Hunger Walk song - sheet music on-line

Lyrics for "Hunger Walk" are below.
Below that is the lyrics with chord names.

This song may be sung for free in support of food programs that serve the needy on a non-sectarian basis


Sheet music with melody and chord names is at:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B70WsnjzVKW-N2Q5ODFiZTItYjIyMS00ODA3LWIxNTUtNTdjODZhMDZlZmM0




Hunger Walk Song
copyright 1994 Patricia M. Shannon
to the tune of the hymn Come Ye Thankful People, Come

Join us on the Hunger Walk/Drive,
share the love and joy we feel,
as we walk/work together for
those who are in present need.
We can make a difference,
when we work toge~ther;
as you help us reach our goal,
you will also feed your soul.

Let's give thanks to all our friends,
who give of their time and pay,
in the groups that work so hard
to make sure no one does starve.
We can never know just when
we will need a helping hand,
our support will help ensure,
community food banks will endure.

Many children in our land
often suffer hunger pains;
it can stunt the healthy growth
of their body and their brains.
Children are the fu~ture;
they need more than just a song;
when we help to nourish them,
we help to keep our country strong.


Hunger Walk Song page 1
copyright 1994 Patricia M. Shannon
to the tune of the hymn Come Ye Thankful People, Come

Patricia M. Shannon
patricia_shan8@hotmail.com
www.reverbnation.com/patriciashannon
www.patriciashannon.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/patricia.shannon


(Verse 1)
F C F Dm C F
Join us on the Hunger Walk/Drive,

F C F Dm Gm A
share the love and joy we feel,

Dm Gm C F
as we walk/work together for

F Bdim C Dm C G Bdim C
those who are in present need.

C C7 F C F
We can make a difference,

F F7 Bb Adim Bb
when we work to-ge- ther;

D Gm C F
as you help us reach our goal,

Bb F Dm F C C7 F
you will also feed your soul.


Hunger Walk Song page 2

(Verse 2)
F C F Dm C F
Let's give thanks to all our friends,

F C F Dm Gm A
who give of their time and pay,

Dm G C F
in the groups that work so hard

F Bdim C Dm C G Bdim C
to make sure no one does starve.

C C7 F C F
We can never know just when

F F7 Bb Adim Bb
we will need a helping hand,

D Gm C F
our support will help ensure,

F Bb F Dm F C C7 F
community food banks will endure.


Hunger Walk Song page 2


(Verse 3)
F C F Dm C F
Many children in our land

F C F Dm Gm A
often suffer hunger pains;

Dm Gm C F
it can stunt the healthy growth

F Bdim C Dm C G Bdim C
of their bodies and their brains.

C C7 F C F
Children are the future;

F F7 Bb Adim Bb
they need more than just a song;

D Gm C F
when we help to nourish them,

F Bb F Dm F C C7 F
we help to keep our country strong.

Doing good does you good

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/e-dgd060820.php

News Release 11-Jun-2020
Elsevier


A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, takes a closer look at the benefits of volunteering to the health and well-being of volunteers, both validating and refuting findings from previous research. The results verify that adults over 50 who volunteer for at least 100 hours a year (about two hours per week) have a substantially reduced risk of mortality and developing physical limitations, higher levels of subsequent physical activity, and improved sense of well-being later on compared to individuals who do not volunteer.

•••••

A cautionary note is that these conclusions were drawn prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic, which makes social activity risky and unadvisable for the foreseeable future, However, Dr. Kim noted that "now might be a particular moment in history when society needs your service the most. If you are able to do so while abiding by health guidelines, you not only can help to heal and repair the world, but you can help yourself as well. When the COVID-19 crisis finally subsides, we have a chance to create policies and civic structures that enable more giving in society. Some cities were already pioneering this idea before the pandemic and quarantine, and I hope we have the willingness and resolve to do so in a post-COVID-19 society as well."

Mexico saved American lives after Katrina. Will Trump accept its aid after Harvey?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/27/mexican-troops-saved-american-lives-after-katrina-would-trump-let-them-do-it-again/?utm_term=.2aebb81f8561

By Max Bearak August 28

•••••

For many Americans, Harvey is bringing back memories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Nearly 2,000 people died in the aftermath of that storm. The U.S. government and Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Katrina was widely criticized, but Americans came together to offer housing, clothing, meals and monetary help to the affected. President George W. Bush even accepted a huge offer of aid from Mexico.

