Editor's note: Bishop T.D. Jakes is founder and senior pastor of The Potter's House of Dallas, Texas, a multiracial, nondenominational church with more than 50 outreach ministries.

"It is a victory for democracy that proves that our country provides possibilities for all people," writes Jakes.

(CNN) -- Last night, I like most Americans of all stripes, watched with visible goose bumps as history was made. I sat with my 13-year-old son and looked from the screen to his eyes as Sen. Barack Obama became the first African American in history to lead a U.S. major-party ticket when he claimed the nomination for the Democratic Party for president of the United States.

I congratulate Sen. Obama on this historic accomplishment. I thank him for accepting the torch that was lit by our forefathers and proudly carrying it through the darkness of our struggles, trials and tribulations, bringing light and hope to a new generation, and for facing all those who said "No" and "You can't win," or "It will never happen," and firmly, proudly, defiantly saying, "Yes I can!"

However, what I really hope people take away from that night is that this is not just a victory for African Americans, it is a victory for democracy that proves that our country provides possibilities for all people. It is also a sign that a metamorphosis is in progress. Today we saw that Americans respect experience, but are interested in change. I hope that we can somehow merge the best ideas of our differences and emerge with a president who epitomizes our highest and best ideals. While it remains unclear where we are going, last night proves that we as a people have moved beyond business as usual.

I congratulate not just Sen. Obama on his victory, but the country on this landmark event that has shattered a past all too often filled with reasons to separate us as opposed to a voice of reason to unite us. The victory cup does not rest on the shoulders of the senator alone, but to all those who have been able to lift the conversation from petty racism, antiquated cut-throat politics, and fear-based campaigns to the larger issues of how we would like to see our country led into the future and ultimately how our country will be remembered.

As the days and discussions of this political season continue, it is my sincere hope and prayer that we do not sink back into the abyss of political pettiness that has plagued our country and our lives for so many years. I am grateful to Sen. Hillary Clinton for giving, through this campaign, a chance for my daughters to see that their femininity is not a liability. Today both my sons and daughters came to understand that their ethnicity isn't viewed by progressive Americans as a limitation or a liability. iReport.com: Readers' feelings on Obama

For me it was almost déjà vu as I sat with my son. I remembered a little over 40 years ago watching the famous King speech with my dad. Similarly, I watched with my youngest son last night as a historical moment unfolded. He and I saw the dreams of slaves come true as the sons of slaves and the slave owners clapped their hands in one progressive sweep. As I drifted into sleep, all I could see was the twinkle in my son's eyes. His eyes were illuminated with possibilities, and his heart was filled with the potential of what is attainable for qualified, competent people of all types who prepare themselves intellectually and are well vested with a divine sensitivity to the "fierce urgency of now!"

Congratulations Sen. Obama.

What Senator achieved a historical achievement?

Answer: Bishop T.D. Jakes

Answer: Sen. Obama on this historic accomplishment. I thank him for accepting the torch that was lit by our forefathers and proudly carrying it through the darkness of our struggles, trials and tribulations, bringing light and hope to

Answer: Sen. Obama

Answer: Sen. Obama

Answer: Sen. Obama.

Answer: democracy

Summary:
Bishop T.D. Jakes: "I congratulate Sen. Obama on this historic accomplishment"
Jakes: "Not just a victory for African Americans, it is a victory for democracy"
Jakes: Nomination "proves that our country provides possibilities for all people"
Jakes congratulates "the country on this landmark event"


Editor's note: Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams." Bob Greene says one dentist in Iowa found an ingenious way of keeping his chair filled with patients. (CNN) -- You may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. I may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. But the truck stop dentist figured it out a long time ago. "When your dental practice is in a truck stop, you don't have a lot of patients coming in for their six-month cleanings," said Dr. Thomas P. Roemer. "You have people walking in holding their jaws in pain. Treatment is not optional -- they need to see a dentist, and they need to see me now." Dr. Roemer's one-man dental office is inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott. The complex proclaims itself to be the world's largest truck stop, and if you've never been there -- well, the truck stop itself is probably a story for another time. Suffice it to say that the establishment is spread over 200 acres, that it features its own movie theater, a 300-seat restaurant with a 50-foot salad bar, the Super Truck Showroom (more than 75,000 truck-related items for sale, festooned with enough gleaming chrome to make you reach for your sunglasses). But the topic for today is Dr. Roemer, and how he ended up offering root canals in a building where people stop for diesel fuel. These desperate economic times highlight the importance of individual inventiveness and ingenuity -- and a dentist has to be beyond ingenious to gaze upon an Iowa truck stop and figure out: A fellow could make himself a pretty nice living in there. "I had a regular dental practice over in Davenport," Dr. Roemer, 48, told me. "I had an advertisement in the Yellow Pages. And in the early 1990s I noticed that I kept getting calls from truckers who were in a phone booth out by the Iowa 80 Truckstop. They had stopped for fuel, and they were in a lot of pain, and they absolutely had to see a dentist." Now... Walcott, the town adjacent to the truck stop, has only 1,500 residents. But the truck stop itself caters to an estimated 5,000 customers a day, most of them long-haul truckers passing through. The light bulb above Dr. Roemer's head snapped on. "I made arrangements with the truck stop to open up an office," he said. "At first I split my practice between my old office in Davenport and the truck stop office. But I ended up closing the old one. My entire practice is in the truck stop now." Business is good, he said, even during the recession. There have been stories from around the country about doctors and dentists seeing fewer patients, because people just don't have the money to come in for regular checkups. But a truck stop dental office is not a place where patients come because they have planned it -- a truck stop dental office is a place where patients come because they need immediate relief. "The sentence I hear the most often is, 'Do you pull teeth?'" Dr. Roemer said. "Someone will come in with his hand to his face, and he'll want to have a tooth extracted. He will have heard that I'm here." But how do truckers learn about Dr. Roemer's practice? "Word of mouth," he said. (So to speak.) The business model of most dental offices, he said, is based on teeth-cleaning: A dentist builds up his or her list of loyal patients and their families who come in to get their teeth cleaned, and when they need fillings or crowns, the office is there for them. The truck stop dentist, by necessity, turns that business model

Greene said that the traffic ensured that some truckers will be in need of what?

What dentist discovered a clever marketing method?

What interstate was the truck stop located at?

Answer: inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott.

Answer: to see a dentist,

Answer: Dr. Roemer,

Answer: Iowa

Answer: Interstate 80,

Answer: Bob Greene

Summary:
Bob Greene: Dentist in Iowa found ingenious way of boosting his business .
He says dentist set up a thriving practice at a busy truck stop on Interstate 80 .
Greene: Traffic ensures there will be some truckers in need of dental care .
He says the dentist can't rely on return business from his patients .


Editor's note: Brian Levin is a professor of criminal justice at California State University, San Bernardino and director of the university's Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism. Michael Stoops is executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington.

Brian Levin says the homeless are excluded from lessons on tolerance and aren't protected by hate crime laws.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Over the last two calendar years, more Americans in the United States were killed in a little-noticed spate of unprovoked attacks than were killed by terrorists, in large commercial jet crashes or in racial hate crimes.

Since 1999, more than 240 vulnerable homeless Americans have been stabbed, beaten, drowned, shot or burned to death in a revolting display of one of the last socially tolerated prejudices, this one based on class.

Despite being prime targets of prejudice and violence, particularly in today's youth subculture, the homeless are routinely excluded from lessons related to tolerance, as well as from official data collection and hate-crime penalty enhancement laws.

A newly released report from the National Coalition for the Homeless documented 27 unprovoked, apparently bias-related homicides by attackers in the United States last year, down one from the previous year and the second-highest number of killings since 2001.

