Rescue of Burned Puppy Comes Full Circle
"Anyone who has ever saved an animal will tell you that its the kind of experience that shakes up your DNA. You won't regrow hair on a balding head or suddenly run a four-minute-mile, but there is a pulse of positive energy that churns through the human body much like a twister. In some cases, fragments of that emotional explosion are powerful enough to be credited with modern medical miracles. An... posted on Feb 4, 17201 reads

Office Workers Raise 5 Day Old Kitten
"He was all soaking wet. The house had been power washed earlier but no one knew there was a baby kitty over in the bushes or that he had gotten wet. I cleaned him off with paper towels in case he had offensive tasting soap on him and put him back down and went back inside so the mama could get her baby. After much sitting there watching him cry, she walked away and didn't come back. I ran over... posted on Mar 12, 19930 reads

Students Debut Life-Saving Infant Warmer
A baby's small hands and dainty fingers have turned blue. Her body is shaking and she lets out a barely audible cry. Moved by stories like this, Jane Chen and her MBA classmates designed an innovative, low-cost baby wrap to prevent infant deaths caused by hypothermia, a common occurrence in developing countries. With the potential to reach millions of infants across the globe, Chen describes, "Whe... posted on Mar 29, 3295 reads

Baby Reunited with Doctor Who Saved Her
In her thoughts and prayers over the past year, Nadine Devilme has thanked God countless times for saving her baby after Haiti's earthquake. She's also wanted to thank the doctor who treated Jenny Alexis after the 2-month-old spent four days alone, crushed in the rubble with nothing to drink. There was one problem: Devilme never knew the doctor's name, never knew exactly whom to thank for treating... posted on Feb 10, 3939 reads

More Miracles in Japan
Amid the silence, a baby cried out. And Japan met its tiniest miracle. Last week, soliders made their way to a pile of earthquake debris, gently cleared away the fallen items, and then they saw her: a 4-month-old baby in her pink woolen bear suit. Three days earlier, a tidal wave had literally swept her from her parents arms. Now a source of hope and renewed diligence among search crews, the baby ... posted on Mar 20, 3688 reads

Mother Robin: Delivering Hope & Babies
They've waited all night for a chance to see their newborn babies, whom the hospital is holding until the medical bills are paid in full. "Holding babies until payment is common in Indonesia," said Robin Lim, a midwife who founded birthing clinics in Aceh and the island of Bali. At this particular hospital in Bali, mothers who don't pay are allowed in twice a day to feed their baby and change thei... posted on Jan 6, 6790 reads

An Act of Dog
Artist Mark Barone believes he is a better man for having painted 5,500 portraits of healthy dogs that have been killed in shelters every year. Through photos shelter volunteers sent him, he produced 12"X12" oil paintings that reveal each dog's personality, and included the dog's name and the circumstances that led to its death. He and his partner, Marina Dervan, have also created a non-profit, An... posted on Jun 14, 10912 reads

My Friend, My Companion: Lessons From Mia
In June 2010, Snigdha Manickavel and her husband Bapoorau brought home a little black puppy from an animal shelter in South India. Mia had been brought in with her mother and three of her siblings, and was the only one of the pups to survive. The young couple who took her home had no idea how deeply this bright-eyed newcomer would touch their hearts and transform their lives. In this short piece S... posted on Mar 31, 14972 reads

Service Surf Dog Ricochet
Ricochet was a puppy prodigy. From the moment she was born, she was training to become a service dog for a person with a disability. As she grew, it was clear her talents were undeniable; but her free, youthful spirit could not be contained -- Ricochet would give in to her instincts to run playfully and chase birds and small animals. A definite no-no for a service dog. Rather than push harder to m... posted on Aug 23, 4692 reads

Happiest Man in America
As Charlie Brown and the "Peanuts" gang told us, happiness could be a warm puppy, pizza with sausage, five different crayons -- or anyone, or anything, that's loved by you. And, although it's true that many special moments are inspired by such happenstance, scientific research contends that people actually can condition themselves for genuine happiness, much as occasional joggers condition themsel... posted on Mar 12, 1456 reads

