Mike, in 2005 to lymphoma. He had assumed he'd be accompanied by his mother and sister for senior night introductions and was stunned when he saw Cribbs arrive minutes before the game.
''I looked, then looked away, then said, 'Why are you here?''' Michael recalled. ''I was shocked.''
A receiver, cornerback and holder for extra points, Michael said Cribbs offered advice before his final game.
''He said, 'Play your heart out. This is it. Give it your all. Don't ever stop on any play. Keep pushing,''' Michael said. ''I almost felt worried. I didn't want to look bad for him.''
Michael's late father recruited Cribbs to play at Kent State and served as a father figure to the Washington, D.C. native during his time at Kent. Mike Drake was the offensive coordinator for the Golden Flashes during Cribbs's freshman and sophomore seasons. Cribbs played quarterback in college and credits Drake for helping him drive home the fundamentals that he still uses today. So, when the idea of returning for senior night was pitched to Cribbs this summer, he didn't hesitate.
It's a small gesture, but it says a lot about the character of Cribbs. He apparently didn't feel the need to talk about it publicly; this happened Oct. 30 and, as far as I can tell, yesterday's report in the Akron Beacon Journal is the first it's been mentioned. Similarly, Drake's mother is quoted in the piece as saying that Cribbs took great pains to underplay his presence at the game for fear of taking away the spotlight from Michael and the other seniors. This shows a humility that other professional football players could sometimes stand to emulate.
Cribbs is back on the field Monday night when the Browns host the Baltimore Ravens.
Related: Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns

“Non Sum Qualis Eram” - Elite Education Offered at High Security Prison

2009-11-17T11:07:00.002-05:00

“Non Sum Qualis Eram - I am not what I once was.”
Here's an interesting story from The New York Times. It's a story about redemption and giving people another chance at life - even if it means a life spent behind bars. It's an experiment of sorts between Weslyan University & a Connecticut prison. What kind of an imprint can education leave on hardened criminals? Read the article to learn more.

Copy & paste link into your browser: From the NY Times: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/college-ivy-sprouts-at-a-connecticut-prison/#more-101173

New Nike Collection All About Giving Back - From the Heart & Sole

2009-11-16T10:13:00.003-05:00

From the Spokesman-Review:

The six young artists made the most of their walkable canvases -- vibrant designs and bright colors befitting a limited-edition line.

But the designers behind the Nike shoe collection being released today are patients whose creations will raise money for Doernbecher Children's Hospital. On Friday, the company presented a showing at its headquarters near Beaverton.

It was a both a joyful and heart-wrenching occasion. Michael Doherty, Nike's global creative director and founder of the Doernbecher Freestyle program, which has raised about $2 million for the Portland hospital, stood with the children in a room packed with dozens of company designers and managers. He proudly called it "one of the best programs at Nike."

Then it was time for Anna Finley, an 11-year-old from Salem, to talk about the brightly colored shoe she'd designed, the Air Max Zenyth.

"This shoe is based on hope and happiness," the blond girl with Hemolytic-uremic syndrome, a kidney disease, told the crowd. As she spoke of her dream to become a gymnast, she began to weep, prompting Doherty to rush to her side and put an arm around her.

"These are some brave people here," he said.

$290,000 raised at auction

The six shoes were unveiled Sept. 19 at a $100-a-head cocktail party and auction at Wieden+Kennedy's headquarters in Portland's Pearl District. About $290,000 was raised that night.

This year's shoes, which run from $88 to $165 a pair, will go on sale today at the 12 Nike stores in the United States and online at Nike.com. Retail sales of last year's line netted $458,900 for the hospital.

The designers are nominated each January by child therapists and other staff at Doernbecher. In the spring, the children head to the Nike campus where they meet their design mentors, brainstorm ideas and begin sketching designs.

"Just to be able to be in this complex was very cool," Anna said before Friday's event.

Designers love the program

Nike designers say they love the program. Matt Holmes, the design director who supervises 18 teams at the sporting apparel maker, says working with Anna was the single best experience of his 12 years at Nike.

This year's collection includes a blue high-top covered with brightly colored basketballs, the Nike Skinny Dunk High. "Basketball is my life," explained designer Makayla Hansen, a 12-year-old from Elgin with Alagille syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the liver.

For the Air Force I Low, 11-year-old Bradley Bowlby of Stevenson, Wash., emphasized stitching to represent both those on a baseball and the ones on his chest following heart surgery. The elk in the design speaks to his love of hunting, the spoon and fork to his dream of becoming a chef.

"We think this program is great," said Mike MacRae, communications manager for the Doernbecher Foundation. "Not only does it raise a lot of money, but it's a lot of fun for the kids."

Healing the wounds of segregation and coming together across racial lines to make friends

2009-11-13T14:50:00.004-05:00

A one-of-a-kind 50th high school gathering. The classes of 1959, once segregated by race as well as gender, sat down together for the first time in history.

CNN has the story:

Macon, Georgia (CNN) -- Bettye Webb-Hayes won't ever forget the day her son posed a question that stopped her in her tracks.

"Mom," the fourth-grader asked, "am I white?"

It was a question she had never asked her own parents. It was something you didn't talk about in the days of the segregated South -- especially when your mom was white and your father was a mix of African-American and Native American. She went to the black schools of Macon, Georgia. Now, her son was asking probing questions.

"Why would you ask me that?" she said.

"Because everybody at school calls me a honky," said the young Cordell, a light-skinned African-American.

Twenty-seven years have passed since that conversation. Bettye and her son recently traveled back to Macon to face something that's been omnipresent their whole lives: the coming together of white and black.

They returned for a one-of-a-kind 50th high school gathering. The classes of 1959, once segregated by race as well as gender, sat down together for the first time in history.

Ruby Dean Dupree Mayes arrived two hours early for the festivities. She didn't sleep the night before.

"It's like waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. I'm so excited," said Mayes, who drove more than 330 miles from Tennessee to attend.

Mayes went to Ballard-Hudson High, the city's black high school, whose most famous students include singers Otis Redding and Little Richard. She came this day "to celebrate and commemorate."

"I could not pass this event up," she said. "I never dreamed of this moment -- just the realization of knowing that we had come together, at last."

