Let’s hear it for the out-of-the-box thinkers, transforming an urban eyesore into a work of art!

Who says that transmission towers need to be ugly? One of the biggest downsides of having easy access to energy has long been the unsightly way it’s carried from place to place, but one US design firm hopes to revolutionize all that — by giving electricity pylons a human touch. In a project entitled “The Land of Giants” those normally stark, utilitarian structures are transformed into more aesthetically pleasing sculptures that folks might not mind having in their backyards.

The artful pylons were designed by the Massachusetes based firm Choi+Shine for submission in a recent competition hosted by Iceland’s national power transmission company who sought designs that had a low environmental impact. Although the project ultimately received only an honorable mention, it has gone on to win praise closer to home, taking home an award from the 2010 Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture.

In the spirit of Easter Island’s iconic rock sculptures, “The Land of Giants” is intended to express “quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people,” say the designers. But much like the architecturally appealing aqueducts of Ancient Rome, which transported another type of resource that made urban life possible, these artful towers breathe life into a structure that is otherwise quite stark.

Source: Treehugger.com

A great piece about the power of a little generosity and ingenuity. Check out the Facebook page at the end to see how you can pay it forward too!

It all started with a trip to Trader Joe’s. Jenni Ware had just rung up her groceries, which came to a total of $207. But as she reached into her purse, she discovered that she’d left her wallet at home.

Ware was about to go home grocery-less when she received a kind offer from the stranger in line behind her, a woman named Carolee Hazard. Hazard offered to pay Ware’s entire bill, simply asking her to send her a check to cover the cost.

The next day, Hazard received a check for $300—$93 more than she’d lent to Ware.

“I didn’t know what to do with the money,” Hazard told USA Today. “I’d thought to mail a check back to Jenni, but in the day and age of Facebook, I turned to my friends to decide what to do with the money instead,”

A friend suggested donating the cash to charity. Hazard thought that was a great idea, and selected the Second Harvest Food Bank, matching the $93 with an additional $93 of her own.

Several of Hazard’s friends were so inspired by her actions that they decided to make their own $93 donations. Soon, their friends were following suit. The group of philanthropists created “the 93 Dollar Club,” and a Facebook page to go along with it. A year since that fateful day at Trader Joe’s, the club has raised more than $100,000 to fight hunger in America.

Now that their story is getting so much attention, Hazard has a bold new goal: doubling donations to $200,000. Want to help? Check out the Facebook page for more info.

Source: Gimundo

Creative potential abounds, even in the most unlikely situations. One would think a boy with a terminal illness would not have the energy, let alone the know-how, to produce such sophisticated and impressive artwork. It reminds us: we are all creative. Convince yourself otherwise and you won’t produce. Allow your inner child to express and you may have the next Picasso:

A terminally ill boy who was not expected to live past six-months-old, has stunned doctors by surviving and holding his own art exhibition.

Leo Haines, aged five, was born with cerebral palsy and a terminal condition affecting his lungs and heart.

Doctors told his mother Marianna Haines, 26, that little Leo would die in his first year. But his fighting spirit saw him through and after spending his first brithday in hospital, Leo was able to move home.

The talented young artist, from Taunton Somerset, England, began painting alongside his grandmother Marianna Thomas, who quickly recognised his talent.

Leo now has 40 unique works, reminiscent of the American abstract artist Jackson Pollock, featuring in their very own art exhibition where they are being sold for charity.

His grandfather, Brian Thomas, 59, said: ‘My wife, his grandmother, is a well-known local artist and it started with Leo joining in, basically uninvited, into her work.

‘So she used to get him a canvas and set him up with paints on the floor and it just went from there.

Artistic Leo, pictured here aged 3, is able to concentrate on his work for over an hour at a time

‘It began by getting him to recognise different colours and mixtures and shapes. Now it is his favourite pastime.

‘I suppose you’d call them impressionism - they’re definitely inspired by his choice of colours, and I think he’s got a very good choice in colours.

‘And they’re really quite good. The first day of the exhibition a man came in and got halfway down the wall and turned to me and asked, ‘Are you Leo?’ - quite seriously.

‘He thought they’d been painted by an adult, and I pointed him to the other wall which tells Leo’s story. He immediately bought a painting. We’ve got about 40 in the exhibition, and they represent two years of Leo’s work.’