Puppies Behind Bars
When Gloria Gilbert Stoga quit working for Rudy Guiliani's office, very few folks supported her new venture -- train inmates to raise guide dogs! Prisoners can get unconditional love as they train some of the young puppies, Gloria thought. Turns out, she was right. Today, the program is not only delivering well-loved, well-trained guide dogs, it's also having a positive effect on its inmate pup... posted on Nov 5, 1638 reads

India's First Shelter for Dogs with Disabilities
He is a renowned animal rights activist who holds many key positions in his home state. But nothing defines Mahendra better than his immense, undying love for animals. It was this love that led him to establish India's first home for dogs living with disabilities. Read on to learn how Mahendra's service to these dogs began after a chance encounter with a puppy on the streets of India.... posted on Jan 11, 14668 reads

The Tortoise & The Baby Hippo
It sounds like a fable or a fairy tale. The main characters are an orphaned baby hippopotamus, Owen, and a giant tortoise, Mzee. The hippo was rescued from a massive tsunami, and the tortoise had defied odds and had lived to be 130 years old. But the story of Owen and Mzee is absolutely true. As soon as Owen was released into the park, he immediately took cover with Mzee, and the two have become n... posted on Apr 2, 5485 reads

The Baby Academy
When Dina Abdel Wahab's son Ali was born with Down syndrome, she was unable to find a preschool to meet his needs. Children with Down syndrome do not benefit from environments where they are kept apart from mainstream society. And in Cairo, at the time, Dina had no other options for her son; if a better place was going to exist, she would have to create it herself. Determined to help Ali lead a no... posted on Mar 17, 2002 reads

A Father's Instinct Breathes Life
As he knelt on the bedroom floor, on the phone with 911, something had gone wrong. When your wife is pregnant, no one tells you, "By the way, she might skip labor, suddenly fall to the floor, and give birth. Oh, and the umbilical cord might be tangled around the baby's neck five times." But that's what happened to Josh Levs. In less than 15 minutes, with only instinct and the 911 operator to guide... posted on Feb 23, 4006 reads

Remembering Kindness 41 Years Later
"I was a widow and an expectant mother in the same day. We had bought a new home and I had filled our two bedroom apartment with nursery items in anticipation of moving in. Now the house would be taken away. I knew I would have to go back to my parents' home, at least until I delivered the baby. And the shock of my husband's sudden death had made losing the baby a very real possibility. I moved ba... posted on Nov 5, 6534 reads

Releasing Contracts that Block Joy
"Self-warmth makes everything better: our health, our immune system, our life decisions, our sense of meaning, our capacity for engagement, our effectiveness, and our intimate connections with others. But we may have agreements with ourselves, agreements we don't even know about, to NOT be warm with ourselves. We may have contracts to not like ourselves, to be indifferent, even to hate and be cru... posted on Jan 3, 6905 reads

From Maid to a Bestselling Author
After running away from an abusive marriage, Baby Haldar worked as a maid to support her three children. One of the houses where she would sweep and mop the floor was a professor, who used to give her a book to read. One time, he gave her a notebook and pen. Couple months later, Baby Haldar wrote her life story and today, she's a bestselling author of a Hindi book!... posted on Sep 23, 1742 reads

A Blessing for A Baby Coming Into This World
"Dear, dear tiny being before you are fully human,
remember the ether from which you came.
Hearken to that terrible squeeze
between the womb and the world,
that journey you willed and that willed you.

Then live your wild human time dancing
and grounded in the grand."

Read on for the rest of a lovely poem written by poet gardener, S... posted on Jun 25, 5310 reads

A Maid Becomes an Unlikely Star
Abandoned by her mother at 4, married off at 12 to an abusive husband, a mother herself at 13 -- there is little in Baby Halder’s traumatic childhood to suggest that she would become a famous author. But "A Life Less Ordinary," this season’s publishing sensation in India, is the result of her nighttime writing sessions, squeezed in after her housework duties were finished, when she poured raw... posted on Aug 3, 2461 reads