As the 1959 graduates arrived, they welcomed one another. Many first greeted people of their own race. Some hadn't seen particular classmates in the 50 years since they earned their diplomas. Gradually, they began mixing and mingling.

There was a commonality -- a need to come together for their children, their grandchildren and the generations to follow. Discuss the past, while moving forward in the present.

Separated now by 'personal choice'

It sometimes takes a son to see things in a new light.

The idea for the meeting began four years ago, when a son told his father: "Dad, think about how many friends you missed getting to know."

Those were the words of Wyatt Johnson, a public school teacher in Santa Cruz, California. He and his father, Tom Johnson, were enjoying a father-son trip to Macon in 2005 to rediscover their roots.

Tom Johnson is the former head of CNN and was once the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He's traveled the world and left his own mark along the way. Yet despite all his accomplishments, there was something he'd never done: reach out to the African-Americans of Macon from 1959, the ones he never knew because of segregation.

An idea was born. He wrote to graduates of the black school, Ballard-Hudson; the white girls' school, Miller; and the white boys' school, Lanier. "We all have deep personal memories of our high school experiences that will remain with us forever," he wrote. "We had lived in a separate black and white world in Macon. ... It is a different world today. We no longer are separated, except by personal choice."

One white graduate responded with hate mail, a reminder that racism still exists.

But on a day in early October, more than 200 people gathered at a Goodwill banquet hall. There was no shouting, none of the in-your-face name-calling seen in recent health care town hall meetings across the country.

Here, there were tears, hugs and handshakes. Often, talk of grandkids took center stage at the 16 roundtables. They talked about race and the segregated past that prevented such closeness a half-century ago.

"You'd think we'd have grown up together," said Alice Bailey, a Ballard-Hudson grad.

"We still have a gift, and that's a gift of time," Johnson said. "Blacks and whites together, we can do something to make the world better."

They took out notepads. They scribbled ways to take action. They began making a to-do list of 59 things for the Classes of 1959. Their goals range from building a home for Habitat to Humanity to writing letters to service men and women from Macon serving in war. They'd love to persuade the one who sent the hate mail to attend the next gathering.

They also want to set an example for the elders of other Southern cities. "I'm glad we've left the past behind," said Michael Cass, the 1959 class president of Lanier.

The daughter of one those in attendance stood and took the microphone. "Today, you have inspired me so much," she said.

Many in the crowd reached for tissues.

Linda Carstarphen Gugin said her whole life had been leading to this moment. "It was the most amazing thing," she said. "It was just like almost immediate bonding between people."

As the class president of Miller, she'd carried guilt for the last 50 years for not speaking out against segregation.

"I have tears about this," she said, crying.

For Bettye Webb-Hayes and her son, the gathering underscored why the question "Mom, am I white" could be asked in one era and not another.

Listening to his mother and her childhood friends, Cordell said, he was struck by how segregation was "was so transparent to them at the time they were living through it. It was a way of life, so they didn't acknowledge its existence."

"I find it interesting how human nature teaches you to accept things that are -- and some people question the reality, and other people don't."

His mother did test the reality of segregation on one occasion. Bettye and her sister went into a Woolworth's department store in Macon. They sat at a counter for food.

The white waitress looked at them skeptically. She couldn't tell whether they were white or black. She grabbed a black cook for his input. "Those are the Webb girls," he said.

The two were kicked out.

Webb-Hayes giggles about the story. She's proud she tried to break the rules. "I think she really would've served us if she thought she could have gotten away with it."

Watch Bettye tell story of her dad and 'stupid' Elvis

It was in 1963 when Webb-Hayes realized just how wrong the segregated South was. She marched in Washington, D.C., with Martin Luther King Jr. that year. "It was almost like you were listening to God speak in person."

Years later, Bettye -- the girl who was sent away from the Woolworth's counter -- would eat Thanksgiving dinner with President Jimmy Carter. Webb-Hayes was the music teacher for Amy Carter, the president's daughter.

Her motto throughout life: "Just do the very best you can."

She calls the gathering of the segregated schools "unbelievable." If it's the last trip of her life, Webb-Hayes, 68, feels her life's journey is now complete.

"I was glad to meet new friends today."

A special thanks to Bright Blue Sky Productions for its help on this report.

Boss Gives Employee the Gift of Life

2009-11-12T10:42:00.002-05:00

Rob Fenstermaker likes helping people, he learned from the best, his boss Brian Deangelis.

Store manager in Allentown, Pennsylvania Brian gave the gife of life to his Rob after he donated his kidney to him. CNN reports in the video below.

Steelers' Ward Brings Hope to Biracial Youth in S. Korea

2009-11-11T10:41:00.003-05:00

From The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/sports/football/09ward.html?_r=1

By JOHN BRANCH

PITTSBURGH — Steelers receiver Hines Ward surrounded himself with old friends at the dinner table on a recent Saturday night. The bond was as obvious as the look on everyone’s faces — half Korean, half something else. The shared experience was far more than skin deep.

There was a boy who was bullied into depression and tried to commit suicide. There was a girl ordered by a teacher to keep her hair pulled back tight, to straighten the natural curls she inherited from her black father. There was another too intimidated by her taunting classmates to board the bus, choosing instead the humiliating and lonely walk to school. There were the boys who were beaten regularly and teased mercilessly. There were college-age girls who broke into tears when telling their stories of growing up biracial in South Korea.

But when they looked around the table, they saw familiarity. And a future.

“It is so special that no one is staring at me, and no one is asking me about my hair,” Lisa So, 20, said. “It gives me hope.”

The eight boys and girls, between 16 and 21, were visiting Ward from South Korea, where people of mixed races are considered everything from a curiosity to an abomination. What starts with teasing from childhood peers often turns to widespread ostracism and discrimination. It eventually leads to higher dropout, poverty and suicide rates.

“It’s a great culture,” said Ward, who was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and an African-American soldier father, and was raised mainly in Georgia by his mother. “I love everything about it. But there’s a dark side to that culture. And me, I’m just trying to shed a light on that dark side and make Korea a better place than it already is.”

The plight of biracial children in South Korea was largely ignored until 2006, when Ward was the most valuable player of Super Bowl XL. Koreans were quick to make the link to his Korean heritage.

That spring, Ward and his mother, Young He Ward, visited South Korea for the first time since Ward was a baby nearly 30 years earlier. They were mobbed by television cameras and gawking fans. They were honored by the South Korean president.

