December 1 - Pay It Forward Day

 Posted on December 1, 2021

This is an update of my post published on December 1, 2010:

Started by David Del Mundo and publicized via Facebook, Pay It Forward Day is a day in which we can do random acts of kindness—a good deed for a total stranger, without expecting anything in return. 

Here are some of David's suggestions for this day:

• Pay for someone's cup of coffee...
• Buy a meal for the next person in line...
• Buy someone some groceries...
• Get the next person's gas...
• Give a stranger a bouquet of flowers...
• Help someone out, if you see a need, or donate something needed...

The whole idea of “pay it forward” is that good deeds aren't necessarily repaid in kind by recipients, but that they will feel good about people in general and do a good deed to someone else. When a lot of people are doing good things for other people, the originator of the good deed will inevitably have someone, some time, do a good deed for him or her as well. It's called "generalized reciprocity."

This concept was a key plot element in a play in ancient Greece (around 300 BCE) and in a 2000 novel and movie.

Benjamin Franklin said that “paying it forward,” when concerning money, is a way of doing “a deal of good with a little money.” Here is what he suggested to a fellow:

I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you [...] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro' many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress.

The concept has also been expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, famed college football coach Woody Hayes, a spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous, sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein, Oprah, and the Pay It Forward Foundation. 

Here's one pay-it-forward story:

Paul Erdös

Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös visited Harvard University. There he met a promising math student who was about to be expelled because he was unable to pay his tuition. Erdös paid the young man's tuition in full. Years later the grateful man offered to return the entire amount to Erdös, but Erdös insisted that the man find another student in a similar situation and give the tuition to him. (It occurs to me, cynic that I am, that the tuition may have gone up drastically “years later.”)

Of course, "paying it forward" doesn't have to involve a lot of money, such as college tuition. It doesn't have to involve ANY money—it could be effort, time, help, support. Even small favors or expenditures of just a few dollars might do a world of good holiday-spirit-wise, community-spirit-wise, happiness-wise!

Also on this date:

Advent begins 

Freedom and Democracy Day in Chad

National Holiday in Romania

Rosa Parks Day

Portugal's Restoration of Independence Day

Antarctica Day

Republic Day in Central African Republic

Birthday of poetaster Julia Ann Moore

Bingo Birthday Month

Anniversary of a diary entry

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on:

• December holidays 
• December birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in December
  
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• January holidays 
• January birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in January
  
  
  
  

November 13, 2011 - International Tongue Twister Day

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,

if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

A woodchuck would chuck as much wood

as a woodchuck could,

if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

• Learn some tongue twisters and try to say them five times quickly.
• Write some new tongue twisters. Be sure to use some alliteration (a bunch of words that start with the same sound, such as “My lodger Larry looks like Lincoln.” Also, use some rhyming words.

• Check out the tons of tongue twisters at Wart Games.

also on this date:

World Kindness Day

"When you are kind to others, it not only changes you, it changes the world." -- Harold Kushner

Today is World Kindness Day. You can kind to anybody and everybody (today and every day): relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers, service personnel, shop clerks. If you put special effort into thinking how to be kind to people on a day like today, maybe you can practice some of those kind ways all year round.

RandomActs of Kindness has a website with ideas, resources, and stories of kindness. One of the red tabs at the top of the page is labeled “Educators”; there are more ideas especially for kids and classrooms there. 

Also, Crayola has put together a few activities for World Kindness Day. 

February 17, 2010

Random Acts of Kindness Day

This is a day to really focus on making others a little bit happier. See if you can smile at more people, say nice things to the strangers you deal with, try to “be there” a little bit more for your friends.

You could also use this day to renew your efforts towards charities. Volunteer a few hours at a soup kitchen, send just a little bit more money to the Red Cross for Haitian relief, or clean up a littered park. Go here for more ideas.

Also on this day...

Anniversary of First U.S. Street with Gas Lighting – 1817

On this date in 1817, the first U.S. city with gas lights (Baltimore, Maryland) finished lighting the corner of Market and Lemon Streets. There were 16 gas street lights.

(Gas lighting in London, England, preceded the Baltimore lighting, beginning in 1807.)

Before streetlights, dark streets were quite dangerous; streetlights reduced crime substantially. In an effort to make cities safer before there were streetlights, there were laws that people had to put lanterns on street-facing walls or lamps in street-facing windows.

Gas street lights began to be replaced by electric lights in the late 1800s. But some streets are still lit by gas lamps. The largest example of this in Europe is probably Berlin, which has about 44,000 gas street lights. Certain parts of London, U.K., and New Orleans, Boston, and Cincinnati, U.S., remain gaslit. South Orange, New Jersey, has adopted the gas street lamp as the symbol of its town and so (of course) uses this kind of lighting on almost all of its streets.

The Dark Side of Artificial Lights

I mentioned above that city streets became safer when they were lit. I didn't mention that gas lighting made it possible to run factories far longer – even 24 hours a day! Even though humans had been “pushing back the night” with fire (campfires, torches, candles, lanterns) for years, gas and later electric lighting were a bit different—one didn't have to continually find and chop more wood or make more candles, for example, and people began to stay up later and do more and more activities later and later into the night.

Nowadays there are people who work their entire jobs at night, and there are cities that are said to never sleep. What has all this nighttime activity meant for people?

Some scientists are studying the effects of artificial lighting itself on people. Some forms of light apparently cause headaches, fatigue, and anxiety, and lighting design students are learning how to create better lighting to reduce these effects.

Other scientists are studying human sleep cycles and insomnia (the inability to sleep or to get restful sleep). There is evidence that humans evolved to get sleep in a more broken-up pattern—going to sleep soon after dark (therefore much earlier than most modern people) but waking up one or several times in the “middle” of the night, sometimes for hours. This is not a scenario of having “trouble” sleeping—this is apparently a description of normal, pre-artificial-light sleep that is still common in societies without artificial lighting. (Periods of daytime sleep are pretty common in these societies as well.)

In most modern societies, we expect to get our sleep in one compacted burst of 6 to 8 hours, but doctors and researchers warn that many people are sleep deprived.

Another effect of artificial lights is light pollution. Astronomers—especially the amateur variety, who have smaller telescopes—find it much harder to spot interesting objects in the night sky when city lights cause the entire sky to glow. Some people are concerned that modern city-dwellers are cut off from the majesty and awe-inspiring night sky that all humans should be able to enjoy.

Animals, too, are affected by artificial lights.
Moths are well known to be attracted to lights and sometimes seemingly commit suicide by flying into hot lamps. This is because they evolved to navigate by using the light of the moon—and our artificial lights confuse this natural navigation system.

To understand moth navigation better, try the activity here.

Other animals that are confused by artificial lights include birds and sea turtle hatchlings.

Light pollution affects many organisms and ecosystems. We don't have to do without lights, but we could be smart about how our lights affect things we care about. For example, deaths of birds have been reduced by turning out or shielding certain lights on tall buildings during migrations.

Check out the light pollution photos above and on this National Geographic website.