HappyRant

Park poet for the people

I love seeing people who have a love affair with what they're doing. Amy Allin is one of those people. Her love affair? Bringing poetry to everyday people. She doesn't get paid for it, but every Sunday since last July Allin has set up her table in the park by Green Lake in Seattle and shared poetry with anyone with enough interest to stop:

Sometimes she reads poems; sometimes people read poems to her that she's selected. She prefers to select the work of other writers -- some well-known, and others less known.

Allin has a yearlong mission: to bring poetry to everyday people, whom she says the poets have forgotten.

"Poets are on an academic campus and writing for each other. I'm tired of poets who think that reading to one another is enough," she said.

So the Poetess at Green Lake spends all day each Sunday at her table across from the Shell gas station on West Green Lake Drive North. She's taking poetry literally to where the public is.

Last Sunday, amid the steady rain and cold wind, 15 of the curious stopped by her table -- couples, a family of four, individuals getting a little exercise.

That's not a large percentage of the 9,400 or so people who Seattle Parks says would visit the lake on a nice weekend day, but it's enough for Allin to feel successful.

"I talked to 15 people who otherwise would not have had poetry in their lives," she said.

Allin also blogs about her poetry sessions at The Poetess at Green Lake.

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More socially responsible investing options with ETFs

The more I see money flowing towards the idea of doing good, the happier I am, because money can be a great catalyst for positive change.  If you're looking for more options for socially responsible investing, there's a new option out there with ETFs (exchange-traded funds). As this article from Motley Fool describes it:

There's a new option available to you, though. Now you can invest in a socially responsible manner via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which offer some advantages over traditional mutual funds. Like index funds, ETFs are typically based on some index or grouping of stocks. They tend to sport low fees, and whereas some mutual funds have minimum investment amounts of $3,000 or more, you can buy as little as a single share of an ETF (though that extreme is not always smart, given commission costs -- spending $15 to buy a $45 share puts you down 33% from the get-go).

If you want to know more about ETFs, the article also includes a good list of links to more information. 

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Amazing Grace

I went to Amazing Grace yesterday. It's the story of William Wilberforce, the English politician who pushed for 20 years to get the slave trade outlawed before finally succeeding in 1807.

As usually happens with movies like this, I came away energized and inspired for the work I'm doing in the world, as well as the difference I want to make.

I tend to have this internal observer that hangs out on my shoulder and watches what is going on in my brain. While the story itself was certainly compelling, that observer noticed that there were two things about it that really got my blood pumping - and they inspired me because they're just as applicable today as they were 200 years ago.

First, there was the dynamic that happens when people who believe in something gather together in an effort to make it reality. It's energizing. From my own experience, I love the way it feeds my passion, gives me different perspectives, and sustains my motivation.

So out of that, here's a question for you. What change do you want to see in the world? What do you care enough about to get involved? Who else cares? Are there any groups you can connect with? Can you create your own?

Second was the element of action. People weren't just passionate about something, they were doing something about it. They were taking action. I found myself wanting to jump into something and roll up my sleeves.

While I think that all change has its roots in the exchange of ideas, at some point people need to put rubber to the road and start taking steps (towards whatever change it is that inspires them).

So here's another question for you. What steps can you take towards something you care about? How can you get involved? Where is the action just waiting to happen?

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Nobel winner Yunus sees social business stock market

Thirty years ago, if someone had told you that loaning money to the desperately poor was a self-sustaining way to boost people out of poverty, you might have thought they were a few cards short of a full deck. Loaning money to people who have no ability to pay it back? Absurd!

And yet Muhammed Yunus started doing just that, founding the Grameen Bank and ultimately winning a Nobel Prize for his visionary ideas and efforts.

Now Yunnus has another vision, one that helps focus the power of the business world on doing good and making a positive impact. He sees the need for a social business stock exchange.

...Yunus said that there is a need for a separate stock market for socially-oriented companies. These exchanges should primarily list companies which would be doing social work.

Here investors can invest money in the company which is involved with the kind of social work the investor wants to do and put money into, the economist explained. Though it is a free market time, there is need for businesses to do good to people, Yunus stressed.

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Charitable giving stimulates the brain

OK, you know that giving to something you believe in feels good, but do you know why? Researchers are starting to shed more light on that.

...NIH [National Institutes of Health] researchers used MRIs to monitor brain activity as 19 people made decisions to give - or not give - to a variety of causes. For charitable giving, their imaging study "strongly supports the existence of `warm glow' at a biological level," said Dr. Jorge Moll, the lead researcher. "It helps convince people that doing good can make them feel good; altruism therefore doesn't need to be ONLY sacrifice."

So what does that actually mean?

...researchers said they found that giving activated two areas of the brain: the part that is activated by reward reinforcement, which also is activated by sex, drugs and money, and the part that influences social attachments, trust and economic interactions.

The two areas work not in competition but together, which "enables us to make altruistic decisions," Moll said.

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What are you optimistic about?

