Pop! goes the weasel...

The rise of social networking gave birth to flash mobs. The next generation of raves (and the next-next generation of '60s Happenings), flash mobs organize on Facebook or Twitter or through email; all the participants show up at a given place at the given time and do whatever activity was planned. This YouTube video of a crowd of Romans singing a song from "Glee" in a mall is proof that, while usually benign, flash mobs are also usually a little pointless.

However, the New York Times Magazine profiled a group called a "crop mob" that is actually very handy. Run on the same premise as a flash mob, crop mobs mobilize to aid young, small farmers in getting specific tasks done. Forty to 50 20-somethings gather at the chosen farm for a day to box thousands of pounds of produce or prep greenhouses or even to clear rocks and brush from a field. The volunteers focus on building a community, and the only thing it costs the farmer is lunch.

Something akin to the flash mob but is decidedly more bourgeois is the pop up. Be it a store or a restaurant, the new trend in launching a business or testing out its feasibility is to "pop up" in someone else's spot. Practically always unannounced and often changing spots nightly, the pop up appeals to those who aspire to be "in the know." The LA Times published an article on the rules for finding pop ups as well as highlighting some of the more popular ones in New York. Hint: to find 'em, you gotta follow 'em. Score another for social networking...

(Photo courtesy of The New York Times Magazine)

MLK still speaks today...

I hope everyone had a great long weekend. It is a fabulous thing to have a short work/school week in January so close to the Christmas/New Years holidays. It does help you get through the dead of winter, particularly when you wake up to an unexpected 4 inches of snow on your car (yes, I'm talking to you Boston).

But I think the meaning behind having a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. has been lost. I was among many who worked yesterday, and in catching up on my tasks, I missed most of the articles and stories on the man we were supposed to be recognizing. The day just sort of passed.

The above video is admittedly long. But it is worth turning off the iTunes, ignoring Twitter feeds and getting off Facebook to watch and absorb the scenes captured. In this speech, and in all his speeches, Dr. King exhorted his fellow citizens to be great. Have courage, stand up and do what needs to be done to right a wrong.

The crisis in Haiti is not one simply of the question of race, though that played its part a long time ago. But the basic message Martin Luther King, Jr. preached nearly 50 years ago can be applied here: Have courage, stand up and do what needs to be done to right a wrong.

September 11th and Hurricane Katrina showed disasters of this magnitude can be hard to handle. There are no dress rehearsals that can approximate the logistics and management needed in these situations. But texting Haiti to 90999 and donating to the Red Cross are great ways to be able to help both those affected and those in charge. The New York Times published a link to a site called Charity Navigator, which helps those who want to donate to learn about the charities which have responded thus far and how they are helping the Haitian people.

The outpouring of aid and money so far has been staggering. Four hundred million dollars from 20 countries, including $100 million from the US alone. It's so good to see that even when the whole world struggles, it can still have courage, stand up and do what needs to be done to right a wrong.

Hand touching hand, reaching out...

Sweet Caroline is my karaoke song. I only sing it, in a group, in Boston since the entire bar jumps in and sings both the words and the bah, bah, bahs. But the line from the chorus which graces my post title really encapsulates my theme for today: people connecting.

The Daily Record in the UK is based out of Scotland and had a story on the power of photographs. It seems there is a cancer center there which aims to connect its patients with reminders of the joy of living. The center has established a scrapbooking program in which participants choose photographs that mark the highlights of their lives. The story features three women - Freda Wilshaw, Elaine Doran and Christine Hague - who share their photos and the stories behind them.

Several of those women's photos are of them men they loved. One San Francisco couple got a second chance at first love, as recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle. After a separation of 30 years, Darrell Holdaway and Nevin Valentine reunited just before their 30th high school reunion. Holdaway and Valentine each married and had children after breaking up in high school but found themselves single as the reunion approached. They met for coffee, and the rest, as they say, was history.

CNN reported on another reunion, one that has caught the nation's attention and held international trade implications. David Goldman was granted custody of his son after his former wife took the boy to her native Brazil for a two-week vacation that never ended. The little boy has been living with his extended Brazilian family after his mother died in childbirth. Goldman and his nine year-old son were reunited on Christmas Eve and planned to spend Christmast together in Disney World after flying home from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

(Photo courtesy of Stroller Derby)

A helping hand...

Walking an elderly person across the street. Picking up a classmate's dropped books. Walking a neighbor's dog when she's on vacation. These are simple kindnesses repeated daily the world over.

I suppose you could argue that kindness is a "nature vs. nurture" thing. Kind begets kind but then how do you explain a person who has been through hell and is still willing to stick out his or her neck for someone else?

In this argument, the New York Times has given the "nature" side a leg up. The Times reported on some studies produced recently which conclude people are "born to help." By studying children young enough to not yet be socialized to how you're "supposed to act," the biologists found babies are innately sociable and willing to help. Children will pick up dropped things and point to things adults pretend to have lost without the stimulation of a reward.

NBC San Diego posted a story illustrating that some adults have not lost that willingness to help a stranger. Virginia Saenz received a desperate voicemail after another woman dialed Saenz's number by mistake. Lucy Crutchfield left the message, telling her daughter she'd send grocery money but would have to miss a mortgage payment to do it. So Saenz called Crutchfield back and told her to pay the mortgage - Saenz would buy the groceries. She took her son along with her and bought a Thanksgiving dinner and enough groceries to last the daughter's family until the end of the month, which was the daughter's next payday. Special thanks to my friend Blair, who helped me find that story. : )

Doing the right thing on a person-to-person level sometimes gets less attention than helping out in the face of larger peril. Daily kindness is no less important, but stories of those who put themselves at risk to aid someone else can loom larger. This morning I got an email my from my old roommate Michelle, a forward telling a story about a woman named Irena Sendler. Being a bit of a cynic still - I'm working on it! - I went to Snopes.com to check on the story. The verdict there was: TRUE.

