Sylvia Bloom, a 96-year-old legal secretary from Brooklyn, left $8.2 Million to one of New York City’s oldest settlement houses, the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, to be used for college scholarships. It was the largest single gift to the settlement house in its 125-year history. No one, not even family and friends, knew she had amassed a fortune. She lived frugally. She worked for the same law firm for 67 years. When her boss picked a stock, she made the call, placed the order, and bought a few shares for herself.
Two additional scholarships will be established.
She attended free public schools and free public college at Hunter College, which is no longer free. One of the other scholarship funds will be established at Hunter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a lovely legacy.
Quite a contrast with Jeff Bezos, who recently said he can’t think of anything to do with his $120 billion dollars besides fund space travel.
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Here is a great Idea . Let him keep a 1000 million and give the other 119 billion to his employees. Inversely proportional to their hourly wages.
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How about if he pays it in taxes? It’s probably about what he owes anyway.
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To the guillotines for Jeff Bezos, and not soon enough!!!
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Off topic but the subject of many previous posts .
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A wonderful legacy.
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A different culture, a background, a living experience and empathy give people a different perspective in life.
To think well to help the unfortunate and to take a good action to alleviate the unfortunate will definitely bring health, happiness and fortune to all Samaritans in their present and future upcoming lives.
All rich but corrupted people, who have bad intention to harm innocent people, will NOT ONLY suffer in bad health, unhappy living, and unpleasant surrounding sooner or later within the near end of their present lives, BUT ALSO suffer the bad consequences to many upcoming lives. That is the absolute truth in the natural LAW of KARMA.
There are many examples to show people that “good deed returns good deed and evil follows evil”. For instance, we should learn from history about life and death of all dictators, all Samaritans, all people with blind faith, and all people with compassion… Back2basic
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Amen.
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I wish I could believe your thoughts in your third paragraph May but from my experience, I don’t see those things as having any surety of happening especially the concept of “upcoming lives”. I’ve known too many good people to have had way more than their share of misfortune and far too early death, and far too many evil people to have magnificent luck and far too long a healthy and destructive to others lifestyle.
What that points to then is the truth in your first statement!
And you and I generally agree on many aspects of thinking, life and being, but not on your third paragraph. So be it, eh!
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Hi Señor Swacker:
You are not the only one who finds the concept of Karma and reincarnation which does not seem truthful.
However, if you agree that we keep perfectly doing whatever, we will succeed sooner or later. In the same concept, a genius person has accumulated his/her talents/skills over many reincarnated lives. In other word, conscience, time and effort will build the finest result in both physical, mental and spiritual aspects = strength, beauty, intelligence and compassion.
On this particular planet of Earth, all living things are made of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen = dirt and water. In Chinese belief, everything on Earth is composed by dirt, water , wind and fire. Most of all, the physical outlook and the inner beauty (= compassion) can be seen through people’s skin aura, tone of a voice, warm smile, and compassionate eyes.
There is a study on people’s aura, the shape of all body’s parts from hair, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, to all palm’s lines, tips of each finger to toes’ nails…The best fortune teller can predict the journey in life of one person from his/her physical outlook and inner beauty until the last hour of his/her death.
IMHO, there is an equation in everything that we think, we plan and we do. This typical equation is in the law of Karma. All beings on Earth are under the law of gravity and law of cause and effect. We do not live long enough to witness what we experience and what bad people have been through their own living conditions.
In short, we must go through our own bad and good intention in order to observe how the law of Karma affects our lives. That is my take on what I express and I believe in. I hope that you will do one day. Take care. May
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And you and I will have to agree to disagree on this aspect, May for my perspective is one of skeptical scientific rationo-logical thought and proofs in which your statement of “The best fortune teller can predict the journey in life of one person from his/her physical outlook and inner beauty until the last hour of his/her death.” is, as far as I’m concerned, completely ludicrous and cannot withstand the scrutiny of rationo-logical scientific thought/process.
Has each paradigm worked for different cultures for centuries? Yes. We come from different backgrounds. And for me those different backgrounds and modes of being should be celebrated for the wonderment and joy they bring to individuals for we all have far more in common on a daily basis than we don’t have in common in such things. Enjoy one’s life and being, live and let live, allow others the same freedoms that one desires for oneself (obviously within the boundaries of do no harm to others), these are the things we have in common that can be shared, eh!
