tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-78093242096326412 2012-02-14T04:00:00-06:00 Conscious Living and Giving TypePad tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01157163ccc6970c0163012be6b4970d 2012-02-14T04:00:00-06:00 2012-02-14T04:00:00-06:00

We have a 2005 Apple laptop. It has its struggles. It can’t display things that require flash player. At times you have to pamper it to get on the web. But it has a better keyboard than the newer Apples although it is missing the left arrow button (but that’s not its fault—it has something to do with playing with our dog too close to the computer). Most importantly it still works.

Give Blog tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01157163ccc6970c0168e7206d7a970c 2012-02-13T04:00:00-06:00 2012-02-13T04:00:00-06:00

New York Times—Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say By Sabrina Tavernise Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects. Read the entire article.

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Huffington Post—Childhood Poverty: A View From Abroad By Ross LaJeunesse There are more than five million Americans living and working overseas as teachers, journalists, students or, like me, in business. Expatriates, or "expats" as we're more commonly called, have decided to live abroad for any number of reasons -- out of a sense of adventure, to learn more about the world, to seek fame or fortune, and sometimes expats have left the U.S. because they feel a deeper connection with another country's culture. Read the entire article.

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New York Times—A Mother Grateful to Have a Key to Her Own Place By Mathew R. Warren For months last year, Tiffany Tyler lay awake at night wondering if city marshals would come to her door the next day to evict her and her 10-year-old son. “I was scared,” Ms. Tyler, 30, said. “I couldn’t breathe.” The last time marshals banged on the door, waking her up early one morning, it was in 2001, and her son, Shamair, was a month old. Ms. Tyler was 19 and living with her older sister in Harlem; she said she had no idea...

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Today we feature the Wounded Warrior Project. Here is some information from its website. Mission: To honor and empower Wounded Warriors. Purpose: To raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members. To help injured service members aid and assist each other. To provide unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members. Read more from its website.

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I have a thirteen year old bike. We’ve been through a lot together. I’ve been over the handle bars more times than I have fingers, and like me, as I age, it has a lot of problems. As I contemplated a new bike, I thought about the memories with my bike and also the money it would cost for a new one. I took the bike to a home-based shop in our neighborhood and my bike now feels like it’s new for at least $400 less than that new bike would have cost. I’m sure glad I didn’t replace my...

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New York Times—Homeless Families, Cloaked in Normality By Alan Feuer ON the sixth day she was homeless, Tonya Lewis overslept. She woke in the dark, in Room 6E at the 93rd Avenue Family Residence, a privately run shelter in Jamaica, Queens. It was 4:45 a.m. She was already running late. Rousting her children — Unique, 15, and Jacaery, 2 — from their beds, Ms. Lewis got them dressed and started shoving DVDs and diapers into two bulging tote bags. When the boys were ready — sleepy, sullen, hoodied, backpacked, in hats and winter jackets — she pushed them out the...

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Washington Post—Gates defends focus on high-tech ag in fight against hunger, calls for more money for research By Associated Press Bill Gates has a terse response to criticism that the high-tech solutions he advocates for world hunger are too expensive or bad for the environment: Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve. When he was in high school in the 1960s, people worried there wouldn’t be enough food to feed the world, Gates recalled in his fourth annual letter, which was published online Tuesday. But the “green revolution,” which transformed agriculture with high-yield...

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US News: Report: Americans more generous in giving to charity in 2011 By msnbc.com staff Americans gave a total of nearly $347 billion to charity in 2011, a 7.5 percent increase over 2010, according to a report released Tuesday by Atlas of Giving. Read the article.

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Today we feature The Asia Foundation. Here is some information from its website. At The Asia Foundation, we believe in societies that give people the chance to succeed without regard to gender or circumstance and in governments that respond to all citizens. We believe in the unlimited capacity of knowledge to enlighten, and in the ability of empowered communities to overcome poverty and despair. The Asia Foundation is committed to creating enduring opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region, and to helping Asia's people reach their goals. This is our mission and our promise. Read more from the website of The Asia...

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I’ve had some competitions with my neighbors back in Kentucky about heat. That is, who will be the first one to give and turn on the heat, or in the summer, the air conditioning. This year, despite the fact that I have a disadvantage having moved to a colder climate, I think I won. I have an unfair advantage however. We’ve blogged about our house in the past. It is super-insulated and has huge windows in the front through which we obtain solar gain from the sun. So, it was last Friday night, January 20, when we first turned on...

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Huffington Post—Philanthropy: College Students Get $100,000 To Give Away To Charity They may be accruing debt and saving money on their Ramen-noodle dinners, but some college students will have the chance to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity this year. In an effort to teach university students about the complexities of giving, the Once Upon A Time Foundation gave eight universities between $50,000 and $100,000 to dole out to their philanthropy courses, Yale Daily News reports. Read the entire article.

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New York Times—A Free Legal Clinic That Opens When Class Is Over By Paul Engleman Soon after Dennis Kass started teaching history at a small high school in Little Village four years ago, he put his law degree to use, dispensing free legal advice to students and their families after school. That modest beginning has evolved into the Chicago Law and Education Foundation, a free clinic that has now expanded to eight additional city high schools. Read the entire article.

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Wall Street Journal—Two Years After Quake, Haiti Remains in Distress By Ingrid Arnesen Two years after an earthquake killed an untold number of Haitians, half a million people still live in squalid tent cities and rubble remains where it fell in this ruined capital. That has left many here now blaming not the quake, but a different culprit for the country's woes: the Haitian government. Read the entire article.

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Today we feature the Chicago Law & Education Foundation. One of our good acquaintances is involved with this foundation. Check out this information from it’s website. CLEF mission is to operate and provide long-term support for legal clinics and legal educational initiatives in Chicago Public Schools. CLEF's long-term goal is to establish free legal clinics and relevant education programming in all Chicago Public High Schools, with access to those programs for their respective feeder elementary schools. Read more from the organization’s website.

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