After bottoming mid-decade, the number killed has not dipped below 20 a year since 2005. In contrast, the FBI documented only 12 hate-crime homicides nationally for the two most recently available calendar years combined.

According to the NCH and the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, nearly 2 1/2 times more homeless people in America have been killed over the past 10 years in apparent unprovoked bias homicides than the total for all the other hate- crime homicides -- on the basis of race, religion, national origin, disability and sexual orientation -- combined.

Like other hate crime perpetrators, these attackers are typically young male "thrill offenders" seeking excitement, with 58 percent of assailants over the past 10 years falling in the 13-19 age range. In 2006, three teenagers out for fun attacked homeless people in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with baseball bats, killing one of their victims, 45-year-old Norris Gaynor. One pleaded guilty and the two others were convicted of murder last September after the jury saw graphic surveillance tape of one of their nonlethal beatings from earlier in the evening.

These attacks exclude the large number of other types of crimes involving the homeless, such as personal disputes, homeless-on-homeless violence, robbery, drugs or murder for life insurance proceeds.

The August issue of Maxim, a youth-oriented magazine targeted at college-aged males, joked about last weekend's National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, in a blurb titled "Hunt the Homeless." The journal quipped "Kill one for fun. We're 87 percent sure it's legal."

In previous violent attacks, some assailants have referenced degrading and violent depictions in popular culture such as "Bumfights" either during their crimes or in subsequent interviews with authorities, with some even filming the events.

"Bumfights" is a popular violent video series that sold hundreds of thousands of tapes and DVDs before going viral on the Internet. The film series sets a new low in American popular culture, featuring fights between homeless men plied by the producers with alcohol, as well as sadistic parodies of the late Australian conservationist "crocodile hunter" Steve Irwin.

These "skits" feature terrified sleeping homeless people who are startled awake and forcibly restrained with duct tape by "hunters" narrating their attacks with feigned Australian accents. Samuel Bowhay of Grinnell College found almost 86,000 videos on YouTube last month with "bum" in the title, thousands more than videos with other derogatory prejudiced epithets.

While homeless advocates lack the political and financial infrastructure often needed to institute policy reform, the frequency and brutality of the bias attacks have renewed focus on the nature of this violent form of prejudice and ways to address it.

Last week, District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty signed legislation adding homeless status to the district's hate-crime law

what is not protected by hate-crime laws ?

who leads some to think of hunting homeless as a sport?

Answer: homeless

Answer: college-aged males,

Answer: fights between homeless men

Answer: the homeless are excluded from lessons on tolerance and aren't protected by hate crime laws.

Answer: hate crime

Summary:
Levin, Stoops: Homeless aren't protected by hate-crime laws or tolerance lessons .
They say new report documents disturbing level of violence vs. homeless .
They say popular culture leads some to think of hunting homeless as a sport .
Levin, Stoops: Laws must forcefully block violence against homeless .


Editor's note: Brian Levin is director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Jack McDevitt is the director of the Institute on Race and Justice and Associate Dean in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Both have testified before Congress in support of federal hate crime legislation and are co-authors of a book on hate in America, due to be published next year. Brian Levin says a new federal hate crime law is needed to combat violent incidents of bias. SAN BERNARDINO, California (CNN) -- America needs a coordinated and multifaceted response to combat the continuing scourge of violent hate crime like the crime committed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, originally introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy a decade ago and nearly passed during the most recent legislative session, is expected to go before the Senate for a vote soon. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified on its behalf Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is a crucial step in the nation's evolving response to hate crime. A hate crime occurs when an individual intentionally targets a victim or their property because of his or her actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability or sexual orientation. While some have argued that these kind of laws criminalize free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the 1993 case, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, that well-drafted hate crime laws are constitutional and do not punish speech. Rather they enhance the penalties only for acts that are already considered crimes. The act is named for Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student who was kidnapped, robbed, tortured and left to die, tied to a fence in a remote area outside of Laramie, Wyoming in October 1998. His mother Judy has been a tireless advocate for hate crime laws and victims. The Shepard Act remedies legal loopholes in federal and state criminal law that fail to protect against bias-motivated attacks based on such characteristics as sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability. It also removes antiquated "Klan era" language that forces federal prosecutors to tie violent racial attacks to a small number of activities such as participating in a jury, voting or using hotels. As recent events have indicated, today's violent hate offenders, unlike their predecessors, will often swing into brutal action on their own initiative without waiting for a victim to exercise a specific activity covered by old 1960s laws. However, much of the act's potency lies not in what it punishes, but rather in its recognition of the primary role local authorities now play in combating hate crime. Nearly all hate crime investigations and prosecutions in the United States are handled by state and local authorities, such as the Boston Police or Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police. Gone are the days where masses of federal agents and soldiers had to swoop into states to protect new students and freedom riders from thugs in Klan-dominated municipalities. The act has a clear bias in favor of local prosecution and has restrictions that require federal prosecution only in limited cases where the leadership of the DJ approves. However, reporting data indicates that some states apparently provide limited assistance to hate crime victims. These jurisdictions report either zero hate crimes or a handful of crime to the FBI, year after year, while neighboring states with similar demographics and crime profiles report far more. A 2005 Bureau of Justice Statistics victimization study found that only a small fraction of hate crimes nationally are actually reported. Thus, there appear to be various instances where federal help or prosecution are still necessary. Today, in the midst of our economic downturn, federal authorities are needed much more to assist cash-strapped local departments, not as an unwelcome occupying force, but as a desperately needed partner to assist with forensics, technical assistance and investigations. Even in police departments with model hate crime investigative units, such as the Boston Police Department's Community Disorders Unit, modern cases increasingly involve interstate travel or Internet hate networks, and require sophisticated ballistic and DNA testing or

Who is going to vote on Matthew Shepherd crime bill?

Whose hate crime bill is the Senate voting on?

Answer: the Senate

Answer: Matthew Shepard

Answer: The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act,

Answer: federal hate crime law

Summary:
Levin, McDevitt: Senate to vote on Matthew Shepard hate crime bill .
They say loopholes in existing laws require new legislation .
They say bill would provide federal help to localities fighting hate crime .
Levin, McDevitt: Hate crimes target pluralistic societies along with victims .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose book "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams" will be published in a new paperback edition this week. Bob Greene says he and his family didn't expect to be able to enjoy this Mother's Day. (CNN) -- This is the Mother's Day we thought was going to be empty. Last summer, my brother, my sister and I got the news like a sucker-punch to the stomach: Our mother's health, which had not been good for some time, had taken a sudden turn for the worse. A very compassionate hospice evaluator came to her home and said that, although one could never be absolutely certain, the end was quite near. "It may be two days. It may be two weeks." Those were the words. We tried to process them. She would be gone from us by the fall. Except ... "Debby just picked me up a book from the library, and I'm a few chapters into it," my mother said to me on the phone the other day. She got better. "Better" does not mean great; she walks with some difficulty now, she is fragile in ways she once was strong, but on this Mother's Day that we all expected to be such a desolate one for us, she's here. On that morning the woman from hospice first came to visit, our mother was in her bed in the same room where our father, 10 years ago, had slowly died. Toward the end, he had not been able to get out of his bed, and we foresaw the same awful drama unfolding in the same way in the same bedroom. It was going to be even more wrenching to witness this time around. But somehow, from somewhere inside herself, she decided: "Not yet." I don't say that glibly; I know that most men and women, in the months of their dying, do not have a choice about whether they will regain a semblance of their health. There comes a point when there is little to do but give in as gracefully as possible. Our mother didn't. And while my brother and sister and I cherish the extra time we have been given with her, the most moving thing is to quietly behold how fiercely she is cherishing the extra time she has been given with the world -- the extra time she has been given with life itself. That book from the library my sister brought her, it is one of many she has read since last summer. It's as if she realized that, if the prediction had been right -- if she had left us within two days or two weeks -- she never would have known the pleasure of reading another book. She has loved reading all her life; now she is reading new books with a sense of gratitude that we can literally feel. She got to watch one more presidential campaign. She has always taken her responsibility as a citizen with utter seriousness. She thought, last summer, that she would never know who the next president would be. But as, little by little, she got better during the fall, I can guarantee you that not even Wolf Blitzer or John King followed the day-to-day fluctuations of the campaign with more devotion than she did. She used to joke with our father that their trips together to the polling place were ultimately a waste of time: He was on one end of the political spectrum, she was on the other, and, as she put it, "Our votes always canceled each other's out." She was born during the Woodrow Wilson administration -- and in November, against all odds, she got to cast a ballot for president one more time. Whenever my brother flies to central Ohio to visit her, he goes not straight from the airport to her house; he makes a stop. He picks up some

Whose family didn't expect to enjoy mothers day?