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I completely understand your disagreement, señor Swacker.
Scientifically, human brain is a hub of all transmitted neurons. Intuition is a true way in order to tap into another network of differently
advanced transmitted information in the past or towards the future.
You may acknowledge that we cannot see electricity, but we can be affected by its occurrence, for instance touching a live wire.
Likewise, we cannot witness the Karma, but we are affected by our bad and good deeds, for instance, caring for others unconditionally or harming others intentionally, we would receive the consequences.
My own experience about these consequences is real.
1) I ridiculed a dream from a manual worker mischievously. My ambition was amused and ridiculed by the PhD engineer in my department within the same day.
2) My dream of a wreckage where I was in the ocean at the age of 7 then again at the age of 10. More than a decade later, I was truly in the ocean twice from the wreckage in 1978 and 1979.
3) My father was the president of his ethnic club. He must pay out of his pocket $1 million Vietnamese dollars in 1956 to put back the club fund which was stolen by the thief. However, one member demanded my father to resign as well as to swear with a proper routine to God/Saints in a Chinese Pagoda. My father did not care more or less and he did according to that member’s request in order to prove his innocence.
As soon as both my father and that member stepped out the gate, that member vomitted blood, and my father soon won a grand prize from lotto that was the same amount of being stolen. All other members begged my father to stay in his position of being their club President. In the mean time, the thief moved to Hong Kong with lots of money, but he became a beggar. There was exactly the result as per the accuser sincerely believed in the punishment that he asked for.
The story did not end until my father asked God to forgive the vow in a proper routine in the same Chinese Pagoda before he passed away. From that day, the rich beggar stopped begging, but the accuser vomitted blood until his death.
In short, my mother advised us that we can ask God to punish bad people, but we need to forgive them after a certain period of time, This will help us to die peacefully.
Señor Swacker, the best revengeful way in life is to be patience, forgiving, cultivating mindset, and caring for the unfortunate with our true compassion.
IMHO, I believe in Karma so I always pray that I am happy to pay back my past ignorance within my capacity, ability and endurance. However, as soon as my deeds are done, any exceeding punishment will be my protection in order to help me on the successful path of enlightenment completely. Take care. May
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What a woman. Thanks for the good news, Diane.
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There is a lesson here for young teachers as well as others. Take advantage of Roth 403b programs. It might seem small but whatever you can put away each time you get paid, do it. This is where NO EXCUSES comes into play. Do it with good professional advice and you have to be willing to take some risk; it needs to go into a good market based fund. Before you know it that $25 or $50, whatever you can, a pay will grow much more than you think and all of a sudden you are retired. Time is your friend when you are young and patience works. If you don’t do this time will become your enemy. Make sure it is a Roth 403b. You can also do a Roth IRA in addition but few will do both. The Roth 403b is easier. When the sales people come around that are in your school district make sure you compare plans. Make sure what you get is a Roth, some of the sales people don’t know you can do it that way. They should, but they just don’t know.
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Amusing to watch the thousands of paid ed reform lobbyists struggle to catch up on the teacher strikes:
“This week, we celebrate two pillars of American education during National Charter Schools Week and National Teacher Appreciation Week. While union activists may see the two events as being at odds with each other, I believe that no sector stands to empower and elevate teachers more than the charter school movement.”
They work really, really hard at completely ignoring public schools in ed reform. So much so that thousands of people who are paid to work full time on K-12 education DID NOT NOTICE that public school funding had reached a crisis stage. The teachers strikes shocked them. They had no earthly idea any of this would happen.
They simply do not value our schools. That’s okay in the case of The 74 or the rest of the privately funded lobbying shops, but what about the thousands of people we’re paying in government? Not one of them has any interest in the schools 90% of families attend?
Why are we paying these people? Why am I paying thousands of federal and state employees when not one of them has the slightest interest in the PUBLIC schools 90% of the people in this country attend?
Surely we could replace them with people who actually support public schools?
We can do better than this. We can hire much better people.
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Gut says there was some insider trading going on at that law firm.
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I was going to say that, but didn’t want to be accused of being cynical.
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Wall Street firm, mid-day trades in small volume, and apparently insider-esque returns. Could be wrong, but that was my immediate reaction.
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