It's so easy to fall into the trap of pessimism when so much of what we see in the media would suggest that the world is falling apart at the seams.

When I ran across The Edge Annual Question for 2007, it struck a deep chord. The question? "What are you optimistic about?"

For one thing, it's just fascinating to read page after page of optimistic perspectives, something we don't typically get. But the other thing that really struck a chord for me was what a great question that is to incorporate into our daily lives.

What if every day you sat down and spent five minutes answering the question, "What am I optimistic about?" That might be optimism about big picture things on a global scale, or optimism about positive details unfolding in your own life. You could simply sit and ponder it, or you go so far as to start an optimism journal, getting the ideas out of your head and reinforcing them by putting them down on paper.

Take a look at your own life and your day to day habits. What can you do to cultivate optimism? 

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Fueling positive change

Because I've been focused on finding positive stories to blog about, the amount of positive news we get exposed to (or lack of it) has been top of mind lately.As I look at the lopsided ratio of murder and mayhem to inspiration and hope, it's clear that we're missing an essential element that would fuel positive change.

Yesterday I started thinking about how I feel when I read an article about someone or something that inspires me. It energizes me, and it makes me want to jump up and do something good. When I see other people making the world a better place, it rubs off on me, and makes me want to jump in and add my efforts to the positive change mix.

I may end up doing something as a result of that inspiration, or I may not. But the fact is that simply reading those positive stories has an impact on me. And sometimes that impact gets translated into action.

When I seek out that kind of story, whether it's in the news, or via books I'm reading, or even people I meet in person, it's like adding a dose of nutrients to the primordial soup of positive potential. It makes it that much more likely that something cool is going to come out of it.

When I expand that idea to the world at large, it's clear that we're missing a vital source of fuel for positive change. Not only is the overwhelming focus on murder and mayhem creating a toxicity that is dragging us down, but the lack of those inspiration sources is also cheating us of the potential for some amazingly positive developments.

The math is simple. The more inspiration people come in contact with on a daily basis, the more likely it is that they're going to be inspired to do something to make the world a better place, whether in a big way or a small way. And the more people step up to that plate, the more amazing things will start to happen. That's not pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. It's just logical common sense.

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Therapy dogs trained by inmates

If you hear the words prisoners and dogs, most likely the kind of dog that would come to mind would be a guard dog. A German Shepherd maybe, or a Rottweiler, trained to keep the prisoners in their place.

What you probably wouldn't think of is a symbiotic relationship that benefits both the prisoner and the dog, and ultimately benefits someone in the outside world. But with a program in the Indiana state prison system, that's exactly what you'll find. As this article describes:

ICAAN [Indiana Canine Assistant and Adolescent Network] is a nonprofit organization based in Indianapolis that partners with the Indiana Department of Correction. Inmates train assistance dogs for Indiana youth who require help because of a disability.

Some tasks ICAAN dogs are trained to perform include opening a refrigerator, turning a light switch on and off, retrieving a cordless phone or laundry from a dryer, pulling money from a bag to pay a cashier, and bracing someone to help them get up if they have fallen or to transfer from one seat to another.

Sally Irvin, founder of ICAAN, chose a prison-based training model so the dogs would receive constant and consistent instruction. As it turns out, the program is just as beneficial to inmates.

"It provides offender/handlers with meaningful work that challenges them, holds them accountable 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and pushes them to look at how they relate to the world around them. A person's style of dog training often parallels their relationships with people," she said.

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The Our Heroes Award

I never cease to be amazed at how much people can inspire me. Every once in a while, in the midst of all the toxic stories in the news, I find a gem.

The Daily Record in Scotland does an annual Our Heroes Award, where people nominate everyday people they think qualify as heroes in a variety of categories.

This story highlights one of them, and also shines a light on the power of focusing on making a difference. Sonya Stewart had battled cancer since she was 12 weeks old. At 18, she was finally cancer free - but then her kidneys shut down and she discovered she needed a transplant. As the article describes...

It would have been easy simply to give up. But instead Sonya signed up to help Scots who, like herself, were facing life-threatening diseases.

"I needed a reason to get out of bed in the morning," says Sonya, now 23.

"I was in pain all the time, but it made a big difference to talk to others who are having a hard time. It put my own problems into perspective."

It's so easy to get caught up in our own lives - the busyness, the goals, the frustrations - that we really do lose perspective. And it's also easy to lose sight of how wonderfully beneficial a focus on helping others can be - not only for the people we help, but also for ourselves.

So who are your heroes?

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) a growing trend

More and more companies are waking up to the idea that Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) isn't just a feelgood warm fuzzy.

There's growing evidence that companies are embracing CSR practices — whether it's reducing factory and transportation pollution, using natural materials for packaging or treating workers fairly — because they believe such strategies can be profitable and socially responsible.

"All of a sudden, corporate responsibility is an idea whose time has arrived," says Julie Fox Gorte, chief social investment strategist at the Calvert Group, which manages socially responsible mutual funds. "We're seeing more companies who think it's not just a philosophy, but good for business, too."

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