The aid Mexico sent was no small thing — it was an extraordinary gesture, and it may have saved many lives. Marking the first time that Mexican troops had set foot on U.S. soil since the Mexican-American War in 1846, President Vicente Fox sent an army convoy and a naval vessel laden with food, water and medicine. By the end of their three-week operation in Louisiana and Mississippi, the Mexicans had served 170,000 meals, helped distribute more than 184,000 tons of supplies and conducted more than 500 medical consultations.

“Mexico and the United States are nations which are neighbors and friends which should always have solidarity in moments of difficulty,” Fox told NBC News at the time.

•••••

Where to Donate: These 7 Places Will Put Your Old Stuff to Incredibly Good Use

See the article at the following link for details on the various organizations.

http://www.rd.com/home/cleaning-organizing/where-to-donate/

From Readers Digest
By Felissa Benjamin Allard

Donate old work clothes to: Dress for Success

•••••

Donate old formal attire to: Operation Prom

•••••

Donate old toys to: Second Chance Toys

•••••

Donate musical instruments to: Hungry for Music

•••••

Donate movies to: DVDs4VETs

•••••

Donate coats to: One Warm Coat

•••••

Donate cars to: Kars 4 Kids

•••••

Study finds Facebook popularity hampers fundraising efforts

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-12/uow-sff122314.php

Public Release: 23-Dec-2014
University of Warwick

People with fewer friends on Facebook raise more money for charity than those with lots of connections, research by an economist at the University of Warwick has found.

Professor Kimberley Scharf analysed data from JustGiving.com and found a negative correlation between the size of a group and the amount of money given by each donor - with the average contribution by each person dropping by two pence for every extra connection someone had on Facebook.

This research builds on and supports earlier analytical findings, published in the November issue of the International Economic Review by Professor Scharf, a Research Director at the University's Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE), that finds large social groups are less likely to share information about charitable causes when compared to those who are part of smaller circles - and that this results in less fundraising success.

In that paper, the phenomenon of 'free-riding' on information sharing is the main driver behind the findings - when people are part of a larger social group, they feel less of a need to share information about well performing charities because they're expecting other friends to share the information; but this concept of free-riding also extends to giving in social groups - friends expect other friends to stump up most of the cash and so they don't bother themselves.

•••••

But Prof Scharf also discovered that the amount a person can raise doesn't only depend on the number of friends they have online - those who complete tougher fundraising activities generate more cash.

"Whilst running is by far the most popular event on JustGiving, it is in fact individuals who complete triathlons that typically attract the largest number of donations and raise the most money in total," she added. "So doing something physically demanding and asking a small group of friends for their support is much more effective than relying on donations from lots of people for what would be perceived as a relatively less exerting activity."

•••••

Evidence mounting that older adults who volunteer are happier, healthier

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/bcfg-emt082914.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 29-Aug-2014

Contact: Kelly Connelly
Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care
Evidence mounting that older adults who volunteer are happier, healthier
Health benefits appear to peak at 100 volunteer hours annually, or 2-3 hours per week

Toronto, Canada – Older adults who stay active by volunteering are getting more out of it than just an altruistic feeling – they are receiving a health boost!

A new study, led by the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences and published online this week in Psychological Bulletin, is the first to take a broad-brush look at all the available peer-reviewed evidence regarding the psychosocial health benefits of formal volunteering for older adults.

•••••

Among the key findings:

Volunteering is associated with reductions in symptoms of depression, better overall health, fewer functional limitations, and greater longevity.

Health benefits may depend on a moderate level of volunteering. There appears to be a tipping point after which greater benefits no longer accrue. The "sweet spot" appears to be at about 100 annual hours, or 2-3 hours per week.

More vulnerable seniors (i.e. those with chronic health conditions) may benefit the most from volunteering.

Feeling appreciated or needed as a volunteer appears to amplify the relationship between volunteering and psychosocial wellbeing.