Who unexpectedly enjoyed their Mother's Day?

Answer: She got better.

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: She got better.

Summary:
Bob Greene: This Mother's Day is one my family didn't expect to enjoy .
He says his mother has survived and made good use of precious time .
Greene: We should all live as if we have only a few weeks more of life .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story." Bob Greene says Logan, Ohio, paid an extraordinary tribute to its most dedicated football fan. (CNN) -- "Yes, it's all gone now," Craig Dunn told me the other day. "If you're not from around here, you'd never know it was ever there." Dunn is the sports editor of the Logan, Ohio, Daily News, a paper with a small circulation (around 4,000) and a small news staff (five people put the paper out, covering the entire county). Last fall, when I was crisscrossing the country on the CNN Election Express, I spoke with Dunn about the town's high school football stadium, which was being demolished. Bill Sauer Field, it was called. The story I wrote appeared briefly on the Political Ticker and then went away quickly; there was so much rapidly breaking news coming out of the presidential campaign that the story was little more than a blip. Yet I found myself, during the last year, thinking about Bill Sauer Field, and Logan, Ohio, and how it's possible for all of us, if we make the effort, to find the best in ourselves -- to find the best in each other. I find myself thinking about Bill Sauer, and about what that little town did for him, more than I think about almost anything else on which I reported during our long journey through America. And so, with a new football season beginning all across the United States, I spoke with Craig Dunn again the other afternoon. "When I drive by the place where it used to be, it's not with a sense of sadness," he said. "It's with pride for what this town once did." Bill Sauer Field was the core of public life in Logan. The town, population 7,300, gravitated to the old stadium on Friday nights in autumns to watch the high school team, the Chieftains, play their games. And who was Bill Sauer? A self-made millionaire from the community who had bestowed the stadium upon the town? A prominent local politician? A long-gone Logan football hero? No. Bill Sauer was born in Logan more than 100 years ago -- in 1908. From the time he was a little boy, he could not walk. He spoke with great difficulty. His parents, desperate, searched for answers. Logan was and is a rural community, and back then sophisticated medical diagnoses were not easy to come by. His mother and father were eventually told that the boy had cerebral palsy. He attended public school in Logan. It was not easy, of course. He was 23 by the time he graduated from Logan High School. Then, as now, the boys who were strong and swift and athletically graceful were the ones most celebrated. Bill could not even take a step on his own. But he loved the Logan sports teams, and he took pride in supporting them. Football, basketball, track and field -- he never missed a game, and he seldom missed a practice session. He would be there on the sidelines, sitting in his wheelchair, cheering for his classmates. His life didn't get any less arduous after he graduated. His father died. It became incumbent upon Bill to support himself and his mother. He sold Christmas cards; he sold magazine subscriptions. At the town's swimming pool, he ran the concessions stand. His philosophy of life, Craig Dunn told me, was basic: However often you get knocked down, you get back up one more time. Bill Sauer grew older. New generations of healthy and talented young athletes played for the Logan Chieftains on Friday nights. No matter the weather, no matter how he was feeling, Bill was always there. The Logan football stadium had been constructed in 1925. It was the heart of the town; it was what made the community feel

Who was a dedicated fan of his football team?

Answer: Football, basketball, track and field

Answer: cerebral palsy.

Answer: high school football stadium,

Answer: the town's high school football stadium,

Answer: cerebral palsy.

Answer: Craig Dunn

Answer: cerebral palsy.

Answer: football

Summary:
Bob Greene: Bill Sauer was a dedicated fan of his small-town football team .
He says Sauer had cerebral palsy and a challenging life .
Greene: Sauer wasn't a football star, a millionaire or a politician .
He says town paid him extraordinary tribute by naming stadium after him .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story." Bob Greene says ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere. (CNN) -- It was still early enough in the evening that the main dinner crowd had not yet started to show up; the restaurant, east of Michigan Avenue in Chicago, was less than half-filled. The party of 10 at the table by the front window had arrived promptly for their 6 p.m. reservation. Nine of the 10 studied their menus, but the 10th, the man at the head of the table, did not. Muhammad Ali, 67, stared down toward the white tablecloth and drew on a piece of paper. He sketched a picture of a mountain. There are a handful of men among us who, simply by appearing out of nowhere, make other men and women pause involuntarily to consider the long paths of their own lives. It is as if these men have always been with us, and if you should unexpectedly spot Bob Dylan in an airport, if you should see Paul McCartney walking through a hotel lobby, if you should encounter Sean Connery entering an office building, it will bring you up short. It's like opening a diary, even if you have never met them, even if you have never seen them except on a television set or a movie screen. Yet Ali is different even from them. Ali -- his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible -- makes people mist up the moment they lay eyes on him. It was happening tonight inside this restaurant called the Rosebud Steakhouse; diners at their own tables, not quite sure for a second that they were really seeing what they were seeing, let their gazes linger and could not look away. Ali drew. The other men and women at his table -- this was a gathering of family and friends to celebrate a birthday, and Ali had come into Chicago from his farm in Michigan -- talked animatedly and laughed. Ali did not speak. He wore a blue-and-white Hawaiian-style shirt; someone had tucked a white napkin into the space above the top button. Over the speaker system of the restaurant, a slowed-down acoustic knockoff of the old Tom Petty hit "Free Fallin' " was playing softly: "She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis ..." A family, across the way, talked spiritedly among themselves. They were deciding something. The father and the children stood up. From the ceiling, the song: "... and I'm free, free fallin' ..." They walked over to Ali's table. "We apologize for the intrusion," the father said. Ali looked toward them, showing a gentle expression. The father had a camera. He said to his children: "This is the most famous face in the world." It is difficult to know what the children made of this. Youth and strength and beauty are so fleeting. The man in the Hawaiian shirt once embodied all of those things, before these children were born. Three times the world heavyweight boxing champion, the center of global fascination and frenzied controversy after winning his first title and then changing his name from Cassius Clay, endlessly mesmerizing with his float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee ring style, called "the greatest of all time" so often that the words became almost an official designation, the sight of his flawless face and the sound of his confident-beyond-all-dispute voice a sustaining part of the very atmosphere. ... But his road has turned hard, and here were these children, who were not around for any of that, standing with their father next to the table. Ali's family members and friends said it would be all right for the father to take some photos, so he did. When he left, Ali went back to his drawing. More diners were beginning to

who said that ali embodied youth
What did Bob Greene say?
What did Greene say about Ali's life?
What did Green say Ali embodied?

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere.

