When I was a child growing up, I remember seeing mostly houses in neighborhoods and a few apartment complexes here and there.  Nowadays, there are still a lot of housing communities, but there are also a lot of apartment complexes and condominiums.  In fact, it’s common to see apartments and condos in the downtown sections of cities.  Senior housing is also available in most areas of a city as well as mobile home parks, some of which have curbs, sidewalks, and driveways just like regular housing communities.
 
I wonder, however, if neighbors nowadays know each other as well as they did back when I was growing up. Back then, we knew nearly all our neighbors up and down the street and many on the streets on either side of ours as well. Now, we basically know our neighbors on both sides of our house (both are great neighbors, by the way) and a few others on our street and other streets in our neighborhood.
 
One thing that’s sad to me is hearing about some people who don’t even know their neighbors at all. It’s great to have neighbors to be friends with, to watch out for each other’s houses when gone, and to be there to help out when needed.  One definition of “neighborhood” is friendliness appropriate to a neighbor (a feeling of  neighborhood).   Even though neighborhoods may change in dynamics, I hope the “feeling of neighborhood” never changes.

Thousands of prayers for Jenny were lifted up during her sudden illness (flu/pneumonia/sepsis), and you can still visit the FaceBook site set up for her!  Although Jenny passed away at the young age of 31 and is greatly missed, her family believes God has a greater purpose in mind.  Jenny’s passion for Christ has touched so many people’s lives!

1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair?
3. Will it improve things?

I think these are very worthwhile questions, and I like the fact that he supports positive youth programs as well as educational and historical preservation pursuits.  That’s probably the teacher side of me that’s drawn to these pursuits.

Do you know of some interesting philanthropists?

Would you like to check the quality of drinking water in your area?  Just go to the University of Cincinnati’s website and click on a major city on the United States map. A graph will show you the quality of the drinking water according to several different contaminates.

I’m surprised at how much chlorine is in our water. Well, actually I guess I’m not too surprised. We can definitely taste the chlorine in our water which is one of the reasons we’ve been using bottled distilled water.  However, we just purchased a “Pur” water filter so we won’t be buying gallons of water now. There’s no chlorine taste using the filter, and we like the taste of the water so far.

Probably most of you know one person or maybe several women whose lives have been affected by breast cancer.  I lost a friend, who had three children, to breast cancer 16 years ago.  I have several friends who are breast cancer survivors, and we thank God for that!

I had a breast cancer scare 15 years ago, had surgical biopsy done, and it turned out to be a non-malignant tumor.  Again, I thank God!  I am in a higher risk category because of that, and so I have my mamograms done every year.  Several years I’ve had to have an additional sonogram.  Last year, I had another scare and thought I was going to need to have another surgical biopsy, but it turned out OK and I didn’t have to have one.  (but that was after 10 weeks, four doctor visits, a mammogram, sonogram, and new digital mammogram)

So again, please visit this site, and I want to stress the importance of every woman having regular mammograms.  They do catch cancer early while it’s treatable!