Bad to Good: You can get here from there. Ready, Willing and Able trainees in Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J. Let’s call him Joe. When I stopped to chat with him on the street one hot summer day, he was sweeping up New York City’s detritus, dressed in the familiar blue pants and shirt of Ready, Willing & Able. Joe told me he got out of prison four months ago. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he said dolefully, “but once I got out the situation was pretty dismal.” That’s when he turned to the Doe Fund, as tens of thousands of homeless men and ex-cons have done since 1990. One of some 700 current m... posted on Jan 4 2015 (31,120 reads)

my email one morning I found a note from Nipun Mehta: We’ve lined up an incredible guest for the July 5th Awakin Call, artist Lily Yeh, and we were wondering if you were available to interview?  I quickly Googled Lily Yeh and yes, I would be available. I’ve done a few other Awakin Calls and, thanks to the remarkable guests, each one has been inspiring. Awakin Calls are one of ServiceSpace’s several avenues for spreading social nourishment, and the guests are always well chosen. Writing now, some months after the conversation with Lily, I find myself struggling for a description that will capture my own experience of it. The language one t... posted on Feb 22 2015 (25,381 reads)

world may sound slightly dismal from certain vantage points. In the United States, a large amount of money is devoted to incarceration compared to education. California spends $47,421 per inmate, as opposed to $11,420 per student. The latest report from Alliance for Excellent Education states, “The nation could save as much as $18.5 billion in annual crime costs if the high school male graduation rate increased by only 5 percentage points.” But I would like to invite you to our little world in a suburban city within the Los Angeles County. We are like a community within a community. This is our public school adventure…. Wisdom from 10-Year-Olds I am someo... posted on Feb 27 2015 (19,508 reads)

studies are suggesting that music can be more powerful than medication. When I gave birth to my first-born, I listened to CDs of classical music in the hospital. I figured that music would help calm me and distract me from the pain. You might use music to distract yourself from painful or stressful situations, too. Or perhaps you’ve listened to music while studying or working out, hoping to up your performance. Though you may sense that music helps you feel better somehow, only recently has science begun to figure out why that is. Neuroscientists have discovered that listening to music heightens positive emotion through the reward centers of our brain, stimulating hi... posted on Mar 17 2015 (31,217 reads)

back at 10 years of writing about the science of human goodness for Greater Good, Jeremy Adam Smith discovers that the bad and good—and the inner and outer—go hand in hand. I’ve been covering the science of human goodness, off and on, for almost 10 years. In that time, I’ve seen a dramatic transformation in the way scientists understand how and why we love, thank, empathize, cooperate, and care for each other. Of course, “goodness” doesn’t seem like a very scientific concept. It sounds downright squishy to many people, and thus unworthy of study. But you can count acts of goodness—and all science begins with counting. It&rsquo... posted on May 24 2015 (15,162 reads)

by U.S. Department of Education Kyle Schwartz, an elementary school teacher in Denver, recently came up with an activity for her third-grade class that went viral. Employed at a school where 92 percent of kids qualify for free or reduced lunch , Schwartz was looking for a way to better understand her students. She handed out notecards and asked them to finish this sentence: “I wish my teacher knew…” The results were heart-wrenching: Although it’s a minor problem in comparison to what some of Schwartz’s students are going through, to this day I still wish my teachers had known how hard it was for me to give presentations. ... posted on May 28 2015 (27,309 reads)

and golden, was burning. Suddenly all the newspapers, the television programs were aware of them. Newspapers were filled with their story. The storytellers, the neighborhood and the city are now in a whole new process together. When I returned home to a different group in the USA we made a story about the transformation of an arsonist, which we sent down to them in Brazil.  Anne: What a powerful story. Nancy: We shall see how all this evolves. Their peace birds were flying and images of fiery transformation were living in their midst as they met this drama. And like the Iroquois nations, we had been working in a council circle all the time, listening to each other in new wa... posted on Jun 27 2015 (17,531 reads)

Ward Mailliard’s students had a chance to visit Desmond Tutu in South Africa, one of them asked, "Bishop Tutu, what was it like to hold Nelson Mandela's hand as he was introduced as the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa?" "Oooo, that's something you can't describe," Desmond Tutu spontaneously remarked. And then quietly added, "I had a conversation with God and said, 'This is enough. Thank you.'" How can we engage with that which can't be described? In our incredibly rich circle of 40 educators, we probed into the question of "Cultivating Compassion Quotient." The challenge with a qu... posted on Aug 14 2015 (20,265 reads)

Control Dubbed the “fear collector” by Modern Weekly, Elman describes how what began as an experimental exercise evolved into an ongoing creative undertaking. “It didn’t take me long to get past any fears I had about pumping something out and putting it out there. The good, the bad, and the ugly—I posted them all.” The subsequent pieces range from the fear of moths to the fear of peeing in front of others. She always follows her gut, creating high-impact images through the use of vibrant, screaming color. The majority of her pieces include passages from actual submissions while others feature what is called “asemic writing.” This kind o... posted on Sep 17 2015 (9,811 reads)

