After years of working 70 hours a week at jobs I detested, I felt like the proverbial "hole in the donut" - solid on the outside, but empty on the inside. Searching for meaning in my life, I abandoned my successful but unsatisfying career and set out on a six-month solo backpacking trip around the world to pursue my true passions of travel, writing, and photography. My blog features stories about the destinations I visit, people I meet, the crazy things...Read more here.... 
Wondering what’s on the minds of the best bunch of baby boomers to ever hit the Internet? Ann at Contemporary Retirement is the host for our Blogging Boomers Carnival this week, and she’s put together a smokin’ summary of posts for your review. Check it out!
Jane Addams, photo courtesy of University of Illinois
Jane Addams attracted national attention when, with with her friend Ellen G. Starr, she founded Chicago’s Hull House in 1889. The facility was located on the city’s near west side, in a densely urban neighborhood populated primarily by struggling immigrants. Modeled after the settlement houses in London, the mission of Hull House was to assist immigrants by providing a center for a civic and social life, improve the quality of education, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.
Hull House provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music and art classes. By virtue of its efforts, the Illinois Legislature enacted protective legislation for women and children, setting the stage for passage of a Federal child labor law in 1916. As her notoriety grew, Addams was appointed to Chicago’s Board of Education, helped to found the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, and led investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions in Chicago. Yet despite her laudable work, when Addams opposed the country’s entry into World War One, she was branded a traitor by the press and expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Fortunately, history treated Addams with more respect; fourteen years later she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work and pacifist ideals.
Jane Addams Hull House Museum historical landmark
Of the 13 buildings that once comprised the Hull House complex, only the original home and adjacent dining hall escaped the wrecking ball when a six square block area was razed to make way for the Continue reading
Efforts to improve the situation of indigenous peoples through restoration of the environment is one of the most intriguing stories to emerge from travel. One of the organizations doing important work in this field, the Environmental Educational Media Project, produced the documentary Hope In A Changing Climate, which promotes the enormous potential of restoration. Screened at the COP 15 climate change summit in Copenhagen last December and subsequently aired by the BBC, the film follows soil scientist John D. Liu, who for the past 15 years has been documenting changes on China’s remote Loess Plateau, where the local people have been transforming a barren plateau into a green and fertile one, reducing the effect of climate change. Liu explains:
“On the plateau, researchers realized that progressive degradation of the environment trapped the local population into a life of subsistence farming. It’s a process that has occurred across the globe, where poor agricultural communities find themselves overusing their land in order to survive, depleting its fertility and further impoverishing themselves. One thing that became apparent early on is the connection between damaged environments and human poverty. In many parts of the world there’s been a vicious cycle: continuous use of the land has led to subsistence agriculture and generation by generation, this has further degraded the soils.”
Shot on location in China, Rwanda and Ethiopia, Hope in a Changing Climate is a truly uplifting story of how ecosystem restoration helps stabilize climate, reduce poverty, and support sustainable agriculture.
It’s Monday and that means it’s time for another Blogging Boomers Carnival, our weekly collection of posts written by some of the Internet’s most fascinating baby boomers. Check out reviews of this week’s posts at our most excellent host, The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur.
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