When Henry was laid off three and a half years ago, his family was forced to leave their house. The house they were renting had mold in the basement. Though Lisette was working two part-time jobs, they couldn't find another place to live. [For more of this story go to http://www.upworthy.com/this-is-what-it-looks-like-when-youre-part-of-the-working-poor]
I had seen her walking through the hallways of our high school pulling a wheeled briefcase behind her. She looked like the kind of person you’d want to hug. Not skin and bones where you feel like you might break the person if you squeezed too hard, but round and fleshy with broad shoulders. She wasn’t very tall, but she held her head high, and her hair added a couple of inches. She had it pulled back from her face in a bun that sat at the top of her head, near the back. The bun...
One of the most groundbreaking, critically acclaimed, and delightful video games of 2014 began in a highly unlikely place — Anchorage, Alaska. A scene from "Never Alone." Photos by North One Games/E-Line Media. It's called "Never Alone" (or "Kisima Ingitchuna"). And it wasn't developed by Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, or any of the other big game studios. It was the brainchild of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) — a nonprofit community support organization for Alaska...
It's always satisfying when common sense and community-oriented compassion combine to make good public policy. It's particularly satisfying when the policy involves one of the most daunting problems Houston and Harris County face: the nexus between the mentally ill among us and the criminal justice system that often ensnares them. [For more of this story go to http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Compassionate-care-6676804.php]
The U.S. military ’s historically high suicide rate is more a generational trait than a wartime offshoot, as millennial recruits join up carrying emotional baggage, a new research paper says. The Pentagon says that the group most at risk of committing suicide is white males under 24 years old — which just happens to fit the profile of virtually all enlisted recruits. [For more of this story, written by Rowan Scarborough, go to...
We have zero tolerance for school children who bully, but what about when it's the coach or the teacher who bullies?
NPR continues a series of conversations about The Race Card Project , where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words. Every so often NPR Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris will dip into those six-word stories to explore issues surrounding race and cultural identity for Morning Edition. You can find hundreds of six-word submissions and submit your own at www.theracecardproject.com . Americans adopt thousands of children each year. And...
While much remains unknown about the motives of our two most recent alleged mass murderers—the man who shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado last month, and the husband-and-wife couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday—all appear to have become self-radicalized. Something happened within the mind of each individual that led them to make the tragic leap from strong belief in an ideology to violent action on its behalf. This is,...
Nature is good for the soul. Walking in the woods can help with depression , and reminders of the natural world such as plants and scenes of wild places can make us more cooperative , less impulsive , and just plain nicer . There's even evidence that time spent in green spaces helps children's cognitive development . On top of that, the authors of a new study report, it might also have something to do with strong communities and lower crime rates. "Although a considerable...
During the early 1990s, New York City had a sky-high number of kids in foster care. Now, it’s safely keeping them with their families. Elisa Izquierdo was conceived in a Brooklyn, N.Y., homeless shelter and born with cocaine in her bloodstream in late 1980s. Her mother, Awilda Lopez, went on week-long drug binges and cashed welfare checks to feed her crack addiction. Two of Lopez’s other children lived with relatives, removed from the home by the court system. Social workers...
For Rev. Donna Allen’s congregation in West Oakland, the New Revelation Community Church is a place to share with other African-Americans and to find support when facing life’s small and big crises. And for Allen, one of the most important messages is that their community has too often ignored the scourge of mental illness. “They’ll describe being very depressed, like ‘I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to get out of bed, I don’t want to live...
The Bank of America corporate center and the Duke energy center are the jewels of Charlotte’s skyline. These buildings and many others only went up in the last 25 or so years, when the city started its celebrated transformation . It’s now the second-largest banking center in the U.S., and recovering steadily after the recession .Between 2010 and 2013, the population growth here was second only to Austin, and in the next decade or so Charlotte might become the fastest-growing...
Jim, a 37-year-old male client, married with two young children but currently separated from his wife, recently entered sex addiction treatment with the following concerns: I started therapy a few years ago, ostensibly to deal with my anger . But the real reason I sought help, unknown to my wife, was that I literally could not stop myself from seeing prostitutes and sensual massage workers. Over the preceding two years I’d had hundreds of encounters with sex workers, some of them...
Missouri is home to some of the strictest requirements on abortion in the U.S., including a 72-hour waiting period and mandatory, state-directed counseling. Missouri is also home to some disturbingly high gun crime rates. St. Louis and Kansas City each rank in the top 10 U.S. cities with the highest rates of gun violence, and a recent report showed that toddlers shot more people in Missouri than in any other state. [For more of this story, written by Lindsay Toler, go...
He wasn’t even planning on submitting Resilience to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, says James Redford, whose documentary Paper Tigers has been screening to sold-out audiences around the U.S. this year. But late this summer, he shuffled some papers aside on his desk, and there was the application. It was due the next day. What the heck, he thought. I’ll submit it, as I have every other film I’ve made, but I won’t tell anyone. Why get people’s...