"Taken together, these results suggest that volunteering is associated with health improvements and increased physical activity – changes that one would expect to offer protection against a variety of health conditions," said Dr. Anderson. Indeed, a moderate amount of volunteering has been shown to be related to less hypertension and fewer hip fractures among seniors who volunteer compared to their matched non-volunteering peers.

•••••

The roots of human altruism and cognition

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/uoz-tro082714.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 27-Aug-2014

Contact: Judith Burkart
University of Zurich
The roots of human altruism

Scientists have long been searching for the factor that determines why humans often behave so selflessly. It was known that humans share this tendency with species of small Latin American primates of the family Callitrichidae (tamarins and marmosets), leading some to suggest that cooperative care for the young, which is ubiquitous in this family, was responsible for spontaneous helping behavior. But it was not so clear what other primate species do in this regard, because most studies were not comparable.

A group of researchers from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy and Great Britain, headed by anthropologist Judith Burkart from the University of Zurich, therefore developed a novel approach they systematically applied to a great number of primate species. The results of the study have now been published in Nature Communications.

•••••

Until now, many researchers assumed that spontaneous altruistic behavior in primates could be attributed to factors they would share with humans: advanced cognitive skills, large brains, high social tolerance, collective foraging or the presence of pair bonds or other strong social bonds. As Burkart's new data now reveal, however, none of these factors reliably predicts whether a primate species will be spontaneously altruistic or not. Instead, another factor that sets us humans apart from the great apes appears to be responsible. Says Burkart: "Spontaneous, altruistic behavior is exclusively found among species where the young are not only cared for by the mother, but also other group members such as siblings, fathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles." This behavior is referred to technically as the "cooperative breeding" or "allomaternal care."

The significance of this study goes beyond identifying the roots of our altruism. Cooperative behavior also favored the evolution of our exceptional cognitive abilities. During development, human children gradually construct their cognitive skills based on extensive selfless social inputs from caring parents and other helpers, and the researchers believe that it is this new mode of caring that also put our ancestors on the road to our cognitive excellence. This study may, therefore, have just identified the foundation for the process that made us human. As Burkart suggests: "When our hominin ancestors began to raise their offspring cooperatively, they laid the foundation for both our altruism and our exceptional cognition."

Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

We need a mixture of public and private research.

It is disturbing to me that President Obama feels it necessary to invoking the growth of the economy to justify research into the brain. With a large number of people entering their older years, the number of people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia are expected to grow to large numbers.

From a moral standpoint, the public should help fund research that might help any of us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ideas-are-privatizing-american-science.html?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&_r=0

By WILLIAM J. BROADMARCH 15, 2014

Last April, President Obama assembled some of the nation’s most august scientific dignitaries in the East Room of the White House. Joking that his grades in physics made him a dubious candidate for “scientist in chief,” he spoke of using technological innovation “to grow our economy” and unveiled “the next great American project”: a $100 million initiative to probe the mysteries of the human brain.

Along the way, he invoked the government’s leading role in a history of scientific glories, from putting a man on the moon to creating the Internet. The Brain initiative, as he described it, would be a continuation of that grand tradition, an ambitious rebuttal to deep cuts in federal financing for scientific research.

“We can’t afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to seize them. I don’t want the next job-creating discoveries to happen in China or India or Germany. I want them to happen right here.”

-----

American science, long a source of national power and pride, is increasingly becoming a private enterprise.

In Washington, budget cuts have left the nation’s research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Projects are being put on the shelf, especially in the risky, freewheeling realm of basic research. Yet from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, science philanthropy is hot, as many of the richest Americans seek to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research.

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“the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”

-----

Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research — the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries — for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration.

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Fundamentally at stake, the critics say, is the social contract that cultivates science for the common good.

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Public money still accounts for most of America’s best research, as well as its remarkable depth and diversity.

-----

Initially, Dr. Apple said, he, too, saw the donors as superrich dabblers. Now he believes that they are helping accelerate the overall pace of science. What changed his mind, he said, was watching them persevere, year after year, in pursuit of highly ambitious goals.