Answer: his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible

Answer: Youth and strength and beauty

Summary:
Bob Greene: Muhammad Ali's extraordinary life brings him instant attention .
Greene: Ali embodied youth, strength and beauty in his remarkable career .
He says Ali drew attention of everyone in a Chicago restaurant .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book, "Late Edition: A Love Story," will be published next month. Bob Greene recalls a radio exec who was ahead of his time by working an almost endless day. (CNN) -- I think perhaps the oddest person I have ever known was a man by the name of Robert Hyland. But the truly odd thing is that we all seem to have turned into him. Hyland was the vice president and general manager of KMOX radio, the 50,000-watt powerhouse in St. Louis, Missouri. He came to work every day at 2:30. In the morning. That's right: Hyland would show up at his office at 2:30 a.m. each day. He would then work straight through until 5 p.m. He didn't do this once in a while; he did it each and every day. He didn't do it to set an example for his employees. He did it because he couldn't seem to stop working. "I'm not one of those people who need sleep to be refreshed," Hyland told me once. "I'll go to bed between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., and I'll wake up at 1:30 a.m. I have an alarm clock, but I never set it. I wake up automatically. I shower and shave, and I'm at the office by 2:30." I asked him if this schedule made any sense at all. "It's a good time to get a lot of work done," he told me. "The phone isn't ringing, and there are no distractions. I have a pile of paperwork on my desk, and I go through it." At 9 a.m., he said -- after he had been at work for 6½ hours -- the other people at the office would show up. And he would keep going. Hyland may have seemed eccentric -- he readily understood that perception; he said to me: "I think what you're thinking is that you're talking to a nut" -- but if he had lived a little longer (he died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 71), he would have witnessed something that might have astonished even him: The rest of the world joined him in his obsession. Hyland died just before the era in which everyone began using cell phones and staring at home computer screens. Society might never have been ready to do what he did -- come to the office in the middle of the night and routinely work 14½ hour days -- had the technology revolution not come along. But come along it did -- and with it came the erasure of all the boundaries that at one time separated the workday from leisure time. E-mails and text messages and BlackBerrys and all their digital cousins may have given us the illusion of freedom -- we tell ourselves that we are unfettered by traditional offices, that we can go anywhere we please -- yet in the end they have created a nation of Robert Hylands. We're never off the clock; that cell phone may ring at dinnertime, that allegedly urgent e-mail may arrive at 11 p.m., that instant message from the regional manager may pop onto the screen when we're on vacation with our families. And what do we do? If your answer is, "We ignore them," good for you. But the truth is, mostly we don't ignore them -- mostly we snap to attention. Ask yourself this: What do you think would happen to an employee who received an e-mail at home from his boss at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night, and who responded to the e-mail by writing back: "I'm sorry, but I'm only available for work-related e-mails during office hours. If you'd like to communicate with me about this matter, please feel free to do so tomorrow after 9 a.m." That might be the rational answer. But how many people -- especially in this economy, and in this job market

Bob Greene said he knew the radio exec who stated at work at what time?

At what time did the radio executive start the day?

Answer: 2:30.

Answer: 2:30 a.m.

Summary:
Bob Greene: I once knew radio exec who started work at 2:30 a.m.
He says Americans now accept that they are always on call for work .
Greene: In tough economy, workers are reluctant to draw boundaries .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams."

Bob Greene says John Madden has had a great perk: seeing America on his own bus.

(CNN) -- You've undoubtedly heard that John Madden has left the football broadcast booth. What you may not have heard is that he's not leaving his bus.

"It's been such a great ride," Madden said as he announced his retirement.

But the truly great ride -- the one he will not relinquish -- wasn't his long career as a National Football League broadcaster.

The best ride was the literal one.

Madden's aversion to flying in airplanes led him to perhaps the grandest business perk in all of American life: He was given his own bus, with his own professional drivers. He crisscrossed the country, on his way from one big game to another, on what came to be known as the Maddencruiser, the cost of which eventually was underwritten by corporate sponsorship.

Now. . .you may think that being stuck in a bus for days and nights on end must be a lousy way to lead a life.

Not when you're the only passenger -- you, or whatever buddies and colleagues you choose to invite along. Not when there's food and drink onboard, and television sets with DVD players at the ready, and plenty of room to stretch out and observe the country as it passes by.

And those amenities leave out the most beautiful lure of all. Let President Obama explain it.

He did, inadvertently, the other week. He wasn't talking about Madden -- he was talking about plans for a new high-speed rail system. These were the president's words:

"No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes [at the metal detector]. . . . "

That's the gift Madden gave himself, by working out the bus deal -- the gift of avoiding the endless headaches of travel the rest of the world has to endure. Departure time? Whenever he wants. Flight cancellations? No such thing. Cramped seats? Nope. Security lines? There are none.

It can make for a pretty peaceful life. A football game to see every week, the country winding gloriously out ahead of you between stadiums, your main decision boiling down to how to chop up the miles, where to eat and where to sleep and where to stop for a few hours just to talk to people. . . .

There is a hotel on the west coast of Florida where I have stayed quite often, and during football season Madden would sometimes stay there too. If there had been a game in, say, Miami, and the next one was in Dallas, he might ask his bus driver to stop for the night at this place, which features outlying cottages on the Gulf of Mexico.

Talk about a guy who seemed tranquil -- I know his on-air image was always sort of loud and animated, but I'd see Madden having a serenely silent and unhurried meal by himself in the restaurant, leisurely flipping through the sports pages; I'd see him in the little sandwich shop/deli in the morning, a quiet and amiable fellow standing in line with everyone else, waiting to pay for his breakfast pastries; I'd see him, on departure day, strolling blissfully toward his bus, an overnight bag in his hand, having decided that this was the time that he'd like to roll out. . . .

Who would ever have thought that a fantasy life could revolve around something as seemingly mundane as a bus? But in a chaotic and confused world, full of noise and anger and deadlines, the allure of cruising in splendid solitude through the country, seeing America mile by mile, the journey itself being the ultimate victory. . . .

Madden is the grand champion of bus riders,

What did Green say about being able to travel the country?

Answer: John Madden has had a great perk: seeing America on his own bus.

Answer: John Madden

Answer: John Madden

Answer: John Madden

Summary:
Bob Greene: John Madden's retiring as a broadcaster but keeping his bus .
He says football expert had the ultimate perk for traveling the country .
Greene: Highway becomes your best friend as you discover America block by block .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams."

Peggy Sue Gerron, left, and Jerry Allison, right, at Buddy Holly's wedding to Maria Elena Holly.

(CNN) -- After days on end of grim and dreary news, the first weekend of spring is with us, and with its arrival comes, to many people, the yearly promise of new romance and a chance for lasting love.

But if figuring out the secrets of how to revive a battered economy is something that is complicated and elusive, that quandary is simple in comparison to matters of the heart. The legendary experts on romance, star-crossed and otherwise, are generally not available for comment. Romeo and Juliet have left the building.

However, there is one person I know who has a better feel for the vagaries of love than most, and I sought her out the other day.

"Spring is the time when you allow yourself to hope that love will come around again," said Peggy Sue Gerron.

You may not recognize her full name, but you sure do recognize the first part of it.

Yep -- she's that Peggy Sue. The Peggy Sue of Buddy Holly's unforgettable 1957 hit, a song of longing and heartbreak that is instantly familiar today even to people who weren't born until decades after it came out. "If you knew Peggy Sue, then you'd know why I feel blue ..."

Juliet, that other symbol of the glory of love, may have been a fictional creation of William Shakespeare's imagination, but Peggy Sue was, and is, real. She lives in West Texas, just as she did when Buddy Holly recorded the song. She was actually not even his girlfriend, although she sensed a certain yearning on his part. She was the girlfriend of Jerry Allison, the drummer for the Crickets, Holly's band.

"I think the reason people think about finding love in the spring is that the season represents new beginnings," she said. "The flowers are blooming. The air smells good. You feel that you have a chance."