Babies' Cries Find Technological Comfort
Why do babies cry? Pedro Monagas claims to have the answer in Castellar del Valles, Spain. What started as a way to understand his son's crying, is now "Why Cry" (selling in Spain for 95 Euros) -- a calculator-size device that has a microprocessor that can decipher the broad meaning of a baby's cry with 87 percent accuracy. The gadget listens to a crying baby, considers and calculates for 20 se... posted on Jan 31, 1361 reads

Diary of a Young Naturalist
"This diary chronicles the turning of my world, from spring to winter, at home, in the wild, in my head. It travels from the west of Northern Ireland in County Fermanagh to the east in County Down. It records the uprooting of a home, a change in county and landscape, and at times the de-rooting of my senses and my mind. I'm Dara, a boy, an acorn. Mum used to call me lon dubh (which is Irish for bl... posted on Jul 16, 1866 reads

Rachel Callander Sees Superpowers
"My first major experience with the healthcare system and with disability was in 2008, when my daughter Evie was born. She had a very rare chromosome condition,and what I noticed after she was born was that the language I was using about her and the language that the doctors were using was very different. And I liked my language better [laughs].Because it highlighted ability and it highlighted hum... posted on Jan 16, 3933 reads

Feeding the Good Wolf: A Gratitude Conversation with Ferial Pear
In an inventive and transformative program for teens, kids not only learn how to nourish and nurture their inherent goodness, they act as secret agents of kindness. Using undercover names like Whip, Neigh Neigh, and G Baby Believe, teens perform anonymous acts of kindness and support others doing the same. Founder Ferial Pearson believes that by doing so, the secret agents "become more ... aware o... posted on May 6, 9160 reads

The Boy Who Saved Seven Lives
It made headlines, and broke hearts worldwide. Highway robbers shot Nicholas Green, a freckle-faced, 7 year-old from California holidaying in Italy. He died two days later. The story might have ended with that tragedy, but his parents Reg and Maggie Green made a very different decision, and one that had a dramatic impact. They donated their son's organs to seven Italians -- among them a mother who... posted on Jul 3, 2068 reads

Spotlight on Seniors Who Are Changing the World
Retirement is a time finally away from bosses and schedules, stress and assignments. Yet, once retired, many miss the sense of purpose and community their jobs provided. Where retirement once called to mind visions of rocking chairs and mid-day snoozes, many in the Baby Boomer generation are shaking things up, turning their focus in retirement to encore careers and volunteerism. In this Spotlight ... posted on Aug 14, 14684 reads

Let's Be Well: A Video Game Born From a Child's Grief
Paula Toledo was the mother of a two-year old, and a two-week-old baby when she lost her husband to mental illness and suicide. In the wake of that devastating loss, "I felt the most important thing I could do was to care for myself and my children. And so I did -- albeit, while I laid in the dirt. Instead of clawing my way out, I decided to surrender and play there with my young children. Insulat... posted on Nov 23, 3861 reads

The Blind Child Musician's Blessing
"Patrick's eyes are not functional. He is in a wheelchair and when we first shook hands, his fingers seemed entirely too thick to be nimble. So when he offered to play the piano for me and his father rolled his wheelchair up to the baby grand, I confess that I thought to myself, "Well, this will be sweet. He has overcome so much. How nice that he can play piano." But then Patrick put his hands to ... posted on Jan 13, 2995 reads

Power of Slow Change
"People love stories of turning points, wake-up calls, sudden conversions, breakthroughs, the stuff about changes that happen in a flash," points out historian Rebecca Solnit. Yet, meaningful transformations often take time. "You want tomorrow to be different than today, and it may seem the same, or worse, but next year will be different than this one, because those tiny increments added up. The t... posted on Jan 28, 1840 reads

The Odd Couple
When the Dec 24th tsunami hit the shores of Kenya and left a baby hippopotamus orphaned, people rushed to its aid and transported it to a nearby wildlife refuge. Exhausted, confused, and frightened, the hippo immediately sought the friendship of Mzee, a 130-year-old tortoise in the park. To everyone’s surprise Mzee returned the affection, and now the pair snuggle and even go for walks together. ... posted on Jul 26, 1804 reads

