Remembering the less fortunate...

It seems that every year at this time, charities and agencies implore people to remember the needy. This year, more and more individuals are joining those ranks through foreclosure, job loss or myriad other reasons. Luckily, people are still stepping into the void to keep helping those less fortunate than themselves - regardless of the economic climate.

CBS 5 in the East Bay highlighted a woman who has become known as the Lemon Lady for her efforts to distribute excess citrus to poor families in the San Francisco Bay Area. Anna Chan used to drive her colicky baby through her neighborhood to help put the little girl to sleep. Anna noticed all the lemons falling off neighbors' trees and going to waste. So, with permission, she began collecting the fruit and giving it to food banks and pantries in two counties. Later she expanded her reach into farmers' markets, accepting donations of unsold produce.

When cities go through a budget deficit, building infrastructure and making improvements falls by the wayside. Whole city blocks can fall into decay - boarded and broken windows, shadowy figures making "business" transactions on the corner, walls tagged with graffiti. But, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, the denizens of Gordon Street in Philadelphia's Fishtown decided enough was enough. On a shoestring budget (and with a lot of chutzpah), a small band of individuals chased out the drug dealers and prostitutes, painted, wired and improved the empty row homes on the block and turned their street into a place they were proud to live. For their efforts they won the 2009 City's Most Beautiful Block. Going down the street now passersby are unable to tell the empty homes from lived-in ones.

The Coloradoan posted a story on its website about the goodwill of Alpine Cabinet Company in Timnath, Colorado. The company has been affected by the downturn in residential building and had to lay off a quarter of its staff and cut hours. But the Chinn family which owns the company is trying to help the remaining 40-odd employees get through the holiday season by making doll houses for needy children. The employees are sewing curtains and quilts and making furniture for the little homes. An employee's wife is providing the dolls. Suppliers donated lumber and the paint which will cover the outside of the homes. When finished, the 50-70 doll houses will be distributed to local groups to then be passed out to area children.

(Photo courtesy of The Coloradoan)

Reverting back to childhood...

My parents have a picture of me when I'm really little, three or four, and my little twin bed is covered in a ruffly spread and weighed down by at least 34 stuffed animals. I'm on the bed too, lost in the crowd of bears and dogs and cats and other breed-indeterminate fuzzies. Clearly, stuffed toys were my childhood crack.

My favorite on was a faded, balding Care Bear. In an incident I remember with startling clarity, one day I thought Wishbear needed to feel the wind in his four strands of hair, so I held him out the car window while on a family trip to Grandma's house. Inexplicably I let go and lost him as my dad zoomed down Middletown Road. My squawking alerted my parents to Wishie's impending doom, and he was quickly retrieved with more than one exhortation to tell Mom and Dad what I was thinking doing that.

So I can completely related to five year-old Jessica Martin. She accidentally left her furry friend, Beary, on a park bench during a pit stop on her way to Grandma's house. Unfortunately it was not until an hour and a half later, Jessica realized her little companion was gone, according to the Pittsburg Morning Sun. She was heartbroken, so her parents decided to try contacting park services to see if Beary could be located. It was a long shot, but Ranger Dave Stark went on a search-and-rescue mission and "captured" Beary. Stark made the stuffed toy part of the park's "Bear Relocation" program and shipped him home to Jessica.

Teddy bears are pretty iconic childhood possessions. While toy icons are just generally accepted as such in daily life, I recently found out via The Boston Globe there is, in fact, a national toy hall of fame. Located in Rochester, N.Y., toys up for induction into the 11 year-old museum must be "widely recognized; foster learning, creativity or discovery through play; and endure in popularity over generations. The ball, along with the Big Wheel and Nintendo GameBoy, recently joined the pantheon of 41 classic toys. Personally, I can't believe it took this long to recognize the ball as an all-star, but maybe that's just me...

