The Love Box

John and Helen Hakanson have been in love for 68 years. Before they were married, during WWII, John sent Helen a gift from Japan in a tiny wooden box. One of their sons kept the box, and when their children and grandchildren wanted to celebrate the couple's 60th anniversary with gifts, he suggested they put their gifts into the tiny historic box. Eight years later, one of the grandchildren made a professional video called The Love Box. If you have six spare minutes to watch it, your heart will be touched and you will understand better what the word "family" really means. To see the video, just click these blue letters.  http://vimeo.com/101927025

"What did I do wrong?"

Sinai Miller, a third-grader at Fox Hill Elementary School on the north side of Indianapolis, Indiana, tries to do things right. She earns A's and B's at school; helps her younger sisters with their home work and is outgoing and kind. So naturally the first thing Sinai (pronounced sih-NYE) wanted to know on the afternoon of February 3 was "what did I do wrong?"

She'd been waiting all day to get her hands on her Girl Scout cookies so she could start selling them door-to-door around her apartment complex. She talked about cookies when she woke up, and was still talking about them when she got home from school. After finishing her homework, she told her Mom it was 4:30 -- time to meet at the apartment clubhouse with the other girls to pick up cookies and start knocking on doors. But she never got there.

"What did I do wrong?"

Just as she took a few steps outside her apartment with one of her little sisters, the gunfire started. Her Mom, Shanita Miller, rushed out and pushed both girls back inside, and Sinai started yelling, "Mama, Mama, it hurt!" She'd been hit in the leg with a stray bullet. Luckily it missed bone and artery, and she was treated and released from the hospital to recover at home, but she can't sell any cookies.

To help, the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, which has troops in 45 counties, created a Web page so Sinai can continue to meet her cookie goals while recuperating. Here's the link. http://www.girlscoutsindiana.org/cookies/cookiesforsinai

By visiting this site, you may purchase cookies from Sinai for yourself, or for Operation Cookie Drop, which gives free Girl Scout cookies to active duty and retired servicemen from central Indiana. And the good news? As of late Thursday, more than 2,000 boxes of cookies have been purchased in Sinai's name. She hopes the earnings will fund a trip for her troop. But on the first night home after being shot, she jumped out of her sleep at noises as common as her sister going to the bathroom, which proves that some wounds aren't fixed with a bandage. 

Always drink upstream from the herd

Today's crumb comes from a reader in California. She's too young to personally remember humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935), but believes his best-loved "sayings" can still make us smile. Rogers was an American cowboy, vaudevillian, social commentator, newspaper columnist and movie actor. He was among the best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s. Here are some of his comments.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither works.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back in your pocket.

Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.

The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

When you're dissatisfied and want to go back to your youth, remember algebra.

One thing nobody says about aging is that it's such a nice change from being young.

If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of Congress?

And my personal favorite:  "Some people try to turn back their odometers and look younger. Not me! I want people to know 'why' I look this way. I've travelled a long distance, and some of the roads weren't paved."

A true love note

Billie Breland taught school for 40 years, and she always wrote notes. Every photo on the walls of her home was documented with a note. She noted funny things that happened, or things she wanted to remember, all in the perfect cursive handwriting of a school teacher. Her devoted husband Jim was a minister who had preached in almost every Baptist church in the Mississippi Delta. They were newlyweds for sixty years, and when Billie took a fall after Thanksgiving last year, Jim stayed by her side in the hospital to take care of her, right up until the night she died.

Hundreds crowded into the funeral home on the night of visitation, to celebrate a life well-lived. But Jim still had to wrestle with the loss of his sidekick for over six decades. Little did he know that Billie, always thinking of others before herself, had found a way to ease his pain.

A few days later, when he opened her checkbook, he found she'd left him a note. Here it is.

A blizzard of unselfishness

New York City is sometimes called unfriendly, almost uncaring, but that wasn't true during the recent snowstorm named Juno. Warmth is the best defense against an icy storm, and folks in the Big Apple proved it. How?

First of all, it's really hard to hail a cab in a snow storm, so members of the Greater New York Taxi Association chose to give free rides to the elderly, people with disabilities, and emergency responders during the blizzard. Eligible passengers called 311 and a free cab showed up as soon as one was available.

The New York City fire department asked residents to be sure hydrants were cleared of snow and ready for hose hookup in an emergency. Volunteers answered this call, using social media to share and coordinate their efforts.

Everyone knew police and firemen would be working long shifts with little access to food since restaurants were closed. So staff at the Omni Berkshire Place Hotel opened their employees cafeteria to law enforcement, offering free meals to anyone on duty during the storm.

The Bowery Mission provided free emergency shelter for almost 200 homeless during the blizzard, plus free breakfast to hundreds the next morning. The mission chapel remains open for anyone needing protection from frigid weather.

Members of the Coalition for the Homeless hiked through the Bronx and uptown and downtown Manhattan, bringing food, water, sleeping bags, socks and coats to people living on the streets. "Regardless of the weather, we're out and about," said Juan De La Cruz, program manager of the coalition's Grand Central Food Program.

Finally, my personal favorite. "Today Show" correspondent Jeff Rossen has worked the bad weather beat for years. Usually he goes out with a cameraman and points a microphone at the face of some tired New Yorkers and asks how they plan to shovel their snow. For this storm, he quit asking that question. Instead (along with workers from Expectation Snow Plowing), he rang the doorbells of unsuspecting Long Island residents and offered to plow their driveways for free. Now that's what I call "breaking news."

A flight one passenger will never forget

Imagine the grumbles of passengers on an American airline flight when young parents came aboard with twin baby boys. But worried flyers were soon placated by the behavior of the new parents, who gave a Ziplog bag of sweets to each passenger with a note enclosed.

"Brilliant and thoughtful parents handed these out to everyone on my flight," a passenger wrote on Reddit, posting the picture above. "The parents were fantastic and the kids were better than would be expected. Mom was obviously tired but still extremely nice to everyone. Not a frustrated word from the Dad either. Saw them after we landed, meeting his parents at baggage, who were seeing the babies for the first time, and I got a bit teary."

A homeless heart of gold

One night last December, 22-year-old Dominique Harrison-Bentzen came out of a nightclub in Preston, England, and discovered she didn't have money for a taxi home. She also didn't have her bank card, and her cell phone battery was dead. She was stuck, until a homeless man known as Robbie approached to ask if she needed help. He offered her all the money he had in the world, $4.60, so she'd get home safely.

Dominique Harrison-Bentzen

Dominique, a student at the University of Central Lancashire, declined his offer and found another way home, but she couldn't forget Robbie. For the next four nights, she and her Mom drove the streets of Preston looking for him. As she inquired, she learned from other homeless folks that he was well-known for helping strangers. He returned lost wallets untouched, and even offered one lady his scarf on a cold night. Eventually she found him, and was able to thank him in person for his kindness. Then she decided to launch a fund-raiser to help him get an apartment. She spent a night on the streets, and asked friends to "sponsor" her for $4.60, the amount Robbie offered to help her. She dreamed of raising $780, but her story went viral. Within a week, she'd raised almost $50,000.00. "The fund-raising site keeps crashing," she said, "because everyone wants to get on it."

Some of the money will provide Robbie with a home, but he suggested the rest be used to help other homeless people in the Preston area and she agreed.