Jonnie Wright stood on an Iowa street corner in the freezing cold on Christmas Eve disguised as a homeless man. Anyone who rolled down their window to give him a donation received a surprise in a sealed envelope.
The Des Moines businessman gave away nearly $1,000 and the money he received went to the local homeless shelter. He said the stunt to reward people for their kindness had been on his ‘bucket list’ of things he wanted to do before he died.
A 10 year old Missouri boy has spent the last month shoveling his driveway, and everyone else’s driveways. And he has not asked for any compensation.
Jimmy Friel has shoveled for more than a dozen of his neighbors because many of them are elderly and he doesn’t want them slipping and falling.
In a blog post, Bill Gates shared his thoughts on the best news of 2013, especially in his chosen philanthropic fields of global health.
“If you measure progress by the number of children who die of preventable causes, or by the number of people who escape extreme poverty—as I do,” says Gates, “then 2013 was definitely a good year.”
Whether a teen is struggling with grief after a family death, or a life-changing diagnosis or homelessness, the ARTS program gives them a world of their own to adjust and grow through trouble. ARTS stands for A Reason To Survive, and those reasons include dance, music, painting, poetry, knitting, sculpting or anything creative.
It was started by a man, Matt D’Arrigo, whose mother and sister were both diagnosed with cancer when he was a young man. Painting in his room brought positive transformation and he later found his calling — helping others to get the same sort of therapy when they need it most.
The curse of cataracts leads to blindness in millions of the world’s poorest adults. After years of darkness, they are now seeing the light, and giving thanks to the American doctor who brought them the gift of sight.
He is a doctor changing lives overnight. Geoff Tabin founded a charity, the Himalayan Cataract Project, that sends flying clinics into remote parts of Asia and Africa to carry out a simple, but transformational eye operation.
(WATCH the video below or READ the ITN story via the PBS NewsHour)
General Mills said it has stopped using genetically modified ingredients in its popular breakfast cereal Cheerios.
The US food manufacturer hopes that using non-GM cornstarch and non-GM sugar and oats will firm up customer loyalty in the face of growing opposition to such additives.
(READ the full story from New York Daily News)
Global manufacturing ended 2013 on a strong note as major exporters like Japan, Germany, and Italy posted their fastest growth in years, and China saw no major slowdown in manufacturing output. (Reuters)
Native peoples’ efforts to reintroduce fading species and restore habitats has unified environmentalists across regions — the Indigenous and non-indigenous alike.
Among the 2013 environmental victories, several species have bounced back, including a record return of Chinook salmon to the Columbia River. A healthy wolf population flourished in Yellowstone National Park, strengthening the wildlife web around it. And, tribes were instrumental in pulling the Black-Footed Ferrets back from the brink.
Here are some of the more notable wins, and the tribes involved in making them happen.
(READ the list at Indian Country Today)
Before you kick your dying Christmas tree to the curb, consider this: Members of the conservation group Trout Unlimited would love to turn that tree into fish habitat.
On three Saturdays in January, the Tualatin Valley chapter of Trout Unlimited will be collecting Christmas tree donations at two locations in the Portland metropolitan area. Later, they’ll place the trees into a side channel of the Necanicum River near Seaside, where they will provide predator protection and food sources for baby coho salmon.
The group is entering the third year of a program called Christmas for Coho. It’s is one of many groups across the country turning old Christmas trees into fish habitat.
Similar projects have taken place in California, Missouri, Ohio and Louisiana.
(READ the story with links from OPB -Oregon Public Broadcasting)
All 52 passengers who were stranded aboard an ice-locked ship in Antarctica for more than a week were rescued by helicopter early Thursday, officials said.
The Akademic Shokalskiy sent out a distress call on Christmas morning after it became surrounded by sea ice while on a scientific mission more than 1,700 miles south of Australia.
On Thursday, a helicopter from a Chinese ice-breaking ship Xue Long — or Snow Dragon — transported groups from a makeshift helipad which the passengers had stomped out in the ice near the ship.
(READ the story from NBC News)
Thanks to public safety awareness, lightning strikes killed fewer people in the U.S. last year than in any other year on record, according to federal officials at NOAA. Compared to 70 years ago when 432 people were struck and killed, the 2013 total reached just 23. (NBC)
Five days before Christmas, when Diane Agricola arrived at work in Glendale, Ohio, people gathered around the nativity scene next door where there was an injured dog curled up in the hay around the manger.
The office workers named him Gabrielle, and persevered to find him medical care. The first vet’s office was closed. The second refused help because they didn’t know if the dog was dangerous. Later, a Cincinnati pit bull rescue group visited the dog at the third vet’s office and promised to find a good home.