Leo was born with cerebral palsy and terminal pulmonary vein stenosis, a condition that means the veins running from his heart to his lungs will become eventually blocked, killing him.

Doctors told his mother, a care assistant from Taunton, Somerset, he was unlikely to survive past six months old, and in the first year of his life Leo’s family was told nine times to prepare for the worst.

But Leo, who suffers from intermittent deafness, battled through and eventually moved home, where he developed a fascination for art as part of therapy to help him communicate.

Now he creates dazzling abstract works full of feeling with sweeping colours on black backgrounds.

Leo’s grandfather, a retired electronics and communications worker, added: ‘Amongst his biggest problems is the ability to communicate because he has cerebral palsy.

Little Leo’s work has been likened to Jackson Pollock’s paintings such as ‘Number 17, 1949′ pictured

‘One of the ways we actually got him to communicate is through activities - painting is one of those things that he can do.

‘My wife’s taught him a sort-of no boundaries approach. It has been great for Leo - it’s got him communicating. He has at least three sessions a week, and in the winter four or five.

‘Some children of his age would not concentrate for more than 15 minutes, but he loves painting so much he can be absorbed for an hour and a half.’

Source: Daily Mail UK

She may look like a puppet to you, but to baby owls, she looks just like mom.

Animal rescue workers at Hampshire, England’s Hawk Conservancy Trust came up with a novel and wonderful use for an owl hand puppet that had nothing to do with children: feeding orphaned owl chicks.

Two chicks and one egg were brought to the center recently, after their nest was inadvertently damaged by farmers. The egg hatched within days of arrival, and the three tawny owls were named Brownie, Woody, and Ivy. The tiny birds were all healthy—but the rescue center wouldn’t be able to release them into the wild if they fed them by hand.

“Owls imprint whatever they first see, this means if they see a human feeding them they will trust humans from that moment on,” Gale Gould of the Hawk Conservancy Trust told The Daily Mail. “These little owls are wild and we want them to remain wild - that’s why we created Super Mum.”

“Super Mum” is the Center’s name for their handmade owl puppet, which Center workers and volunteers use to feed the three baby birds. Super Mum has a pair of tweezers that sticks out of her nose, and the baby birds’ food is placed in the tweezers. For the babies, it’s very similar to how they would take food directly from the mother’s beak in the wild.

The babies will need to continue eating from the hand puppet for the next two months, but after that, they’ll be free to fly off and build their own nests, thanks to Super Mum and her friends.

Source: Gimundo

Leave it to Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to think out of the box with this one!

Former Velvet Underground frontman, Lou Reed, and his wife, performance artist Laurie Anderson, are curating a music and arts festival called Vivid Live at Australia’s Sydney Opera House this month—and one of their events promises to be a barking good time.

On June 5th at 10 AM, four-legged visitors will be welcomed to the Opera House Forecourt (along with their human companions) for the first event of its kind in the world: a concert only for dogs.

Laurie Anderson has created a performance piece consisting of tones so high that we humans won’t be able to hear them, but our canine friends are sure to enjoy the sound. “Our canine friends will be treated to a glorious cacophony of sound, while all we will hear is the lapping of the water on the harbor,” says the Vivid Live website.

Actually, we’ve got a feeling that the human audience members may well be treated to the sound of a few hundred dogs barking in unison—but maybe that’s just part of the music, too.

Live Down Under and want to see the show with your favorite pooch? Check out the details on the website.

Source: Gimundo

This story is a great example of people making the most of out of difficult economic times as well maximizing space in a trying real estate market. What can you do to make the best of a limiting situation in your life? How can you think outside of the box and optimize your space better?

They spent a lot more than a penny doing it up, but turning the public toilets into a home was a true labor of love.

For nearly a century the Victorian WC was used as a loo by visitors to the beach at Scarborough.

Now the distinctive building has been transformed by Tracy Woodhouse and her partner Graham Peck into a cosy house, with magnificent views overlooking the North Sea.

Now named Lookout, the single story building, built into the cliff overlooking the resort’s famous North Bay, is widely admired by local residents who have witnessed its reincarnation.

Miss Woodhouse, 45, said: “Some people joke about it. At work they’ll say things like, “Oh yes, you’re the couple who live in a lavatory.”