“They target polio and go after it until it’s done — no one else can do that,” he said, referring to the global drive to eradicate the disease. “In effect, they have the power to lead where the market and the political will are insufficient.”

-----

There are also signs of a growing awareness, among some philanthropists, that this influence brings a responsibility to address some of the criticisms leveled at them. Last year, a coalition of leading science foundations announced a campaign to double private spending on basic research over a decade — to $5 billion a year — as a counterweight to money rushing into health and other popular fields.

Continue reading the main story

“Today, federal funding of basic research is on the decline,” the group said. “The best hope for near-term change lies with American philanthropy.”

-----

The financial outlook had fallen far and fast. Congress had long reached across party lines to support government research, for its economic and military rewards and because the distribution of billions of dollars plays well come election time. After rising steadily for decades, federal science financing hit a high point in 2009, in the early days of the Obama administration, as Congress, to stimulate the economy amid the global financial crisis, allocated about $40 billion for basic science.

That bipartisan consensus eroded with the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections and the budget battles that followed. Spending on basic research has fallen by roughly a quarter, to $30 billion last year, one of the sharpest declines ever.

The cutbacks translate into layoffs: A group of scientific societies recently surveyed 3,700 scientists and technical managers and reported that 55 percent knew of colleagues who had lost jobs or expected to lose them soon.

In an interview, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis S. Collins, called 2013 one of his agency’s darkest years ever, with fewer grants awarded and with jobs and programs cut. In decades past, research financed by the institutes won more than 100 Nobel Prizes. The cutbacks, Dr. Collins said, were “profoundly discouraging.”

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The official reticence about private science may reflect, in part, a fear that conservatives will try to use it to further a small-government agenda. Indeed, some of the donors themselves worry that too much focus on private giving could diminish public support for federal science.

“It’s always been a major worry,” said Robert W. Conn, president of the Kavli Foundation, which has committed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to science and is part of the private effort to increase financing for basic research. “Philanthropy is no substitute for government funding. You can’t say that loud enough.”

-----

Still, he and other experts are quick to add that the private surge is far too small to replace public financing.

The N.I.H. budget alone runs to about $30 billion — half for basic research. At least for now, said Dr. Press, the board chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, private giving is “still a drop in the bucket.”

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This private war on disease has resulted not only in significant advances in treatment, but also in what experts describe as a major breakthrough in how biomedical research is done. The method opens up blockages that have traditionally kept basic discoveries from being turned into effective treatments — especially for rare diseases that drug companies avoid for lack of potential profit.

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Many of their efforts are rooted deep in personal or family trauma. Sometimes, by sheer force of genetics and demographics, that impulse may risk widening historical racial inequalities in health care and disease research, disparities that decades of studies have shown to contribute to higher rates of disease and death among blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups.

A review of these campaigns finds that, as with cystic fibrosis — which mainly strikes people of Northern European descent — a significant number are devoted to diseases that disproportionately affect white people.

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Of course, the pervasiveness of most diseases means most philanthropists give comfort and medical relief across the lines of race and ethnicity. When Mr. Milken, for example, learned that he had prostate cancer, he set up a foundation to fight it. The charity has raised more than half a billion dollars, helping save not only him but also many black men, since they develop the disease more frequently than white men do.

So, too, the techniques of translational science, inspired by philanthropy, are now being applied in a federal effort against sickle cell anemia, a blood disorder that mainly strikes black people and has long been something of a research orphan.

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Sometimes, private donors go to the government’s aid. When budget cuts threatened to shut down a giant particle accelerator on Long Island in 2006, Dr. Simons, the hedge-fund investor, who lives nearby, raised $13 million to bail it out. As a result, research teams were able to keep exploring subatomic aspects of the blast that brought the universe into existence.

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Shortly before he died, Mr. Mitchell, the telescope man, spoke of his concern that American science was already losing its competitive edge. He cited the discovery of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle seen as imparting mass to the universe. The finding was made at a particle accelerator in Europe after tight budgets shut down a rival machine near Chicago.

