HappyRant

When I grow up, I want to be Mama G

Do you ever stop for a moment to look around and ask yourself, "Who do I want to be like? Who are my role models?" For me, one of the answers to those questions is, "Mama G," a high school teacher in Los Angeles who is pushing 90 with an amazing outlook on life.

It takes only a minute or two with the bundle of energy that is Rose "Mama G" Gilbert to get excited about just about anything.

And to forget that at 88 she's old enough to be the great-grandmother of her Palisades Charter High School students.

"I want them all to just live literature, love poetry and love life — not just get caught up in grades," Gilbert said.

Pupils usually don't start out liking poetry, so Gilbert eases them in with love poems by ee cummings. "It's very sexy," Gilbert said.

For Gilbert, teaching really is a labor of love.

Gilbert doesn't have to work; her husband left her millions when he died. But she loves it too much to quit.

Mama G's energy is infectious, said Masha Elakovic, a 17-year-old senior. "She comes in, she is really pumped up. That is kind of a sign she is ready to teach us and ready to be 'on fire.' ... I love her."

It's easy to get stuck in, "Gee, I wish I could be like her" when we look at people we admire. But the power of role models isn't in aspiring to be someone else, it's in asking yourself, "What would life be like for me if I incorporated more of what I admire into my own life?" And more importantly, "How can I incorporate more of that?"

For me, one of the things that really struck me about Gilbert was her attitude.

...Gilbert underwent heart surgery a decade ago, but it barely slowed her. She recorded lectures and had the substitute teacher play them for the class. Exams and papers were delivered to her each day so she could grade them.

"I'm crazy, OK?" Gilbert said. "That is my attitude. I don't dwell on the negative."

Every morning, Gilbert lifts weights and does yoga. Weekends are filled with UCLA basketball and football games and visiting her grandchildren.

Asked when she will stop teaching, Gilbert pauses.

"When I'm tired," she finally says. "I'm not tired. I have more energy than a kid."

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Living to inspire others

Sometimes what I run across as I'm out looking for something positive isn't breaking news, it's just a story about someone I want to know more about. Like this one about 40 year old Greg Smith.

40-year-old Greg Smith doesn't sugar coat it. His life has been far from easy. Born with muscular dystrophy, he wasn't expected to live past the age of 10. Now the father of three lives to inspire others.

"Not just people with disabilities, but everyone, because I feel like in my life, I've been through tough times, and I've come out victorious," said Smith. "And there is a story that anybody can be inspired by."

I started poking around to find out more about Smith. He's a national speaker, a radio show host, the subject of a documentary, and an author.

There is no fairy tale ending to Smith's story. The challenges in his life continue. Hurricane Katrina flooded their house in Mississippi with four feet of water just as he was dealing with congestive heart failure. He had to live in a nursing home for three months while their house was being rebuilt. And now...

Back home and recovered now, his body continues to grow weaker from M.D. He can no longer dress himself and needs help getting in and out of bed.

"I can't turn over in bed very easily, especially if I'm under a heavy blanket," said Smith. "I feel straight-jacketed at night. I have to condition my mind to just go back to sleep."

But he can still speak, and he continues to travel the country providing insights and motivation through the lessons he's learned along the way.

For me, the inspiration of stories like Smith's isn't just about seeing somebody overcome enormous obstacles. It's about how their story relates to me and my potential. As Smith put it as he was talking about the public's perception of the disabled...

"We don't feel sorry for ourselves, so you shouldn't either," he said. "In fact, I view the lessons I've learned from my disability as an opportunity to teach other people what they can do, and what's inside their spirits as human beings."

Each of us has amazing potential. Most of us, truthfully, don't come anywhere close to embracing it. Stories like Smith's serve to shake us out of our little world of perceived barriers and restrictions, and remind us to reach for something bigger.

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Online request brings strangers' support to man with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease)

Every once in a while I start to feel jaded and cynical about what's happening in the world. It's stories like this that remind me of the potential for good and giving that each of us carry around with us.

65 year old Bert Brumett has ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). He can't talk, move, or even breathe on his own, but his mind is still sharp. To keep him stimulated, his wife Robin came up with a novel idea.

Knowing that Bert's keen intellect is alive and well, Robin decided if he couldn't go out into the world, she'd bring the world to him.

Not long ago she placed an ad on craigslist, the classified-advertising Web site, seeking people who would come to their home and spend an hour or so talking with Bert about any topic of mutual interest: travel, history, gambling strategies or medicine, to name a few. No rules, no pay, just an hour of conversation — or monologue, really.

In a short time, there were 50 responses, ranging from belly dancers to proponents of holistic medicine.

