Sunday, July 11, 2010 Eat to Prevent Cancer  Cancer researcher William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game. Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, July 10, 2010 Kindness Goes Around, and Comes Around  It is so often true that "what goes around, comes around," and that life lessons often walk in through the most unexpected doors. On one hot summer day, a single mother and her son find themselves on a broken down bus. When their fellow elderly passengers grow unbearable hot and uncomfortable, the mother-son duo hand out all their food without a second thought, even though they have no money to spare to buy more. Eventually, they make it to the train station, but only to discover they had missed the last train of the evening! With no other option but to spend a dinner-less night at the station, a stranger nearby shouts, "Hey you two, come over here!..." Read More >>
back to top Friday, July 9, 2010 A Small Act  Chris Mburu feels fortunate to have received an education at all. Growing up in a mud house in Kenya, it seemed unlikely that he or his neighbors would escape a cycle of poverty. Today, Mburu is a Harvard Law School graduate and works as a human rights advocate for the United Nations. How did this happen? A small and consistent act of hope from a teacher in Sweden. Years ago, Hilda Back decided to sponsor a child in Kenya to go to school. While the 15 dollar monthly donation seemed insignificant to her, she kept it up because she thought even a small act was worth performing. Little did she know her small commitment would help educate and empower a whole generation of Kenyan children years later. Mburu started a foundation (named in Back's honor) to give other poor and promising children the same opportunity Back had given him. Their story has even been made into a documentary called "A Small Act," which airs July 12 on HBO. Read More >>
back to top Thursday, July 8, 2010 A Village of Our Future  Tucked away in the small village of Kamikatsu, Japan is a phenomenon that is saving the future of our planet. This township of just over 2,000 residents separates household waste into 34 categories, recycling everything under the kitchen sink: food, phones and even sake bottles! Most likely the first to achieve Japan's mission of a zero waste environment by the year 2020, Kamikatsu emulates hope for a clean, vibrant and sustainable planet. Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, July 7, 2010 The Health Benefits of Generosity  Ever notice a feeling of warm satisfaction from giving someone a gift? Or a sense of joy from treating someone else to a meal? This link between good vibes and good deeds may be more than coincidence, say researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School. In a recent study, participants were given $10 and asked to decide how much of it to share with someone else. Those who gave more money away reported higher levels of happiness- both in hormone levels and questionnaire results. "The moral of the story is that the economic decisions we make can have downstream health consequences," concludes study co-author Lara Aknin. Maybe money can buy happiness after all, if it's given away... Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, July 6, 2010 Five Practices for Cultivating Patience  Patience is one of those qualities that doesn't get much consideration -- especially in our fast-paced 21st century. But there is tremendous wisdom in it. Patience is what helps us let go of an unhelpful obsession with outcomes and with our limited identities. It is a recognition that our reality is in flux and we don't always know what is best. Practiced deeply, patience is what dissolves unexamined reactions and habits of interpretation, allowing us to see things in a way that is more real, more whole, more true. But the trouble with patience is that it usually comes too little, too late. We've already yelled at a loved one, or thrown away months of work in despair. So how do we develop patience before we actually need it? Here are five practical tools to experiment with. Read More >>
back to top Monday, July 5, 2010 The Compliment Guys  "I like your jeans." "I like your brown shoes." "Have a nice day!" Don't you love it when someone says something nice about you? Doesn't that brighten your day? Imagine how wonderful your day would be if someone said something nice about you, just because. Brett Westcott and Cameron Brown, also known as The Compliment Guys at Purdue University, are doing exactly that. "When people come up after they've had a bad day and say thanks for a good compliment, that brightens my whole day," says Cameron. Compliments are so contagious, that the duo even went on a 10-day compliment tour last summer! Read More >>
back to top | 
She's the woman behind Americorps and Obama's Corporation for National and Community Service. Radiating service from White House conference rooms to grassroots nonprofits, Shirley Sagawa is making community service a staple in the United States. Her belief? That it will change the nation, for the better. Named by author Steve Waldman as the "founding mother of the modern service movement," Sagawa has no doubt that volunteers with change America. A modern-day instigator of William James' 1906 "Moral Equivalent of War," she envisions in her latest book: "Imagine a nation that serves... Every town has well-trained disaster response volunteers, and every student can succeed because of extra help... Whole communities are engaged in healthy behaviors." [ 
From 1953 to 1981, a silver-haired woman walked over 25,000 miles on a personal pilgrimage for peace. Crossing the United States seven times with nothing more than a toothbrush, some pamphlets, and a navy sweatshirt, she vowed to "remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food." Leading a fairly ordinary life up through young adulthood, Mildred Norman Ryder died at 72 as "Peace Pilgrim": a woman who transformed everyone and everything along her path. This weekend, her hometown of Egg Harbor, New Jersey will celebrate her life and legacy in honor of her birthday on July 18. [ 
Growing your own food is exciting, not only because you get to see things grow from nothing into ready-to-eat fruits and veggies, but you also don't have to worry about the pesticides they might contain, and you definitely cut down on the miles they (and you) have to travel. But starting a garden can be a daunting task: so many possibilities, water, and weeds. As it turns out, with pretty minimal effort, anyone can be a gardener. From fruits like apples and kumquats, veggies like peppers and cucumbers, and even aloe vera and tea plants can all be grown from a container in your home! [ 
So many things. Katydids telling each other where to look for food, frogs bellowing for a mate and piranhas leaping out of the muddy brown Amazon. And this is how it sounds to a deaf person. Hear the World organization has partnered with Global Explorers to bring 50 mixed hearing students to the Amazon Rainforest to experience sound, empower the deaf. For a group of young adults, the expedition is strikingly still. "We're quiet because we're trying to listen," says 17-year old Jentry Taylor who was born deaf and now listens to the Amazon three times a day through the program's hearing devices. "Down here, you hear something every second," agrees Gary Quenzer. "None of the sounds are annoying. They all make you stop and turn and try to find what it actually is." Imagine what we could all hear and see, if we only take the time to listen. [ 
Susan Schaller's story, comparable to "the Miracle Worker, is still not widely known. Perhaps it's so amazing, it's hard to grasp. How can one understand what it means not to have a language at all? For a man already 27 years old, to be in such a situation was considered completely hopeless. Fortunately, Schaller didn't know the situation was considered hopeless. Instead, she followed her instincts: "One of the things that attracted me to him more than anything else- the intelligence in his eye caught my eye- but more than that, he hadn't given up. I can't imagine going twenty-seven years thinking I was stupid and watching mouths. The most frustrating thing I can imagine. He didn't know what language was. He didn't know what sound was, but he knew something was happening and he wanted to know what that something was." Here is the story of a contemporary miracle. Maybe it's just at the point of giving up where real possibility exists. [ 
When I started this journey, I just wanted to be a carpenter. But I surpassed my wildest dreams and became a builder, a distinction I didn't even know existed when I started. And this realization leads me to one overriding and inescapable truth, that a life well lived must be a creative endeavor. Whatever form that creativity takes whether it's carpentry, building, teaching, raising a family, or writing a book the challenge of looking within ourselves to find that creative element makes us who we are. But chances are, if we are genuinely open to the possibilities of a calling, we will find that that satisfaction will come from someplace far different from where we expected to find it. [ 