Instead of choosing to spend the holidays relaxing at home, British adventurist Maria Leijerstam, a 35 year-old former management consultant, just broke two world records by becoming the first person to cycle to the South Pole in record time.
Leijerstam, who battled freezing Antarctic temperatures and whiteouts, beat out two male rivals on the grueling 500 mile, which took just 10 days.
(READ the full story with photos, at Inhabitat)
Even if you don’t personally buy or own stocks, it is likely that someone in your family has a retirement or pension plan that has earned a lot of money in 2013 now that the global recession is behind us and stocks are at all-time highs.
The stock market wrapped up its best year since 1997, showering investors with an almost 30% gain in a record-breaking run that might finally have convinced investors scared off by the 2008 financial crisis that stocks remain a viable investment alternative.
(READ the full story from USA Today)
New York City had fewer murders in 2013 than any year in its recorded history, according to a statement from the mayor’s office, which announced a 20 percent drop from even last year’s record low.
The less-than-a-murder-a-day rate is a dramatic change from 2001, when there were 641 murders in New York City, and from 1991, when the murder rate skyrocketed to a record-high 2,245.
(READ the story from Huffington Post)
The holidays can be stressful. For many, it’s a time that challenges their sense of self-worth. One Portland billboard offers an important reminder: “You are enough.”
The third in a series of monthly positive messages on Portland billboards, the bright yellow placard proclaims, “You are enough,” and can be seen on Glisan and 27th Ave.
At the age of four, some boys love super heroes. Some love football. Some love everything. Mycal Bickings of Levittown, Pennsylvania has only one passion — trash trucks — and your heart will melt when you see the relationship he has with the trash collectors who come to his home every Thursday. His father made a video in honor of the boy’s “Buddies” because the town hired a new waste company and last week’s was the last garbage pickup at Mycal’s house.
It started two years ago when Mycal started waiting by the window on the scheduled trash day. Trashmen Derrick Hill and Camay Ulysse began noticing the little boy and waving. His mother was so touched that she wrote a note to Republic Services, praising the two employees for their excellent work and caring attitude.
On their last day of pick-up, the workers in their bright yellow vests allowed the boy to throw some of the trash into the back of the truck and lifted him up to start the compactor machine, while his parents shot some video.
After high fives and hugs — the twirling around kind of hugs — the two drove away waving to the youngster clinging to his toy trash truck in the driveway. Even though they won’t be picking up the Bickings’ trash, Hill and Ulysse promised to return to see their ‘buddy’.
(WATCH the video below from Mycal’s dad)
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I bet Jaxxyn Wood’s parents are glad Santa brought their 12-year-old son a new video game for Christmas.
He was enthralled in one of the game’s “important mission” at 3:30 in the morning when he smelled foul smoke coming from the kitchen. If he hadn’t been awake, the nine people sleeping upstairs might have been trapped by a raging fire, because there were no smoke detectors in the house.
Because household appliances are more energy efficient than ever, Americans’ electricity use is at the lowest level its been in a decade. Power usage declined in 2013 for the third year in a row, to 10,819 kilowatt-hours per household — the lowest level since 2001. (AP)
Saying goodbye to 2013 feels bittersweet. When we remember the crime and tragedies of the year, we tend to forget all the good things. Here, then, to help you remember the good, and restore your faith in people and institutions, we give you our annual Top Ten Good News of 2013.
Counting down from #10…
Last year, while in first grade, Dylan Siegel’s best friend was diagnosed with a rare liver disorder that doesn’t have a cure. Dylan, six years old at the time, was determined to do something about that. He wrote a book, “Chocolate Bar,” and it has already raised $400,000 to help find a cure, much to the delight of scientists researching the rare glycogen storage disease type 1B. (See the story here.)
Educated consumers have driven huge corporations in 2013 to remove hazardous chemicals from cosmetics, household cleaners and personal care products. In February, Johnson & Johnson executives were handed 30,000 signatures from consumers who, instead of complaining, were praising the company for being one of the world’s largest producers of such products to make good on a pledge to remove toxic chemicals from its baby products. In September Wal-Mart announced that it will require suppliers to disclose and eventually phase out nearly 10 toxins from such products. Similarly, Procter & Gamble cited consumer preferences as the reason it will eliminate hormone-like phthalates and the antibacterial triclosan, which is a known endocrine disruptor, from all its products.
For more than 30 years, Albert Lexie took two buses from his home in Monessen, Pennsylvania traveling to his part-time job to shine shoes. Since 1981, until he retired this month, he donated all his tips — more than $200,000 — to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
(See the story here.)
