Seven Questions on Giving Time
"In the moment when we spend money for others, there is the deep joy of expressing gratitude, of imagining the recipient's delight and of silently recognizing our interconnection. It's beautiful. Yet, it only lasts for that moment. Instead, when you give time and allow yourself space to experience the process, you witness a long series of those joyous moments. If spending money is generosity, ... posted on Dec 09 2007, 4,223 reads

Restaurant Ripples: Kindness in Action
A real-life story of an anonymous act of kindness starts simply: "So there we are sitting in our little booth, finishing up a, tasty meal. It dawns on us, it’s time. Who will it be? Who will it be? Hmmm…. them! Who? Them, the couple behind me over my left shoulder. All right, lets do it! Our waiter comes over and asks: Would you like to take the rest with you? 'Yes, we would. Could we have our... posted on Dec 05 2007, 5,089 reads

Six-year-old Piano Prodigy
Emily Bear is hardly typical for her age. Emily was two years old when she simply sat down at a piano and started playing rhythm patterns she had overheard. "I have so much music in my heart that it just falls out," Emily said.... posted on Dec 02 2007, 3,128 reads

Pop!Tech: Ideas that Transform
Last month's Pop!Tech conference, held in the New England town of Camden, took some of the world's most intractable issues and applied social theory and thinking to them. Interspersed between musical performances, films and demonstrations, all staged in a restored 19th-century opera house on the coast, were a range of contributions from some 500 thinkers from industry, business, technology, academ... posted on Dec 01 2007, 1,655 reads

The White Envelope Project
It's Christmas Day, and the Lawder family has one last gift for the kids, and it's the one they anticipate most every year: a plain white envelope with a note. This particular year, the note says that in the sons' honor, their parents have supported a local health clinic that provides access to physicians and necessary medical care to those who can't afford it. Everyone smiles, some through teary ... posted on Nov 26 2007, 4,375 reads

Do-Nothing Cultivation
Masanobu Fukuoka is a towering figure in the revolutionary field of sustainable agriculture. The author of One-Straw Revolution and The Natural Way of Farming, his unconventional farming methods involve no tillage, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no weeding, no pruning, and remarkably little labor! He accomplishes all this (and high yields) by careful timing of his seeding and careful combinations o... posted on Nov 22 2007, 2,017 reads

How A Bookstore Can Change Your Life
"One of the more romantic literary notions is that a book can change a person's life. Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford, for instance, claims Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer made Ford the author he is today. If a book can change your life, a bookstore can utterly transform it. In my case, I found one, or perhaps it found me, at a critical juncture when I was turning my back on everything I had... posted on Nov 21 2007, 3,090 reads

1 Slum, 7 Days, 200 New Homes
For the first time, Mona Miller has a real roof, solid walls and glass windows. Lights come on at the flick of a switch, water flows from the tap and she has the dignity of a toilet. Miller will move into her first proper home this weekend thanks to a building blitz by nearly 1,400 Irish volunteers, who completed a mission Friday to construct 200 houses in a week in the depressing, dusty -- and ho... posted on Nov 15 2007, 1,589 reads

"Anonymous Friend" Gives $100 Million
Mike Batchelor invited the heads of 46 charities into his downtown office for one-on-one meetings to personally deliver the news. Nearby, on a small table, sat a box of tissues. And then he proceeded: A donor had given a staggering $100 million to the Erie Community Foundation, and all of the charities would receive a share. That was when the tears began to flow -- and the mystery began -- in this... posted on Nov 14 2007, 2,991 reads

Know a Word? Then, Donate Rice.
Millions of online wordsmiths have translated their vocabulary prowess into more than one billion grains of rice -- enough to feed 50,000 hungry people for one day. An Internet game called FreeRice tests the vocabulary of anyone who plays it. If you click on the right answer, 10 grains of rice are donated by the site's advertisers; if you click on the wrong answer, you're given an easier word. ... posted on Nov 12 2007, 3,833 reads