In the song, Peggy Sue, implicitly, was the one who did the dumping, not the one who got dumped. But time has made her understand:

"I think, I really believe, that on a rare occasion, two people in life run across each other in a path like two comets. And when it happens, I think that feeling lasts forever."

Which is to say: With a love so rare and true.

And that, she said, is what makes people keep looking for love regardless of how many times they may have tried and failed. She has a theory of what being in love does to a person:

"Your eyes are a little bit shinier and your skin is a little bit clearer when you're in love. When you meet that person, you think: Whatever you're doing, I want to be right beside you when you're doing it. I want to be near you just because I like to see your smile."

Not that being Peggy Sue means she has all the answers. "I don't," she said. She is 68 now; she has been married twice, divorced twice. When she introduces herself to new people, they often say, "Oh -- like the Peggy Sue in the song!"

Sometimes she tells them she is in fact that Peggy Sue; sometimes she lets it go. It's an uphill battle to convince them she's not kidding.

And as the woman who eternally will be a symbol of true love's ways, she thinks she understands why people never give up on hoping to find the right person. "You have a tendency to put the walls up after you've been hurt," she said. "You think it's not worth trying again. But then you do it

Who has a theory about what love does to a person?

Answer: Peggy Sue

Answer: Peggy Sue Gerron.

Answer: to a person:

Answer: Peggy Sue.

Answer: Peggy Sue

Summary:
Bob Greene: John Madden's retiring as a broadcaster but keeping his bus .
He says football expert had the ultimate perk for traveling the country .
Greene: Highway becomes your best friend as you discover America block by block .


Editor's note: CNN affiliates report on where job seekers are finding work across the country and how those looking for employment are coping with the situation. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, shown in April, once worked in a city jobs program as a youth. (CNN) -- Some of the stimulus money from the U.S. government is going to programs that help young adults find jobs. In Baltimore, Maryland, the city wants to put more than 7,000 to work, mostly in local government jobs. It will use more than $6 million from the federal government and sponsorship money, according to WBAL-TV in Baltimore. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon recalled her days as a young worker. "I worked at a camp, and then in high school, I was able to continue to work in the program," she said. Read the full report on WBAL In Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Kahtoya Wesley, 20, has had difficulty finding a job, but she has a better chance of finding work now because she has joined the Summer Youth Employment Program, according to WPBF-TV in West Palm Beach. So far 200 people have landed jobs through the program, an initiative of the Workforce Alliance of Palm Beach County, WPBF reported. The organization is using $3 million of stimulus money to fund the positions the young adults find, the station said. iReport.com: Share your job hunt story The group also prepares the job seekers for interviews and provides seminars in how to deal with work-life situations. "I got fired like five times. It was bad," John Hill told WPBF. He chose a seminar on working better with a supervisor. "Because I usually don't," he told the station. Read the full report on WPBF The state of Arkansas is using federal money to fund jobs for at-risk students in Springdale, according to KHBS-TV in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The town's youth center hired five teens to work in clerical and maintenance positions, KHBS reported. David Cook told the station he has had trouble motivating himself to go to school. The summer job was helping him with a shift on focus. "It gives me a sense of responsibility of showing up on time, working on a schedule and with other people," he told KHBS. Read the full report on KHBS West: FedEx center brings 650 jobs to Oregon Even before a new FedEx shipping center brings hundreds of jobs to Troutdale, Oregon, it is helping with employment through road construction jobs, according to KPTV-TV in Portland. The new hub, which is expected to be completed in July 2010, will bring more than 1,000 additional cars to the area, so the Oregon Department of Transportation called for two additional lanes at a nearby major intersection, KPTV reported. FedEx is expected to employ 650 workers at the facility once it opens, according to KPTV. "We're creating family wage jobs, because this project will take place this summer," Troutdale Mayor Jim Kight told the station. Oregon's unemployment rate was a record 12.4 percent in May. Read the full report on KPTV South: No job? Create your own He was once a senior loan officer who had been laid off and was looking every day for a job anywhere there might be an opportunity. When he couldn't find the right chance, he created his own. Kenneth Hodge is now a small business owner, the founder of SFG Records. "If you look at your failures, if you stare at your failures too long, you'll never go anywhere," Hodge told WPBF. "But if you look beyond your failures, you can move to and fulfill your dreams. You can do that. I think I can do that, and we are doing that." Six recording artists are featured on his Web site, and Hodge told the West Palm Beach station that he has already hired seven employees. Read the full report on WPBF Midwest: Iowa town sees trickle-down effect from stimulus Federal stimulus

What did a man lose his position as?
Where is teh FedEx centre?
what is the fedex center bringing
what is maryland doing
What will bring more jobs in Oregon?
How many teens will be hired?
How many teens will Baltimore hire?
What business did a man start?

Answer: senior loan officer

Answer: Troutdale, Oregon,

Answer: 650 jobs to Oregon

Answer: the city wants to put more than 7,000 to work, mostly in local government jobs.

Answer: a new FedEx shipping center

Answer: five

Answer: 7,000

Answer: SFG Records.

Summary:
Job fair aimed at people 50 and older draws big crowd .
Pittsburgh area business executives meeting with high school students .
Wal-Mart adding 3,000 jobs in North Carolina .
Air Force recruiter in Florida has seen increase in interest .


Editor's note: CNN affiliates report on where job seekers are finding work across the country and how those looking for employment are coping with the situation. Job fairs are becoming more popular and are seeing record attendance. (CNN) -- A record number of senior citizens attended a job fair this week in Loveland, Colorado. The fair, which targeted people 50 and older, drew the biggest crowd -- about 900 people -- for the annual event. Nan Cooper, a job seeker, said applicants have to do more these days than just walk into a prospective employer's office with a resume. "[Times] have changed radically," she told KMGH in Denver. "I've spent countless, countless hours on the Internet and filling out applications."  iReport.com: Share your job hunt story She said she had even applied for jobs through the online auction site eBay. Read the full report on KMGH Northeast: Job week seeks to solve 'disconnect' between employers, job hunters Employers in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area say they are having a difficult time filling 22,000 available positions. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said this week the city would increase its participation in a job placement program, both monetarily and through city organizations. The mayor made his remarks as part of a kickoff event for Imagine Career Week, which links high school students and employers. A spokesman for one of the groups sponsoring the week's events said there shouldn't be so many employers with open spots. "At the same time, we have young people walking around famously saying that they can't find a job. There's a big disconnect there someplace," Paul Leger of the Allegheny Conference told WTAE. During the career week, students will visit businesses and prospective employers will visit classrooms. Read the full report on WTAE Southeast: Wal-Mart to increase its N.C. workforce by nearly 6 percent Wal-Mart said Wednesday it plans to add 3,000 jobs in North Carolina. The retail chain currently employs 51,000 people at 155 locations in the state. "In a time when many are suffering, we want North Carolinians to know that we are here to stay," David Cameron, general manager for the Carolinas, told WRAL of Raleigh. He did not say where the jobs would be located. North Carolina is one of eight states with unemployment above 10 percent. Read the report on WRAL Southeast: Military recruiter sees more potential airmen Technical Sgt. Greg O'Conner is staying very busy these days. He is an Air Force recruiter in Bradenton, Florida. "With the way the economy is, recruitment is up," he told Bay News 9. "I get dozens of calls every day and walk-ins from young men and women interested in joining the Air Force." One of his recruits was 20-year-old Dakota Slentz, who cannot afford to go to law enforcement training school. He said the Air Force offers a chance for great experiences as well as a great salary. In statistics provided by the Department of Defense, the Air Force has reported meeting its recruiting goals each month of the fiscal year, which began in October. Read the full report on Bay News 9 West: Sacramento project to bring thousands of jobs A building developer in Sacramento, California, says plans to turn rail yards into a residential and commercial district will require thousands of workers over the next 20 years. Suheil Totah of Thomas Enterprises told KCRA that initial projects like building roads will mean jobs for 3,000 people. The company said more than 56,000 people will be needed for the project in the next two decades. The 244 acres will be converted into a mix of homes, businesses, entertainment venues and government offices. Read the report on KCRA Around the nation Tennessee will use federal stimulus money to hire 12,000 people ages 24 and younger, WSMV reports. A food company is converting a North Carolina textile plant and bringing 172 jobs, WXII reports.