“But we now have a lovely little house with a sea view that used to be a loo. We understand the amusement it causes. It tickles us, too.”

The public loo, which became an ammunition store during the war, was closed down in the 1990s and for a few years became a seasonal cafe.

When the lease became available five years ago, the couple, both factory workers, decided it would make a perfect home. A local architect produced plans which maintained the character and style of the building and the council backed the scheme.

The Lookout has stunning views out over the North Bay in Scarborough

Boarded up: The delapidated public toilet before being bought and converted

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1271229/Scarborough-couple-convert-15k-public-toilet-seaside-home.html#ixzz0nXoSY4Rs

We all feel for the horrible natural disaster continuing to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to remain positive when so much damage is being done. A sense of powerlessness can take over. But for some, innovative solutions to difficult problems are what they do best.

Take this next story:

By Katherine Gustafson for Tonic.com

As our newest oil spill seeps toward the Louisiana coast, it’s natural to wonder whether there are any out-of-the-box ways to clean up the mess. Is rubbing animals with dish detergent the best we can do?

Looking to the Philippines, we found our answer: human hair. In 2006, the country’s worst-ever oil spill prompted an unusual program in the country’s prisons. Thousands of Philippine inmates had their heads and chests harvested for hair to be used in the clean-up effort. The hair was combined with feathers to create a spongy material that would soak up the more than 50,000 gallons of industrial fuel that had leaked from a sunken tanker off the central island of Guimaras.

The method was also used in San Francisco, when hair mats were employed to clean up the Cosco Busan spill of 2007, which resulted when a cargo ship hit the base of the Bay Bridge and let loose some 58,000 gallons of oil. Lisa Gautier, director of a nonprofit called Matter of Trust, donated 1,000 “oil spill hair mats” she had made for the San Francisco Department of the Environment to absorb motor oil spills.

Once the hair mats, which are size of doormats and feel like Brillo pads, had absorbed all the oil they could, oyster mushrooms were cultivated on the mats to absorb the oil and turn the oily hair into nontoxic compost within 12 weeks, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Mycologist and author Paul Stamets donated $10,000 worth of oyster mushrooms to the cause.

So could hair and mushrooms work in the gulf? Yes, indeed. Lisa Gautier is at it again and wants your hair to the help with the clean-up effort. Find out how to donate your excess locks here.

Source: Gimundo

That’s right - after years of debating and in-house feuding, the United States of America has passed a healthcare reform:

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Under the legislation, health insurance will be extended to nearly all Americans, imposes new taxes on the wealthy and bars restrictive insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

They represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for Americans aged 65 or over.

President Barack Obama:

“It’s a victory for the American people.”

Damn straight.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Source: BBC News

Hannah Mitchell is 8 years old and blogging about her first Olympic games. What makes this blog so special? Seeing something as colossal as the Olympics and the beautiful city of Vancouver from a child’s point of view is refreshing and fun. It removes all the hype and gives you the child-like essentials, such as:

Then, we were walking back to the hotel when we saw six guys with suits standing outside a building. A limo pulled up and a man walked out, surrounded by the six guys in suits. We didn’t know who he was, but we asked a person next to us and she said it was the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. We looked his picture up on the Internet at the hotel, and it was really him.

Check out her blog when you get a chance. Get a child’s eye view of the Olympics and Vancouver!

We’ve told you about the Songs of Love Foundation in previous posts but since their good work doesn’t stop, we have more to tell you. This week’s story is about rock musician Jason Mraz contributing to the cause for 13 year-old Christian Burn.

According to Good News Now:

Christian is battling Ewing’s sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, and Mraz recorded the song for the Songs of Love Foundation, which provides personalized songs to young people with serious illnesses. The organization draws on the talents of 350 professional lyricists, instrumentalists and vocalists.

Songs of Love was founded in New York by John Beltzer after his brother Julio, the lead singer in his band, took his own life. Shortly before dying, he had recorded a composition called “Songs of Love,” which inspired Beltzer to start his nonprofit.

Their first song was recorded for a 5-year-old cancer patient named Brittany in Memphis, Tenn. Mraz became involved with Songs of Love through a friend of his, Michael Natter, who also co-wrote the song with his wife, Nancy. Natter approached him about recording the landmark 20,000th song in the organization’s 14-year history.

Here’s the song and video. Beautiful!

Christian Burn