Imprisoned Men Knit for Kids in Need
In a heartwarming and unusual gesture of generosity, over 30 men who are inmates in an American jail are spending their hours with yarn unraveling at their feet, knitting stocking caps, blankets and booties for children in need around the world. Lavender caps, purple-pompom stockings, hats in stripes and bumble-bee colors -- these prisoners have knitted more than 300 hats this year, about half wit... posted on Dec 3, 1618 reads

The Landlord Who Would Not Evict
September 23rd marked 41 days that the 6-foot, 4-inch tall guy with the tattoo of Jesus on his left arm and the gray ponytail has worked at Walgreens pharmacy on Celanese Road. "The 2-to-10 shift. Proud to do it," says Peirce. He is not your usual landlord. One of Pierce's tenants worked in construction and has a wife and two little kids. A second man worked in utilities contracting and has a baby... posted on Oct 13, 4991 reads

The Woman Who Saved 200 Sloths
"Monique Pool first fell in love with sloths when she took in an orphan from a rescue centre. Since then many sloths have spent time in her home on their way back to the forest -- but even she found it hard to cope when she had to rescue 200 at once. It all began in 2005 when Pool lost her dog, and called the Suriname Animal Protection Society to see if they'd found it. They hadn't, but they told ... posted on Apr 6, 10599 reads

She Lost A Daughter. Today She Shelters 800 Girls
Outside of one home in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh, India), sits a baby's cradle, awaiting another child to be left it its bed to be given a new life. This cradle has taken in hundreds of abandoned and orphaned girls who would otherwise be left on the streets and Sarojini Agarwal, now 80 years old, is the mother to all of them. As a caregiver, educator, companion and mother, Dr Sarojini Agarwal is an i... posted on Mar 17, 18812 reads

Views on a Pandemic
"I write to you now from my home in Seattle, former ground zero of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic, on the fifty-fifth day of our isolation. I write to you nine months pregnant, from the attic bedroom where I fatten on dates meant to hasten the child's arrival, perhaps upon this very bed. It is a rather Victorian confinement, subplot of the quarantine that is pregnancy itself. Friends and acquaintan... posted on May 13, 4214 reads

Rolling For Peace
"Just like a baby rolls on a mother's lap, similarly this man rolls on the streets. So if he can do this, what is it that prevents others from loving each other?" Barreling down a sizzling-hot road, in a cloud of diesel fumes and dust, Ludkan Baba is on a serious roll. LA Times reports that this renunciate has rolled thousands of miles and millions of rounds over the last 19 years, surviving on ... posted on Jun 8, 1130 reads

Endangered Species Chocolate
To put himself through school, Jon Stocking worked on a tuna boat where he witnessed dolphins and other marine animals being fatally trapped in the tuna nets. One day, Jon's conscience got the better of him, as he began to cut open the tuna net to free a trapped mother and baby dolphin and didn't stop till every last fish was freed back to the ocean. Jon lost his job, but not his conscience, and h... posted on Jun 28, 1303 reads

The Swimmer And The Lost Whale
Lynne Cox is a famed open water swimmer and author of the best-selling book "Swimming to Antarctica" -- a chronicle of her swims across the Bering Strait, the English Channel and one mile to the shores of Antarctica. Her new book, "Grayson", is the remarkable story of her experience, at age 17, swimming with a lost baby gray whale off the coast of California. "I think it made me realize the things... posted on Mar 30, 2819 reads

The Time Bank: Better Than Barter
They stand over the table like surgeons, white masks over their noses and mouths, latex gloves covering their hands. Terrie Anderson is stirring a tub of gray grout powder while Sherri Shokler pours in what looks like milk from a thrift-store cream pitcher. Anderson, an educational consultant, is learning the art of mosaicing at a class taught by Sherri, an artist, and Jeff, an archaeologist turne... posted on Jun 6, 2455 reads

Raising Kids Who Care
John Holland-McCowan was sitting on a beach in Hawaii with his parents and his baby brother, Harrison, happily playing with coconuts and driftwood. "I'm so lucky," the almost-five-year-old suddenly announced. "I have all these toys to play with and all my toys at home." His startled parents replied that he was indeed lucky, since a lot of kids didn't have any toys at all. "That's when he started t... posted on Apr 25, 4554 reads