“I got more love there than I did in the States,” Ward said.

Ward was only starting to understand the underlying hypocrisy. Biracial children in South Korea recognized it instantly.

“They liked someone because he is famous,” So said. “If you are not famous, they are very cold. So I was happy, but also bitter.”

It represented, however, a slow turn toward tolerance.

“Nobody thought this problem was so serious in Korea,” said Jin Roy Ryu, the chairman of a multinational metals company, Poongsan Corp., and of the South Korean branch of Pennsylvania-based Pearl S. Buck International, which has provided social services to biracial children in South Korea since 1965.

“We’re a closed society, and no one really talked about it,” Ryu said. “But Hines came, and it really brought the issue to the center.”

When Ward visited the Pearl S. Buck office in South Korea, he found the stories heartbreaking — and familiar.

He was a year old when his family moved to the United States. His parents split, and Ward spent his early years with his father. In second grade, Ward moved in with his mother, who spoke little English and worked low-paying jobs. She still works in a school cafeteria; Ward said he had little contact with his father.

“It was hard for me to find my identity,” Ward said. “The black kids didn’t want to hang out with me because I had a Korean mom. The white kids didn’t want to hang out with me because I was black. The Korean kids didn’t want to hang out with me because I was black. It was hard to find friends growing up. And then once I got involved in sports, color didn’t matter.”

But there is no such relief valve for most of the estimated 19,000 biracial children in South Korea. The fast-growing majority of them are Kosians, with a parent from a different Asian country.

The number of Amerasians — those generally with white or black American fathers, often from the military — is slowly shrinking. But their mere appearance leads to harsher discrimination, officials said.

“Korea is traditionally a single blood,” said Wondo Koh, a Korean who met up with the group in Pittsburgh while doing business. “We Koreans are not comfortable with this mixed-blood situation. We have become familiar now, but we did not know how to cope.”

Ward and Pearl S. Buck International have taken eight Amerasian children to Pittsburgh during each of the last four football seasons. They stay with host families, people who have adopted South Korean children through Pearl S. Buck. They share stories about their experiences, a bit of therapy for children who usually do not know other biracial people back home.

Ward’s message: never be ashamed; embrace the opportunity to be part of two cultures.

Ward met the contingent at the airport. The next day, he treated them to several hours of arcade fun at Dave & Buster’s. Ryu and Ward hosted dinner for the group at a Korean restaurant.

Gifts were exchanged. Two boys did a tae kwon do exhibition. Two girls sang. All of them read essays written as part of the application for the trip. Several cried.

Earlier that day, Min Hyeok Han, 16, sat at the dining room table at the home of Ryan Little and Mary Kate Kelley, parents of two young boys they adopted from South Korea. Like most of this year’s group, Han was making a repeat trip to Pittsburgh.

“Here, they would just be the popular kids,” Kelley said. “It’s hard to imagine what they go through in Korea.”

Han is funny and smart, with a hipster’s bent and a maturity beyond his years. Korean strangers, he said, often think he is American — a common conclusion that he and the others rarely correct, simply to avoid an uncomfortable episode as a biracial South Korean.

Han lives with his grandparents and a great-grandmother. His mother lives nearby, but he knows nothing of his father, a white American soldier. Cousins shun him, he said, especially those from the countryside.

He said he was physically bullied by classmates once or twice a week, and verbally harassed daily — often with derogatory terms reserved for mixed-breed dogs. Sometimes, the barbs were aimed at his mother. When Han sat down for lunch with other children, he said, they frequently moved to another table. He has been beaten on the street by much older children quick to notice that he was a “half-blood.”

Han said he was ashamed to admit that he tried to overdose on his grandparents’ medications and had cut his wrists.

Things have changed the last three years. Han met Ward in 2006. When classmates saw pictures of the two together, Han was suddenly treated differently. Most antagonism ended. Some peers even find his biracial heritage “cool,” he said.

“I can see Korea is changing every year,” he said. “It’s slowly changing.”

On Oct. 25, before the Steelers played the Minnesota Vikings, the group stood on the sideline at Heinz Field. They were bedecked in Ward’s No. 86 jersey and other Steelers gear. Ward came over for high-fives and hugs.

From the end-zone stands, sitting with their host families, they waved Terrible Towels and cheered the Steelers to victory. The next day, they left Pittsburgh for a week of sightseeing in Philadelphia, Washington and New York with Pearl S. Buck officials. Then most returned to South Korea, carrying with them a booster shot of confidence.

They are part of a generation caught between yesterday’s racism and tomorrow’s acceptance. But as they sat around a dinner table in Pittsburgh, their vastly different faces did not seem unusual at all. What they had in common were their smiles.

Journals Lift Spirits of Soldiers Overseas

2009-11-10T10:09:00.004-05:00

Watch the Story from ABC News: Flight Attendant Serves Up Drinks, Journals for Soldiers - ABC News

Delta flight attendant Robin Schmidt is on a mission to make sure soldiers sent overseas are not forgotten. For the past 5 years, Schmidt has asked her domestic Delta passengers to fill out journals for the troops - thanking them for putting their lives on the line for others. The response she receives from soldiers is immense helping the soldiers realize their work is not in vain. Schmidt said her efforts are not meant to be a political statement, rather she wants to make sure the men and women who volunteered to serve the US get the support they need.

Finding Joy In Tough Times

2009-11-09T11:48:00.001-05:00

(Health.com) -- These days it can feel like the age of anxiety is winning over the pursuit of happiness. An uncertain economy and the swine flu are just the tip of our worry iceberg.

In fact, scientists say women are wired to worry -- at least more so than men. In a recent Health magazine poll, 54 percent of women said they worry more than their spouse, with only 12 percent claiming their partner worries more than they do. That's thanks, in part, to the hormonal roller-coaster women ride month to month and through the years.

"The highs and lows can make women prone to feeling everything from anxious to depressed," says Jerilyn Ross, a licensed independent clinical social worker, president and CEO of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, and author of One Less Thing to Worry About.

And while men tend to be linear problem solvers, "Women are more in touch with their emotions, and worry is an emotion," points out Dr. Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist and author of Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life. Still, experts say that with some practice we all can learn to be a little less worried and a whole lot happier.

