Some people fear change. They try to avoid it at all cost. Me, well, I’m used to change. I moved to a new house, school, and sometimes state almost every year of my childhood. I kept up the trend into my adulthood. I’ll change the furniture around just to have something be different.
But if there is one constant in life, it’s that it’s always changing, always moving.
Before any change which we actually choose, we first start with the acknowledgment something isn’t right. This could be anything from knowing exactly — “I need to stop smoking” — to knowing vaguely — “I just don’t feel right.” In any case we start by seeking change. A move away from pain; a move toward pleasure (or ease).
Some may seek help for the transition. Some could seek help from friends or a counselor. Oftentimes these people will tell you change is a process. But is it? Or does that just give you an excuse to drag it out and not actually make the change?
Perhaps change is really just a decision so change happens the moment the decision is made.
When I decided to stop smoking — I mean really stop — it was an immediate and no going back decision. I had had enough and that was that. (for the rest of this story, please visit www.thistle-glow.com)
Funny that must have been what the smoking baby in South Sumatra thought….
• Smoking Baby Reportedly Has Quit
Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of South Sumatra, who reportedly smoked 40 cigarettes a day, has broken his nicotine addiction through a 30-day rehabilitation program, the Jakarta Globe reported Thursday.
www.earthtimes.org/articles/news
• Pisa’s Leaning Tower 800-year-old Mystery Solved
Professor John Burland has spent the last two decades striving to save – and understand – the Leaning Tower of Pisa. After defying gravity, Italian bureaucracy and accusations of corruption, it seems he’s finally cracked the case. From 1990 to 2001, the tower was closed as the International Committee for the Safeguard of the Leaning Tower strove to save it from collapse. Visitors to Pisa dropped off by 45 percent. ‘Without our intervention, any local storm or earth tremor could have finished it off.’ Burland, 72, is emeritus professor of soil engineering at Imperial College London, his reverend-like humility belying the fact that he helped solve one of the most fascinating riddles in architectural history.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/7907298/Solving-the-800-year-mystery-of-Pisas-Leaning-Tower.html
• China Plans Buses That Can DRIVE OVER Cars
China is the current world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases and biggest energy consumer. But the country also is thinking in big and bold ways when it comes to how it will reduce pollution with a new plan to build a “straddling bus”. The innovation, powered by a combination of electricity and solar energy, will allow cars less than 2 meters high to travel underneath the upper level of the bus.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100803/cm_huffpost/669166_201008031605
• Rotary Club Provides Windmills, Increase Income for Salt Harvesters
Five families who harvest salt from the desert in western India have new windmills that will double their income. The families — who are among the 10,000 families who migrate annually to the Little Rann of Kutch salt marsh in Gujarat to collect up to 800 tons of salt apiece — previously relied on diesel engines to draw water to the desert’s surface. Five windmills were installed by the manufacturer in February with the help of Rotarians and the recipients. Rotary Club members expect the other five windmills to be in use by October, the start of the six-month salt-harvesting season.
www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews
• Cape Town’s “Ghetto Ballerina” Lands U.S. Scholarship
“Ghetto Ballet” is a documentary that chronicles the lives of four young ballet dancers living in one of the poorest towns on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. As a result of that film and an email from a kind viewer, one ballerina has been given the chance to train in the United States.
www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/07/30/ghetto.ballet.email.atlanta
• Beating the City Summer Heat
Three dumpsters in New York City have been transformed into public swimming pools complete with pool decks. People can use them for three Saturdays starting this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-sgwKbuZ4&feature=player_embedded
• 40 Billionaires Pledge to Give Away Half of Wealth
A little more than a year after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett began hatching a plan over dinner to persuade America’s wealthiest people to give most of their fortunes to charity, more than three-dozen individuals and families have agreed to take part. Buffett said he and Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, and Gates’ wife Melinda made calls to fellow billionaires on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans — in many cases, people they had never met — to try to persuade them to join the giving pledge. The United States has roughly 400 billionaires — about 40 percent of the world’s total — with a combined net worth of $1.2 trillion, according to Forbes. If they all took the pledge, that would amount to at least $600 billion for charity. The 40 names that have pledged to date have a combined net worth surpassing $230 billion, according to Forbes.The pledge is a moral commitment to give, not a legal contract. It does not involve pooling money or supporting one cause or organization. It’s up to each person who signs the pledge how to divvy up their wealth.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38556042/ns/us_news-giving/
• “Recovery Sleep” Can Make Up for Lost ZZZs
A new study just published in the journal Sleep has found that those periods of “recovery sleep” are good for us and can actually undo some of the damage caused by sleep deprivation.
