Dine Out Staten Island

I went home this weekend to participate in the Dine Out Against Hunger campaign that I have participated in every year since my freshman year of High School.

During Dine Out Night, restaurants all over Staten Island donate 20% of their proceeds from each bill to project hospitality to stop hunger on Staten Island.

Project Hospitality has been around for about 20-25 years and has been doing Dine Out for about the past 15. It began with a few restaurants and now it is becoming more and more popular.

High school students serve as ambassadors and also sell plates in order to raise additional funds for the cause. The plates are similar to the sneakers sold in the supermarkets for Junior Diabetes Fund. They cost a dollar and look like the dine out emblem.

This is a great cause and should be transported to other towns throughout the tristate area and perhaps even the nation. I was especially pleased to see that all the restaurants continued to donate despite the recession.

Information

is a powerful thing.

I feel that since Obama has taken office we hear more and more about the war in Iraq. Is that a coincidence? I am not sure. It is because I have simply taken more of an interest as I have gotten older? Again I am not sure, but what I am sure about is that each day on the cover of the New York Times I constantly see pictures and stories and other information that I don't remember seeing in the past.

This story is one which reminded me of this fact. I am and always have been an avid reader of the New York Times, since the age of 8, and believe that I don't remember the stories being written as much as they are nowadays.

I think it's great that students are now able to sympathize and understand what is going on with these soldiers and these current events.

Mod Cloth

Modcloth is an awesome new Web site/blog that I recently found. I love the forties, fifties and anything to do with what is often called the Golden Age of America (or at least that's what I've heard it called). The website offers clothes that remind one of a simpler time, before Twitter and the World Wide Web, before blackberries and iPhones, before the world was "on" 24/7. It is a time, that especially as of late, I long to return to, a time when things seem to have been a lot easier and calmer.

I am personally buying a bathing suit that looks like it belongs in Long Beach Island circa 1957, quite similar to a picture I have of my grandparents during their "dating days." Oh how I wish I could have been 20-something in New York City then, it seemed like it was a real party, but who knows maybe New York still is the party and I have simply yet to find it as I've been locked away in Connecticut these past few years, I'm hoping I'm right!

Twitter!

I love twitter! It's so much fun to read what your friends are doing and what "famous" people are doing. Okay maybe it's not that fun and maybe that was a little sarcastic but I love the fact that it helps people promote their blogs, web pages, etc. I think it is a great networking tool as well. It shows employers that you have an understanding of the internet and also that you have the ability to harness the web for whatever purpose you have chosen, be it blogging about your own thoughts or promoting content from fellow editors and writers on a school newspaper, it's cool and I think people often assume that it is simply another stupid way of telling people every minute detail about your life. Look beyond the surface people!! Think about all the possibilities and you'll be amazed at what you can do!

Finals, May Weekend and A Variety of Other Thoughts

So May Weekend is technically this weekend, but due to an unfortunate series of events, it is no longer called May Weekend and we no longer have the activities that we had my freshman year, such as funnel cake, and sausage and peppers and the other carnival like activities that were often housed in the gym.

It is a shame that we don't have it anymore, but what's even more of a shame is that people could not control themselves and drank to excess. I, like others do enjoy drinking, but I think there's a point where you need to stop.

I'll never forget my first may weekend when a friend drank wayyyy too much and had to go to the hospital. It was the scariest moment of my life, and has continued to remain in my mind throughout my college career.

Be safe this "may weekend" my friends...be smart and safe.

Naturally Thin

So I bought this book because I saw Bethenny Frankel on Good Morning America this morning and I have to say, that despite the fact that I haven't read it yet, I am quite impressed with the power of the news. GMA made the book look so good that I bought it. I went right online and ordered it from Barnes and Noble, oh the power of the media today let me tell you!!

Digg.Com

So Digg has this awesome new feature. If you type www.digg.com into your address bar, or click on the word Digg in this post, you can get to the homepage, but if you type www.digg.com/ and include a specific URL such as, oh I don't know a Quad News story, then you can create it's own Digg short URL for use on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and a variety of other social networking sites.

Seattle Post Intelligencer

This happened a few weeks ago, but in thinking about it, I feel that this was a good move for the newspaper and will ultimately become the way of the future. In my journalism class two weeks ago, an editor from the New Haven Independent came and spoke with us about this hyperlocal paper. It is also an online only paper which deals with a variety of local issues. The Hamden Daily News also deals with local issues. I think if these newspapers can harness the power of the Internet and also create a local Web site directory, using Twitter, Digg and other social networking sites, then they will be able to become for profit models and ultimately survive through any and all economic shifts.

Of course "real" newspapers will never consider this model, or will they? I think NYTimes could take a page from these books, and they have in the form of The Locals which covers the same areas in New Jersey as patch.com. Maybe these hyperlocal papers or divisions of papers will save the paper industry? I hope so.