He is an exceptional student with a near perfect SAT score, but 17-year-old Alex Chivescu needed to find a foster family who would be willing to accept him into their home, or be moved from the school district — and away from friends — that had served him so well during troubling times.
To a couple dozen foster parents in the region he wrote the most important letter of his life.
Watch the CBS News video below, or read the story from Steve Hartman here.
As many low-income families continue to struggle with rising costs of everyday living expenses, a power company in Ohio launched a $1 million utility assistance program to help low-income families statewide. American Electric Power Ohio has joined the Neighbor to Neighbor Program in partnership with the non-profit Dollar Energy Fund and began distributing utility assistance grants on May 4.
A family of four earning up to $44,100 per year in income is eligible for the program. To qualify, households must have made a sincere effort of payment on their electric bill in the last 90 days and have a back balance. A network of Community Based Organizations throughout Ohio are providing application assistance. Full eligibility guidelines and application instructions can be found at www.dollarenergyfund.org.
“Today’s economy combined with the cold winter has force many of our neighbors to face large utility balances this spring,” said Chad Quinn, COO of Dollar Energy Fund. “AEP Ohio’s generous donation to the Neighbor to Neighbor Program will help thousands of low-income families keep safe electric service.”
AEP Ohio provides electricity to nearly 1.5 million customers of major AEP subsidiaries Columbus Southern Power Company and Ohio Power Company in Ohio, and Wheeling Power Company in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. AEP Ohio is based in Gahanna, Ohio. The company serves all or part of 61 counties in Ohio and two in West Virginia.
Dollar Energy Fund was founded in 1983 and has grown to become the fourth largest hardship fund in the United States. Dollar Energy Fund is a 501(c)3 organization operating in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. Throughout its history, the organization has provided over $55 million in utility assistance grants to over 225,000 low-income families and individuals.
It was encouraging to see record numbers of graduates at Western Carolina University, so many that two commencement ceremonies were needed. But it’s the character of the graduates that holds the most hope.
Fewer of them appear to be chasing the dollar, and more appear to be chasing something higher. More students are looking to careers in service, government and public policy.
Dare we say it? Yes. There’s a whiff of a new morality in the air, a generation with a sense of justice, a determination to serve and to produce a better country, not just land a bigger paycheck.
Indiana became the first state to pass a major electronics recycling law this year, and the nineteenth state to pass a law creating a statewide electronics program.
Eighteen of the 19 states — California, Maine, Maryland, Washington, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York City, Oklahoma, Virginia, West Virginia, Missouri, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Illinois, Michigan and now, Indiana — have adopted ‘producer takeback’ laws, requiring the manufacturers to pay for the collection and recycling of old products.
In 1976 I met Bernie Tiger in freshman drafting class at Madison, NJ High School. He didn’t play football that year, his family was in too much turmoil — a sign of things to come. But as a sophomore, either a guidance counselor or his mother suggested he join the team. He’d never played or had much exposure to the sport, but he made it through the season. Our friendship, most importantly, endured.
Bernie Tiger had a tough life even before he moved. Bernie’s dad, a rugged Morristown cop, was diagnosed with colon cancer but he refused treatment, thinking medicine was for “sissies”. He fought the pain with grit, but the illness created financial hardship for the family.
Bernie, shuttled amongst relatives, found little time for sports or fun. He worked. He was fifteen when his dad died.
His mom remarried and moved the family to Pennsylvania where his stepfather and Bernie immediately butted heads.
Eventually, Bernie was banished. At seventeen, he was homeless. For three horrible nights he slept in the snow, seeking work during the day. He lived at a Salvation Army for six months.
But Bernie bounced back. He got a job. He played bass in a band. He earned his GED. He protected himself. He saw others succeed and thought he could too. He tested himself. His success validated those suspicions.
He met his wife. He got a better job. They had a son and committed to raising him better.
Unbeknownst to me, Bernie relocated to the Massachusetts town right next to mine. We saw each other in a Blockbuster Video store. We were the two tallest people in the room. We stared. I nodded, and thought: “this guy looks like Bernie Tiger”, but I couldn’t believe it.
After Blockbuster, I returned home and found an email from Bernie. He wrote that he saw me at Blockbuster, then did a web search to confirm. Our kids were in the same class. He reintroduced himself and asked if I remembered him from Madison, NJ.
I remembered, of course. As sophomores, we were members of our 1977 State Championship Football Team. We were the biggest guys on the field, and stood next to each other in the team photo. Bernie let me wear his helmet after mine cracked against Summit. His was the only one big enough.
