America seems to be an ever more divided, bitter country. Lost amid those divisions is the story of how a down-on-its-luck town in Texas struck its own little blow for unity. A little more than a year ago, this city of 25,000 — overwhelmingly white and Christian — made a Muslim outsider their mayor.
Muslim Mayor Repairs, and Wins, Texans’ Hearts
DC Commuters Have Happy Mondays Thanks to Man Waving Uplifting Signs
Bleary-eyed drivers entering Washington, DC on Monday mornings, are jolted into happiness by people waving with signs with optimistic slogans from the side of the road.
29-year-old Massoud Adibpour, who started the project called “Make DC Smile”, aims to get hundreds of honks from workers who might otherwise be blue because it’s Monday.
Held by Massoud and 4 other volunteers, the signs were scrawled with uplifting messages: “Honk if you love someone!”; “Be happy”; “Don’t be so hard on yourself”; and, “Smile!”
On the morning this photo was taken, the cheerful pedestrians were greeted by “a cacophony of honks.”
(READ the interview with Massoud or read the story w/ photos in the Washington Post)
Photo by IvanPriceDesign.com, Rocky Mount, NC
DC Commuters Have Happy Mondays Thanks to Man Waving Uplifting Signs
Bleary-eyed drivers entering Washington, DC on Monday mornings, are jolted into happiness by people waving with signs with optimistic slogans from the side of the road.
29-year-old Massoud Adibpour, who started the project called “Make DC Smile”, aims to get hundreds of honks from workers who might otherwise be blue because it’s Monday.
Held by Massoud and 4 other volunteers, the signs were scrawled with uplifting messages: “Honk if you love someone!”; “Be happy”; “Don’t be so hard on yourself”; and, “Smile!”
CONTEST: What Good News Means to Me, Prizes for 4 Best Entries
Fifteen years ago on Labor Day weekend I clicked the button for the first time that uploaded the Good News Network website, allowing anyone in the world to see it on the internet. I’ll never forget the thrill I felt as a simple click opened my voice to the world.
At that time, Google had not been invented. There was no YouTube, no social media networks. There was not a single blog.
“Good News” soon came to mean much more to me than aggregating stories from around the world, or publishing my own metaphysical essays, like “The Mist on the Lake is Like our own Consciousness.”
Focusing on good news became a philosophy for my life, a way to ‘temper’ my temperament. I came to realize how important it was to focus on the good in my children, rather than pointing out their mistakes.
To mark the website’s 15th anniversary, I am launching a contest called, “What ‘Good News’ Means to Me”.
I’ve got some SUPER life-enhancing prizes to award for my favorite entries. Two of the celebrities donating items (Carol and Francis) are professionals I have worked with who initiated wonderful breakthroughs during their personal sessions with me. Their talents, as well as Darin’s coaching, could help anyone to find their purpose in life, or find clarity and meaning in the more troubled areas of their lives. (Like the mist on the lake finds sunlight.)
To win, just write a few paragraphs or a short story about how the Good News Network contributes to your own philosophy of life or, more generally, what “good news” means to you. It ends SOON — on Friday, September 7 at midnight — so get your entries in right away!
Winners Can Choose From Among These Gifts:
• Personalized Astrological Natal Chart by Francis Dunnery
No ordinary Astrologer, Francis Dunnery is a renown singer/songwriter/guitarist and a true intuitive who supports people to reach for their deepest potential. His 12-15 page Astrological reports are often dotted with the myths of Jungian psychology, but full of common sense insights that can alter the course of anyone’s life for the better. (You can order your own report, or schedule a personal telephone consultation at francisdunnery.com.) Hear his anthem, I Believe I Can Change My World, on YouTube.
