G as in Good H as in Happy

Monsieur Acorn

August 8, 2008

The man who planted trees. From Walt, here, and here.

Update: Now devolved -- see comments -- into interesting psychological observation: deliberately cultivating inspiring myths cultivates disgusted cynicism when they are exploded. Misguided icon-making exercise remains, though protagonist might better be pictured as a squirrel.

Now, John Chapman, that's another matter.

Mother's Day in Chinese and English

May 14, 2006

Almost too intensely perfect Mother's Day story.

American families with ties to China laid these fears [of the orphanage director bringing the child to the US] to rest. In Chicago, families with children from Gong Lu's orphanage met Xu and Gong Lu at the plane, bringing spicy takeout Chinese food. In Little Rock, the two were greeted at the airport with balloons by their host family, who have three adopted Chinese children. Little Rock's Chinese-American community brought Xu home-cooked Chinese meals every day, bought her a cell phone and gave her a list of numbers she could call night or day.

Beautiful girl, indeed. What can't be accomplished with creativity, good will, good cheer, and good skills? Makes us proud and grateful to be human, and alive. And here, in a state next to Arkansas.

Via Powerline.

Little Wound School

February 23, 2006

Lakota Marine sees it through to the end.

Courtesy The Anchoress

Givers Outpace Takers

November 2, 2005

The best news in this Marginal Revolution report, "Sponsor an African Business," is that sponsors are lined up. We maintain that people are more than eager to help others, even while refusing to write blank checks for oh-so-sympathetic social service programs that may well make matters worse, and the objects of "help" more desolate and dependent and, utimately, desperate.

Why Something Rather Than Nothing?

The Pontificators, David B. Hart, others, plus assorted learned and less-so kibitzers over at Pontifications, where some of us theo-puppies go to get philosophical milkbones for stronger, cleaner apologetics.

The upshot?

The world is [here] through an incomparable generosity.

Taking No Thought

July 6, 2005
We love miracle stories.

Our friend, who helps us with certain tasks, told us yesterday about a $2500 transmission breakdown on her Ford Explorer. She had no savings, and though several clients offered to help her with loans or gifts, she did not feel that was appropriate. She steeled herself to doing without a car in this summer-baked road-bound Texas city, until she could afford to pay the bill. It could be months, and she is responsible for elderly parents and doctors' appointments.

The night before she planned to ask the mechanic to tow the damaged car back to her, a long out-of-touch cousin telephoned from North Carolina. Twenty years ago, a troubled teenager, this cousin had lived with our friend for awhile. When she heard about the difficulty, and the looming mechanic's bill, she insisted on paying it by credit card the next day, from her income as an extremely successful real estate broker. She would not even listen to a refusal, saying she had been given a home when she needed one, and now she could thank her benefactor properly.

And, not incidentally, the episode inspired the grateful protagonist to undertake a programmatic savings-account project of the sort she had postponed far too long.

Until a solution appears we may not know how our problem will be solved, or where we have stored up resources, or whose heart will be touched by our needs. And the time spent in tears or worry is wasted. Better, more accurate, than worry is explorer-like curiosity about just how the answer will unfold.

Easy for us to say, which is why we're writing it here, now, to revisit if it's ever not so easy to say. Things work out. Reality is kind. We terrify ourselves with shadows and stories and predictions of misery, abandonment, and deprivation.

An expensive and gruelling hobby.

Shelby Foote, Room in His Heart for Folly

Also from Neurolearning, a heartwarming remembrance of someone who had a way with words and simply couldn't sit still for conventional acquiescence.

Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.

R.I.P. Thanks for the vision.

Every Book Has Its Reader

May 29, 2005

Public libraries for Nepal. A need, plus a well-thought, generous, practical, sustainable solution.

Like kids in the proverbial candy store, Jomson's young people flooded the reading room the instant the doors opened, pulling books from the shelves, cooing over the educational toys, spinning the globe.

But there was not pandemonium. The children carefully and lovingly handed each book to the next set of waiting hands.

Katmandu has them. Now rural children do, too.

Via mirabilis

Dr. Neubauer is spreading not only the joy of reading, but inspiration to find our own READ-like undertaking. Good will, means, and ingenuity. We all possess some measure of all three, to combine, apply, and offer.

Update:
Here's someone's offering. His eyes were open, his heart was touched. He is a bicyclist of some prowess. It's a good enough story to catch our attention. So he's off. Yesterday.

We'd like to think the unknown slave-saints who finished their sufferings in the Gulags will keep an eye on him, and  bring him safely home.

Via Done With Mirrors