Thus was born Brumett U, which Robin calls her "college of conversation."

This story has it all. Love, reaching out for help, and complete strangers feeling moved to respond. We really do have an amazing capacity for beauty. This article gave me just the spark I needed today. 

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Celebrating Community Heroes

When it comes to positive change, it's easy to get swept up in the big picture. We want to see big changes, and big results. Who can blame us?

While the big vision is inspiring, most of where the real work gets done is at street level with individuals putting their vision into action. Larger than life heroes are great for inspiration and motivation, but it can't stop there. We need to celebrate heroes on a smaller scale as well, because it's the combined efforts of many individuals that really brings about change.

If you want a taste of what I'm talking about, here's an online booklet put out by LISC Chicago's New Communities Program that celebrates a selection of community heroes, community-focused people who are setting positive wheels in motion on a local level.

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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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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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80 year old yoga teacher

One of the things I've learned along the way is that people inspire me. It doesn't have to be the amazing story that is a movie just waiting to be made. It can be the relatively mundane life of somebody whose outlook and actions I admire.

Take 80 year old Lois Enna, for example, who teaches 5 yoga classes a week. She started yoga in 1981 after a debilitating auto accident. Around the same time she left her job as inspector at a manufacturing plant and started focusing more on yoga and art.

In her new role, Enna realized that she was becoming a different person. She could finally relax and enjoy life, using yoga and art as her personal outlets.

“If you’re happy, everyone around you is happier,” she said. “It’s not that life doesn’t have peaks and valleys, but you weather them more because you know things are going to change.”

For me, sometimes that inspiration just comes from a snippet of wisdom that it's easy to lose sight of as we rush through our days with our noses to the grindstone.

After eight decades on this planet, Enna has come to realize something: Human beings are meant to be treasured.

“I want people to understand how wonderful they are,” she said. “They have the power to change to make the world a happier place. You don’t need to change the universe, just change your little world right here.”

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Kevin Bacon and Six Degrees from positive change

Somewhere along the line you've probably at least heard of the game "Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon," where you name a famous actor/actress and try to connect them to the actor Kevin Bacon via the movies they've been in, people they've been in movies with, etc.

Bacon, who admits to being "horrified" when he first heard of the game ("I thought it was a joke at my expense"), has decided capitalize on it as a way to raise money for good causes. Teaming up with Network for Good, he founded SixDegrees.org.

The basic idea is that various celebrities have chosen a cause that resonates with them, and created "celebrity badges," which describe the cause and sometimes why it's important to them.

In an interview with EW.com, Kevin says, "We live in such a celebrity-driven kind of culture. People are really obsessed with what celebrities are wearing, what they're thinking about, who they're dating. Why not be interested in what causes they're interested in?"

On the six degrees site you can look through the various causes and make donations. Or, you can choose to create your own celebrity badge to "become a celebrity for your cause," putting it on your blog or web site and allowing others to donate.

[via Ali Edwards at { A } ]

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Richard Branson offers $25 million global warming prize

I love news like this.

British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, with former Vice President Al Gore at his side, offered a $25 million prize Friday for anyone who can come up with a way to blunt global climate change by removing at least 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from Earth's atmosphere.

...Branson, saying the "survival of our species" is imperiled by current environmental trends, said the prize was similar to cash inducements that led to some of history's most notable achievements in navigation, exploration and industry.

The winner must devise a plan to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere without creating adverse effects. The first $5 million would be paid up front; the remainder would be paid only after the program had worked successfully for 10 years.

This is about much more than just a $25 million prize. It's the energy that the whole thing generates. There will be research ripples that will radiate out from this, just like the commercial space flight prize, which has the potential to generate a cumulative result way beyond what the one person/organization who wins the prize will produce.

But there are also positive ripples from the buzz that it creates. People pay attention to Richard Branson, and people pay attention to money like that. It's interesting. It's exciting. And best of all, it focuses people's attention on the issue.

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New York cabbie returns diamond rings

OK, so imagine you're a New York taxi driver. And you get a thirty cent tip on an $11 fare. And then imagine that after you drop the person off, you find a bag with 31 diamond rings in the trunk. What do you do?

If you're Osman Chowdhury, you spend the rest of the day tracking down the owner so you can return the rings.

Chowdhury, a native of Bangladesh, told the New York Daily News that he didn't consider keeping the gems.

"I'm a hard worker," the soft-spoken cabbie said. "I enjoy my life. I'm satisfied. I'm not going to take someone else's money or property to make me rich. I don't want it that way.

"When I find something left in my cab, and I can return it to the owner, I feel very happy. I feel proud."

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