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/02/%E2%80%98recovery-sleep%E2%80%99-can-make-up-for-lost-zzzs/
• Haitian Schools: Rebuilding From the Ground Up
Schools in Haiti were some of the hardest hit after January’s earthquake. Nearly 80 percent of schools were destroyed. But, now American educators and private aid organizations are trying to rebuild schools for the start of this year’s school year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPXG8WSOo-Y&feature=player_embedded
• Baby Revived By Mother’s Loving Touch
A premature baby with no vital signs defies odds and survives.
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/health/2010/08/30/mom.touch.baby.life.cnn
• ShelterBox Increases Aid to Flood-Hit Pakistan
Thousands of displaced Pakistani families will find new homes and have access to clean water to drink thanks to international disaster relief charity, ShelterBox. When the catastrophic flooding hit Pakistan the charity was able to respond within 48 hours distributing tents to hundreds of families who had lost their homes. Since then ShelterBox has sent out enough shelter and water filtration systems, known as LifeStraws, to help thousands of families.
shelterbox.org/news
• Canine Lifeguards Doggie Paddle to the Rescue
Hundreds of specially trained dogs from Italy’s corps of canine lifeguards are deployed each summer to help swimmers in need of rescue.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38820088
• This Woman’s Nose Stands Between You and Gulf Seafood
Susan Linn personally has sniffed more than 1,000 samples of seafood from the oil-tainted Gulf of Mexico and is one of 30 “expert sensory assessors” tasked with smelling Gulf seafood samples to determine whether it’s safe to reopen local waters. Their opinions, paired with chemical tests, have been used to decide the fate of the commercial and recreational fisheries affected by the massive spill.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38885939
• A Classic Tale of Lassie
An Iowa family followed the sound of their barking dog to find their two-year-old son. The boy had wandered about a quarter-mile into a corn field with the dog and got lost.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zovu9jY_c4s&feature=player_embedded
• Bee I.D. for Biodiversity
A York University doctoral student who discovered a new species of bee on his way to the lab one morning has completed a study that examines 84 species of sweat bees in Canada. Nineteen of these species – including the one Jason Gibbs found in downtown Toronto – are new to science because they have never been identified or described before. Gibbs’ expansive study will help scientists track bee diversity, understand pollination biology and study the evolution of social behavior in insects.
www.yorku.ca/mediar/archive/Release
• Forest Fires Help Power the Nitrogen Cycle
When fire burns down a forest, nitrate levels go up, and the effects are persistent, according to recent research from University of Montana scientists. They found that charcoal deposited during fire events has the potential to stimulate the conversion of ammonia to nitrates, an important step in the nitrogen cycle. The burned sites had greater rates of nitrification, meaning that nitrogen was being processed more quickly through the ecosystem than without a fire. The research results reveal a link between fire, charcoal deposition, nitrification, and abundance of nitrifying organisms in coniferous forests of the inland Northwestern US.
www.agronomy.org/news-media/releases
• Lab-Created Corneas Restore Vision
A new study from researchers in Canada and Sweden has shown that biosynthetic corneas can help regenerate and repair damaged eye tissue and improve vision in humans. Globally, diseases that lead to clouding of the cornea represent the most common cause of blindness. The biosynthetic corneas also became sensitive to touch and began producing normal tears to keep the eye oxygenated.
www.ohri.ca/newsroom/newsstory
Good news collected from several online sources, for more google: good news. And if you enjoy my writing you can catch my blog at www.thistle-glow.com, this week’s is the rest of the introductory story:“Change: Process or Decision?” Hope you enjoy good news and a good life, Amie