Here's your recipe for a more joyful life. Read on and say, "So long, dark side."

1. Find your joy

One of the keys to finding happiness in tough times is "simply being aware of what is happening right now, without wishing it were different," says James Baraz, a meditation instructor and founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. That may require a little less multi�tasking and worrying and more stopping to smell the roses, says Lori Hilt, an anxiety specialist at the University of Wisconsin.

"When we get caught up in cycles of brooding and worrying, our minds are stuck in the past or the future," she says. "Get out of the cycle by focusing on the present, noticing the cool breeze on your skin, the taste and texture of a bite of food."

Health.com: 9 secrets to boost your energy

"When I'm blue, I'll mix up a fruity drink, insert one of those festive straws -- umbrella open, of course -- and pretend I'm at a party. It's impossible not to feel happy when your drink has a pretty paper umbrella! -- Diana Estill, 55, Murphy, Texas

2. Lighten up

Looking for joy means looking for reasons to smile. Happily, just the act of smiling makes you happy! Even a forced grin tells your brain, "My mouth muscles are moving up, so I must be happy," and leads to a release of happiness-inducing endorphins, psychologist Sybil Keane says.

"Because of the threat of layoffs, my job is stressful. I cope -- people think I'm nuts -- by watching those funny cat videos on YouTube. It's a nightly ritual that always cheers me up!"-- Termeh Mazhari, 25, Great Neck, New York

3. Get moving

Physical activity is a power�ful ally to greater well-being and joy. "Exercise, yoga, or any kind of regular movement helps get you out of your head," Baraz says. "In addition to being a healthy activity, it triggers endorphins that have a profound effect on lifting your spirits. It makes you come alive."

Health.com: A new prescription for happiness

"I row myself into a better mood. Being out on the water, I forget about all the day-to-day things that cause worry and focus more on what I can do every day that will make a difference." -- Linda Jackson, 51, San Francisco, California

4. Look for a joy buddy

It's harder to be happy when you're isolated. That's why Baraz suggests that you find a partner in your pursuit of happiness, what he calls a "joy buddy." Having someone rooting for your well-being and reminding you to look for the good in your life is a very effective way to stay on track, he says. That buddy can be a friend you trade positive text messages with every day or a joy group you meet with once a month.

Surrounding yourself with other happy people can hike your odds of being upbeat by 9 percent, studies show. But steer clear of complainers: Downer friends bring you, well, down, says change expert Ariane de Bonvoisin, author of The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Making Any Change Easier, and founder of First30Days.com.

"Heading to the park with my dog, Scoobie, is my favorite cure, no matter what's weighing on me. It's impossible to worry when I'm surrounded by dogs running and tumbling over one another -- there's something about the innocent joy of their play that relaxes me." -- Carol Huang, 43, New York City

5. Practice being happy

Most people discover that happiness isn't related to objects or experiences, though those things can give us fleeting pleasure, says Baraz, whose book Awakening Joy will be out in January. "Studies show that happiness comes with certain states of mind and heart, such as generosity, kindness, or gratitude," he says. Getting there may take practice, but the more you consciously focus on the feeling of joy -- whether it comes from giving a compliment or laughing out loud with your kids --the more deeply that feeling will register and the happier you'll be.

"Digging in the soil makes me happy. It helps me feel as if I have control over something. And the pride I feel when I look at my garden makes me feel successful. The connection with nature brings me into the now." -- Angie Mattson, 36, Charlotte, North Carolina

Health.com: 10 ways to go from tired to terrific

6. Do a song or dance (really)

If an apple a day keeps the doc away, Baraz would say a song does, too. He believes that singing is one of the surest roads to finding joy.

"It's hard to stay in a funk if you're singing regularly," he says, and research bears him out: University of Manchester researchers discovered that an organ in the inner ear (that responds to singing sounds) is connected to a part of the brain that registers pleasure. So singing, alone in the car or in a crowd at church (and even if you're very, very bad at it), makes you happier. If singing isn't your thing, Baraz says, paint, dance, or write.

"When I was in the minuses in my bank account, I was beside myself with worry. So in the middle of changing my clothes, I would dance, nude. The movement helped move the worry right out of me, and the nude part worked symbolically for setting me free." -- Elisabeth Manning, 39, Marin County, California

7. Be very still

Regularly taking a little quiet time -- meditating or perhaps sipping a warm cup of tea -- helps you appreciate the moment and your life, Baraz says. "Being still reminds you that life isn't about racing as fast as you can to get to the end of your to-do list."

"Whenever I start turning over all of my worries in my head -- bills, car, kid, marriage, everything -- I wash dishes. I may not be able to control how much my mortgage payment is, but I can wash the dishes. Once I focus on the present, everything else seems to just fall away." -- Jen Matlack, 39, Bethel, Connecticut

Don't let $$ worries steal your joy

Worrying about money sure can drain the joy out of life. But instead of just lamenting, do something about it, says financial expert Jean Chatzky, author of The Difference: How Anyone Can Prosper in Even the Toughest Times, who blogs at JeanChatzky.com. "The people who assert control over finances are significantly happier than the ones who don't," she says.

Health.com: Signs you might be clinically depressed

For instance, worrying about the stock market, something you can't control, is useless, she says. Instead, go to the retirement calculator at ChooseToSave.org and crunch your numbers. "Then say, 'All right, what if I saved this much more? What if I work a little longer?'" she says. If you can't figure out what to do, hire a certified financial advisor, Chatzky advises. "Just have them do an annual assessment, as you would a checkup with your doctor."

Kimberly Holland contributed to this report.

'Medicinal ice cream' to help fight cancer

2009-11-06T11:01:00.001-05:00

Here's a sweet treat for you on Friday. We already know ice cream tastes good but it but now it will be good for you. Researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand are working to create a "medical dessert" which has shown encouraging signs in combating the side-effects of chemotherapy in cancer sufferers. The ice cream, called ReCharge, is using active ingredients from dairy products to relieve diarrhoea, anaemia and lack of appetite in people undergoing chemotherapy.

Read the full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/6457341/Medicinal-ice-cream-to-help-fight-cancer.html

Black Cowboys Teach Inner City Kids Horsemanship, History

2009-11-05T11:40:00.002-05:00

Kids from rough areas in New York City have found a home away from home on a 25-acre ranch in Queens, CNN reported Tuesday.

