Getting All She Wanted -- And ALS
Darcy Wakefield, a runner, teacher, and writer, was always on the go, so when she was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal neurological disease, at age 33, she did what came naturally. She lived what she referred to as a ''fast-forward life," buying a home, comiting to a partner, becoming a mother, and writing about it all in a book published two years later. ''She redefined what it means to be a person... posted on Jan 27, 4006 reads

Why Do Good?
Why do people do good? A new scientific study suggests that it's not just for an emotional reward: people may actually act selflessly because they're acutely tuned into the needs and actions of others. For decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have puzzled over the tendency of humans to engage in altruistic acts -- defined as acts "that intentionally benefit another organism, incur no direct ... posted on Jan 29, 3072 reads

Nigeria's Lady Mechanic
Sandra Aguebor, an activist known to Nigerians as the Lady Mechanic, has turned a personal passion into a successful project in female empowerment. The energetic mother of two rose from humble beginnings to national prominence as the creator of the Lady Mechanic Initiative. It's a thriving enterprise that trains disadvantaged women in Africa's most populous nation to learn a trade once considered ... posted on Jan 30, 1537 reads

Teen Grocer Revives Community
Not just bagging cans and produce, 17-year-old Nick Graham owns the only grocery store in the small town of Truman, Minn. The high school senior bought and reopened the store a month ago, making him "something of a hometown hero." Locals -- many far older than Graham -- credit him with restoring life to the town's struggling Main Street and saving them a 24-mile roundtrip to another store. "I didn... posted on Feb 2, 2770 reads

A 17-year-old's Life-saving Breakthrough
In what could be a life-saving breakthrough, 17-year-old high school student Madhavi Gavini has found a way to defeat the Pseudomonas bacteria, which, in addition to killing people with cystic fibrosis, can cause deadly secondary infections under immune-suppressing conditions. To find a way through the bacterium's shield, the young scientist turned to Ayurvedic medicine, the traditional Indian hea... posted on Feb 4, 2528 reads

Rottweiler Adopts Newborn Lambs
Rottweilers have a fearsome reputation, but a dog named Molly is proving that the breed has a softer side by helping rear two lambs! After a complicated birth on an English farm, newborns Lucky and Charm needed some extra attention, and it was Molly who unexpectedly stepped up to the plate. Her owner Maria Foster says Molly stayed close to the pair at night, and even protected them from other anim... posted on Feb 6, 3349 reads

Bermuda's Environmental Awards
A would-be pig farmer, a teacher with a passion for science and storytelling and a group of children who grow their own vegetables are among this year’s recipients of the Government’s Environmental Awards. Environment Minister Neletha Butterfield yesterday handed over grants worth $62,500 in total to 12 worthy schemes aimed at highlighting, preserving and restoring Bermuda’s natural environm... posted on Feb 16, 1949 reads

From Loss to Compassionate Action
Seven years ago, Pam and Randy Cope’s lives revolved around their son’s baseball games, their daughter’s dance lessons and family vacations. All that changed dramatically in 1999, when their fifteen-year old son, Jantsen, died unexpectedly of an undetected heart ailment. With his death, Mrs. Cope said, "we were instantly transformed into different people. We couldn’t resume normal life." S... posted on Feb 9, 2595 reads

The Man Who Moved a Mountain
Years ago, a frail, landless farmer decided to move a mountain. The challenge for Dashrath Manjhi was formidable -- a 300-ft-high rocky hill stood between his village and vital resources. With most of the cultivable land and shops across the treacherous hill, villagers were forced to cross it many times a day. Not waiting for help from the Indian government, Manjhi chose to go at it alone, selling... posted on Feb 11, 3151 reads

Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind
Where do creative people get their inspiration? Guy Claxton, author of "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind" has a theory: according to him it comes from a combination of inspiration and evaluation, "of being able to let an idea come to you and then crafting it into shape." Claxton talks of the intuitive understanding creative people have, of the importance of alternating work rhythms with reverie, of knowi... posted on Feb 14, 3023 reads

Secret to Long Life: School
For decades, there have been a variety of hypotheses about what it takes to live a long life -- money, lack of stress, a loving family, lots of friends, even IQ. In every country, there is an average life span for the nation as a whole and there are average life spans for different subsets, based on race, geography, education and participation in faith-based activities. Surprisingly, year after ye... posted on Feb 17, 2851 reads

A Dollar A Year CEO
In a letter sent November 2006, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey announced that he would take nothing more than a $1 annual salary, donating the rest and all future stock options to the company's two foundations. "The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happi... posted on Feb 19, 3569 reads

