Whether metaphorically or literally, singing is a beautiful way of expressing yourself. So let your heart sing out or sing your favorite song proudly. Let these quotes inspire you to sing today. Sing like you just don’t care.

My heart is like a singing bird.
Christina Rossetti

I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe’s singing until somebody told me that it wasn’t a joke.
Spike Milligan

Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.
Rudyard Kipling

Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
Zora Neale Hurston

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil’s mind, and behold, all things are changed!
Anne Sullivan

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
Bertrand Russell

Nothing I have done professionally will top the feeling I got when singing with John Farnham at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.
Olivia Newton-John

Singing is the love of my life, but I was ready to give it all up because I couldn’t handle people talking about how fat I was.
Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/singing_2.html#ixzz1nmobtYjx

There are always heroes, great and small. That’s because human nature prevails and we do what we need to do to help others. We often think it’s a rarity but it’s happening at this moment, all over the world. It may not be monumental in task, but it is in spirit.

Robert George said the ice has been thin this mild winter on the pond near his house off Third Lake, where children are normally able to skate and play hockey in a normal February.

But on Thursday, that ice gave way when four young people ventured out, and George was among the Mariner’s Cove residents who suddenly found themselves in rescue mode.

In fact, George ended up taking an unscheduled swim.

“I was working on the computer and my kids came in yelling that someone fell through the ice,” George said. “So I ran out, dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, and saw that two of them were out a ways and two others were closer, and there were some adults trying to throw them a rope.”

That rope just happened to be in the garage of Izabela Stepien, who also responded to the call for help.

“My neighbor was screaming that some kids were in the pond, so I went and grabbed the rope, which luckily was hanging in the garage. We use it during the summer for tubing,” Stepien said. “By the time we got out there, the smallest one was able to crawl out on his own, but we had to throw the rope to two of them and pull them out.”

Read more at ChicagoSunTimes.

We love it when a reader of our blog makes a suggestion. It feels great to share our positive news and yours too! Here’s a good example:

I love your site, and because what we are creating is extremely positive I want to share it with you.

(Watch our heartwarming One World, One Heart Beating video - created by 9-year-old Kasper here http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kY9HieCkT9c - and light up your day!)

One part “Playing for Change”, one part “We are the World”, One World, One Heart Beating is a global anthem for peace and understanding sung and played entirely by children from around the world.

It is also an interactive website where educators can find great tools for teaching tolerance, and kids (and grown-ups too!) can explore and share ways of fostering joy, compassion and unity.

Since the project’s Valentine’s Day launch, praise and invitations have been flooding in from teachers, kids, diplomats, film festivals, African based NGOs, the press and even Carnegie Hall!

For the full story please visit  http://oneworldoneheartbeating.com/.

Given that this project is a fundraiser for War Child, whose acclaimed programs assist some of the most vulnerable kids on the globe, any suggestions you have, or anything you might be able to do to help spread the word about our project would be most appreciated!

Warmly,
Oona

Attraction is a broad concept that can apply to a number of circumstances and interactions yet its underlying meaning remains the same. There is a desire, a magnetic pull, almost beyond our control at times, that brings one element toward another.

What is this magical force?

And that, to me, is the main attraction to comics. It’s an avenue to say what you want to say.
Bill Sienkiewicz

Attraction is beyond our will or ideas sometimes.
Juliette Binoche

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
Dean Inge

He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Henry Ward Beecher

I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.
Gustave Moreau

I believe very strongly that when it comes to desire, when it comes to attraction, that things are never black and white, things are very much shades of grey.
Brian Molko

I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.
Lars von Trier

I have never fallen in love with my own voice, but I’ve always had an attraction for it.
Tom Snyder

I hope I’m not a tourist attraction - I’m sure that they come here really because St. Andrews is just amazing, a beautiful place.
Prince William

I live my life parallel with my work, and they are both equally important. I’m always amazed how much people talk about celebrity and fame. I don’t understand the attraction.
Cate Blanchett

I wasn’t good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy.
Alison Moyet

Yes, the companionship is amazing. You know, you can get that physical attraction that happens is great, but then there’s an awful lot of time and the rest of the day that you have to fill.
Vince Gill

I suspect the secret of personal attraction is locked up in our unique imperfections, flaws and frailties.
Hugh Mackay

Social commentator, Hugh Mackay

In today’s high impact world, it’s important to have as many ways as possible to discharge accumulated anxiety and stress. The more you move it through your system, the less it lingers and causes mental and physical problems.

So what are some examples of “vent hobbies”?

• Kickboxing
• Running
• Cooking (lots of chopping and dicing and slicing)
• Sweeping (not exactly a hobby but cleans the house and your mind!)
• Yard work
• Singing (vocalizing is a type of screaming, which we all want to do sometimes)
• Soul dancing (which means simply dancing in your own way, with the idea of release in mind.)

What other vent hobbies can you think of? It can pretty much apply to any hobby, as long as your intention is to purge accumulated stress, even knitting!

