Designs on the Future
An important player in the design world, Valerie Casey had been pitching new packaging and product-design strategies to corporate giants with less-than-stellar environmental resumes. Hesitant to even broach the topic of sustainability at the risk of scaring off her potential clients, and anguished at her own cowardice, she began, there on the plane, to write a "Kyoto Treaty" of design, a call to a... posted on Jun 26 2008, 2,071 reads

Peace on a Billboard
Seeing Peace: Artists Collaborate with the United Nations, is a visionary initiative that brings the imagination, through the presence of the artist, to the table of the General Assembly of the UN. The goal is to embed the creative process into the great global dialogues of the day. Former Secretary of Defense of the United States, Robert McNamara, commenting on wars of the 20th century, wrote: "... posted on Jun 23 2008, 2,574 reads

The Baseball Player With One Leg
Adam Bender is eight years old and loves to play baseball -- not unusual for boys his age. What is remarkable is the fact that he plays with just one leg. When he was a year old Adam lost his left leg to cancer, but his parents were determined not to let this stop him from living a regular life. "I was a little hesitant when we first brought him up here for baseball," admits his mother, "I thought... posted on Jun 19 2008, 3,860 reads

The Paralyzed Yoga Instructor
Matthew Sanford once led an ordinary life in a loving family. But at age thirteen, he was involved in a devastating car crash that took the lives of his father and sister, and left him paralyzed from the chest down. Advice from his doctors to "forget his lower body," however, was what really crippled Matthew, leading him to ignore his once-athletic body, until he discovered yoga at age twenty-five... posted on Jun 13 2008, 5,014 reads

Living With the Arctic Peoples
Two masters degrees, Fulbright scholar in Denmark, ordained priest, avid photographer, author, ice painter, nurse practitioner in remote villages of Alaska, university teacher. It's hard to imagine that's all one woman, but it is indeed Irene Sullivan. What's even more interesting is that Irene's story barely begins there. After years of serving indigenous people in Alaska, her experiences with... posted on Jun 12 2008, 2,609 reads

Israeli Takes Palestinian Citizenship
World reknowned Israeli pianist, Daniel Barenboim, recently became the first person known to hold both Palestinian and Israeli passports. "It is a great honor to be offered a passport," he said after a Beethoven piano recital in Ramallah, the West Bank city where he has been active for some years in promoting contact between young Arab and Israeli musicians. "I have also accepted it because I be... posted on Jun 08 2008, 1,887 reads

A Turtle Who Taught Kindness
"Enlightenment and epiphanies can show up in some pretty strange ways. The Buddha found it under a Boddhi tree, Nelson Mandela in prison and Ram Dass through psychedelics. Little did I know, mine would arrive in the form of a hard-shelled reptile simply trying to cross the road -- a turtle. But this wasn’t just any turtle, this was the world’s most optimistic one. He was tenaciously determine... posted on Jun 02 2008, 4,228 reads

Doing Good, While Wearing Tuxedos!
"Two fools, one adventure, no idea." That was their tag line. Heath Buck and Doug Campbell barely knew one another when they decided to set out on what they dubbed a "crazy adventure of the charitable kind." For six months, the duo traveled from Hong Kong to London raising money for local causes they encountered along the way. The catch? They wore tuxedos the whole time.... posted on May 27 2008, 3,417 reads

The 247 Pound Vegan
The protein-rich bounty of the football training table is supposed to grow the biggest and strongest athletes in professional sports. Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Tony Gonzalez was afraid it was going to kill him. So last year, on the eve of the biggest season of his career, Mr. Gonzalez decided to try going vegan. Could an all-star National Football League player, all 6-foot, 5-inches and 247 po... posted on May 20 2008, 3,559 reads

A Blind Painter's Inner Vision
John Bramblitt lost his sight to epilepsy, but not his inner vision. The University of North Texas undergraduate shows how he managed to transform the anger he felt about his disability into art--developing a system of painting by touch, using his fingers in the place of eyes to create paintings of astonishing vibrancy. "If I hadn't lost my sight, I don't think I would have become a painter," Bram... posted on May 17 2008, 2,839 reads