(Photo: Matt, center top, and Bernie, to the right – #77 and 79)
Our moms were Madison natives. We each experienced a terminally ill parent (his dad, my mom). Each of those died of cancer when we were teenagers and our surviving parent remarried within the year, causing common transition challenges.
Bernie did not graduate with our Madison High class. We never knew what happened to him. The championship season gloss faded fast with his new trials.
In January, via Facebook, I reconnected with Mark Monica, youngest son of my legendary high school coach, Ted Monica. As quarterback, he guided us to our third consecutive, undefeated, NJ State Championship title, and Top NJ Ranking, during our 1979 senior year. We even attended kindergarten together.
As seniors, we were football co-captains. He was one of the guys who stuck by me when my mom succumbed in her eight year battle with melanoma a few days before our state championship playoff game.
I mentioned a lunch plan with Bernie Tiger to Mark and he wrote back immediately, with a startling piece of information.
He was helping his dad organize his football belongings a few months earlier. He came across a lone wrapped ring box with “Tiger”, #79, on the sleeve under the wrapping. He remembered Bernie as a good guy, but like myself, never knew what happened to him. (Photo, top: Bernie Tiger’s ring, engraved with name and jersey number, 79)
I wrote Mark that it’d be great to surprise Bernie. “Can you imagine giving this thing to him 32 years later? Call me at the office tomorrow.”
Mark followed this up with: “Ring went out today via FedEx Next Day Air. You should have it tomorrow morning by 10:30AM. Good luck!”
On January 29, 2009, I surprised Bernie Tiger with his 1977 High School Football State Championship Ring, at a restaurant ironically named, “How on Earth” in Mattapoisett, MA, more than 31 years later, and four states away from the original green turf with cheering crowds where it all transpired.
It fit. I claim that Bernie almost passed out — or at least got teary. (Bernie refutes this.)
A new national study in Canada says teens are experiencing better ties with their parents “than any teen cohort in the past 30 years.”
Teens are reporting a greater degree of understanding between themselves and their parents: just 39 per cent are troubled about not being understood, compared to 58 per cent in 1992. Weekly arguments are down from 52 percent a decade ago to 42 per cent.
Close to 80 percent of youth are receiving high levels of enjoyment from their moms, 75 percent from dads, up about 10 points in the past 8 years.
(Read more from the Vancouver Sun)
Two years ago a large survey sample in the U.S. pointed to the same trend:
Poll: What Makes Teens Happy? … Family Ties
If you’re going to buy a satellite dish, why not get one that can heat water and cool your home? That’s the thinking behind evice, which consists of a honeycomb-like layer of hexagonal mirrors placed on top of a satellite dish. The system comes outfitted with a PVC tube, receiver, and evacuated tube–so it can both receive TV signals and concentrate sunlight onto an optical collector to heat water.
The $300 dish generates more energy than a standard water heater.
From Washington to Oregon, to Vermont, states across the country are tallying lower crime rates over the past few years. Even in 2009, amidst economic downturn, cities like Los Angeles, Dallas and New York have seen a dramatic reduction in violent crime.
“In much of Los Angeles County and elsewhere in Southern California crime has dropped significantly so far this year, despite an economic meltdown that has pushed unemployment into double digits, imploded the housing market and shuttered countless businesses,” exclaimed the LA Times last month.
New York City’s crime rate for the first three months of 2009 was the lowest in more than 40 years, which “defied fears that the sinking economy might send the city back into the bad old days of rampant murders and rough streets,” said the New York Daily News three weeks ago.
From Washington to Oregon, to Vermont, states across the country are tallying lower crime rates over the past few years. Even in 2009, amidst economic downturn, cities like Los Angeles, Dallas and New York have seen a dramatic reduction in violent crime.
“In much of Los Angeles County and elsewhere in Southern California crime has dropped significantly so far this year, despite an economic meltdown that has pushed unemployment into double digits, imploded the housing market and shuttered countless businesses,” exclaimed the LA Times last month.
New York City’s crime rate for the first three months of 2009 was the lowest in more than 40 years, which “defied fears that the sinking economy might send the city back into the bad old days of rampant murders and rough streets,” said the New York Daily News three weeks ago.
India’s election results Saturday deserve to be celebrated on more than one count. The country has pulled back from the trend of recent decades: fragmentation of parties along religious, caste, language and regional lines.
Also we should be happy with the outcome: a decisive swing to the Congress Party and the government it leads under the present Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh ensures an India that will pursue inclusive, secular policies and steady economic reform at home, and co-operative foreign policies with its Western and Asian friends.