Rachel's Challenge
As part of her essay at Columbine High School "My Ethics, My Codes of Life", Rachel Scott wrote, "Compassion is the greatest form of love humans have to offer." This essay was found in her room by family members a few weeks after Rachel died -- the first victim in the Columbine shootings in 1999. Rachel's Challenge, a program started by her family, consists of five challenges based on Rachel's jou... posted on Feb 21, 4941 reads

Never Check Email In The Morning
You read that right, "Never Check Email in the Morning"! It's advice from Julie Morgenstern, a leading time management and efficiency expert. She's helped companies like American Express, Microsoft, and FedEx revamp the way they work, and is a regular guest on Oprah. Her strategies stress among other things, the importance of deleting. In her words, "It could be catalogs when they come in, it cou... posted on Mar 5, 5024 reads

Photobloggers: Chronicling Lives in Pictures
Waitress Valerie J. Cochran started her photoblog partly as a reaction to customers who view restaurant workers as robots and not real people. Based in Berkeley, California, her photos are often of ordinary people and places. Lecturer David J. Nightingale is another photoblogger -- one of the thousands of people around the world using the net to publish photographs that offer a glimpse into life. ... posted on Mar 10, 3281 reads

Airline Ambassadors: Wings of Love
It was 10 years ago when Nancy Rivard asked a simple question. "I'm working on these flights every day, and I would see empty space in the overhead bin, empty space underneath in freight, empty seats, and I thought, why can't we use this to help others?" she says. Initially, the airline answer was no, but Nancy would not give up. Eventually, she convinced executives any additional costs were outwe... posted on Mar 14, 2366 reads

A 9-Year-Old Scholar's Determination
Brenda Tejeda Baez has endured a lot of chaos in her short life. By the time she was in third grade, she had lived in five different friends' apartments and two homeless shelters. Yet, the 9-year-old girl has refused to budge on the one constant in her life: attending Louis Agassiz Elementary School. Even when her family had to live for three months in a homeless shelter, Brenda, her mother, and h... posted on Mar 20, 4392 reads

Wisdom of the Teduray Tribe
In the 1960s when Stuart Schlegel came across the Teduray, a tribe from the Philippine rainforests, he found a "radically egalitarian" society. Men and women, children and adults, shamans and basket weavers: all operated as equals. The Teduray knew no violence, repression or hoarding of wealth. Child-rearing was equally divided between parents. The whole society was built on cooperation, non-viole... posted on Mar 21, 4004 reads

Mindfulness Practices For Patients
In 1979, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts named Jon Kabat-Zinn had an idea. He had a hunch that pared-down meditation techniques could help patients at the university's medical center deal with pain. The idea of mind-body health wasn't well explored at the time, so Kabat-Zinn approached physicians and pain specialists at the university, asking them to refer their patients to his new ... posted on Mar 31, 2797 reads

We Are All Innovators
Innovation, to organizational consultant and thought leader, Margaret Wheatley, means the ability to rely on everyone's creativity. Wheatley -- whose work studies systems thinking, theories of change and learning organizations -- is quick to recognize that in today's era of constant change, it is crucial for leaders to constantly evolve and adapt. Doing this, Wheatley maintains, depends on one's a... posted on Apr 2, 2799 reads

Key Characteristics of Changemakers
There are millions of citizens who refuse to succumb to what their more cynical neighbors call "reality," who insist with their lives that there has to be a better way -- and who day by day go about bringing it into being. What makes them tick? What enables them to see beneath the surface and work for the common good rather than simply for their own private welfare? What inspires people to act fro... posted on Apr 4, 4544 reads

Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier
At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Ishmael Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive hims... posted on Apr 15, 2867 reads

The Healthy Art of Forgiving
Holding grudges may be part of human nature, but recent studies show that it works to the detriment not just of spiritual well-being but of our physical health as well. Bitterness, anger, hostility, and fear are emotions that have specific physiologic consequences—such as increased blood pressure and hormonal changes—linked to cardiovascular disease, immune suppression and impaired neurologica... posted on Apr 20, 3595 reads

World's First PhD Program In Happiness
A leading expert on well-being is establishing what he calls the world's first Ph.D program (in Claremont, California) focusing on positive psychology and the analysis of happiness. "Even though the things that make people happy seem ephemeral and immaterial, they are the most important things in life, and they have not been studied very seriously," says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, highly acclaimed a... posted on Apr 22, 6664 reads

Wikinomics & Mass Collaboration
Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics is an approach to put this fear to rest. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. Based on a ... posted on Aug 2, 2034 reads

The Good Pied Piper of Haiti
10 years ago, when American Douglas Perlitz visited Cap-Hantien –- Haiti's second-largest city -– he soon found a trail of street children following him. One child, Wilnaud Pierre, only 8 years old, especially touched his heart. "He pulled me aside and said 'Would you send me to school? I want to learn to read and write.'" Five months later, Perlitz talked to some local priests who offered him... posted on Apr 23, 1496 reads

