Celebrate Earth Day Every Day!

    This is the day to acknowledge your connection to your home planet and all the nurturing nature, bounty, and beauty you receive from this big blue dot. April 22nd is Earth Day, celebrated annually in over 184 countries to promote a healthy environment and peaceful planet. Earth Day highlights our connection with nature, bringing awareness that each one of us is responsible for the destruction or abundance of our natural world... the only one we have. Earth Day makes us realize that each of us has a  voice and every one of our actions matters; collectively great things happen.

    Celebrate Earth Day by joining an organized group and help clear beaches and parks of cans, paper, plastic, bottles, and trash. Go with your family and friends, or go out alone. Look around your neighborhood to see what needs to be done. Petition your local government for more trees, cleaner waterways, and an end to industrial pollution. Use earth-friendly chemicals. Recycle paper and cans, and compost green matter.

    Log onto earthday.org or check your local press to find out what is happening in your area, how to organize your own event, or what commitment you could make in your own small way to help save our Earth... and then make every day Earth Day.

Top of the Mornin'

    One of our fabulous interns here at Viva Editions,  Sara Wigglesworth, has a lovely way of saying "Good morning" upon arriving that ensures that it will actually be a better morning. I have to admit that greeting coworkers sometimes slips my mind, so it's helpful to be reminded of the power that a simple, well intentioned, and sincere greeting can have. It is a wonderful way to start the day with elegance and ease.

Pass on the Wisdom of Grandmothers to Children Today

    Rich, my beloved, was raised by his grandmother, whom he called "GM." She had been the wife of the head of their village and clan in Southern China until the Japanese Occupation, when war devastated the community at the cost of many lives. She felt very fook sing (lucky] to have made it to America with her only son and they rebuilt their lives from scratch. She ran a Chinese laundry which I have no doubt was the finest in all of Flushing, Queens. While working and taking care of her grandchildren, she told stories of the homeland, including the hardest times of having to eat insects during drought and war, fame, and pestilence. She relayed all this with no bitterness, only a sense of good fortune in getting to live in the land of plenty in the US. Day by day, story-by-story, she instilled values of excellence-gratitude, hard work, keeping a positive attitude no matter what- in her children and grandchildren.

    When Rich and his younger brother Jimmy went to public school in Queens, they made lots of friends in that melting pot metropolis, including a young African American boy who was really tall for his age and came from a family that had a hard time putting enough food on the table. One day, he stopped by her house with Rich and Jimmy. It took GM about two seconds to assess the situation and she told them to bring him by every day. She always made extra for their new fast-growing buddy. Having faced severe hunger during the war, GM was not going to let anybody in her circle go hungry.

    Every day, in ways large or small, she showed her family how to do the right thing- stand on the buss so others can sit, be polite even if others are rude, and, above all, "Take care of your clan."

One of Many

Together, we can do and be anything we dreamt of.

Buy your copy of "Random Acts of Kindness" by Brenda Knight and Becca Anderson now on mango.bz: https://mango.bz/books/random-acts-of-kindness-1484-b

Universal Bringer of Kindness

The universe always has space for more kindness.

Buy your copy of "Random Acts of Kindness" by Brenda Knight and Becca Anderson now on mango.bz: https://mango.bz/books/random-acts-of-kindness-1484-b

Spread Kindness without Care

Start a chain of kindness around you. 

Buy your copy of "Random Acts of Kindness" by Brenda Knight and Becca Anderson now on mango.bz: https://mango.bz/books/random-acts-of-kindness-1484-b 

Be of Good Cheer

    Open the doors for everyone- young, old, everyone in between- simply because it is a very, very, very nice thing to do.