With All The Bad News, Here's Some Good

[Annie]

Here's some good news -- for a change

Here's some good news -- for a change
Last updated November 28, 2008 10:42 p.m. PT

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON JR.
P-I COLUMNIST

TEEN shootings and gang violence mar Seattle streets.

A Wal-Mart worker gets trampled to death in a Black Friday stampede back East.

Terrorist attacks and bloodshed throw Mumbai into chaos.

What's the world come to?

With all this bummer news, I thought today would be a fine time to focus on the positive, putting the spotlight on good people who've done good things.

PEOPLE like Moisei Baraniuc, a 17-year-old grocery store employee who packs bags for $8.07, the minimum wage.

On Nov. 13, the young man, who goes by the nickname "Moses," found a bag containing $10,000 in his workplace bathroom at Top Food & Drug in Federal Way. He turned the bag over to his manager, who called police.

Turns out the bag contained the life savings of a Vancouver, Wash., man who had accidentally left it behind...

...I NEVER got to meet Brenden Foster of Bothell. Wish I had.

For an 11-year-old kid, he possessed the wisdom of a community elder.

Brenden, bedridden and battling terminal cancer, had a wish: to help the homeless.

He told KOMO/4 that the idea came about recently when he passed the "Nickelsville" homeless encampment in Seattle: "I was coming back from one of my clinic (appointments) and I saw this big thing of homeless people, and then I thought I should just get them something."

"They're probably starving," added the cherubic, curly- haired boy who dreamed of becoming a marine photographer, "so give them a chance."

When word got out about Brenden's wish, people kicked into action. Seattle-area volunteers made hundreds of sandwiches and passed them out to the needy. A TV station in Los Angeles held a food drive. A shelter in Southern California handed out sack lunches with two words on each bag: "Love Brenden."

Messages even poured in from as far away as Saudi Arabia.

The boy triggered a global avalanche of support for the down-and-out before he passed away a week ago....

 

[Lycurgus]

Thanks for sharing that. I think it is easy for us to look past all of the good which takes place every day. It's good to be reminded of it and to take notice of it.

 

[William Joyce]

Turns out the bag contained the life savings of a Vancouver, Wash., man who had accidentally left it behind...

A few months ago, we all would have had a good laugh about this retirement plan.

Nowadays, maybe he was on to something...

 

[Annie]

Thanks for sharing that. I think it is easy for us to look past all of the good which takes place every day. It's good to be reminded of it and to take notice of it.

Your quite welcome. Between the carnage in India, the two Darwinian award contenders at the Toys R Us, and the trampling of that poor man, yesterday was depressing to me. Glad I ran across that...

 

[Sunni Man]

Thanks for the break from all of the bad news we hear all day long

 

[random3434]

Here's some good news -- for a change

Don't you just love kids?

My nephew is going to collect clothes and toys for the students where I teach. They are 'economically disadvantaged'-and he goes to a private school where those kids are not. He has traveled to Brazil to help the poor, and to the deep south to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. He's working on his Eagle Scout Badge too.

{He's 16, yeah, I'm bragging on him too..... }

 

[Annie]

Don't you just love kids?

My nephew is going to collect clothes and toys for the students where I teach. They are 'economically disadvantaged'-and he goes to a private school where those kids are not. He has traveled to Brazil to help the poor, and to the deep south to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. He's working on his Eagle Scout Badge too.

{He's 16, yeah, I'm bragging on him too..... }

The good kids do so much 'good.' Yet, it's the man bites dog stories that we're bombarded with. My kids have always volunteered, but then again so have I. One of them went down after Katrina and helped with clean up. The youngest has always volunteered with the elderly, especially with Alzheimer patients. While neither of my parents suffered from that, they lived with us throughout his high school years, my mom in a wheel chair with 24 hour nursing. He'd been a very angry child, who became a very caring teen and now adult. Saved several times by my brother 'the cop' from serious trouble, he's starting his internship in law enforcement next month.

 

[Sunni Man]

Don't you just love kids?

My nephew is going to collect clothes and toys for the students where I teach. They are 'economically disadvantaged'-and he goes to a private school where those kids are not. He has traveled to Brazil to help the poor, and to the deep south to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. He's working on his Eagle Scout Badge too.

What a wonderful boy!!

 

[editec]

Good kid.

 

[del]

Don't you just love kids?

My nephew is going to collect clothes and toys for the students where I teach. They are 'economically disadvantaged'-and he goes to a private school where those kids are not. He has traveled to Brazil to help the poor, and to the deep south to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. He's working on his Eagle Scout Badge too.

{He's 16, yeah, I'm bragging on him too..... }

good for him. when my son was working on his Eagle, he organized and helped collect 3 tractor trailer loads of clothes and blankets for Katrina victims.

we later found out that the trailers were diverted to Halliburton and the clothing sold at exorbitant prices to Kurdish tribesmen to fund illegal operations in Pakistan, but i've always maintained that it's the thought that counts.

good luck to your nephew, making Eagle is a real achievement.

 

[Old Rocks]

Don't you just love kids?

My nephew is going to collect clothes and toys for the students where I teach. They are 'economically disadvantaged'-and he goes to a private school where those kids are not. He has traveled to Brazil to help the poor, and to the deep south to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. He's working on his Eagle Scout Badge too.

{He's 16, yeah, I'm bragging on him too..... }

Yes, you are, and justly so. This kind of kid is our future. So kudos are in order, and I hope he maintains this kind of ethic for the whole of his life.