by Nomad
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Photo by Marcin Ryczek |
In truth, it is entirely up to us which we would like to focus our attention on, the rotten side of life or the good.
Smooth Operator
On Thursday morning, there was some drama beneath the streets of New York City. A 12-year old boy had somehow wandered onto the subways tracks near Hoyt Street Station and had climbed over the rail that carries 600 volts of electricity. He then managed to wedge himself between the columns that separate the local and express tracks.Thanks to the swift response of witnesses from the platform and a station operator, the alert was sent out to emergency crews and train drivers. Hopeton Kiffin, a 51-year-old operator for the No. 5 train and father of three, was on the ball.
According to the article,
Mr. Kiffin’s reaction was swift but gentle. He secured the train, jumped out and approached the boy, who did not speak or respond physically or verbally to words.The perilous situation required a light touch. Offering his hand, Kiffin gently spoke to the boy and eventually persuaded him to come with him to the waiting train and to the operator's cab. By the time the train arrived at the next stop, the authorities were waiting to take the boy to the nearby hospital to be evaluated.
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Another Form of Child Rescue
Our frugal grandparents lived by the credo "Waste not, want not." Today, it is a different story. According to the United Nations:
Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries.
Students at one Indiana elementary school are part of a program attempting- in a small way- to reverse that staggering statistic. In the town of Elkhart, it is estimated that 13% of children aged 5 to 17 live in poverty so it did not make sense to throw out perfectly good food if it could be "rescued" to provide meals for children when schools were not in session.
This is the land of plenty so why should any child go hungry?
The school administrators, according to The Washington Post, elected to partner with a food-rescue nonprofit organization called Cultivate.
The mission was to repurpose leftover food, perfectly good meals that would have ended up in the trash. How? By supplementing with a few other items to round out the nutrition, packaging it for freezing. The meals are then offered to needy students can take home over the weekend.
Saving Gisele
Keeping with this theme of child rescue with this story out of Massachusetts.She had been born premature at another hospital in July 2016, weighing just under 2 pounds. She had neonatal abstinence syndrome - a result of her birth mother using heroin, cocaine and methadone during pregnancy.
The state of Massachusetts took custody of Gisele when she was 3 months old and transferred her to Franciscan Children's because her lungs needed specialised care, and she had a feeding tube. The baby did not have a single visitor in her five months at the hospital.The moment Smith saw little Gisele, she knew:
"I'm going to foster this baby. I'm going to be her mother."From the expressions on growing Gisele's face, it looks like things worked out pretty well for both mother and child.
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So the challenge for my nomads is to find one positive story to promote. Just one. It could be personal or local or national- whatever and wherever.