Since 1994, the Federation of Black Cowboys have been teaching inner city kids horsemanship and history to keep them away from gangs and drugs.

CNN reports that thousands of kids have been introduced to the stables since 1998, and a small number return for longer mentorships. Members of the federation, who go by nicknames like "Ma" and "Little Red", work first and foremost to make their aspiring junior wranglers feel safe. They also teach kids about "the forgotten black West" and the role that black cowboys had in shaping America's history.

But the cowboys need some help, CNN reported. The nonprofit survives on donations, and with few current contributors, the stables are falling into disrepair and the federation's museum is presently a dilapidated trailer containing a hodgepodge of memorabilia and artifacts.

Story from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/03/black-cowboys-teach-inner_n_344607.html

Man With Lymphoma Determined to See America - By Horse & Buggy

2009-11-05T11:13:00.004-05:00

From the Spokesman-Review:
PRIEST RIVER, Idaho – There is a man passing through the Inland Northwest right now who can tell you for a fact you are moving too fast.

He’s traveled 7,000 miles in a covered wagon with a team of horses during the past three years, relying on the kindnesses of strangers and a few friends to keep him going.

His speed: 3 mph.

He and his animals have endured torturous heat and biting cold and were nearly knocked to pieces in Nebraska by a commercial truck carrying a steel tower.

Lee Crafton keeps going, he said, because the journey has become his life. He will tell you he’s on his way to Alaska by way of Seattle and San Francisco, but there’s no real destination.

“I’m just going across America to visit with people,” he said Wednesday after spending the night in a vacant lot along U.S. Highway 2 in Priest River.

He and his team should reach Mead on Friday afternoon. He plans to continue moving west from Spokane on U.S. Highway 2, crossing the Cascades at Stevens Pass.

“I’m not here to raise money,” he said. “I’m not here to raise your social consciousness.”

The journey began in 2006 when Crafton left a life of horse logging and ranching near Flathead Lake, Mont., with almost nothing to show for 27 years of work, he said.

He had been diagnosed with lymphoma, but didn’t want to endure conventional medical treatment. He wanted to see America. He says he’s feeling fine.

He hitched his Suffolk Punch draft horses to a homemade wagon on tire wheels and set out for the East Coast. His initial goal was to visit a childhood sweetheart in New England.

Along the way, he’s gained friends, a lot of publicity and a steady stream of donations to keep going. He moves with an innate trust. “The bottom line is this is a trip of faith,” he said.

The horses – Max, Tom, Fey and Baby – come from a breed known for its willingness to work. They are “incredibly quiet and mellow,” he said. The horses are not shod, but instead wear a type of horse boot.

Crafton averages 100 miles a week.

The horses have been spooked twice: once when encountering a buffalo statue in New York and another time by a dinosaur sculpture in Montana.

His covered wagon is equipped with a battery for power.

He sleeps in a loft and has a woodstove for heat. His dog, Katie, keeps him company. He stays in touch by cell phone, a laptop computer and a Web site.

Crafton, 48, prefers to be known as Lee the Horselogger as the sign on his rear wagon shows. He can be found online at www.leehorse logger.com.

Living life at a horse’s pace has its own satisfaction, Crafton said.

“In this age of communication, we do not know how to communicate, and that’s what this trip is about … This country is huge, and we move way too fast,” he said.

“You have no idea what you are missing.”

Floating Doctors - Crew Brings Healing While Keeping it Green

2009-11-04T10:43:00.002-05:00

(CNN) -- The dream started inside a gray canvas backpack.

When American medical student Benjamin LaBrot traveled to Tanzania in 2005, he hauled antiseptics, insulin syringes, VapoRub, gauze, ibuprofen and other supplies in his pack. At a Masai village, he treated wounds, parasitic infections, sores and other ailments until his once-bulging backpack was depleted.

"When your backpack is empty and there are still people that have to be helped, it's extremely disappointing," he said, recalling a line of nearly 60 villagers left waiting around him.

LaBrot vowed to return someday.

Four years after running out of medication and feeling powerless, the 33-year-old doctor departs this week for a yearlong medical mission. Although he won't be going to Africa, he'll once again lug his trusty backpack. And this time, he'll take along 20,000 pounds of medical supplies.

LaBrot, head of a nonprofit group called the Floating Doctors, will be at helm of a 76-foot sailboat that will carry supplies and 15 crew members to 15 countries in Latin America and the Pacific islands.

The Floating Doctors' mission is to provide medical relief in developing countries in an environmentally friendly platform. It will not rely on airplanes, shipping supplies or ground transportation.

Gesturing to the towering white boat, LaBrot said, "This vessel serves as the housing for our crew, the storing of our medical equipment and supplies, the transport for our crew and our supplies, the base for our laboratory and equipment."

LaBrot envisions a lean, green, self-sufficient machine maneuvering through waterways in Haiti, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The boat, the Southern Wind, will also visit the Pacific islands: the Tuamotu Archipelago, Tonga, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Melanesia, which the organization contacted in advance of the trip.

The Southern Wind can travel 250 miles a day and requires little fuel, depending on wind conditions.

"Delivering health care from a green platform is our way of demonstrating that it's not really a question of more resources but a question of utilizing the resources we have as efficiently as possible to try and improve the delivery of health care," LaBrot said.

LaBrot, soft-spoken with unkempt sandy hair, seems unfazed by the enormous project. Friends and family say he has mulled over the idea for years as he recruited medical school classmates, friends and his younger sister to join the Floating Doctors.

Long before he graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 2006, he developed an interest in medical missions. As a boy, he watched as his father, Dr. George LaBrot, an internist in Santa Monica, California, departed for medical trips to Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and India.

His father fully supports his son's vision.

"All of these projects that are successful are overly idealistic," the elder LaBrot said. "The number one defense mechanism of highly successful people is cognitive dissonance. They just refuse to believe it won't work."

There will be no floating for him, though.

"I really do get seasick," he said.

The father plans to volunteer -- on land -- when he flies to Belize to meet up with the Floating Doctors.

"They really are my heroes," the elder LaBrot said of his children. "Because they know what's important at a rather young age."

The Southern Wind's first stop is Cap-Haïtien, the second largest city in Haiti, where the crew plans to connect with Dr. Ted Kaplan, a pediatrician from Orlando, Florida.