7) Perseverance Personified: Diana Nyad Completes Historic Cuba to Florida SwimAfter trying and failing five times in 35 years, Diane Nyad finally achieved her lifelong ambition of swimming from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. The 64-year-old endurance swimmer, through sheer force of will, made it to Key West, Florida swimming in open ocean for 53 hours, 100 miles from Havana. (See the story here.)
“Avrey Walker is cancer free! A total remission!” her father announced in April. Avrey was the seventh child with an aggressive form of leukemia to receive an experimental therapy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the second whose response has resulted in a complete recovery. Thanks to a novel cell therapy her immune cells were reprogrammed to rapidly destroy targets in the cancer cells they would otherwise overlook. Using a similar technique at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center this Spring, five adults with a type of blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia were in remission following treatment with genetically engineered immune cells from their own blood. One person’s tumors disappeared in just eight days. A further 11 people have been treated, almost all of them with the same outcome. Several trials for other cancers are also showing the same promise.
After twice conducting four days of continuous measurement on a controversial energy unit, a group of independent scientists reportedly confirmed the existence of unexplained energy production via a process formerly known as “cold fusion” but now named LENR for Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction. In simple terms, the E-Cat devices (Energy Catalyzers) are similar to nuclear reactors but without any radioactivity or hazardous waste, and according to a top NASA scientist, could literally solve our twin problems of climate and energy.
4) Pay It Forward Phenomenon GrowsA trend was gaining strength this year throughout Canada and the US, as generous patrons from coffee and sandwich shop drive-throughs spread anonymous kindness to fellow restaurant-goers by bankrolling other people’s meals– paying their orders before they even get to the window. One store counted 55 drivers in a row paying for another, instead of just taking the free breakfast. In July, the pay-it-forward trend took a marvelous twist when a copycat customer in three different Canadian cities handed over around $900 to pay for coffee and snacks. Another branch of this same phenomenon is the Suspended Coffee movement started in Europe and resurging across the globe with strangers paying for a cup of coffee that anyone can later claim. (See the trend reported here.)
Three times in 2013, homeless men amazed the rest of us when they went beyond what would be expected of people living on the street, returning valuable belongings to their owners. Some onlookers were so touched by their integrity they created online fundraisers that collected more than one hundred thousand dollars — first, for Billy Ray Harris in Missouri who returned a diamond wedding ring, and for a Boston man who found a backpack with $42K inside. Each time, the heartwarming generosity of strangers matched the unexpected honesty of the homeless man. In November, an Atlanta homeless man made the effort to search four different hotels hoping to return a lost wallet he found in a dumpster. He received a five-night stay in the owner’s hotel plus a handsome reward. Even better, thanks to news reports, he and Billy Ray were reunited with grateful family members who hadn’t seen them in years. (See more examples of how honesty pays, here.)
He was named TIME’s Man of the Year and has gained millions of fans for the Catholic church, which had been battered by sex abuse scandals in recent years. The new Pontiff replaced Pope Benedict who wore fancy shoes and chose to live in luxury until his surprising resignation in March. Pope Francis, in contrast, has shown humility in his role as church leader and called for dedicated service toward the weakest among us. He has ramped up the Vatican office charged with bringing direct solace to the poor and suffering — even sometimes accompanying his chief alms-giver onto the streets of Rome at night. The world was touched by photos taken in November when he stopped to pray and lay his hands on a severely disfigured man whose skin was covered in painful tumors. To celebrate Easter, Pope Francis continued what has been a ritual for him as a cardinal and archbishop in Argentina, but something no other papal leader before had done. He disregarded church tradition and washed the feet, not of famous priests, but of two young girls — a Serbian Muslim and Italian Catholic, along with ten other young inmates at a nearby juvenile detention center. It was the first time a pope included females in the Easter rite. His no-frills spontaneous style, coupled with his focus on mercy and modesty has changed the face of Christianity in the new millennium to one that answers the question, “What would Jesus do?”
And, the #1 best good news story of the year….
The Pakistani girl who campaigned for the rights of all children to get an education, and for her activism was shot in the head by Taliban militants in October 2012, celebrated her 16th birthday by delivering a defiant speech at the United Nations. Speaking to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the 500 youth and dignitaries gathered in July, Malala Yousafzai said that the gunmen could not silence her because knowledge and education are more powerful than their bullets.
Ms. Yousafzai was featured on the April cover of TIME magazine as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”. She was the winner of Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and was nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize — the youngest person and first girl ever considered for the honor. She showed us the meaning of courage as she healed her own wounds and vowed to continue trying to heal her nation’s illiteracy.
Now, let’s raise a glass to hail the best for 2014: May good bless us all!