So That All May Play
Justin Clemens loves baseball. Cerebral palsy may limit this 13-year-old's use of his left arm and both legs, but he plays his favorite sport on the Montgomery Miracle League. With help from parents and coaches he swings at pitches and scoots to first base with his walker. "When he's going for home, he feels like a million bucks," says his mother. For the most part, baseball diamonds are unplayabl... posted on May 4, 1779 reads

A Wiser Earth
Imagine you're on holiday in a city in Thailand and you discover that the area's natural environment is suffering from the effects of tourism. Back home, you decide to support that local Thai environmental movement. But how do you tap into it? WiserEarth, offers an answer: an online database of organizations active on the issues of environmental protection and social justice. For two years, scores... posted on May 6, 2276 reads

11-Year-Old Leukemia Patient's Compassion
Pat Pedraja is a sixth-grader on a mission, and nothing -- not leukemia, not chemotherapy and certainly not a lack of public awareness -- is going to keep him from his goal: adding 2007 new donors to the National Marrow Donor Program Registry and raising $100,000 to pay for their cheek swabs, all by the end of the year. If anybody can accomplish such a task, this 11-year-old with the bubbly person... posted on May 8, 1724 reads

Thinking Outside & Inside The Box
This takes a little outside-and-inside-the-box thinking. What looks like and lives like a house is actually a shipping container. "I call it my bunker," says Rosalynn Kearney of her container home. Used to import almost everything we use and wear, shipping containers are now a new concept in affordable housing. The containers are claimed to be hurricane-proof, fire-resistant. Increasingly too expe... posted on May 9, 4231 reads

Transforming a Village on $3 a Month
When Phulbasin Yadav and 11 other women set aside $3 a month to start a business, skeptical elders turned the town against them. When Ms. Yadav learned to ride a bicycle, traveling between villages to set up health clinics and offer hot meals for children, her husband threw her out of the house, saying she was ignoring her duties at home. Business in Sukuldhain, India had always been a man's world... posted on May 15, 2201 reads

Young Golfer Playing Against The Odds
There is more than one reason that MacKinzie Kline has been generating headlines in the United States lately. The most obvious of them is that she suffers from an incurable heart defect that means she may not live to see her 30th birthday, and yet she has managed to work her way on to the women's professional golf circuit at the tender age of 15. That might be enough to grab anybody's attention. W... posted on May 21, 2309 reads

A Clinic That Gives Prescriptions ... for Action
If you’ve ever experienced acute concern over environmental issues, specialist Dr. Natalie Jeremijenko, of NYU’s Environmental Health Clinic, might be able to help. To be clear, Jeremijenko, 40, has a Ph.D., not an M.D. And the project is part of NYU’s Art Department, not the School of Public Health. Her credentials as an artist and environ-mental activist, however, are solid. Ever since 199... posted on May 29, 1730 reads

Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet
As Ray Anderson was preparing a speech at Interface, a billion dollar carpet title company he founded, he had a stark realization -- "I was running a company that was plundering the earth." While they fully complied with the law, he knew that wasn't enough. So he challenged his employees to find ways to turn it all around, and forestalled objections from his own stockholders. “He bet his enti... posted on May 23, 2253 reads

Your Life (And How You Tell It)
Researchers have long been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, but they have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why. Yet in the past decade a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality.... posted on May 28, 3745 reads

Forgetfulness: A Tool of the Brain
A note to the forgetful: be thankful you don’t remember everything. It means your brain is working properly. According to a new study, the brain only chooses to remember memories it thinks are most relevant, and actively suppresses those that are similar but less used, helping to lessen the cognitive load and prevent confusion. "Whenever you’re engaging in remembering, the brain adapts. It’s... posted on Jun 9, 2555 reads

The Odyssey Project
Students in the Odyssey Project at University of Wisconsin-Madison are near the poverty level, and most are encountering higher education for the first time. As one Odyssey graduate wrote, "I would never have thought that classes in the humanities would change my life forever. I mean 'forever' without exaggeration because writing, art history, American history, literature, and philosophy transport... posted on Jun 20, 1418 reads

Three Men Sailing Against All Odds
An unusual sailing crew is gearing up to compete in the North Sea Yacht Race on 1 July. All three men have lost limbs -- and only have three hands and three feet between them. The race, which takes two to three days, is one of the longest and perhaps most challenging ocean races in Northern Europe, starting in the Norwegian port of Stavanger and finishing in Macduff, Scotland. This audio slideshow... posted on Jun 18, 2160 reads