How many jobs is Walmart adding in North Carolina?

The job fair is aimed for what type of people?

Answer: 3,000

Answer: 24 and younger,

Answer: senior citizens

Answer: in North Carolina.

Summary:
Job fair aimed at people 50 and older draws big crowd .
Pittsburgh area business executives meeting with high school students .
Wal-Mart adding 3,000 jobs in North Carolina .
Air Force recruiter in Florida has seen increase in interest .


Editor's note: CNN affiliates report on where job seekers are finding work across the country and how those looking for employment are coping with the situation. Tennessee's Williamson County Public Library in Franklin is trying to improve computer skills of older job seekers. (CNN) -- An Ohio company transforming its business model will build its headquarters in the town of Greenville. LAH Development will become a wind turbine manufacturer and installer after years of constructing commercial buildings. The company's new building is expected to cost $1 million, CNN affiliate WHIO-TV in Dayton reported. The state of Ohio has granted the company a tax credit of almost $400,000 to help create jobs. The company expects to hire 100 new employees. iReport.com: Share your job hunt story Under an agreement with the state, the company is required to operate at the new site for 12 years. Read the full report on WHIO Northeast: Grant money used to train veterans Pennsylvania is providing $311,000 to train 80 unemployed veterans in the field of welding. The state's Department of Labor and Industry grant will be used to train the former military members for 96 hours in beginner welding over an eight-week period. "As more troops return home after tours of duty, it's important that we provide tools and resources to help them reintegrate into civilian life," Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato told WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh. Read the full report on WPXI South: Library to teach computer skills to job seekers In Franklin, Tennessee, the county library is trying to help older job seekers by expanding its computer course offerings. Teachers will instruct students on how to use social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to search for jobs as well as make sure they have basic skills. "If you don't know those skills and you can't use them readily, it makes everything else so much harder," said Janice Keck, director of the Williamson County Public Library, told WSMV-TV in Nashville, Tennessee. Read the full report on WSMV Midwest: Indiana business to add 125 positions An Indianapolis, Indiana, life science firm is more than doubling the size of its staff. Biostorage provides biomaterials storage and distribution for companies around the world, according to WTHR-TV in Indianapolis. "Ninety percent of our clients are actually outside Indiana," John Mills of Biostorage Technologies told the station. "So we are earning Indiana dollars from companies outside Indiana." The current staff has 70 people; Biostorage plans to add 125 more employees. Read the full report on WTHR Around the nation Quintiles Transnational Corp. is moving its world headquarters to the Research Triangle Park near Raleigh, North Carolina, News 14 Carolina reports. A new Wal-Mart in Owasso, Oklahoma, is expected to hire 100 people, Tulsa's KOTV-TV reports.

Who is getting a $400,000 tax credit to hire workers?

What will the Pennsylvania program train veterans to do?

Answer: Biostorage

Answer: LAH Development

Answer: welding.

Answer: $400,000

Answer: 100

Answer: almost $400,000

Answer: 100

Summary:
Job fair aimed at people 50 and older draws big crowd .
Pittsburgh area business executives meeting with high school students .
Wal-Mart adding 3,000 jobs in North Carolina .
Air Force recruiter in Florida has seen increase in interest .


Editor's note: CNN affiliates report on where job seekers are finding work across the country and how those looking for employment are coping with the situation. Workers at the Jayco plant in Elkhart County in Indiana put together a travel trailer in February. (CNN) -- Elkhart, Indiana, has suffered through a litany of economic bad news and layoffs. The United States Department of Labor said that in March, the Elkhart metropolitan area had the fifth highest unemployment in the country. Just last year the Monaco Coach Corp. closed down its motor home assembly plants in Elkhart, Nappanee and Wakarusa. But Electric Motors Corp., which builds engines, cars and trucks, is moving into Elkhart County and bringing hundreds of jobs. "Their production working skills will be a little bit different than RV workers, but not that much different. We'll easily be able to train the workers," County Commissioner Mike Yoder told WSJV. Neither the company nor government officials would comment on how many jobs could potentially be created. "It's good to get a small number just to build up and hopefully it'll keep coming," said college student Erika Miller, who is looking for summer work. Read the full report on WSJV South: Famed New Orleans hotel closed after Katrina hiring hundreds The Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, is almost ready to reopen after being shuttered after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. After undergoing a $145 million renovation, the hotel will be staffed by 400 employees. This past week, more than 5,000 job seekers came to a job fair at the downtown landmark. Some of the people hired will begin in a few weeks, while others will start later. "We are looking to make some additional hires in September and in October when business picks up," Roosevelt employee Melissa Kariker told WDSU. One applicant at the fair had worked previously at the hotel. "I started my career with the Fairmont-Roosevelt," Gregory Smith said. "I worked in the Blue Room for several years." Read the report on WDSU Midwest: Newspaper giving away space for 'Hire me' ads The New Herald newspaper of Cleveland, Ohio, will publish "Hire me" ads in its Sunday editions and on its Web site. There is no cost for job seekers, but the offer applies only to this Sunday's paper. "It's actually something our publisher suggested that they did back in the '70s at the height of unemployment that he had worked at that time," executive editor Tricia Ambrose told WEWS. The Web site will also post video resumes. Read the report on WEWS West: Solar panel plant to hire 300 Schott Solar, which makes photovoltaic solar panels, opened a plant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this week, bringing 350 jobs. Officials with the company told KRQE the number of employees could grow to more than 1,500. A plant manager said the company provides its own funding and has not been hurt much during the recession, KRQE reported. Officials from the California-based company said they chose New Mexico in part because of the amount of sunshine it receives. Watch the full report on KRQE Around the nation General Mills will hire 112 people when it builds a distribution center in Social Circle, Georgia, WGCL in Atlanta reports. ...  In Richland, Washington, federal stimulus money is being used to pay for environmental cleanup, KREM reports. ...  Target and Lowe's stores are scheduled to open in Greenland, New Hampshire, this summer, bringing 400 jobs to the town, WMUR reports.

On what day is the newspaper providing free classified ads?

Answer: Sunday

Answer: Electric Motors Corp.,

Answer: Schott Solar,

Answer: New Orleans, Louisiana,

Summary:
Job fair aimed at people 50 and older draws big crowd .
Pittsburgh area business executives meeting with high school students .
Wal-Mart adding 3,000 jobs in North Carolina .
Air Force recruiter in Florida has seen increase in interest .