Called "the female Oskar Schindler," Sendler passed herself off as a nurse and went in and out of the ghetto, sneaking out nearly 2500 Polish Jews, mostly children. She smuggled them out in a tool box and burlap sacks. Sendler recruited 25 others - mostly women - to help her. Before joining an organized resistance, she saved around 500 people on her own. Sendler survived brutal beatings by the Nazis and prison when she was finally caught to help reunite the children she saved with any family left after the Holocaust.

This email reminded me of a story I saw a week or two ago about a British soldier who smuggled himself INTO Auschwitz. The BBC interviewed "Ginger," Denis Avey, who spoke of his actions over 55 years ago for the first time. Avey served in the British army during World War II and was captured by the Germans. His prison camp was attached to the death camp, and he arranged with Ernst Lobethall, a prisoner, to switch places twice. Avey wanted to witness the atrocities first-hand. Now 91 and living in Derbyshire, Avey didn't know Lobethall survived until the BBC recently reunited Avey and Lobethall's sister, Susana.

(Photo courtesy of the New York Times)

World's best kids...

Yesterday I committed a positivity blog post FAIL. I completely forgot to mention the 99th birthday of a man who has done a tremendous amount to change people's behavior to the positive. Former UCLA men's basketball coach and all-time great person John Wooden celebrated his birthday yesterday. He grew up in the Midwest and used the values and morals of his upbringing to mold his players into men. The LA Times Sports blog has a brief post about the man, the myth and the legend.

Okay, now I can get onto today's post. The children I want to highlight today are definitely following in Mr. Wooden's enormous footsteps. I pulled a story from the BBC online on a 16 year-old Indian boy is making a difference in 800 of his neighbors' lives. Babar Ali has been called the youngest headmaster in the world. He is the first person in his family to get an education, and he is not about to waste a bit of it. Called a model student in the article, Babarreturns home and runs a school of his own in the afternoon. His pupils are 800 of the children in his village who are too poor to go to even the government-subsidized schools. He began teaching some of his friends when he was nine, and now his school has 10 fellow teachers and is sanctioned by local authorities who have given Babar awards for his work in raising literacy rates in the area.

Great Britain runs at least two contests which reward its children for making a positive impact in the community. Harry Moseley, from Sheldon, Birmingham, won the title of Britain's Kindest Kid yesterday. The nine year-old was one of five finalists in the competition hosted by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) and Five News, according the the CAF website. Moseley, who lives with an inoperable brain tumor, makes and sells beaded bracelets to fund raise for Brain Tumor UK. He decided to do his part after a hospital stay which parked him next to a 55 year-old man with the same affliction. Moseley has even launched an initiative that seeds bracelet-making clubs in area schools. Fifteen pence of each sale goes to the schools' funds while the rest goes to Brain Tumor UK. He received 1000 pounds in pocket money and 1000 pounds to donate to his charity. Ever the kind one, Harry plans on giving 200 pounds each to his brother and sister and using another 200 pounds for a wooden playhouse where he can make more bracelets.

Cambridge News reported on the Cambridgehire Young People of the Year award ceremony, which honored ten young people in their area for their selfless efforts. Sixteen year-old Sarah Bannister was named Young Person of the Year for her fundraising efforts for Crohn's disease despite her battle with it. Bannister is giving half of her 1000 pound prize to a Crohn's disease foundation. Cambridge News' article also gives snapshots of the other winners and what they've been doing to make the world a better place.

(Image courtesy of CAF)

Making an impression...

While thinking of a way to tie together today's post, all the phrases connected with making an impression came flooding into my head. I'm not above an occasional pun and/or terrible play on words since they amuse me (yes, I know what that says about my sense of humor), but I didn't want to go that route today. 

For some reason Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "What is Success?" popped into my head, mainly for the fifth stanza - "...To leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition..." 

That single stanza perfectly captures the stories I found for today. 

Walt Disney made an impression on generations of children (myself included), and his ground-breaking work continues to inspire others to do the same. Some may think Disneyana is childish or hokey, but the New York Times believes it may be making a comeback as a legitimate genre of antiques, propelled by the October 1 opening of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, Calif. Created by the animator's daughter and grandson, the museum celebrates Walt Disney as a "daddy, husband and friend" and will include all sorts of memorabilia from his life and creations. 

The Epoch Times has a story on a muralist in Burnaby, British Columbia who has partnered with all sorts of organizations to paint full building-sized murals that show nature and animals in their natural habitats. Entrepreneur and painter Todd Polich paints endangered species murals in a way that promotes connection to nature and conservation. Check out the photo in the story closely. You can't tell that he painted that on the side of an insurance building. 

In recognition of Nelson Mandela's 67 years of fighting for human rights, peace and humanity, South African president Jacob Zuma has called on people all over the world to spend 67 minutes doing something to help their community tomorrow, July 18 - former President Mandela's birthday. The Sofia Echo posted a Reuters story quoting Mandela: "We would be honoured if such a day can serve to bring together people around the world to fight poverty and promote peace and reconciliation."