• (7) One-Hour Coaching Sessions with R. Darin Hollingsworth
Use these 7 one-hour sessions to launch a transformational journey that explores your goals, passions, possibilities, and intentions. Darin Hollingsworth, of Odonata Coaching & Consulting, is passionate about helping individuals to exceed their potential through work based on gratitude, accountability & encouragement. Clients transform their lives to attract to themselves the things they want most as Darin shares “a new language” of gratitude, intention, presence, possibility and change. (OdonataCoaching.com)
• Numerology Life Chart by author Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.
Carol Adrienne offers this 25-page numerology Primary Life Chart, a personal profile based on analyzing your birth name and birthdate. This detailed chart describes your over-all life purpose—including your most important personality strengths, career path and destiny, life lessons, and major life turning points— and includes a month- by-month forecast for 2013. Adrienne is an internationally-known author, numerologist, and life coach. Her books, including the Oprah-hailed “Purpose of Your Life: Finding Your Place in the World Using Synchronicity, Intuition, and Uncommon Sense” is a must-read best-seller. (Get free numerology weekly messages at CarolAdrienne.com.
• Handmade Artisan’s Ceramic Pottery Piece
Lola Arts offers this classic round ceramic butter dish. Lola Arts, a small one woman business in Portland, Maine, specializes in functional pottery that is simple in design, light in weight, and a colorful addition to your home. (www.LolaArts.com)
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Email your stories to Geri (or post in comments section below). These entries must NOT be more than 500 words. Your stories may be reprinted on the Good News Network and your name and email address is required to receive your gift. I look forward to hearing your interpretation of good news!
5 Simple Tips to Boost Your Confidence
Confidence can improve your life in many ways, but it isn’t always easy to practice. Becoming a confident person is a choice you make, and a process you may need to work at in order to end up where you want to be.
You may want the improvements that self-confidence can bring to your life – a higher salary and more friends – but it’s hard to know exactly what to do to make yourself more confident. I offer you these tips for becoming more confident. See what kind of a difference they can make in your life.
5 Simple Tips to Boost Your Confidence
Confidence can improve your life in many ways, but it isn’t always easy to practice. Becoming a confident person is a choice you make, and a process you may need to work at in order to end up where you want to be.
You may want the improvements that self-confidence can bring to your life – a higher salary and more friends – but it’s hard to know exactly what to do to make yourself more confident. I offer you these tips for becoming more confident. See what kind of a difference they can make in your life.
New York’s New Environmental ‘Hero’ –The Oyster
Marine scientists, planners and government officials say millions of mollusks planted in polluted waters off New York and other cities could go a long way toward cleaning up America’s urban environment. The oyster and other shellfish can slurp up toxins and eliminate decades of dirt.
The oyster is the perfect aquatic engineer for the job. It pumps water to feed, retains any polluted particles and releases the rest — purified. Each one filters about 50 gallons of water a day.
World Record Message in Bottle Found After 98 Years
A Scottish skipper has set a new world record after finding a message in a bottle 98 years after it was released.
Not only that, he found the bottle while skippering the same fishing boat which had set the previous record, the Shetland-based vessel Copious.
The bottle was one of hundreds released by the Scottish government in order to document the sea currents around the UK.
(READ the story in the BBC)
Photo from the Scottish government via AP
How Brazil’s Good Governance Created High Growth, Political Freedom, and Greater Income Equality
In the first of four installments of a series on good governance, SPIEGEL explores how Brazil has become one of globalization’s success stories. A rigorous battle against corruption and poverty has ushered in new freedoms, growth, and increasing equality, winning the country respect around the world.
Blind Orangutan Receives Cataract Surgery, Sees her Babies for First Time
A formerly blind orangutan has been given the remarkable gift of being able to see her baby twins for the first time after undergoing cataract surgery in the first such operation in Indonesia.
Prior to her surgery on Monday afternoon, Gober, a 40-year-old orangutan, had spent at least the last four years blind due to cataracts leading.
She was rescued in North Sumatra province in late 2008 by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program.
Recently she gave birth in their breeding program.