GEORGE, Ont. — It may only be October, but a terminally ill seven-year-old boy in southern Ontario had a white Christmas Saturday evening. Doctors have said they didn't know if Evan Leversage, of St. George, Ont., would live to see this holiday season, so his town rallied around him to give him a final Christmas parade. By Saturday afternoon, the ground outside his home was blanketed in artificial snow. There were ornaments in the trees and a sign that read "Santa, stop here'' in the window. A snow machine brought a level of authenticity that is hard to come by even on December 25. Evan has had an inoperable brain tumour since he was just two-years... posted on Nov 7 2015 (11,083 reads)

speeds us away from the present moment, expressing a wish to be in the future because we think we’re going to be late. To counter it, Master Alexander teacher Walter Carrington told his students to repeat each time they begin an action: “I have time.”He tells us that on his visit to the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, where horses and riders are trained to move in unison, the director ordered the circling students to break into a canter, adding, “What do you say, gentlemen?” And they all replied together, “I have time.” Try it yourself sometime when you’re in a hurry. Send yourself a message to delay action for a nano-second before ju... posted on Dec 3 2015 (21,813 reads)

courtesy Lava Mae)  If you woke up this morning and showered in the privacy of your own bathroom, consider yourself lucky: America's nearly 600,000 homeless people often don't have a clean place to clean up. But in San Francisco, where the number of homeless has risen seven percent in the last decade, a non-profit organization is putting bathrooms on wheels and driving them to those in need. The group Lava Mae, whose name loosely translates to "wash me" in Spanish, is retrofitting decommissioned city buses with ensuite bathrooms and bringing them into neighborhoods like the Castro, the Mission and the Tenderloin, currently... posted on Jan 6 2016 (11,518 reads)

to class one day, one of us (Laura) saw a young student crying and waiting for his mother to arrive—he had split his chin while playing. When Laura got to class, the other students were very upset and afraid for their friend, full of questions about what would happen to him. Laura decided to ask the class how they could help him. “Caring practice!” exclaimed one of the children—and they all sat in a circle offering support and well wishes. The children immediately calmed and they continued with their lesson. Young students make "peace wands" as part of the Center for Healthy Minds' Kindness Curriculum.Image courtesy of the Center for Health... posted on Feb 10 2016 (32,377 reads)

from the Huffington Post: On March 2, 2016, my 11-year-old brother was hit by a truck while crossing the street. The trauma knocked him unconscious, and the damage to his brain quickly stopped his breathing. Paramedics gave him CPR and doctors helped him breathe, but it was clear that he wasn’t coming back. Because of his condition, we asked about the possibility of donating part of him to help others. Its what he would have wanted, being the person that he was, and if you are the lucky child who gets his heart, you should know what you can expect. *** Eric’s heart was the biggest part of him. He loved more than normal people. He seemed to ha... posted on Apr 1 2016 (10,319 reads)

Find meaning and purpose Creating and Recalling Positive Events reminds us that pleasure isn’t the only path to bliss; meaning can also bring us happiness, albeit a quieter and more reflective kind. In the Meaningful Photos practice, you take pictures of things that are meaningful to you and reflect on them. Over the course of a week, look out for sources of meaning in your life—family members, favorite spots, childhood mementos—and capture about nine or ten different images of them. At the end of the week, spend an hour reflecting on them: What does each photo represent, and why is it meaningful to you? Jot down some of those thoughts if it’s helpful. Ami... posted on Apr 29 2016 (69,756 reads)

crack sellers, loonies and ex-convicts travel on the bus." This summed up the main message I read on the internet while researching bus travel in the United States, in preparation for a road trip that I was embarking on with a friend. Additionally: it is likely that the bus won’t show up. And if it does, it will break down. Coming from a place where public transport is a norm, and going to a place 'built for cars' -- not even mentioning the many other biases reflected in the comments -- I decided to take the reviews with a huge pinch of salt and bought the bus tickets. About a month later my friend and I were at the Minneapolis Greyhound terminal, ca... posted on May 27 2016 (14,177 reads)

have long known this. Sleep deprived they watch, on occasion awe-struck, as their four-year-old marvels at every object in the world, in a perpetual state of awe, peppering them with endless questions of “why?”. Biographers routinely discover this in their studies of innovators. Awe drives people to paradigm-shifting discoveries and new technologies. Such was the case of Darwin, Muir, and Einstein. Our studies at Berkeley are finding that simply watching short videos of expansive images of the Earth leads people to come up with more original examples when asked to name items from a certain category (e.g., “furniture”), to find greater interest in abstract paintings... posted on Jun 2 2016 (17,009 reads)

science as a human discipline, and they longed for the larger culture to see the value of the scientific enterprise and to celebrate it and enjoy it, in the way we enjoy music and literature. What many of them said is that people are able to enjoy music even if they couldn’t have written it and wouldn’t be able to read it. In the last 5-10 years, I’ve seen this incredible cultural shift. Things like the Human Genome Project and the Hubble telescope, which brought amazing images of the galaxy into our living rooms, have contributed to our sense of awe. We’re morphing to this place where science and scientists and scientific ideas are much more celebrated at the h... posted on Aug 15 2016 (12,086 reads)

Malloy’s father was in Army Intelligence and assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Shanghai when Malloy was an infant. When Chiang Kai-shek fled China three years later, in 1949, Malloy’s family was the last one out of Shanghai on a plane. From there they went to the Philippines during the Huk rebellion. And then there was Java and Borneo and jungle living. By the time Malloy was seventeen, he had moved forty-four times. In his young life as a rolling stone, Malloy learned to rely on himself. Whatever allies and friends he might have begun to cultivate in one place were always torn away by his constant displacement. In schools in New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Oakla... posted on Aug 16 2016 (15,911 reads)

starts to speak, softly and in beautiful Tamil. Now and again he joins in, with a sly sentence here, a funny line there. They are sharing the story of their lives with a roomful of strangers. Before they started no one in the audience knew who they were. By the close of the evening- no one would be able to forget. Manohar is a scientist-writer-artist, an innovator with a restless intelligence and vivid imagination. He grew up in the Madurai of the 1940s, a schoolboy at large, roaming the city under the great gopurams (temple towers) of Goddess Meenakshi. Couple on Wedding Day Mahema, his wife, is an engaging person, lively and articulate. She was ... posted on Sep 10 2016 (20,945 reads)