Ya Gotta Have Heart! Individuals and Organizations Who Make a Difference.

[Guest]

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[Jill]

There’s so much, there are so many out there, in this country and in every other, to be touched by, to care about.  May peace and comfort and love, too, come to all who hurt (and to all who care, as well).

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/kentucky-man-buys-kmart-inventory-gives-away-220043176.html


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57437136-10391704/flesh-eating-bacteria-victim-aimee-copeland-on-amputations-lets-do-this/
http://www.facebook.com/AimeeWePrayThatWeGetToSeeThatSmileAgain

[Jill]

http://gma.yahoo.com/paralyzed-teen-fulfills-vow-walk-high-school-graduation-154347779--abc-news-health.html

[Jill]

The video, here, of a couple of little boys who pretty clearly are being “raised right,” almost can’t help but give a person a boost.  I thought it was pretty special.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/brothers-inspire_n_1703034.html?utm_hp_ref=good-news


Not at all related to the preceding except to the extent that the young women featured have demonstrated their own kind of “heart,” in the following two links, you’ll find some great photos, one or more videos you may be inclined to check out, and a fair amount of learning, inspiration, and cause for reflection if you want to take the time.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/07/27/157432980/photos-female-arab-athletes-on-the-rise
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/2cf282dc-cbb4-11e1-911e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz221NfzTCT


EDIT: Not related at all to any of this, but since I'm here, right now, anyway, I decided I'd go ahead and post a couple of pics I saw over at zooborns.com the other day that gave me a smile.  To the extent that anyone might be interested, zooborns just came out with a really wonderful app called ABC Zooborns that displays 2 or 3 pics and I think at least two short videos for each baby animal that's featured.  To give an example of how superlative they are, following is one of the videos they have for baby elephants.  Resist this one if you can!


EDIT #2: Apparently, I’m on a Sunday morning roll, and/or in a major, and very transparent, procrastination surge.  
Just as, at one time, a number of us were captivated by the concept of the PlayPump*, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of the sOccket ball for awhile now.  This is a great story.
Love that it was young women who came up with the idea.  Love the diversity of the group (even just the hopefulness that there is in that!).  Love even the possibility that maybe this could turn into something big.  And love that the people over at the Clinton Initiative thought enough of the project to be willing to give them an extra push.
The promotional video that I’m tacking on for it, I thought, was really well done.

World Cup Exclusive: Women Entrepreneurs Use Soccer Ball to Bring Clean Energy to Developing Nations
Soccket: The Football That Can Produce Electricity

*The ultimate disappointment of the PlayPump, emanating, mostly, from the failure of its creators to consider the inevitable mechanical breakdowns, the need for follow-up and that sufficient attention need be paid and personnel, training, local buy-in, and monies provided to respond to the requirements for sustainability, all that actually served a really useful purpose in PlayPump's unsought role as a cautionary tale for the multitudinous clean water, sanitation and other organizations there are out there that need to attend to similar issues if they have hopes of being anything more than just a scintillating flash in a pan.

[Jill]

Often in the morning, when I’m on a particularly extended computer, email and Internet jag, I’ll have the TV news on in the background.  It allows me to pretend that I’m learning something, that I’m actually doing something of at least a little value instead of completely throwing away my time as goofing off on the Internet often makes me feel I’m doing.

This morning, as I was on it later than I’d wanted to be (it was sometime after 8 a.m.), I flipped onto the “news” show, ABC Good Morning, America* for a few minutes.  I truly “love” Robin Roberts, who, like Rachel Maddow and fewer than a handful of others, really stands out for me both for her humanity (hu-womanity) and her substance, in striking contrast to all the Stepford anchor-fluff artists who nowadays impersonate serious news people.


In any event, Robin Roberts, who not all that long ago apparently withstood a battle with breast cancer, in a couple of weeks will be taking an extended leave to undergo a bone marrow transplant from her sister.  Turns out that after she’d survived the depredations of the fight with breast cancer, she recently was diagnosed as having some rare blood disorder.  Knowing that makes seeing her, these days, all the more poignant.


The reason I’m taking the time to post about all this at all is because when I did flip onto that “news” show, it just so happened that I caught the last two or three minutes of this story.   It was so touching and the people involved so incredibly likeable and sympathetic, that not only did it bring tears to my eyes (and make me think of super-cherished and inexpressibly important friends of mine, one whom I lost to leukemia, the other who survived one of those incredibly scary and risk-filled bone marrow transplants), it just so much made me want to share it.


There are often stories, pretty much in the same vein as this, to the point we become somewhat inured to them and maybe don’t pay all that much attention when we run across them.  I know I don’t.  But this one was so affecting and the people involved were so beautiful to me, I don’t know.  I just thought it was worth posting and giving you a chance to see if you wanted to take the time to check it out.  (You wouldn’t even have to watch the whole video.  You could move the pointer in the video to about the 3 minute 20 second mark or even after, which is where the interview was when I happened upon it). 


It probably goes without saying that I responded to this as strongly as I did, at least in part, because of the sweetness I felt in seeing that not only the two people had been complete strangers (so this seemed to be about total “unselfishness”), but also very likely because it was an instance of members of two different races coming together in caring, compassion, and connection.  And of course, I always love that whenever I get to see it.