A 13-yr-old Secret Santa
For the second straight Christmas, a philanthropist from Utah's Capitol Hill has been warming the hearts of the homeless and brightening the smiles of hundreds of their children. The benefactor works year-round raising money, networking with businesses, buying and wrapping gifts, and encouraging random residents to pitch in with presents the underprivileged kids otherwise would never see. Jocelyn ... posted on Dec 23, 9740 reads

A Guide to Finding Your Passion
"Following your passion can be a tough thing. But figuring out what that passion is can be even more elusive. I'm lucky -- I've found my passion, and I'm living it. I can testify that it's the most wonderful thing, to be able to make a living doing what you love. And so, in this little guide, I'd like to help you get started figuring out what you'd love doing. This will be the thing that will get ... posted on Feb 5, 86851 reads

The Measure of Meaning: Visiting Wendell Berry
"One of my favorite moments was when Wendell said that he is a member of two organizations: 1) The Slow Communication Movement and 2) The Preservation of Tangibility. He noted that anyone can join these and added with a grin, 'Actually, I think I founded them.'" In this beguiling article, a young singer-songwriter, describes the pilgrimage she took with three friends and a baby to visit Wendell B... posted on Aug 15, 14535 reads

Waiting for the Elvers
"I'm not sure who first saw the wriggly, almost see-through, three-inch bodies of the elvers, or baby eels. But I think it was my energetic five-year-old because I remember his face. When he told me, he had run all the way back to our house through the woods and up our steep bank. His eyes were shining and he was breathless from exertion and excitement. His words tumbled one over the other, and hi... posted on May 2, 3160 reads

Mother's Instincts
Luz Aida Cuevas took one look at the dimpled, dark-haired little girl at a birthday party and instantly knew two things: she was watching her own daughter - presumed killed as a baby in a 1997 fire - and she needed a way to prove it. So Luz pretended the six-year-old girl had gum in her hair, removed five strands from the child's head, folded them in a napkin and put them in a plastic bag. DNA t... posted on Mar 5, 1053 reads

Elephant Orphanage
Stories about an orphanage are bound to yank at your heartstrings. The one 60 Minutes recently told is no exception. All these orphans are from East Africa, they were all abandoned when they were very young -- and they're all elephants! A couple of decades ago, there were about 100,000 elephants in Kenya. Now there are about a quarter as many, largely due to poachers. The orphanage gets distress c... posted on Apr 12, 1870 reads

12 Year Old Who Doesn't Age
Brooke Greenberg has celebrated 12 birthdays according to the calendar but in terms of growing up, she has yet to reach her first! To the mystification of the medical world, Brooke is frozen in time, a real-life, female Peter Pan. She weighs 13lb and measures 27 inches, and looks and acts as if she were a six-month-old baby, not a girl about to become a teenager.... posted on Aug 9, 4242 reads

Excuses, Excuses: Excerpt from Teacher Man
"I was in my third year of teaching creative writing at Ralph McKee Vocational School in Staten Island, New York, when one of my students, 16-year-old Mikey, gave me a note from his mother. It explained his absence from class the day before: "Dear Mr. McCort, Mikey's grandmother who is eighty years of age fell down the stairs from too much coffee and I kept Mikey at home to take care of her and hi... posted on Jul 28, 7440 reads

For Love of Sheeba the Cheetah
"Every parent knows the bittersweet ache of watching their children grow and leave the nest, but what happens when your baby is not yet two years old and can already run as fast as a car? No one knows exactly how a one-month-old cheetah cub made her way under the fence of the Ol Pejeta chimpanzee sanctuary in Kenya in October of 2010. It's no small miracle that sanctuary workers spotted her before... posted on Nov 12, 0 reads

For Love of Sheeba the Cheetah
"Every parent knows the bittersweet ache of watching their children grow and leave the nest, but what happens when your baby is not yet two years old and can already run as fast as a car? No one knows exactly how a one-month-old cheetah cub made her way under the fence of the Ol Pejeta chimpanzee sanctuary in Kenya in October of 2010. It's no small miracle that sanctuary workers spotted her before... posted on Nov 18, 31837 reads