Another kind of ball is entertaining the young at heart. The Boston Globe did a feature on the Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Northbridge, Mass. The elderly residents have picked up a passion normally dominated by the nerd in the corner cubicle - fantasy football (sorry Joel). Due to H1N1 concerns, the seniors' usual visits with the children in a nearby day care had to be curtailed, so a young recreation director had to get creative in livening up Sunday afternoons. This is my kind of fantasy league - no keeping track of individual players scattered all over the NFL. Residents win whole teams through a lottery and then root for them all season long.

(Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe)

Child's play...

As some of you know, I have been sick for the last week. I only made it to work for four hours before today, so that would be the reason behind the uncharacteristically sporadic blogging this week. Most of my time has been spent watching re-runs of "The Big Bang Theory" and "Gilmore Girls," eating juice popsicles and throwing horizontal and rather pathetic temper tantrums. 

I'm not the best sick person; I am in no way stoic. And when forced to take care of myself while ill, I tend to revert back to childhood, spicing my whining and kicking the bedcovers with some decidedly grown-up swear words. In fact I had a bit of a temper tantrum this morning (vertically) when I realized I was better enough to go back to work. 

So it amused me when several of the stories I had for today involved children's stories and toys. 

The photo for the post today came from the accompanying Yahoo! News story about the possibility one of Aesop's fables may have been true. Famous more for their moral lessons than their veracity, one of Aesop's tales - "The Thirsty Crow" - may actually have been based in fact. The aptly named Christopher Bird of Cambridge University in England completed an experiment with three rooks and published the results in yesterday's issue of "Current Biology." Turns out rooks are capable of dropping stones into a tube of water to make the water level rise, just like in the fable...

The Fort Worth, Tex. Star-Telegram had a snippet in Wednesday's paper regarding a recession angel who, by investing in a toy store just before it closed, saved not only a woman's livelihood but brought joy to the area children. Sandy Challinor had decided to close her toy store due to economic worries and high operating costs, but on the second day of a three-day, going-out-of-business sale that brought browsing children to tears, an anonymous investor contacted Challinor and offered to help keep her going.

MSBNC.com posted a story a little while ago on American veterans who are bringing joy to foreign children. Former US military living in a retirement home near Denver, Colo., have banded together with a charity to make toys to send to children in some of the poorest regions in the world. This video highlights the distribution of toys by the Georgia National Guard to a destitute region just outside Kabul, Afghanistan. The smiles on the little boys' faces at the 2:05 and 2:13 marks are beyond precious. 

Mish-mash Monday...

I had a really good weekend, highlighted by a spontaneous trip to Newport, R.I. on Saturday - the first truly gorgeous day we've had in recently memory. My weekend was a little of this - the Cliff Walk, shopping - and a little of that - errands, puzzle-doing - and today's blog follows in that vein. 

Within the last year or so, I've become a little obsessed with Arts & Crafts architecture. This should be a surprise to no one, considering the name of the style. : ) But I came across a blog post on wired.com about Frank Lloyd Wright legos. He's not generally my style, but I loved Legos as a kid and thought it was pretty cool to have Lego sets that let you build actual architectural gems like the Getty Museum, etc. 

The current crisis in Iran has overshadowed another attempted political revolution that made news months ago after the cyclone that devastated Burma/Myanmar exposed just how badly the people there were suffering under a dictator. Protests led by Buddhist monks and nuns and populated by ordinary citizens were brutally crushed. According to Google News, some of the opposition members fled and had been looking for asylum until the tiny island of Palau took them in and promised to keep them safe.

The last story for today is about an inspirational three year-old. Olivia Curcuru had an accident not that far from her home and was paralyzed from the upper abdomen down. But she has not let that stop her. Like any three year-old, Olivia plays games with her mom and participates in sports. She competed in her first triathlon one month after coming home from rehabilitation, according to The Explorer News out of Tucson, Ariz. 

(Photo courtesy of The Explorer News)