“We have no excuse” for losing the lead, Mr. Mitchell said. “We need to fix it.”

generosity leads to higher levels of happiness

http://www.cifar.ca/lara-b-aknin

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Dr. Aknin’s primary research interests focus upon the antecedents and consequences of happiness and prosocial behaviour. Some of her recent work has examined perceptions of the money and happiness relationship and whether people reap greater happiness from spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) than when spending the same amount of money on themselves. Her research has found that generous spending leads to higher levels of happiness than spending money on oneself, both in North America and in various other countries around the world. Dr. Aknin and her colleagues have also found that children as young as two years old experience greater happiness when sharing their own resources (e.g. edible treats) with others than when receiving the same treats themselves.

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Slacktivism: 'Liking' on Facebook may mean less giving

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/uobc-so110713.php

Contact: Andrew Riley
University of British Columbia

Would-be donors skip giving when offered the chance to show public support for charities in social media, a new study from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business finds.

"Charities incorrectly assume that connecting with people through social media always leads to more meaningful support," says Sauder PhD student Kirk Kristofferson, who co-authored the forthcoming Journal of Consumer Research article.

"Our research shows that if people are able to declare support for a charity publicly in social media it can actually make them less likely to donate to the cause later on."

The study results add fuel to recent assertions that social media platforms are turning people into "slacktivists" by making it easy for them to associate with a cause without committing resources to support it.

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They found that the more public the token show of endorsement, the less likely participants are to provide meaningful support later. If participants were provided with the chance to express token support more privately, such as confidentially signing a petition, they were more likely to give later.

The researchers suggest this occurs because giving public endorsement satisfies the desire to look good to others, reducing the urgency to give later. Providing token support in private leads people to perceive their values are aligned with the cause without the payoff of having people witness it.

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In Rich and Poor Nations, Giving Makes People Feel Better Than Getting, Research Finds

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130221104357.htm

sciencedaily.com | Feb 21st 2013

Feeling good about spending money on someone else rather than for personal benefit may be a universal response among people in both impoverished countries and rich nations, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Our findings suggest that the psychological reward experienced from helping others may be deeply ingrained in human nature, emerging in diverse cultural and economic contexts," said lead author Lara Aknin, PhD, of Simon Fraser University in Canada.

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"From an evolutionary perspective, the emotional benefits that people experience when they help others acts to encourage generous behavior beneficial to long-term human survival," said Aknin.

The more gray matter you have, the more altruistic you are

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/uoz-tmg071112.php

Public release date: 11-Jul-2012
Contact: Ernst Fehr
University of Zurich
The more gray matter you have, the more altruistic you are

This press release is available in German.

The volume of a small brain region influences one's predisposition for altruistic behavior. Researchers from the University of Zurich show that people who behave more altruistically than others have more gray matter at the junction between the parietal and temporal lobe, thus showing for the first time that there is a connection between brain anatomy, brain activity and altruistic behavior.

Why are some people very selfish and others very altruistic? Previous studies indicated that social categories like gender, income or education can hardly explain differences in altruistic behavior. Recent neuroscience studies have demonstrated that differences in brain structure might be linked to differences in personality traits and abilities. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers from the University of Zurich headed by Ernst Fehr, Director of the Department of Economics, show that there is a connection between brain anatomy and altruistic behavior.

.....

The aim of the study, however, was to find out why there are such differences. Previous studies had shown that a certain region of the brain – the place where the parietal and temporal lobes meet – is linked to the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes in order to understand their thoughts and feelings.

What percent of US budget goes to foreign aid?

http://masbury.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/what-percent-of-us-budget-goes-to-foreign-aid/

We Americans guess, on average, that 24% of our federal budget goes to development assistance. The real number? Less than one per cent.

Despite laudable recent increases in US giving to reduce poverty, US aid as a percent of personal income is second to last among wealthy nations.

We give about 25 cents per American per day [correction:] year in foreign aid; with private giving, another dime. It’s a lot, in total, because there are a lot of us. But it’s far behind the level of sacrifice made by people in most developed nations.

Further, according to the Borgen Project:

Less than half of aid from the United States goes to the poorest countries
The largest recipients are strategic allies such as Egypt, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Israel is the richest country to receive U.S. assistance ($77 per Israeli compared to $3 per person in poor countries).

