Have a Helping Halloween

Halloween is perhaps my favorite holiday, and it's also the occasion of two of my favorite ways for kids to make a difference. Encourage your children to Trick or Treat for UNICEF, so they can help kids in need all over the world, or participate in Sight Night and get eyeglasses to those who so desperately need them. Either choice will make candy rewards feel all the more richly deserved.

How to Remember September 11

This Thursday is the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Honor those who died, those who survived and those who still struggle to recover with a compassionate act:

Create a special envelope for the Remember September mail art project originated by Gail Ellspermann. Learn about it here. (Sample at left by Marney Makridakis of Artellaland.com.)

Do a kindness for another as part of a growing movement to make September 11 a national day of service. Learn more at mygooddeed.org.

Watch the PBS "Frontline" film, "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero." (Ask your library if it has a copy to lend, or order it here.) Gather family and friends to watch with you.

Find out how others around the country are commemorating the events of seven years ago at the Families of September 11 site.

Multiply the effect by paying it forward: share these suggestions with 5 friends.

Curbing Offensive Phoning

Sometimes "compassionate action" is as simple as employing common consideration. July is Cell Phone Courtesy Month. Have you gotten so accustomed to those voices in your ear that you're ignoring the humanity around you? Try to mind your wireless manners by:

> Letting calls go to voicemail when you're in others' company.
> Turning your phone off, or to vibrate, at public performances, presentations and ceremonies; at the library, movies and museums; and in any place where a ringing phone will disrupt an otherwise peaceful environment.
> Foregoing calls while driving. If you're paying attention to the road, you can't give your call buddy the full attention he or she deserves. And no one likes their conversation to be interrupted by tunnels, toll booths or other interferences. You'll be doing your fellow drivers a favor, too.
> Using text messaging to receive and send urgent, but brief, news.
> Recognizing that you're not alone. Do you really want a store-ful of strangers to hear the details of your love life?

For more on cell phone courtesy, check out Modern Manners Guy.

Promote Peace This Weekend

Monday is Memorial Day in the United States, a day to remember all those who have died in a war. To date, 4079 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq. The number of Iraqi civilians killed isn’t reported by the U.S. government, but the lowest estimates range from some 84,000 to just under 92,000. Numbers like these can be numbing, hard to translate into human suffering. In America, we are prevented from seeing the coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base, the funerals at Arlington Cemetery and small towns all over the country, the weeping mothers and wives, brothers and sisters whose loved ones will never come home.

This weekend, let’s remember each of them, as well as those who have died in other wars around the globe, at the appointed hour of 11 a.m., wherever you live, with a Prayer for Peace. You’ll find one here, and another in a downloadable mp3 file here. (Click on Prayer for Peace MP3.) And if you know someone who has lost someone in the devastation of war, send a note to let them know they aren’t forgotten.