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-- OPINION --
Shutting off the lights in Australia
By Rebecca Baylis in PERTH, Australia --
A revolutionary way of thinking about climate change started Saturday,
March 31, 2007 when millions of people did something as simple as shut
off their lights.
In a single hour that evening, 2.2 million
people in Sydney, Australia, shut off all lights and unnecessary electrical
appliances in order to take a stand against ridiculously high carbon emissions
in Australia and worldwide.
That hour was affectionately dubbed ‘Earth Hour’
and set into motion a new yearly tradition that effectively breached the gap
between many nations in their fight to rescue a flailing world.
Read more
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When Hurricane Katrina smashed ashore in
2005, Louisiana teen Samantha Perez started writing about the
storm that washed away much of her old life. Her journal,
chronicled in the pages of The Tattoo, is all online at
Hurricane Journal.
Read it for an eye-opening and intensely personal look into the
eye of the worst storm in recent history. |
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I caught Bruce Springsteen's
harmonica
By Jared Brown in HARTFORD, Connecticut, U.S.A. -
I was wearing my dad’s old Springsteen shirt from the
early 1970s that has a picture of Bruce in his “Jersey
Devil” days, wearing a funky cap and big sunglasses with
metal rims. During the concert, Bruce spotted my tee
shirt and smiled. At the end of the song “Promised
Land,” he tossed me his harmonica.
Read more
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Sailing the Hudson in Seeger's sloop
By Kiernan Majerus-Collins in WEST HARTFORD, Connecticut, U.S.A.
–
The
captain of a Hudson River sloop built to raise environmental awareness – the
brainchild of folk singer Pete Seeger – said the once badly polluted river
“looks better to me” these days.
“This amazing old boat” has done a lot to promote clean water
and to help convince people to love the river since its launch
in 1969, Capt. Samantha Heyman said.
The boat, named the Clearwater, sails with anything from a
fidgety fourth-grade class to a 50th wedding
anniversary. However “our primary program, our bread and butter,
is called classroom of the waves,” said Heyman.
“Classroom of the waves” and other programs have made it so that
“half a million students have sailed on the Clearwater since she
started” in patrolling the river 40 years ago Heyman said.
To honor Seeger’s 90th birthday tonight, musicians
ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Joan Baez are playing a
benefit concert in New York City to help establish an endowment
that would ensure the Clearwater has clear sailing for
generations to come.
Read more
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-- NEWS --
South Africans cast their votes
By Mariechen Puchert in
WESTERN CAPE, South Africa --
National Election Day arrived on April 22 in a fashion more
peaceful than many South Africans expected. As a public holiday,
that meant, for many, they could sleep in. But others woke up at
the crack of dawn and made their way toward voting stations
around the country. Some traveled by foot, the more fortunate by
car, but citizens throughout the country appeared to have a
single pattern of thought on their minds – Reach the polling
stations, vote, go home and anticipate the results.
“We can all try to change the country by complaining or we could
try to change it by voting,” said Paul Jordaan, a fifth year
medicine student in Western Cape.
Read whole story
South African elections may prove pivotal
By
Mariechen Puchert in WESTERN CAPE, South Africa –
(April 20, 2009) For the past
few months, there has been little that could occupy the
attention of South Africans for long. Not even the arrival of
the Indian Premier League in South Africa was greeted by a
suitable hubbub. Students, parents, professionals and even the beggars on street
corners have but one topic for discussion: the upcoming national elections on
Wednesday, April 22. For the first time since the first democratic elections in 1994,
South Africans are uncertain about their choice of political party.
Read whole story
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