But look what can be done:

The U.S. was the largest single donor in a global campaign that eradicated smallpox from the world by 1977.
The U.S. provided funding for a program to prevent river blindness in West Africa. As a result of these efforts, 18 million children now living in the program’s region are free from the risk of river blindness.

..

Recent Generations Focus More On Fame, Money Than Giving Back

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120315094503.htm

ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2012) — The times are changing, and not necessarily for the better when it comes to giving back to society, according to 40 years of research on 9 million young adults. Since the baby boomer generation, there has been a significant decline among young Americans in political participation, concern for others and interest in saving the environment, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.

"Popular views of the millennial generation, born in the 1980s and 1990s, as more caring, community-oriented and politically engaged than previous generations are largely incorrect, particularly when compared to baby boomers and Generation X at the same age," said the study's lead author, Jean Twenge, PhD, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of the book, "Generation Me." "These data show that recent generations are less likely to embrace community mindedness and are focusing more on money, image and fame." The study was published online this month in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The findings did show that millennials were more likely than baby boomers or Generation Xers to volunteer during high school and to say that they intend to participate in community service in college. However, the authors contend that this trend is most likely related to schools' requiring community service for graduation, which has been cited in numerous studies. The desire to save the environment, an area considered to be of particular concern to millennials, showed some of the largest declines, with three times as many millennials as baby boomers at the same age saying they made no personal effort to help the environment. Fifty-one percent of millennials said they made an effort to cut down on electricity use to save energy, compared to 68 percent of boomers in the 1970s.

[...]

..

America's poor are its most generous givers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/19/68456/americas-poor-are-its-most-generous.html?storylink=MI_emailed

Posted on Tuesday, May 19, 2009
By Frank Greve | McClatchy Newspapers

America's poor donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What's more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.

"The lowest-income fifth (of the population) always give at more than their capacity," said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. "The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give."

[...]

..

Zookeepers stunned as moose rescues drowning marmot from watery death

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009820/Elk-safety-Zoo-keepers-stunned-moose-rescues-drowning-marmot-watery-death.html

Last updated at 8:07 AM on 1st July 2011

Keepers at Pocatello Zoo, Idaho, were worried when they noticed Shooter, a four-year-old elk, acting strangely at his water trough.

Baffled, they watched as the animal - who is so massive some keepers are afraid to even enter his enclosure - tried to dip his hooves into his drinking trough, before attempting to dunk his whole head in the water.

But they were amazed as 10ft tall Shooter lifted his head from the trough clutching a tiny marmot - a kind of large squirrel - between his jaws.

The gentle giant placed the hapless rodent down and nudged it with his hoof, as if checking it for signs of life, before calmly watching it scamper off into the bushes.
Zoo staff caught the entire rescue on camera. 'It really was amazing,' said Kate O'Conner, Pocatello's education co-ordinator.

[.....]

'He was trying to dunk his head in the water, but his antlers kept getting in the way.
'Nobody could figure out why he was trying to get his head in, and then he started dipping his feet in.
'We were all completely confused, until we saw the marmot in his mouth.
'I think he had nudged the animal away from the edge of the bucket with his antlers and hooves so he could reach it with his mouth without his antlers getting in the way.

[...]

..

death toll from Wednesday's storms keeps rising.

This is so sad. It is also upsetting because climate scientists warned decades ago that rising greenhouse gases would lead to global warming/climate change, resulting in more episodes of severe weather.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42837437/ns/weather/

By GREG BLUESTEIN, MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
updated 1 hour 21 minutes ago

PRATT CITY, Ala. — Church groups, students and other volunteers worked aggressively Saturday to bring food, water and other necessities to communities ravaged by the second-deadliest day of tornadoes in U.S. history.

Across the South, volunteers have been pitching in as the death toll from Wednesday's storms keeps rising.

At least 340 people were killed across seven states, including at least 249 in Alabama, as the storm system spawned tornadoes through several states. It was the largest death toll since March 18, 1925, when 747 people were killed in storms that raged through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.

----- (skipping)

This week's tornadoes devastated the infrastructure of emergency safety workers. Emergency buildings were wiped out, bodies were being stored in refrigerated trucks, and authorities were left to beg for such basics as flashlights. In one neighborhood, the storms even left firefighters to work without a truck.

