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• Kids at an Obama Rally: Photos to Make Your Day

  I'm going to be irritatingly positive for the first in my life and point out the tiny silver lining to the Obama election pushback (KKK cross burnings, Idaho schoolchildren chanting, "Assassinate Obama," nooses hung from trees in Maine). It's no longer possible to deny that racism is alive and well in the U.S.--which means that we're all being forced to talk and think about the monumental impact of race relations in this country. Perhaps some people will be more likely to support, say, affirmative action now that they have been awakened to the deeply ingrained racism of many of their fellow Americans. In the interest of keeping the "audacity of hope" Obama's election inspired in us going for as long as possible, check out these amazing photos taken at an Obama rally by a 17-year-old girl named Nida Vidutis.   Read More... Posted Nov 14 2008, 01:30 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: children, kids, racism, hope, pictures, photos, election, affirmative action, nida vidutis, election pushback, april winchell, amazing photos, obama rally, audacity of hope, idaho. assassinate obama, KKK

• Saving the World in Junior High

  Kids today. Why, when I was Tara Suri's age, I was…well, doing not a whole hell of a lot, actually, compared to what she's accomplished. When she was 13 years old, Tara went to India with her family. She was profoundly saddened by the poverty she observed, and wanted to do something to help the orphaned children she saw there and the Sudan. "It was somewhat of a revelation for me," Tara, now 16, told CNN. "It was the first time I recognized the economic disparities and the gender inequalities that were there. And that really touched me and I knew I had to do something about it."  So she began HOPE, for Helping Orphans Pursue Education...   Read More... Posted Mar 31 2008, 05:06 PM by Amy Kuras with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: hope, charity, india, sudan, Tara Suri, orphans

• Rwanda to Maybe Limit Families to 3 Kids

  Okay, so sorry to interrupt your Valentine festivities here (I don't know about you, but where I live there's an ice storm, and the schools are closed, and there's NO CHOCOLATE, so why not go after the hard news?), but I ran across this piece of news about Rwanda.  Remember Rwanda?  That would be the country which engaged in racial genocide of some 500,000 - 800,000 (the numbers are conflicting) members of ethnic groups, which could have been stopped by UN or US involvement but was a case of too little, too late.  Yeah, that Rwanda.  I know, I know.  I couldn't watch the movie "Hotel Rwanda" last year either, and had to turn it off. So why am I interrupting your Valentine's Day love-fest to bring this up?  Because apparently, amid the past ugliness, there's been such a resurgence of hope in the country that women are bearing an average of six children apiece (!!!) in an effort to regain the lost population.  Wow, that's hope, isn't it?  I love that.  The only problem is, the country's so damn poor that all those children really can't be supported.  Oops, some more "too little, too late".  So now the country's thinking about trying to create incentives for families who adhere to a new minimum of three children per.  China, it's not.  But maybe someday this overpopulated country will find its balance; I certainly hope so. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled chocolate now.  Posted Feb 14 2007, 06:18 PM by Karen Murphy with | with no comments Filed under: hope, Rwanda, family planning, genocide

• Sophie's Choice: One Family's Journey to Hell and Beyond

  You know the moment when the world starts to spin the other way, things stand still, and you know that everything that happens to you ever after will never be the same as it was before?  Consider Vampdaddy. His world blew apart last June when his then-16-month-old son had a seizure and the resultant MRI showed a tumor.  In his brain.  And this happened on the most ironic of days, if the universe was listening and thinking about such things:  Father's Day. The posts that follow are a heart-wrenching assortment of descriptions of the rarefied world of Cancer: the treatments, the tubes, the endless hospitalizations, and the dizzying spiral descent into a bizarre world that had somehow day by day became, for the Vampfamily, the New Normal, as they tried to maintain their equilibrium in this ever-changing and removed-from-reality world.  Nothing was the same anymore, and yet, inside this, they found that everything was still there:  a little boy, his mom, and his dad. Until now.  Faced with the most incredible and heart-breaking Sophie's Choice dilemma, the Vampfamily must now choose between having a little boy who might end up with severe cognitive delays, affected in yet-unknown ways and to yet-unknown degrees, or having a little boy who will surely die.  In so doing, this courageous family, representative of so many families who daily face situations you and I can only imagine, examines destiny and choice, realizing that there simply are no choices.  There are only actions, only love. Posted Jan 09 2007, 04:03 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: health, Cancer, hope, choice