(Continue Reading in Sydney Morning Herald)
Thanks to Bill Filthorn for calling in with the story!
The pride of the nation known as the cradle of civilization, reopened in February almost six years after its ancient treasures were looted in the chaotic aftermath of the US-led invasion. Take a peak at the prestigious Iraq Museum with this new video report by AFP.
Video may take a moment to load, or view it at theNewsRoom.com
Raising hopes for the development of an AIDS vaccine that might actually work, researchers report they were able to protect monkeys against infection with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the primate version of HIV.
Calling it “a national treasure,” President Barack Obama on Tuesday issued an executive order to bring the full weight of the federal government behind cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. The executive order calls for the Environmental Protection Agency and six other federal agencies to coordinate the scattered federal tools and resources to help the neighboring states speed cleanup of the nation’s largest estuary.
Standing in front of the Potomac River, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson presented the executive order, which creates the Federal Leadership Committee for the Chesapeake Bay and institutes a bay-wide set of strict pollution caps backed by state action plans and federal consequences to assure progress.
The caps include sharp reductions in pollutants that impact the bay; robust use of existing authorities; increased funding support, and unrivaled scientific and technical assistance.
(UPI) — A dramatic change in Kuwait’s conservative society has been revealed with the first elections of women to its National Assembly, analysts said.
The third try for female candidates running for the Assembly, only four years after women obtained the right to run for office, proved to be the charm Saturday when four of them were voted in, the Kuwait news agency KUNA reported.
(photo of Emirati women breaking tradition by traveling their county)
In a project being billed as the first of its kind, the city of Sanford, Fla., has found a new way to deal with its never-ending stream of wastewater sludge: converting it into renewable energy.
The system will also save the city north of Orlando big bucks in sludge disposal and natural gas costs.
(Continue reading in GreenBiz.com)
For Patagonia, everyday is Bike To Work Day. More than half the employees who work there travel to the Reno, Nevada business by some form other than by driving a car.
On top of burning calories and saving money, Patagonia makes green commuting easy for them, even rewarding them to leave their cars at home.
The building is equipped with showers and lockers, plus dozens of bike racks. The company offers incentives to employees who bike, walk, carpool, even ski to work.
They can spend their earned credits on clothing and products at the Patagonia outlet store.
A migration route for almost half the world’s whale species which contains vast amounts of rare coral will be preserved in the Savu Sea within the borders of the newest and largest marine park in Southeast Asia.
The reserve will be set up within the area known as the Coral Triangle with the help of The Nature Conservancy and WWF to lead efforts in stamping out illegal practices such as dynamite and cyanide fishing, Indonesia’s fisheries minister announced this week.
How many t-shirts in your closet are feeding malnourished children? A non-profit group has set out to change that with their launch of The Orphan Collection, a new series of t-shirts designed by African orphans.
Each t-shirt sold from The Orphan Collection provides the financial support needed to feed an orphan or vulnerable child for one month and provide the child with a new school uniform, school supplies and meals for the school year.
The Orphan Collection t-shirts are all limited editions, printed with eco-friendly water-based inks, and are available in women, men and kids sizes. The designs are derived from artwork by orphans in Obanjenie, South Africa and other developing nations. With each t-shirt, supporters receive a tag with the name of an orphan that CommonThreadz is able to feed for a month with that purchase. Supporters are also immortalized on the CommonThreadz Honor Wall in Africa.
Instead of tossing that bag of Doritos in the trash, consider sending it back to Frito-Lay. It might just get turned into a tote bag.
Frito-Lay has announced that it’s opening 1,000 collection sites in the U.S. for used snack product packaging. For every bag donated, the company will give two cents to your charity of choice. The packaging itself will be upcycled by Terracycle into pencil cases, tote bags, and purses that will be sold in chain retailers like Wal-Mart. Eventually, the bags could be used to make green building materials.
Terracycle and Frito Lay hope that their ambitious program will divert over five million bags from landfills by the end of 2009.
(Read more from Ariel Schwartz blog in Fast Company)
Calling it “An historic day for an historic river,” the EPA marked the start of dredging of the Upper Hudson River to remove PCB-contaminated sediment on Friday.
A river’s edge ceremony launched the beginning of the first phase of the six-year dredging project near Roger’s Island in Fort Edward, NY.
“The start of Hudson River dredging is a symbol of victory for the environment and for its river communities,” said George Pavlou, Acting EPA Regional Administrator. “Dredging will help restore the health of the river, and will one day allow people to eat fish that are caught between Fort Edward and Albany.”