Kaplan formed a network of clinics and health organizations in Haiti. The partnership with Cap-Haïtien Health Network and the Floating Doctors was a natural fit, because Kaplan was trying to find a sailboat to transport supplies, he said.

Shipping in Haiti is expensive and often unreliable. Transporting supplies is challenging, because the road conditions are "completely horrendous," Kaplan said. "Many of the roads got to the point of bare rocks. It's quicker to get around the country by boat, especially with towns around the coast. They're hard to reach by car."

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living under the poverty line.

Kaplan said many have diarrheal diseases, malaria, malnutrition and minor illnesses that become serious because of the lack of treatment. The Floating Doctors will help distribute millions of chewable tablets used to deworm children when they arrive in mid-November, he said.

The Southern Wind leaves November 1 from St. Augustine, Florida.

Earlier in the summer, the crew loaded thousands of pounds of anti-diarrheal drugs, antifungal medications and vitamins, which will go to needy patients. Many of the supplies were donated by Direct Relief International, an organization that provides medical aid.

Since April, a volunteer crew of mostly 20-somethings has repaired the aging sailboat. The Floating Doctors bought a recreational boat from a Florida couple and transformed it to a working medical vehicle.

Drenched in sweat and sunburned orange, the crew worked power saws and sanders during a simmering, humid day. They came from all walks of life -- the Army, college, nursing school or emergency medical technician training -- and ended up in Florida wearing flip-flops.

"We're about to sail around the world and do something incredible," said Jon Resnick, a 24-year-old crew member, who took a year off from nursing school. "This is something people don't even dream about doing. And even when they do dream it, don't have it in them to go ahead and do it."

LaBrot's younger sister, Sky LaBrot, 27, initially thought her older brother was "insane" when he started the Floating Doctors, she said. To give sisterly support, she quit a glitzy Hollywood job managing beverages for bars and restaurants, and joined the crew as the director of operations.

Her father used to tell her, "To be truly happy is to live a life of service."

"I used to roll my eyes until now," she said.

She no longer has time to blow dry her hair or wear makeup as she did in her L.A. days, because she has fiberglass to lay and an entire boat that needs to be fixed. Now tied to a bigger mission, she said: "I've never been happier."

Nicholas Wansten, a hulking former Army cavalry scout, jumped at the chance to join the Floating Doctors. He has EMT training and someday hopes to be a pediatrician.

"Most of us are 23 or 24, right around that age," said the boyish 27-year-old. "But we're young; we're able to work hard and make this happen. It's going to reshape the rest of all of our lives."

Not all of them have medical training, so crew members will participate only to the limits of their training, Benjamin LaBrot said.

At departure, LaBrot will be the only floating doctor, but plans have been made to connect with a dozen physicians throughout the trip, he said.

When asked why the Floating Doctors decided to travel to foreign countries rather than the Mississippi Delta or other areas where Americans need medical attention, LaBrot said the urgency is much greater in places where "people die from diarrhea."

"Suffering is universal, and healing and medicine should also be universal," he said.

Black Cowboys Bring Hope & History to NYC Youth

2009-11-03T10:54:00.002-05:00

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Boney D and Rabbit come from rough parts of Brooklyn, places that could be unfavorably compared to the Wild West.

You wouldn't expect that they'd escape their environments at a rugged 25-acre ranch in nearby Queens, riding horses and hanging out with cowboys.

"I've seen a guy get shot dead, point [blank] range, right in front of me -- dropped him, boom," D'vonte "Boney D" Jemmott, 15, said of the neighborhood where he grew up. "I've seen dudes get beat up, chased home, all sorts of things. I've seen all sorts of different drugs being ran around.

"If I wasn't down here," he said, "I'd probably be involved with things like that -- robbing people, probably hurting people -- because I've seen a lot of that stuff done around my way."

Jemmott's mother has been taking him to Cedar Lane Stables since he was a toddler. The Federation of Black Cowboys, founded in 1994, has called Cedar Lane home since 1998.

A white post-and-rail fence separates the property and its three dozen horses from the 18-wheelers, dump trucks and commuter traffic at the intersection of Linden Boulevard and Conduit Avenue.

A red, wooden sign at the stable's entrance advertises "reins & things" at Debbie's Western Boutique. Mallards and chubby white geese populate a murky creek on the north side of the property, and a wide wooden bridge takes you to the riding ring and stables, many of which have been converted from metal shipping containers.

"[The kids] love it, Texas in Queens. This is like an oasis in the middle of the city," said cowgirl Heather Bradley, whom the children call "Ma."

Paris "Rabbit" Parrish, 20, has ridden with the black cowboys since he was 8 years old. He remembers when he and his mother were driving on Linden Boulevard and first saw Jessie Lee "Captain" Wise, one of the federation's 11 founders, riding his horse.

"I was like, 'Mama, mama, look, it's a cowboy!' And I've always wanted to be a cowboy. I watched Westerns. So we pull over, and we talked to him, and he told me to come on down to the stable," Parrish said as he rode a thick black mare, Beauty, across the backside of the property. "Ever since I was at the stable, it's been like I was at home, paradise."

Like Jemmott, Parrish said his neighborhood is rife with gangs and narcotics -- he's witnessed drug transactions in front of the school near his house -- and he's confident he wouldn't be entering college soon without the guidance of the local cowpokes.

"I think I'd be probably in jail or with a gang somewhere because it was hard for me to stay out of trouble," he said.

Keeping youngsters away from gangs, guns and drugs is a top federation priority, said President Stencil "Doctor D" Stokes, a foreboding man who can crack a bullwhip with such prowess, it sounds like a shot from a small-caliber pistol.

Stokes would never use the whip on anyone, he assured, but it helps get the kids' attention.

"They see the Bloods. They see the Crips. All they see is violence," the school bus driver said, bullwhip in hand and Stetson tilted back. "They can come here at night without worrying about getting shot."

Though the federation has mentored a child who went on to become a veterinarian and another who is a New York mounted police officer, Stokes said he doesn't have unrealistic expectations of the children, because the primary goal is to keep them safe.

"Everybody cannot be an A student. We understand that, but if you're a C student, be a damned good C student," he said.

Education is a staple at the stables, according to Warren "Black Red" Small, who said that taking care of a horse is a lot like taking care of yourself.