Editor's note: CNN agreed not to use the full names of the family in this article due to concern for their safety. Youssif is able to smile again, and his scars are healing well. Doctors are monitoring the swelling on his right ear. WOODLAND HILLS, California (CNN) -- Youssif happily pulls off his plastic face mask and pats his cheeks, which were once covered by horrific burns. "No hurt," the 5-year-old Iraqi boy says in English. "No hurt." He then shows off his right hand. It too had been marred by hardened scar tissue after he was attacked by masked men outside his central Baghdad home January 15, 2007. Now, his hand is smooth.   Youssif flashes a proud grin. A few moments later, he darts off and comes back toting his kindergarten portfolio. In less than a month of schooling, he's now writing the alphabet in upper- and lowercase.  See photos of a transformed Youssif » He reads a book, repeating each word after the narrator. When he gets to the word "you," he gets tickled. He points at the name "Youssif" and then covers the final four letters. "You," he says. Youssif began attending an American school just last month, one year to the day after he was so savagely attacked in Baghdad. In a recent letter to those who have helped his son, Youssif's father described the anniversary as a "very hard day" to endure but one that also brought joy. "But this year, it was the day for another miracle, Youssif's first day of kindergarten. It was a very happy day," Youssif's father said. Youssif begins each day with his father strapping him into a bike trailer. Dad then pedals him to school. On one recent outing, his dad's mobile phone blared Arabic music as Youssif quietly sat in the back, a helmet securely strapped to his head, the wind whirling past. As soon as they reached the school, Youssif's slow walk away from his father, his head held down, quickly changed into a sprint toward his classroom, and all you could see was the big red "S" on his Superman backpack flying away. "Harry," Youssif says in a small, muffled tone, reading the writing on the dry-erase board after receiving a little help from some classmates seated on the rug.  Watch Youssif-inspired music video » He then receives a congratulatory high-five from one of his kindergarten teachers. Youssif is adjusting well to school, able to write out the alphabet and count to 12 without hesitation. He always finishes with an accomplished sigh, wide eyes and a smile so big, it's as if he is making up for the 10 months he was not able to smile. He is quick to show the pencil box on his desk, pointing to his name written on it and then pointing to himself with the same tiny finger and nodding his head, letting you know that it is his. "The kids love Youssif. They get more excited than he does when he learns a new word in English, and they brag about it for hours," the mother of a classmate says. Youssif is attending the school thanks to help from the Children's Burn Foundation, the Grossman Burn Center and hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by you, the CNN.com user, to help bring him and his family to the United States for treatment. Youssif has undergone more than half a dozen surgeries. One removed the most massive scarring, which stretched about half a foot, from one of his ears to below his chin.  See how doctors removed Youssif's scars » He could undergo as many as 12 more procedures, his doctors say, mostly to tweak scars. His right ear has swelled, and doctors are monitoring it to figure out the best way to keep it in check. He wears a clear plastic face mask for much of the day to keep his skin tight and to allow it

when was boy burned?
What is the boy already doing?
Where did Youssif attend school?
Where was Youssif attending school?
What is the boy who was burned doing?
Who's lively spirit has returned?

Answer: January 15, 2007.

Answer: write out the alphabet

Answer: American

Answer: American

Answer: attending an American school

Answer: Youssif

Summary:
Youssif began attending school in metro LA one year to the day of his attack .
Boy burned in Iraq is already writing the alphabet and counting .
Dad says, "I have begun to see my son's lively spirit return"


Editor's note: CNN agreed not to use the full names of the family members in this article due to concern for their safety. Youssif and his surgeon, Dr. Peter Grossman, shake hands at the end of their Wednesday visit. SHERMAN OAKS, California (CNN)  -- Youssif nervously scanned the doctor's examining room, his dark brown eyes darting around, from the floor to the wall to the ceiling. His mother stroked his hair and then his forehead to put him at ease before the doctor walked in to the room. A day earlier, the badly burned 5-year-old Iraqi boy had boarded a plane in Amman, Jordan, with his family, their first trip on an airplane. Now, more than 7,500 miles later, his mom, dad and 14-month-old sister were with him at the Grossman Burn Center in the heart of sunny Southern California. Dr. Peter Grossman strode into the room, a warm smile across his face. He held Youssif's hand. The boy turned shyly around and buried his face into his father's leg. "This is not unusual," said Grossman, a plastic surgeon with more than 12 years of experience, including helping one young girl whose face had melted to her shoulder after a horrific accident.  Watch Youssif show his scars to Grossman for the first time » A father of two children, Grossman spoke softly and reassured Youssif that they would soon be friends. "We're going to do everything we can to make him better," he told Youssif's parents. Perhaps haunted by the pain he suffered in Baghdad's hospitals, Youssif hiccupped back sobs as his father lifted him onto the examination table. But the boy put on a brave face after his father told him to let the doctor do his job. "Who's the brave one? Youssif," his father whispered reassuringly. "He's not going to hurt you, I promise." Grossman pulled out measuring tape and took measurements of scars under the boy's chin and around his nose. One swollen scar around his chin measured nearly 3 inches. He also examined burns on Youssif's hands, forehead and right ear. At one point, Youssif thrust his head back and opened his mouth as best he could for the doctor. But his lips barely separated, their movement hampered by the swollen, hardened flesh. "What we want to eventually do is be able to get him to open his mouth as wide as he can," Grossman said. Youssif faces eight to 10 operations, possibly more, over the next six to eight months. He also will undergo psychological therapy to help him better adapt to all that has happened to him.  See photos of the boy's arrival in the U.S. » On January 15, masked men grabbed Youssif outside his central Baghdad home, doused him in gas and set him on fire. Grossman won't be able to make all the scars go away, he said, but he's confident that "we can make him significantly better." "We're going to do everything we can to move forward and to do a good job," he said. The boy's mother nodded solemnly. "I just want my son's smile back," she told the doctor. Watch how masked men stole a boy's smile Youssif was introduced to his other doctors, a pediatrician and anesthesiologist. The boy cuddled into the warm confines of his father's chest. His dark eyes kept a keen watch on all those around him. His first operation could come as early as next week and involve multiple procedures. Grossman will cut away scar tissue around his nose and put temporary skin from a cadaver over it. "We're also going to stick a balloon underneath the good skin under his neck and on his face," the doctor said. "The purpose of that is over time we will stretch the good skin, so that in about three months he will be able to go back to surgery, remove the scar tissue and pull up the stretched out good tissues.

Where does Youssif's medical treatment took place?

How many surgeries will the burned Iraqi boy undergo?

What is the name of the burned Iraqi boy?

Answer: Youssif and his surgeon, Dr. Peter Grossman,

Answer: Youssif

Answer: Grossman Burn Center in the heart of sunny Southern California.

Answer: eight to 10

Answer: 5-year-old

Answer: Youssif

Answer: 5-year-old

Summary:
Burned Iraqi boy will undergo eight to 10 surgeries in coming months .
Youssif's medical treatment in California follows CNN story about him .
Youssif remains cautious around doctor but eventually warms up .
By the end of first visit, the boy, 5, and doctor shake hands .


Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams." "Tumbling tumbleweeds" have been romanticized in song, but they're no fun in some parts of the U.S. (CNN) -- "Do we like them?" Patrick Victor, a game and fish commission employee in San Carlos, Arizona, repeated the question back to me as if I had proved my lunacy by asking it in the first place. "Do we like tumbleweeds?" he said. "No one likes them. They're not like in the cowboy movies. We consider them garbage -- worse than garbage. There is nothing to treasure or cherish about a tumbleweed." We were talking about tumbleweeds because of a theory I had been pondering: In this country, because of the immediacy of news, it seems as if everyone from one coast to the other is worrying obsessively about the same thing at the same time. You name it: the banking meltdown one day, the feared floods in Fargo, North Dakota, the next; the forced ouster of the head of General Motors one morning, followed soon after by the street demonstrations in London during the Group of 20 summit. We all tend to fret together about one crisis at a time; undoubtedly there will be something new for all of us to be nervous about together before sundown tonight. So the goal here was to come up with something utterly unlikely -- something that, in 2009, you wouldn't think would bother people -- and find out if it does. Tumbleweeds. That, just picked at random, was the test case. "They can be a pretty big problem out here," said Scott McGuire, a code enforcement inspector in Greeley, Colorado. "When the wind is right, they'll pile up right to the roofline of a house. Seriously -- people can't see out of their windows or even easily get out of their homes." There was something instructive, even (in an off-kilter way) comforting, about learning this: the affirmation that, in this increasingly monolithic country, there are still local vexations that override the breaking news bulletins on the national networks, that people in one pocket of America are routinely dealing with forces that people a few hundred miles away are blissfully unaware of. Just hearing about it makes life seem somehow more life-size. "I meant what I said literally," McGuire said, continuing on his pinned-in-the-house-by-tumbleweeds theme. "They are big and prickly -- they can blow for hundreds of miles, sometimes all the way from Wyoming. They go until the wind dies out or they run into something. That's when people can have piles of them pressing against their homes -- when the tumbleweeds stop there." Tumbleweeds, if you haven't thought about them in years, may seem like a gauzy memory from old Western movies, a nostalgic high-plains symbol of desolation and loneliness. There was that campfire song by Roy Rogers and his group, the Sons of the Pioneers; once you think of the lyrics and melody again, you can't get it out of your head: "See them tumbling down/Pledging their love to the ground/Lonely but free I'll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds." But in the 21st century? In our connected-by-broadband, addicted-to-cell phones, technologically tethered nation? Tumbleweeds? As something to be concerned about? "They're ugly and nasty," said Charlene Hardin, the county manager of Roosevelt County, New Mexico. "They can make our roads impassable. You can see 12-foot-high, chain-link fences with tumbleweeds piled all the way up to the top. They're very flammable -- toss a cigarette, and you have a big fire. "Tumbleweeds are more than a nuisance out here. We'll get

