Headlines from December 31, 1969
- Charity Navigator’s top 10 lists of various charities’ achievements and embarrassments.
- See also: Best Practices of Savvy Donors.
- Cunningham Children’s Home offers healing to young people with serious emotional and behavioral disabilities.
- The Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill, NC—a beacon of hope for the families of seriously ill or injured children.
- Dorothy House provides loving care and support for people with life-threatening illnesses.
- JAM (Junior Appalachian Musicians) brings bluegrass music into poor public schools.
- PEN defends free expression, fights for persecuted writers, and advances literature.
- A $125 donation provides a six-week bicycle-building workshop for at-risk youth at the Oasis Center.
- The Sad Stuff Fund supports the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization.
- Just Detention International strives to end rape in prison.
- Kid’s Company does great work in South London with children who might otherwise slip through the social net.
- The Bowery Mission helps homeless New Yorkers.
- Transportation Alternatives: New York City’s advocate for biking, walking, and mass transit.
- Hollaback! is an international non-profit aimed at stopping street harassment of women.
- Providing hands-on help after natural disasters, All Hands Volunteers connects survivors, donors, and volunteers.
- Thistle Farms helps the women of Magdalene House—survivors of prostitution, addiction, and abuse—build work skills, savings, and confidence.
- Pajama Program gives PJs and bedtime books to orphaned, neglected, and underserved kids.
- Girls Write Now—writing workshops, mentoring, college prep, and therapy.
- All About Labs cares for dogs in need, placing them in loving, responsible homes.
- Books from Birth of Middle Tennessee sends a free, age-appropriate book once a month to any child who registers, up to age five.
- TMN will resume publishing January 2, 2013. Happy new year!
- Schwarzenegger bicycles Venice Beach just to inhale stray smoke, and other notes on weed in California.
- Overview of “sea change” taking place globally toward gay marriage.
- In case this applies to your late-December plans somehow: Is he cute or is he British? #tmn
- The most downloaded album this year was “L’apogee.” French consumer trends of 2012.
- Engineer behind music-recommendation software explains how it does and doesn’t work.
- Music critic Alex Ross’s annual holiday traditional: listening to “the ‘Messiah’ on Crack.” #audio
- Photographer documents South Africa’s “train churches.”
- Selected quotes from victims and saviors in this Christmas season’s 2,803 cases of baby Jesuses stolen and/or vandalized.
- Photos from around the world of people watching television.
- TMN asks thinkers, writers, and more to address “The Year That Was and Wasn’t.” #longreads
- Miranda Popkey on everything you need to know about football’s outdated “icing the kicker” strategy. #tmn
- Seinfeld wears hard soles onstage nowadays, and other details from his joke-writing process.
- Mike Nichols and Elaine May give first joint interview since breaking up 51 years ago.
- UPS delivered 28,000,000 packages yesterday, its biggest day on the calendar.
- Wanting and liking are governed by separate circuits in the brain; thus you can get extreme wanting without a corresponding increase in pleasure.
- Consequences of indulgence turned into tabloid/monster-movie deaths. #tmn #photography
- Doctor diagnoses injuries experienced by burglars in Home Alone.
- For those who might be keeping score, we just passed the 333rd consecutive month of global temperatures above the 20th-century average.