Youngsters aren't allowed to ride until they first learn how to groom the animals, clean their hooves, saddle and bridle them and, yes, muck their stalls.

A retired peace officer for the state court system, Small said the federation also teaches children about "the forgotten black West" because it's important that kids know the role African-Americans played in taming the Wild West.

Buckaroos such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy too often dominate popular cowboy lore, Stokes added, explaining, "I'm not a racist man, but they wasn't the first."

The federation teaches youngsters about Bill Pickett, who invented steer wrestling, and the pugnacious "Stagecoach" Mary Fields, whose nickname was derived from her reliability in delivering mail across an ornery Montana frontier.

The stories help kids ascertain their own identities, Small said.

"History, for all people, is a necessary part of their evolution and their growing process," he said.

Also necessary, said the group's first female inductee, Kesha "Babygirl" Morse, is "working with kids to find a balance for them between the macho man stuff and being a gentleman."

Thousands of kids have come through the stables via various school programs and community functions since 1998, Small said. About 25 to 30 of those, such as Jemmott and Parrish, have moseyed back for mentoring.

Like any nonprofit, the federation survives off donations. Major corporations have donated to the cause, and co-founder Jessie Lee Wise has tapped his own excavating business to help with upkeep and construction at the stables.

But times are hard, said Eric "Little Red" Jackson, and the cowboys could sorely use a sponsor to continue their work. Several stables are in disrepair, and the federation's future museum is presently a dilapidated trailer containing photos, animal hides and a hodgepodge of memorabilia and artifacts.

Jemmott said he knows plenty of kids his age who also could use some work, peers wrapped up in drugs and violence who "have nothing going for them now."

"I'm glad I didn't get involved in any of that activity," he said. "Couple more years, if they're not incarcerated, they're going to be in the dirt. I want to prosper in life. I just don't want to be a statistic or a product of my environment."

A Safe Haven For Afghanistan's War Orphans

2009-11-02T11:01:00.000-05:00

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Ways to Give Back On Halloween!

2009-10-30T12:30:00.002-04:00

Did you know while you are having fun this Halloween you can also be giving back? Here are some ways you can give back:

1) Head to The Salvation Army or Goodwill for your costume. You'll save the money that you would spend on an expensive costume from a shop and you'll be supporting an organization that provides great benefits to lower-income households. This step is especially helpful if your planned Halloween costume is a 70s disco fanatic or indie hipster.

2) Donate candy to children and soldiers. Operation Gratitude sends care packages to members of the military and are happy to include leftover Halloween candy. Most of their packages can be shipped for $11 or less.

Most food banks collect leftover candy for children, and local schools often participate in post-Halloween collection as well. Call your local school district or food bank for available programs.

3) Take part in Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. Since 1950, families across America have raised over $144 million for UNICEF by collecting money on Halloween. You can order an orange box to collect money through October 30 or make your own collection box.

4) Participate in Sight Night. Every Halloween, Lions Club International hosts a fundraiser for eyeglasses. On Sight Night (Halloween), trick-or-treaters are encouraged to ask for used eyeglasses to give to the needy (it helps if you put up fliers or notify your neighborhood first).

5) Support A Cause Through SocialVibe's Click4Good campaign. This online trick-or-treating game allows users to give clean water to developing nations, provide care to children affected by AIDS, or contribute to cancer research, just through the act of clicking.

6) If you want to give back but aren't sure where to begin, using AllForGood.org's search tool can narrow down volunteer opportunities in your area. Enter your zip code and then search for Halloween.

7) Host a Halloween Party for a nonprofit. Whether it's human rights, free clinics, the environment, or homelessness, a Halloween party is a great way to support your cause of choice. Tell your guests to forgo the bottle of wine and bring $10 instead to go into a collection box. Get into the spirit by dressing up as your favorite changemaker. (Nicholas Kristof is the trendiest costume this year).

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/7-ways-to-give-back-on-ha_n_333306.html

Learning Lessons about working hard, helping other and eating eating healthy

2009-10-29T11:01:00.006-04:00

What started out as a volunteer project has turned into a tradition for some Oregon 2nd graders. Every year in the spring, second graders from the Yaquina View Elementary School plant the seedlings in a greenhouseand and return again in the fall to harvest the vegetables to offer the bounty to the Food Share and other local charities.

Families in need get fresh, healthy food, and the students get all kind of lessons.

See the full article at: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/a_heartfelt_harvest_newport_ki.html

Dogs Making the Rounds, Cheering Patients Up

2009-10-28T10:43:00.003-04:00

By Ellen Gilmer, The Oregonian

CEDAR MILL -- Samantha sits in a hospital bed, an IV in her arm, nurses and therapists bustling in and out, and a smiling dog at her feet. Four-year-old Samantha is undergoing growth hormone testing, and Bonnie the border collie is there to calm her nerves.

Hormone testing can take up to five hours, so Samantha's parents are thankful Bonnie is there.

"It's a good distraction from the monotony of the day," said her mother, Colette Verbanic of Tigard. "At 4 years old, it's hard to sit still for five hours."

Five days a week, a dog can be found trotting in and out of patient rooms at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. The hospital has used animal-assisted therapy, a volunteer program that brings in animals to relax patients, for at least 10 years.

Samantha, who doesn't have a dog at home, got to meet Bonnie and owner Susan Moore of Beaverton. Samantha laughed and swatted at Bonnie. She hasn't learned how to pet gently yet, but Bonnie didn't seem to mind.

Bonnie visits children to try to distract them from blood draws, IV starts and other procedures. Therapy dogs not only cheer up and distract patients, but also actually lower pulse rates and offer warmth in cold hospital rooms, said child life specialist Barbara Blair.

"Nobody's focused on the procedure; they're just focused on the dog," Moore said.

According to research from the Delta Society, a national human services organization that connects people to animals, animal-assisted therapy has been shown to improve physical, social, emotional and cognitive functioning in patients. By offering companionship and a warm touch, animals help alleviate loneliness, lower blood pressure and reduce stress.

The practice is common at many area hospitals, including Legacy Emanuel and OHSU Hospital.

Susan Core, director of volunteer services at St. Vincent, said the hospital's use of therapy dogs has always been popular.