Ah, communication. Such an elusive concept at times, isn’t it? We know when we are communicating, but when we’re not, it’s not always that simple to fix it. One thing is sure: it’s very important. From interpersonal relationships to global peace, communication can make or break us.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.
Emma Thompson

Art must unquestionably have a social value; that is, as a potential means of communication it must be addressed, and in comprehensible terms, to the understanding of mankind.
Rockwell Kent

As a whole, the managers today are different in temperament. Most have very good communication skills and are more understanding of the umpire’s job. That doesn’t mean they are better managers. It just means that I perceive today’s managers a bit differently.
Jim Evans

As soon as you judge communication a little more rigorously, there is a possibility that the message will not be democratized. I have to say what I believe to be right. I have to spread out the statement among all the means of expression available to us at present.
Alexander Kluge

Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.
Rowan D. Williams

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
Abraham Maslow

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/communication.html#ixzz1mSsZImSb

Okay, so not everyone has a romantic partner on Valentine’s Day. What can you do to stave off that heavy heart that secretly wants something magical to happen?

There is one big problem when it comes to this holiday: we give our power over to others. We expect someone else to sweep in with some grand romantic gesture, whether it’s a gift or a night on the town. Maybe even a card in the mail. Maybe a romantic phone call…something! But unfortunately, we can’t always dial that up. Hence the disappointment that follows. We had a picture in our mind as to what romance is supposed to be. And that picture isn’t always actualized!

Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the picture in your mind. What would you like to have happen? Describe it in detail:

I’d like to kiss someone I like today. I’d also like to be taken out for a nice dinner. A small gift would be great too. A silver chain with an unusual pendant that I’ll wear constantly and be reminded of you. I’ll feel the heat of passion with another. That magical feeling of two bodies close to one another, desiring one another. I’d like a sweet dessert to top it off.

Just by the mere act of defining what you’d like to have happen, you’re that much closer to it. Because you can’t long for something if you’re not sure what it is! So long away today - simply be specific!

Boy, if this story doesn’t do something to you, check your pulse. One rescued boy, one lost Teddy bear, one happy reunion:

The child’s father told rescuers that the little boy had been unable to sleep since the disaster and desperately missed his toy.

He wrote to islanders who had given shelter to him and his son after they were brought ashore when the 950ft long vessel ran aground on the Italian island of Giglio on the night of Jan 13.

Islanders passed the letter to the island’s mayor, Sergio Ortelli, who in turn gave it to rescue divers, who entered the hull on a special mission, finding the cabin where the boy had been staying and retrieving the soft toy – bedraggled but intact.

Bad weather has repeatedly forced divers to suspend their operations in the hull of the crippled ship but they took advantage of a break in the weather earlier this week to go back in – a welcome break from the grim task of looking for bodies.

They found the bear hidden in a tangle of debris – overturned tables, chairs, mattresses and scattered luggage.

Rescuers sent the teddy bear back to the boy, who lives with his father in Verona in northern Italy, having lost his mother some years ago.

Source: The Telegraph

It’s baaaack. That’s right, the scariest of holidays. Oh wait…it’s not supposed to be scary at all. It’s a holiday based on love and the celebration thereof. What will you be doing this Valentine’s Day? If you don’t have a certain someone, that’s no reason not to celebrate. Love is all around us. And it’s one of the most powerful feelings known to humankind. Let’s tip our hats that day, happily and brimming with love.

When love is not madness, it is not love.  ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.  ~Albert Einstein

I don’t understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine’s Day.  When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.  ~Author Unknown

For you see, each day I love you more
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
~Rosemonde Gerard

Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.  ~Author Unknown

Love - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker.  ~Author Unknown

I claim there ain’t
Another Saint
As great as Valentine.
~Ogden Nash

Trip over love, you can get up.  Fall in love and you fall forever.  ~Author Unknown

Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart.  ~Author Unknown

A hundred hearts would be too few
To carry all my love for you.
~Author Unknown

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure they won’t laugh if you trip.  ~Jonathan Carroll, “Outside the Dog Museum”

We’re all a little weird.  And life is a little weird.  And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love.  ~Robert Fulghum, True Love

We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love. ~Robert Fulghum, True Love

We all get lost sometimes. Metaphorically and literally. How you survive during that period is key to your survival. This family figured out how to keep alive in the Oregon woods and make it through to tell the tale.

PORTLAND, Ore. – A family of three huddled on the edge of an old-growth Oregon forest for six days, lost and cold, unable to signal search helicopters flying low and slow overhead.

Without food, water or even warm clothing, Belinda and Daniel Conne, along with their 25-year-old son, Michael, survived by drinking water from streams and taking shelter in a hollowed-out tree.

On Saturday, they managed to crawl to a clearing, where a search helicopter spotted them several miles outside the community of Gold Beach, roughly 330 miles south-southwest of Portland.

“It’s a miracle, really,” Curry County Sheriff John Bishop said.

The three were airlifted to a Gold Beach hospital, where Bishop spoke with them at an emergency room. He said the Connes told him they could see search helicopters just a few hundred feet above them while they were lost but had nothing to signal them with through the thick, coastal forest vegetation.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/05/family-lost-for-6-days-found-alive-in-oregon-forest/#ixzz1li45D9wS