----- (skipping)

Volunteers stepped in to help almost as soon as the storms passed through. They ditched their jobs, shelled out their paychecks, donated blood and even sneaked past police blockades to get aid to some of the hardest-hit communities. Students from universities elsewhere in Alabama, and even from as far away as South Carolina and Pennsylvania, have offered to pitch inwith supply drives and other aid.

Still, others said the government wasn't doing enough.
Eighty-two-year-old Eugene Starks was working with a tow truck driver to pull a blown-out car from what remained of his garage on Saturday morning. He was hoping the government would provide more help so he could recover what was left from his wrecked house.
"I'm trying to do what I can myself," he said. "I hope the government steps in, but I'm not holding my breath."

Of course, this is in a state which votes Republican, where people are against "big government". Where do they think the extra government workers are going to come from in a disaster this big?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42834400/ns/weather/

NBC News and news services
updated 4/30/2011 12:52:11 PM ET
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The death toll from this week's storms rose to 344 Saturday, according to an NBC News count, making the tornado outbreak the second deadliest in U.S. history.

With some estimates putting the number of homes and buildings destroyed close to 10,000, state and federal authorities in the U.S. South were still coming to terms with the scale of the devastation from the country's worst natural catastrophe since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In Tuscaloosa, Ala., alone, up to 446 people were still unaccounted for in the city, though Mayor Walt Maddox said many of those reports probably were from people who have since found their loved ones but have not notified authorities.

The number of deaths has now surpassed that of a twister outbreak that hit Alabama in March 1932, killing 332 people.

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Forecasters have said residents were told the latest tornadoes were coming, but they were just too wide and powerful and in populated areas to avoid a horrifying body count.

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Catastrophe risk modeling company EQECAT said that with initial reports of nearly 10,000 destroyed buildings, property insurance losses were expected to range from $2 to $5 Billion.
"Tornado activity in April is putting 2011 into the record books," it said, adding that the recent tornado outbreak had involved "hundreds of touchdowns, some tornado tracks reported to be almost a mile wide and tens of miles long causing hundreds of fatalities."

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In Rainsville, a northeast Alabama town devastated by the storms, people in cars stopped to offer bread, water and crackers to residents picking through what was left of their belongings. A radio station broadcast offers of help, a store gave away air mattresses and an Italian restaurant served free hot meals.

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The article included several heart-warming accounts of people helping the storm victims, as well as sad episodes of looting.

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Japanese City’s Cry Resonates Around the World

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07plea.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=WO-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-MMY-040711-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: April 6, 2011

MINAMISOMA, Japan — It was a desperate plea for help, spoken into a small digital camcorder by the mayor of this seemingly forsaken city, and posted on the Internet like a bottle tossed into a digital sea.

n the 11-minute recording, the mayor, Katsunobu Sakurai, described the dire situation facing Minamisoma, whose residents were still reeling from a devastating earthquake and 60-foot tsunami when they were ordered to stay indoors because of radiation leaks from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant, 15 miles away. Those who had not fled now faced starvation, he said, as they were trapped in their homes or refugee shelters by the nuclear alert, which also prevented shipments of food from arriving.

¶ “We are left isolated,” Mr. Sakurai said urgently into the camera, his brow furrowed and his voice strained with exhaustion. “I beg you, as the mayor of Minamisoma city, to help us.”

¶ The video, posted on YouTube a day after it was recorded late on the night of March 24, became an instant sensation, and has since drawn more than 200,000 viewers. Almost two weeks later, the city hall is still getting phone calls, most from non-Japanese calling from abroad with offers to help. The city has also received hundreds of boxes of food and other supplies from individuals, and truckloads of relief goods from nonprofit organizations.

¶ “It’s amazing how many of these donors say they saw us on YouTube,” said Noriyoshi Saito, who works in the City Hall economic section and is in charge of handling donated goods.

¶ Mr. Sakurai described the online plea as a turning point in Minamisoma’s struggle against the triple disaster, which for a time had transformed this city of 75,000 people into a virtual ghost town. Some 50,000 residents fled in the first two weeks after the earthquake, though a small number have begun trickling back.

