The Happiness Santa Fe Initiative kicked off its Sustainable Happiness Week on Saturday at the Santa Fe Farmers Market with a formal city proclamation, music, hugs and, of course, a message board where people could write down the things that bring them joy.
One of the driving forces behind the project is Dr. Merle Lefkoff, who was invited last year by the Prime Minister of Bhutan to help promote that country’s “Gross National Happiness” index at the United Nations.
Optimism has been good for Bert Jacobs, who along with his brother John, co-founded Life is good in 1989.
The lifestyle and clothing brand, built around Jake – a smiling, somewhat crudely drawn elongated smiley face with a huge grin and a jaunty beret – started with the pair peddling T-shirts on the streets of Boston. It has grown from the two brothers sleeping in a van while they sold T-shirts door-to-door on college campuses to a $100 million business built around the idea of spreading optimism.
Hundreds of California youngsters got the chance to experience a live NBA basketball game for the first time after the athletes themselves reached out to community groups with stacks of free tickets.
Golden State Warriors players Andris Bierdrins, Andrew Bogut, Draymond Green, Jarrett Jack, Richard Jefferson, David Lee, and Klay Thompson bought 50-to-100 tickets each, and donated them to local groups in San Francisco.
Kimberly Mitchell’s life story has always been missing a few important pages — like how she ended up in an orphanage in 1970’s Vietnam with war raging.
“If you’re an adopted child, you always want to know — did your mother, did your father want you?” Kim says.
She finally knows the story and got to thank the soldier who rescued her — and named her — in 1972.
(READ the story from Steve Hartman at CBS)
The horrid green fluorescent lamps in offices and schools could be a thing of the past.
Lighting company Philips has developed an LED lamp that it describes as “the world’s most energy-efficient” — twice as efficient as those currently used in offices and industry around the world. The tube fixture offers the same amount of light while cutting the carbon emissions in half.
A 10-year-old boy who lives in L.A.’s inner-city has never been on an airplane, but that hasn’t stopped him from dreaming of becoming an astronaut when he grows up.
He was moved to tears when he saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour fly over his school on its way to its new home at the California Science Center and even more excited when he could walk around the gargantuan space craft at the museum, touching tires that flew in space.
Bullied every day for years because of his lisp, Josh Yandt and his family moved to London, Ontario, in 2011. Determined not to be “put in a box” by his new classmates, the remarkable young man dramatically changed the trajectory of his life with one small idea: he would hold open the door at school each day.
It was his chance to break out of a depression-filled past. He held the door open for hundreds of teenagers that first morning – and every morning since. At first they didn’t know what to make of the stranger who quietly offered them greetings day after day. But then, something happened.
A photo posted on Reddit has gone viral for its depiction of a loyal dog waiting for their deceased dad on the driver’s seat of his tow-truck. The photo caption says their father died in June, but the dog still waits for him every day in the vehicle he used to drive.
The truck is still used to move cars on their impound lot, according to the poster AmericanBulldag.
An Armstrong BC woman named Karel Nordstrom has launched an international search for the mystery man who paid for her and her late-husband’s wedding 54 years ago in England. Karel and Tom Nordstrom were young and broke students when they threw a reception at a restaurant on a shoestring budget. When they went to pay they were told that a fellow diner in the restaurant had already paid.
A team of conservationists have uncovered a hidden population of around 200 of the world’s rarest Bornean orangutans in Malaysian Borneo.
The sub-species Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus is listed as the most severely threatened orangutan worldwide with a total of between 3,000-4,500 animals, of which 2,000 live in the Batang Ai National Park and Lanjak-Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary in Sarawak.
The orangutans were found in an area of about 14,000 hectares (140 sq km) and the Sarawak government has pledged protection.
Mexico said on April 11 that killings linked to organized crime fell 14 percent in the first four months of the presidency of Enrique Pena Nieto, who has vowed to reduce murder, kidnapping, and extortion. (Reuters)
From the back seat of a New York City taxicab, complaints about drivers flow effortlessly.
But about twice a day, taxi passengers in New York take time to tell the city about some exemplary deeds.
The drivers’ deeds include leaving the cab to confront the assailant of a pedestrian, returning a diamond ring, and caring for a college student after a mugging.
(READ the full story in the NY Times)
It took more than 60 years, but an Army chaplain who died as a prisoner during the Korean War will be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama on Thursday.
Capt. Emil Kapaun, who was a Catholic priest serving with the 3rd Battalion, will be honored for “extraordinary heroism”, for bravery and service to others — both on the battlefield and in prison following his capture by enemy troops in November 1950.
Since the November election, 240 California prisoners facing potential life sentences have been set free. That’s because voters changed California’s tough three strikes sentencing law, which sent thousands of people to prison for terms of 25 years to life for minor, nonviolent crimes.
The ballot initiative’s success is due in no small part to Sue Reams. Her son was one of those released, after 17 years in prison.
But she isn’t done fighting having gained her son’s freedom. She believes that the initiative didn’t go far enough.
“For me this has become a way of life,” she says. “People are [still] in [prison] for stealing baby food, for stupid things. And they don’t deserve a life sentence for that.”
(READ the full story from NPR News – WATCH an interview with Sue below)
Seven years ago, Evie Branan suffered a stroke that left her in a semi-coma. In May of 2011, she tumbled out of bed, bumped her head and woke up. Her first words: “I want to go to a Bob Seger concert.”
Tonight in Flint, Michigan, a limousine is going to pull up to her nursing home and take the 79 year-old patient to see Bob Seger. Not only that, she will get to meet him.
Since leaving his job as Microsoft’s China business development director in 1999 and dedicating his life to improving global literacy, New York-based John Wood has put books in the hands of more than 7.8 million children in 10 countries in Asia and Africa.
His charity, Room to Read, has built more than 14,600 libraries and 1,500 schools in 12 years.
So is he happy? “Extremely. Extremely,” he told me recently when he was in Vancouver to promote his new book, Creating Room to Read: A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy
(READ the story in the Vancouver Sun)
A bipartisan group of senators has struck a deal to expand gun background checks to all commercial sales — whether at gun shows, via the Internet or in any circumstance involving paid advertising, according to Senate aides familiar with the talks.
The amendment to the guns legislation already proposed in the Senate would not cover private transactions between individuals, unless there was advertising or an online service involved. It is more stringent than the current law, which requires checks only when purchases are made through a licensed dealer.
An overwhelmingly majority of American voters — 91 percent — support universal gun background checks, according to a poll from Quinnipiac University released last week, and other similar surveys conducted this year.
(READ the full story in the Washington Post)
An Oregon man pinned by his overturned tractor said his teenage daughters saved his life by miraculously lifting the 3,000-pound machine.
Jeff Smith was pulling a stump from his garden in the rural outskirts of Lebanon last week when his tractor flipped upside down pinning him beneath its steering wheel.
Regular family suppers contribute to good mental health in adolescents, according to a study co-authored by McGill University professor Frank Elgar. Despite the fact that teens may squirm under the barrage of parental questioning, there are benefits to these family meals — regardless of whether or not they can easily talk to their parents.
“More frequent family dinners related to fewer emotional and behavioral problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviors towards others and higher life satisfaction,” says Elgar, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, whose research centers on social inequalities in health and family influences on child mental health.
A speedy horse named Metro Meteor won $300,000 over his career on the track. Now he’s picked up a new vocation.
Forced to retire after knee injuries, he was given a new life when adopted by artist Ron Krajewski and his wife, Wendy.
The equine was constantly moving his head around, so Ron put a paintbrush in his mouth. The 9-year-old thoroughbred is now painting to benefit other horses in need.
