Monday, January 11, 2010

Monday afternoon scramble...

Good Monday to you all. I hope you had nice weekends. A perusal of today's good news stories showed no discernible pattern or theme, so I decided today I would take a cue from "Glee" and do a mash-up.

New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristoff centered his column inches around Costa Rica last week. The many polls/surveys/studies out there have named Costa Ricans as the world's happiest people. It seems no matter which way you slice it, those Central American natives consistently rank at the top of the happy charts. Remarkably, back in 1949 the government decided to disband its army and since then has spent the available funds on wildlife preservation, education and tourism.

A reporter for Australia's ABC News simply couldn't escape her profession on a recent vacation to NYC. Fulfilling a long-held wish to visit the Algonquin Hotel, famous as a haunt for the foremost writers, thinkers and actors of the Roaring '20s, Pip Courtney met a fellow Australian couple celebrating the 25-year anniversary of their engagement. Courtney's article is liberally laced with witticisms from Dorothy Parker, which will make you chuckle. Parker may be the originator of the concept of "funny 'cause it's true."

I recently went over to the dark side and joined Twitter to see what the fuss was all about. The answer: not much - people are not generally as witty as Dorothy Parker, myself included. However, in my Tweet trolling, I came across the following story on The Chef's Cookbook profile about Toni Poulos, who bakes birthday cakes for foster children. Now a mother to seven of her own adopted/foster children, Poulos spends up to $30 per cake and 60 hours a week in her kitchen to produce her gratis cakes. She started the non-profit Cakes for Kids and has made over 200 cakes since.

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