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Nepalese doc is ‘God of Sight’ to nation’s poor

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35935864/ns/health-more_health_news/


By MARGIE MASON
AP Medical Writer

updated 11:26 a.m. ET, Sun., March. 21, 2010
HETAUDA, Nepal - Raj Kaliya Dhanuk sits on a wooden bench, barefoot, with a tattered sari covering thin arms as rough as bark. Thick clear tears bleed from her eyes, milky saucers that stare at nothing.

For nearly a year, cataracts have clouded out all sight from the 70-year-old grandmother's world. With no money, she assumed she'd die alone in darkness. But now she waits quietly outside the operating room for her turn to meet Nepal's God of Sight.

"I am desperate. If only I could see my family again," she whispers in her native tongue. "I feel so bad when I hear the baby cry because I can't help him. I want to pick him up."

Dhanuk and more than 500 others — most of whom have never seen a doctor before — have traveled for days by bicycle, motorbike, bus and even on their relatives' backs to reach Dr. Sanduk Ruit's mobile eye camp. Each hopes for the miracle promised in radio ads by the Nepalese master surgeon: He is able to poke, slice and pull the grape-like jelly masses out of an eye, then refill it with a tiny artificial lens, in about five minutes. Free of charge.

It's an assembly-line approach to curing blindness that's possible thanks to a simple surgical technique Ruit pioneered, allowing cataracts to be removed safely without stitches through two small incisions. Once condemned by the international medical community as unthinkable and reckless, this mass surgery "in the bush" started spreading from Nepal to poor countries worldwide nearly two decades ago.

Thousands of doctors — from North Korea to Nicaragua to Nigeria — have since been trained to train others, with the hope of slowly lessening the leading cause of blindness that affects 18 million people worldwide. And later this year, U.S. military surgeons will train under Ruit for the first time.

Ruit estimates sight has been restored to about 3 or 4 million people through his method. Most of them live in the developing world, where a loss of vision can be worse than death because of the added burden thrust on families already drowning in hardship. The soft-spoken portly doctor in acid-washed jeans and sneakers guesses he alone has removed 100,000 cataracts over his 30-year career.

"You realize there are drops which make an ocean," says Ruit, 55, an ethnic Sherpa who grew up poor in a remote mountain village on the border near Tibet. "They're such wonderful cases that make you fully convinced of the power of the work."

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"Dr. Ruit is as skilled as any cataract surgeon I know, and I suppose it is natural to wonder what he could earn with these same skills in an affluent country," says Chang.

Ruit admits life could have been much more comfortable if he'd simply left Nepal for a job in the West. But not many people have the opportunity he has had to make life better for others, he says.

"This is really too good for money," he says.

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Do Kinder People Have an Evolutionary Advantage?

http://www.alternet.org/story/145888/do_kinder_people_have_an_evolutionary_advantage

March 4, 2010
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

They call it "survival of the kindest."

"Because of our very vulnerable offspring, the fundamental task for human survival and gene replication is to take care of others," said Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. "Human beings have survived as a species because we have evolved the capacities to care for those in need and to cooperate. As Darwin long ago surmised, sympathy is our strongest instinct."

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"The findings suggest that anyone who acts only in his or her narrow self-interest will be shunned, disrespected, even hated," Willer said. "But those who behave generously with others are held in high esteem by their peers and thus rise in status."

"Given how much is to be gained through generosity, social scientists increasingly wonder less why people are ever generous and more why they are ever selfish," he added.

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Christine Carter, executive director of the Greater Good Science Center, is creator of the "Science for Raising Happy Kids" Web site, whose goal, among other things, is to assist in and promote the rearing of "emotionally literate" children. Carter translates rigorous research into practical parenting advice. She says many parents are turning away from materialistic or competitive activities, and rethinking what will bring their families true happiness and well-being.

"I've found that parents who start consciously cultivating gratitude and generosity in their children quickly see how much happier and more resilient their children become," said Carter, author of "Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents" which will be in bookstores in February 2010. "What is often surprising to parents is how much happier they themselves also become."

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