Friday’s Odds and Ends

Starting off today with a contest. I have been sponsoring back-to-school contests, one of which just ended, and this new one runs until September 12th. The Grand Prize Winner will receive a Kindle Fire as well as one e-book from each of the participating authors! The Runner-Up will receive a selection of 15 e-books from the featured authors. Not too bad!

I’m sponsoring with my YA novel, Friends Forever, and will be giving a few copies away later this month.

FF giveaway image

Click HERE to enter, and Good Luck!!!

IN THE NEWS

Looking for positive stories to share, I found the following news stories on the GoodNews Network website. It is a  good place to visit when you want something other than the political garbage that is dominating the major news outlets

Couple donates prize to homeless shelter. Hannah Spooner and her boyfriend had only visited Little Ceasar’s pizzeria for one sit-down meal – which is why they were all the more surprised when they won free pies for a year.

pizza2Instead of keeping the prize for themselves, the couple  donated the pizza voucher to a homeless shelter in Detroit, Covenant House.

As a side note to that story, I remember when Covenant House first started in 1997, and one of my daughters wanted to go to Detroit to work there. She ended up working for some non-profit shelters in the Dallas area, but she still thinks about someday working at Covenant House.

Home Depot workers build walker for disabled toddler. Two-year-old Silas was born with Norrie Disease, a rare genetic disorder that delays muscle development and leaves male infants blind. His mother, Jessica, tried to find a walker for her son when he outgrew the baby walkers, but couldn’t find one. Her grandfather had gone to the Home Depot store to buy tools to build a walker – but when he explained Silas’s situation to the store’s supervisor Matt Spencer, the grandpa was introduced to Eric Bindel and Christopher Wright. Those two men made a customized walker for the boy and gave it to the family a few days later.

A 12-year old girl starts library in her village. Maria Clara gathered the literature by creating a campaign asking for book donations. Once she’d been given enough material, she opened the library in an abandoned office used to provide phone services to a nearby state highway. Maria lives in a village called “Povoado de Serrote” – a very poor area of Bahia in northeast BrazilDespite the size and the simplicity of the structure, the establishment will offer valuable research material for nearby students whose families are too poor to buy books.

This next item came from CREDO, a site where you can sign petitions, if you want to, to do more than just rant about the injustice in the world. One of the most recent injustices concerns EpiPens. We all know that the EpiPen can mean the difference between life and death for those with life-threatening allergies. What I didn’t know was that the precursor to the EpiPen was created with funds provided by the U. S. Government.

epipen

In 2007, Mylan, a giant pharmaceutical company, bought the exclusive rights to EpiPen, and since then it has increased the costs by 400 percent – more than $600 per package. Because EpiPens expire within months, millions of Americans have been hit hard with the increase in costs. Meanwhile, the company dodged taxes and raised its CEO’s pay by 671 percent. (READ a story in the Wall Street Journal)

In the past, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blocked alternatives to Mylan’s EpiPen, and it is time for the FDA to strip Mylan of its monopoly, allowing other companies to produce the same product at a lower cost.

If you agree, you can visit CREDO and sign the petition that is going straight to President Obama.

FRIDAY FUNNIES

Q: Who lives in the scary Hundred Acre Woods?
A: Winnie the Boo

Q: What part did the turkeys play in the Thanksgiving Day parade?
A: They played their drumsticks.

Q: If the Pilgrims were still alive, what would they be most famous for?
A: Their age.

Q: What kind of music did the Pilgrims listen to?
A: Plymouth Rock.

Q: What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire?
A: Frostbite

Q: What room are ghosts not allowed to enter?
A: The Living room.

The previous jokes were stolen..er…borrowed from a great site Two Kids & a Coupon. Click over to read the rest of the jokes there.

WRITING WISDOM

Just a quote today, but it is one that really resonated with me.

“If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.”
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story~ Celebrating the 37th anniversary of that work on September 1, 2016

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Do you have a favorite joke? One to share with us? Are you going to sign the petition? I do hope so. Drug companies have to start reining in prescription prices.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to enter the CONTEST

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