Martin Sheen Thanks His Newspaper Delivery Lady: App Honors Workers by Saying “Thanks”
“Thanks for the work you do” is heard all too rarely, says the AFL-CIO, which has launched a creative new digital application to help everyone — including Martin Sheen — say thanks to the workers in their lives this Labor Day.
On the new app, from the AFL-CIO, participants can send personalized thank you cards through Facebook or email to those people whose work makes life easier for all of us. The online app also features thank-you videos from leaders, including actor Martin Sheen, recognizing the work of people they rely on every day. (Sheen honors Ann Hernandez, who delivers his Los Angeles Times newspaper every day.) Viewers can create and upload their own video thank-you.
Pending US Home Sales Touch Two-year High
Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose to their highest level in more than two years in July, an industry group said on Wednesday, suggesting the housing market recovery was gaining traction.
The number of contracts signed in July, increased 2.4 percent to the highest level since April 2010.
40,000 Pounds of Potatoes Piled High in a Sweet Giveaway
Working with area farmers who have excess produce at harvest time, the Love and Cherish Family Center of Rock Hill, South Carolina organized a huge giveaway this week inviting local residents to fill bags and buckets at the foot of a mountain of sweet potatos.
Hundreds of families had only reduced the pile of potatoes by a few feet the first day of the gleaning giveaway.
Postal Service Reduces Energy Use by 26%
Since 2003, the United States Postal Service has reduced its energy use by 26 percent. Energy efficiency improvements at the USPS’s 33,000 buildings have saved enough energy to meet the power needs of 90,000 households for a year.
In 2011, alone, the USPS saved $22 million with its 1 trillion BTU reduction in energy use.
Largest Green Roof in Oregon to be Planted Atop a Walmart
Walmart is winning over some Portland-area naysayers with its construction of a new store in North Portland that will be home to not only the largest green roof in the green-happy city of Portland, but the largest green roof in the entire state of Oregon.
When completed, the vegetated, carbon dioxide-absorbing roof atop the Hayden Meadows Walmart will measure 40,600 square feet.
Navy Lieutenant Swims To Gold In London Paralympics, Months After Injury
Less than one year after being blinded by an explosion in Afghanistan, U.S. swimmer Bradley Snyder has won a gold medal in the men’s 100m freestyle at the 2012 Paralympics.
He swam even faster during an earlier heat, setting a Paralympic record with a time of 57.18. To put that time in perspective, it would have put Snyder in first place in one of the early men’s 100m freestyle heats at the London Olympics.
Rare Blue Moon Tonight Coincides With Neil Armstrong Memorial Service
The memorial service for astronaut Neil Armstrong being held today, August 31, coincides with the day of the rare blue moon, a fitting tribute to the first man to walk on the lunar surface.
A blue moon occurs about every three years when four full moons appear in a single season.
Google Co-founder Quietly Buying Up Property and Charging Below-Market Rent
Soviet-born Sergey Brin is already a world-changer. The Google co-founder has donated millions of dollars to charity and given us public technology tools that make us smarter.
But one of the most touching efforts comes from his small real estate holding firm called Passerelle Investment Company.
Australians Implant “World First” Bionic Eye
Australian scientists said Thursday they had successfully implanted a “world first” bionic eye prototype, describing it as a major breakthrough for the visually impaired.
Bionic Vision Australia, a government-funded science consortium, said it had surgically installed an “early prototype” robotic eye in a woman with hereditary sight loss caused by degenerative retinitis pigmentosa.
Stolen Laptop Leads to Generous Outreach Toward Poor Teen
A Boston, man who found his stolen computer in the hands of a teenager, instead of getting angry, decided to raise money to buy the boy from the housing projects a new laptop.
Fran Harrington, a web designer, used the Apple technology on his Macbook to see who was using his laptop after it was stolen. It turns out the boy’s low-income parents had bought the computer not knowing it was stolen.