"We're wanting to look at all aspects of healing, not just the medical side," she said. "It's one more element of healing, and it's refreshing."

Not just any dog can handle the task.

"It really takes a special dog to do this," Moore said. "Therapy dogs are born. Some dogs just have that connection with people."

Eleven-year-old Bonnie certainly does. She always smiles, and she makes eye contact with everyone she visits.

Frank, a 3-year-old Bernese mountain dog, visits every Wednesday with his owner, Carly Morrish of Portland. They've been coming since February.

Kids love Frank, who weighs about 120 pounds. Sometimes he even hops into bed with toddlers.

As Audrya Owens, 14, waited for surgery, she welcomed Frank into her room. This isn't the Vernonia girl's first experience with a therapy dog.

Aurora Owens took a picture of Audrya and Frank with her cell phone, recalling when her daughter was in the hospital at 18 months old, and a golden retriever was brought in to cheer her up. The dogs are a great distraction, she said.

Bonnie and Frank have more than just sunny personalities; they also have training and certification under their collars. Both completed basic obedience classes as puppies, then took animal-assisted therapy classes with their owners at DoveLewis, a Portland animal hospital. The hospital uses a training program from the Delta Society.

Training the owner is half the challenge. Owners must know how to present their animals in different social settings, said Heather Toland, director of the therapy program at DoveLewis. They must also be able to tell when their animals are tired or stressed.

Moore said she knows Bonnie, who has been working as a therapy dog five years, well enough to read her mood from the set of her ears or the way her tail moves. If Bonnie seems overwhelmed, Moore knows to take her away from patients.

Bonnie doesn't often get overwhelmed, though, and that's what makes her a good therapy dog.

Her biggest hurdle? Getting used to crowded elevators. Now she handles them in stride. And she springs up to the reception counter every week for a treat, a simple thank-you for a job well done.

The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/10/therapy_dogs_ease_hospital_pat.html

Group of Dentists Give Kids a Reason to Smile Again

2009-10-27T13:01:00.001-04:00

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All You Need is - LAUGHTER!

2009-10-26T11:27:00.003-04:00

By Vicki Friedman
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 26, 2009

CHESAPEAKE

It's a funny little thing, this class that Katie Lawrence teaches on Wednesday mornings in the fall.

You've got to laugh, and you've got to laugh a lot.

Out loud.

That's the purpose of laughter therapy, a feel-good hour at the Great Bridge Community Center. The class is offered every fall and spring by the city's Department of Parks & Recreation.

A class to make you laugh? You're kidding me.

Lawrence tells a curious group of participants that laughter is good for your health.

"It lowers your pulse rate; it lowers your blood sugar, and it improves your respiratory system," she said.

Laughter boosts the immune system, improves muscle flexation and triggers the release of endorphins, the body's natural pain killers, according to laughter experts. It also promotes a general sense of wellbeing.

Lawrence, by the way, is a certified laugh leader. She completed a pair of seminars through the World Laughter Tour (www.worldlaughtertour.com).

Don't mistake her class for a standup comedy club, though. You don't need jokes to laugh, she stressed. The therapy uses a systemic approach to create therapeutic laughter for mental and physical health.

"Simulated laughter leads to stimulated laughter," said Lawrence, whose T-shirt is the World Laughter Tour slogan, "Think Globally, Laugh locally."

On this particular Wednesday, the good-natured group looks skeptical at first. But laughter, it seems, even the simulated kind, is a wonderful icebreaker. At the start of class, everyone forms a circle for deep-breathing exercises.

"I'm not laughing yet," said Doug McRary of Western Branch with a straight face.

"You will be," Lawrence said, and McRary laughed.

McRary, 70, is there with wife Linda, who he contends "likes to sign me up for all kinds of things."

A smiling Linda said, "I like to laugh, and I like to laugh often."

Carolyn Peek, 80, said after the class: ''I thought it was amusing. I've had a lot of things that had me under stress, and I wanted to release it.'' (Ross Taylor | The Virginian-Pilot)

Deep Creek's Carolyn Peek, 80, thought the class would do her some good, and she brought along son-in-law Dennis Kelley, admittedly in attendance, "because my wife made me come."

Lawrence doesn't care why anybody is there; she's just glad to have a group to share her version of good medicine. After a couple of deep breaths, she reminds them laughter comes from three places: the head, the heart and the abdomen.

Then she introduces the language of the class: "Hee, hee. Ha, ha. Ho, ho."

Instead of greeting someone with a handshake, pull your hand away and exclaim, "Ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha! Yay!"

Throw your arms up like an official signaling touchdown.

The group tries both exercises, and the result is... pretty silly. But know what? Everybody keeps laughing at the end.

An imaginary plane trip to Hawaii is on tap next. Among Lawrence's tactics: pretend you're walking to the bathroom, squirming like an impatient little boy, saying, "Hee, hee, hee" en route.

Once the plane lands...

"Aloha, ha, ha," is the new way to say hello.

You get the idea.

Lawrence, a psychiatric nurse at Sentara Obici, typically drives away from her night shift job repeating, "Hee, hee. Ha, ha. Ho, ho." She admits she gets some stares at stoplights.

Linda McRary tells Lawrence she feels so energetic now, she's ready to do something fun that afternoon.

She's laughing on her way out the door.

No joke.

'Come Together' to stop hunger

2009-10-23T10:43:00.003-04:00

Macy’s has launched COME TOGETHER, an innovative awareness and fundraising campaign that aims to feed 10 million people suffering from hunger. COME TOGETHER invites the public to rally around the cause by hosting special dinners in their homes and asking their guests to pledge a donation to Feeding America. In return, Macy’s will match these donations dollar-for-dollar until the total goal of 10 million meals is reached.

To get involved the public may participate in three ways Host, Give and Shop.

» HOST- Friends and families across the country can host dinner parties from casual to formal, send invitations and manage party details including themes and recipes on www.macys.com/cometogether. In lieu of bringing traditional host gifts, guests are suggested to make a donation to Feeding America.

» GIVE – Donate $1 directly at any Macy’s register, one dollar provides dinner for seven.

» SHOP - Macy’s customers can shop for the cause and get special savings in-store on October 17, when Macy’s hosts a national Shop For A Cause day. A portion of the $5 in-store ticket sales will benefit Feeding America.

See how the nation as come together here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=8860787