Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink...

In honor of World Water Day, I've decided to do a post on gratitude since the abundance of clean water we have should make those of us in the West extremely grateful we live here.

Aussie web news site The Mosman Daily profiled 94 year-old Anne Parcell. The grandmother of five is completely independent and even drives to her local nursing home to visit the residents there. Parcell began her volunteering back in 1955 as a social hostess before moving on to work with the blind and deaf, the homeless and the Red Cross. A quote from the story notes she is grateful for her volunteer work as it gives her a "new lease on life." Some of us nearly three-quarters her age should be shamed by that.

As math has never been my strong suit, I won't even try to figure out the fraction of Anne Parcell's age represented by the middle school students in the following Tampa Bay Online article. As part of Lenten festivities, Catholic school students in sixth and eighth grades participated in Operation Rice Bowl. Catholic Charities organizes this every year: Instead of a regular meal, substitute a meat-less meal and donate what you would have spent on the regular meal to Operation Rice Bowl. And the lesson is not lost on the pre- and teenagers: student Jodie Anderson said, "I'm eating this meal for lunch today, and it may not be much, but at least I know I'll have a regular meal for dinner tonight. Other kids won't be so lucky. I've learned not to take what I have for granted."

In professional sports, you tend to see an even split between spoiled athletes and grateful ones. However, as Yahoo! reported, former New Orleans Saint Scott Fujita just scored one for Team Grateful. Traded to the Cleveland Browns after winning the Superbowl, Fujita donated half his championship check to Haitian relief efforts and to coastal restoration in New Orleans. He and his family wanted to "protect" the city and residents they cared so much about.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports)

Happy Thanksgiving Week 4...

Happy Black Friday everyone! I hope you are all relaxing after wonderful Thanksgivings with family and/or friends. I'm going to round out this week with one last thankful thought and Thanksgiving-themed story.

Today I am grateful for all the little things. So many times they can be the ones that bog us down, so we don't really have a great impression of them. But the flip side of that is, sometimes the little things are the best. For example, today there was no traffic getting to work AND it's raining so I don't regret not taking the day off. : )

In that spirit of gentle irony, I'll move onto my story for this morning from MSNBC. Earlier this week the news giant reported that employees from Goldman Sachs - one of the Wall Street nasties - performed community service over the holiday. The Salvation Army served over 10,000 meals in New York City yesterday, and employees from the investment firm were on hand...to take out the trash.

(Photo courtesy of MSNBC)

Happy Thanksgiving Week 2...

Today's gratitude belongs to my parents. They field crazy phone calls from me, well, at all hours really, and they have always put me first even when I didn't realize it and/or was a total brat about it. I've gotten better at realizing when they do it at the expense of themselves, but I'm still working on the brat part, so thanks for putting up with that too. : ) They've been okay with me traipsing around the world alone and with people they don't know without uttering a peep; so thanks for giving me roots and wings (along with the occasional infusion of cash). You're the best!

The story featured today comes from the Trenton Times. It highlights 17 year-old Lindsey Curewitz's efforts to single-handedly restock the Trenton Free Library. She began culling 100 books off her own shelves to clear some space but that sparked the idea to start a book drive among family and friends. Helped along by her brother, she canvassed the neighborhood and beyond to collect 25,000 books and DVDs, ranging from children's stories to books on tape and adult non-fiction. Curewitz far outstripped the largest prior donation to the Free Library, a total of 300 books.

Happy Thanksgiving Week...

Seeing how Thanksgiving is this Thursday (and I'm actually getting to take off for the holiday!), I thought I'd celebrate Turkey Day all week long.

Each day I'm going to write one thing I'm grateful for and then post a link to a Thanksgiving- or gratitude-themed story.

So here goes for today...

I'm grateful for the ability to immediately talk to faraway friends. Both living far from my childhood friends and having college and post-collegiate friends flung all over the world, I'm grateful for the means to catch up with them in real-time without having to pay an arm and a leg. Catch up with and, in one case, check on - Matt In Iraq, I'm talking to you here. So yes, I guess I am grateful for Facebook and AIM and GChat.

Today's story spotlight is shined on Tammy the Turnpike Turkey. My friends from New Jersey hate it when other people find out they live in the Garden State and then proceed to ask: "Which exit?" Well Tammy can actually answer that question; well, she could if she could speak. NBC New York reported on our gal, who had made her home on exit 14B. Having parked at the Jersey City exit, Tammy eluded Turnpike authorities for quite some time before being captured by NJ state officials. Tammy had learned to negotiate traffic but was causing some trouble for motorists who had to hit the brakes when she fancied crossing the street. She is going to live in the Popcorn Park Zoo with a male companion named Gobbler to keep her company.

(Photo courtesy of NBC News New York)

Other people's happy thoughts...

When I was little and my mom and I traded happy thoughts at bedtime, we would always start with "MY happy thought...", putting the emphasis on what was important to us. Looking through the stories today, I saw a lot of what other people were grateful for and decided to feature that.

Helenair.com posted a story about two University of Montana graduates who formed Grateful Nation, a fund that sounds the children of fallen soldiers to college in the UM system for free. Once a child who is enrolled in the program turns 12, he or she is matched with a UM professor/mentor who helps ready the child for college. The founders of the program were stunned to learn how little federal assistance the families of those killed in action receive and wanted to do something to show the American people's support and appreciation for the nation's defenders.

The Synapse, the student paper of UC-San Francisco, recently published a story about a wellness program the university is running to get its students to focus on their physical, emotional and mental well-being. Part of the "Passport to Wellness" requires the students to write down three things they are grateful for, and the story in the paper lists a sample of the responses.

This last one isn't exactly an explication of what someone is grateful for, but I had to include it. I'm still a little leery of YouTube unless someone sends me a direct link to something I HAVE to see, so apparently I missed the phenomenon that is the GratiDudes. These guys promote people finding their "inner Super Powers" and how embracing gratitude can change your life. They are so gungho about it, they've created a dance and posted a video on YouTube. My favorite part is near the middle when two guys doing the dance nearly fall out of a tree... And by the way, I found the reference to this on a NASCAR blog...