Familiar Beats in a New School
They trudged in, eyes cast down with no sign of a smile, unsure what to expect.Then they noticed the two drummers playing African beats. One by one, the Burundian children took over the skin-covered drums, cola-nut shakers and rhythm sticks, stomping the floor and dancing to the music. This was how the child refugees were introduced to the Dallas Independent School District. The 16 children had co... posted on Jul 5, 1725 reads

Homeless Shelter Gets Extreme Makeover
When a friend asked her to help women battling homelessness and abuse, Terry Grahl made a visit to their shelter. "It was as if the room was screaming out, 'Save me!' I knew I had found my calling -- a passion and purpose which, I was sure would lead to the transformation of, not just a room, but the lives of many women." Grahl, an interior designer who owns Terry's Enchanted Cottage in Taylor, b... posted on Jun 28, 2965 reads

Not Buying It: The Freegan Movement
The day after New York University's class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of an N.Y.U. dormitory. They had come to take advantage of the university's end-of-the-year move-out, when students'discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb. Ben Ibershoff, a dapper man wearing two bowler hats, unearthed a Sharp television. Autumn Brewster, found a paintin... posted on Jun 30, 1956 reads

The Elders: Veteran Diplomats Unite
Melding serious statesmanship and a dose of audacity, Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, and a clutch of international figures are announcing an alliance to diplomatically tackle the world's most intractable problems. The alliance, unveiled during the events marking Mr Mandela's 89th birthday, is to be called the Elders. It includes the retired Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, th... posted on Jul 20, 1484 reads

The Little Island That Could
It's a two-hour ferry ride to the Danish island of Samso — and it can seem like a trip back through time. But if you look more closely, to visit Samso is to see the future. Samso is an area about 40 square miles long with a permanent population of about 4,000 — all of them living a green dream. Take farmer Erik Andersen. His tractor runs on oil from seed, which he grows. His hot water and powe... posted on Jul 21, 2369 reads

When Was The Last Time You...
"When is the last time you cut someone off in traffic or scared someone with an insistent and angry horn? When was the last time you took the last cart, or cookie, or pool chair and pretended not to look at someone waiting behind you? When was the last time you said no when you could have said yes? When was the last time you cut someone you love with words because you were tired, cranky, hurt, ove... posted on Aug 17, 4336 reads

Why Old Habits Die Hard
Habits help us through the day, eliminating the need to strategize about each tiny step involved in making a frothy latte, driving to work and other complex routines. Bad habits, though, can have a vise grip on both mind and behavior. Notoriously hard to break, they are devilishly easy to resume, as many reformed smokers discover. A study led by Ann Graybiel of MIT now shows why. Important neural ... posted on Aug 16, 3101 reads

What Makes You Happy?
So you're between the ages of 13 and 24. What makes you happy? According to a recent survey the answer is sweet and simple. Spending time with family was the top answer to that open-ended question, according to an extensive survey -- more than 100 questions asked of 1,280 people ages 13-24 -- conducted by The Associated Press and MTV on the nature of happiness among America's young people. Next wa... posted on Aug 21, 3254 reads

Philosophy & Recycling in Albania
Miranda Fejzo is an unlikely person to find standing in the middle of a rubbish heap. Smartly dressed in matching black jacket and skirt, with white high heels, she explains the intricacies of recycling while carefully navigating between piles of discarded plastic bottles and heaps of cardboard and tins."Here comes the rubbish," she says - long, silver coloured fingernails pointing at a battered t... posted on Aug 22, 2300 reads

Walking Across America
32 years ago Peter Jenkins began his first epic journey across the country. He started that trip as a disenchanted young man, so upset by war, politics, and the troubled state of race relations that he was ready to abandon America. An older friend urged him to give the country a closer look. So he began walking in October 1973, starting in Alfred, 300 miles northwest of Manhattan, accompanied by h... posted on Aug 23, 2371 reads

A Clinic for the Little Things that Matter Most
To talk. To be listened to. To unwind. When you are a low-income woman with cancer, it is often the little things -- a caring touch, a steaming cup of herbal tea -- that can make a difference. The Charlotte Maxwell Clinic addresses an invisible problem -- the economic and emotional fallout that cancer can have on low-income women already underserved by the health care system. The clinic -- a volun... posted on Aug 31, 2009 reads

Eighty Year Study On Happiness & Giving
One of the longest-running social-science studies on happiness began in Oakland, California, in the 1920s with 200 people. It combined semi-annual interviews until participants graduated from high school, and has since followed them at intervals of 10 years. An astounding 90 percent of people have stayed in the study, giving it coherence and offering insights into what constitutes a happy life. On... posted on Sep 2, 5956 reads