This other link/video is of one I found and watched after seeing the other story.  After watching this second one and the other one, even if a person had never heard of Robin Roberts before, I don’t know how anyone could help but wish this woman well.


* I don’t think I ever watched that show (coming from the days of Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, etc., I generally won’t watch fluffy “news” shows that seem more geared to audience pandering and pleasing management and the advertisers than they are devoted to objectively disseminating important news stories) before I’d read on the Internet about the raw deal that one of the woman anchors on a competing “news” show had been given by her network and her fellow anchor.  So, partly in solidarity with her but mostly, because I just really love one of the staples on Good Morning, America, Robin Roberts, those occasional times I’ll have the news on after 7:30 in the morning, I’ll sometimes turn the channel to catch a little of her.

[Jill]

This  is the world that I want to live in.  Loved this story and all its players.
And here’s another article about it.  I got a kick out of learning where Ra Rim had worked* in order to save money for the trip. Made me think of a TV program that was popular in the last century, "What's My Line?"

*Information that you’ll be astounded you’ve managed to live your entire lives up til now, without:
Curious about what people would do with those things, I just now stopped everything to look it up.  Turns out that that which Ra Rim packed for a living at the little plant in Maine was apparently “… the first species in which sperm cells were proven to fertilize ova.”  
On top of that, as it happens, both the male and female gonads of the species are considered to be culinary delicacies in many parts of the world.  No sex discrimination here.  Thanks, Wikipedia


EDIT: Not in any way related to the above, or actually, to this thread, particularly, either, but….
Just now came across this story, and both because of a background that often had me dealing with people in prisons and because of a fascination with nearly all things that might come under a rubric of “And what will they think of next?!?,” I thought this article was pretty interesting.  And, according to the article, it all began with “an absent-minded Google search…”
Ha!

[Jill]

A Particularly Satisfying Story (at least, for me) On A Number Of Different Fronts
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/10/11/florida-boy-fights-his-right-attend-local-school
"... I like the 'you can do it' better than the 'you cannot do it'..."


And this, not even tangentially related, but quite fun for animal lovers and for animal lovers, in particular, who, like the stars of the video at the following link, can think of absolutely no reason why we can't all get along, especially if we just put all our minds and hearts to it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/interspecies-animal-friendships_n_1556674.html

[Jill]

Life can be pretty fascinating if you just open your mind to it.....

Mosquito Maven Takes Bites For Malaria Research


Good ol’ Google.  
Just on the off chance, you type in the words, “mosquito song,” and it turns out there's a whole Mosquito Song world out there....

Mosquitoes by Bryant Oden
(Composer of the inimitable “ The Duck Song,” memorialized in the Other Pleasures thread).  (And also, while doing my life-altering research this morning, I discovered Bryant Oden wrote another classic, soon to be beloved by dog owners/dog lovers everywhere, called, “He Wags His Butt.”)



I Don’t Like Mosquitoes (It begins at the 2 minutes, 21 seconds mark)



The Mosquito Song by Queens of the Stone Age


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EDIT: As Unrelated As Unrelated Can Be:
I’m having a progressively more difficult time as the days go by and the stories about the depredations in Syria proliferate.  And I/we go on doing nothing, or doing whatever we’re doing, and that, pretty obliviously, just like the horse that was scratching his rear up against a tree while Icarus was falling to his death in Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts”.

Too much like the rest of the world watching/not watching what was going on in Nazi Germany, in Rwanda, in Central and South America, in Palestine and Pakistan, and in too many other places, almost as though we don’t care.  At least, not enough.  

Problem is that I haven’t a clue what to do about it.  I can only think about what if it were us, or our families and friends, who were being massacred while the world looked on with maybe a “Tsk, Tsk”, if even that, to offer us in solace.  

I have to believe there's a better answer, somewhere.
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EDIT #2: Also Unrelated, But A Bit More UpBeat Than The Last Edit:
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/01/168346591/peace-pilgrims-28-year-walk-for-a-meaningful-way-of-life

[Jill]

I’ve mentioned Creative Visions Foundation here before.  The more I learn about it, the more impressed I become.  


It was started by a mom and her daughter who were grieving the loss of their son and brother, Dan Eldon, a photojournalist who’d lost his life when filming in Somalia.  They’d wanted to take their loss and to do something meaningful and hopeful with it, and damn, if they haven’t done really an unbelievable and wonder-filled job honoring Dan’s memory and accomplishing all kinds of joyous things in their efforts to do just exactly that.  


The first time I came across their organization was when I discovered this really wonderful documentary that I’d loved, Soldiers of Peace, about youth activists in Colombia who’d been risking their lives and their families’ lives in this incredibly courageous quest for peace.


More recently, I found out that Creative Visions has been involved in two other projects that have particularly engaged me, Landfill Harmonic and Living On One (Dollar A Day), all three of which I’ve previously highlighted here.


I had occasion to return to the Creative Visions website where I started clicking on some of the other numerous projects that they’re helping to underwrite, at least, support in some way or other, whether financially or otherwise.  


One of them, the one entitled, True Connection, (check out the 4 plus minute video) especially its Healing Arts program, got me thinking that if even only a few of the other more than 150 “CVF Creative Activist Projects” that CV is involved in are as neat as this one seems to be, then there’s a whole treasure trove of information and inspiration waiting for us to discover it, simply by using their home page as a starting off point.
http://www.creativevisions.org/get-involved/cap/true-connection