What are some parts of the U.S. plagued by?

Answer: banking meltdown

Answer: "Tumbling tumbleweeds"

Summary:
Bob Greene: National issues such as economic crisis dominate news .
Greene says that we quickly move from one crisis to the next .
Greene: Still there are regional concerns that never get a big spotlight .
Some parts of the U.S. are plagued by "tumbling tumbleweeds"


Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose forthcoming book is "Late Edition: A Love Story." Bob Greene says kin of Columbine victims don't have the luxury of moving on after the 10th anniversary is marked. (CNN) -- The weddings that will never be held. The birthdays when there will be no one to embrace. The first jobs that will never be greeted with a parent's proud smile of congratulations. Those are the things -- the sacred things, perhaps the sole things -- that we should pause to think about Monday. Because while the rest of the world considers anew the meaning of what happened 10 years ago at the school in Littleton, Colorado, the people who matter -- the only people who truly can fathom the meaning -- are the people with the wounds in their hearts that will never quite heal: The mothers and fathers of the children who were murdered. The brothers and sisters who were left with the empty and soundless spaces in their homes and in their lives. For the rest of us, it's all guesswork, and the anniversary provides a circumscribed time to think about it somberly. But by tomorrow we will have moved on to other concerns, while the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers -- the grandfathers and the grandmothers -- will return to that which they can never wish away: The weddings that won't ever come. The birthdays when there is only silence. Is it possible to break that April day from 10 years ago into its incremental elements, as if by doing so we will be able to find a possible future remedy? If we think enough about the saturation of our society with violent images, from the movies we watch to the video games our children play to the stories on the evening news -- is that what can explain Columbine? If we dissect the live television coverage of that day when millions stared for hours on end -- was it those unblinking pictures that made the scenes still so hard to shake? Is there a resolution to be discovered in debates about the guns that were used, the need for security checkpoints? Those are all just details, not answers. Those are merely facts to be noted. What is worth paying attention to is that we, as a people, have developed, without really wanting to or knowing we were doing it, the thousand-yard stare that you see in the eyes of certain homicide detectives who have been doing their jobs for a very long time. It is a look of utter numbness -- a look that is the opposite of cynical, a look of sorrowful surrender. It is a look that says, of the bearer of those eyes: My eyes are dead because I know that what they have witnessed is only prologue. My eyes show nothing because they must be prepared for what they know they will be seeing again. To encounter those eyes -- to see the thousand-yard stare -- in a police officer is one thing. But to see it in a country. ... Yet that is what the many years of nonstop killings have done to us. Columbine -- that word, that label -- is the way we sum up this kind of thing, but labels like that are at core our way of conceding our inability to process the despair. There was murderous madness that came before Columbine, and murderous madness that came after. We tell ourselves on each new occasion that what has happened is shocking, but the word has become all but meaningless. The only genuinely shocking thing would be if the cruelty and the killings were to somehow suddenly cease. We can blame all of this on our modern times veering out of control, if we wish, but it really speaks of something more elemental and dark, of factors beyond our earthly understanding. The most deadly attack upon sons and daughters at a school did not occur at Columbine 10 years ago, or at Virginia Tech two years ago. On May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, 44 people, most of them elementary school pupils in their

What do the kin of the victims live with?

Which victims live with the pain every day?

Answer: the wounds in their hearts that will never quite heal:

Answer: kin of Columbine

Answer: kin of Columbine victims don't have the luxury of moving on after the 10th anniversary is marked.

Summary:
Bob Greene: Kin of Columbine victims live with the pain every day .
Greene: Most Americans see such violence with numb eyes and can look elsewhere .
The pain of these incidents predated the horror of Columbine, Greene says .
He says people eternally have sought to tame human savagery .


Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story." Bob Greene says discussion of ballplayer Ted Williams' corpse is a shameful way to remember the superstar. (CNN) -- "I was scared," Ted Williams said. He was talking about his lifelong fear of not being good enough -- of coming up short. "I was always afraid I might fail," he said. "I was pictured as being so cocky -- I might have been cocky to some people, but not in my heart. All the time, I was just hoping to make whatever league I was in." I am thinking about a long conversation I had with Williams toward the end of his life. I'm thinking about it because of the unconscionable thing that is being done to him now that he is gone, now that he is without any defenses. You may have heard about a new book that makes some cruel and repugnant allegations about the mistreatment of his remains. What has been done to Williams' good name since his death at age 83 in 2002 is heartbreaking. First there was the very public battle within his family about what to do with his body; when it was entrusted to a facility that specializes in cryonics -- freezing -- there were tasteless gags all over television. Now there is the nauseating voyeurism surrounding these new allegations. They are unspeakable, and I will not repeat them here. He has been made a joke. It is as if there has been a conscious effort to rob him of his humanity. As if he is a punch line, as if he was never a person with thoughts and feelings. No one deserves this, and certainly not Ted Williams. A magnificent 19-year career with the Boston Red Sox; twice the winner of baseball's triple crown; the last ballplayer to hit .400 in a season; two tours of duty in the military in World War II and the Korean War ... This is the man whose right to rest in respectful peace is being stripped from him. It is a crime. And because he can no longer speak for himself, I will share with you his voice from a time when he could. "I can't believe how well people have treated me, how nicely," he told me. He had suffered a series of strokes; he knew there wasn't much time left. I was writing a monthly column for Life magazine, and he had agreed to talk with me. I told him that there was something striking about his voice: He sounded just like John Wayne. "John Wayne sounded like me," he said, not kidding. When he told me about his fear of failure, it was in the context of always being fixated on his own shortcomings. "The only time I could savor an evening is if I had done something well," he said. "My most disappointing things all my life were always related to baseball. I didn't feel good because I did something successfully; I felt bad if I failed to do something that I was expected to do." As a young ballplayer, he supposedly said, "All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street, people will say, 'There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.' " It happened. That was what people said about him. Did it satisfy him? "I would slide down in my seat a little bit when I heard someone say that," he told me. "Because I wanted people to believe it, but I didn't believe it myself. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron -- they were so good. When I would be at a dinner and someone would say I was the best, I would want to hide out of sight and sink into the floor." At the height of his talent, he stepped away from baseball to fly Panther fighter jets

Who said that the discussion about Williams' remains is distasteful?

Answer: Ted Williams

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: discussion of ballplayer Ted Williams' corpse

Answer: Ted Williams

Answer: ballplayer to hit .400 in a season;

Answer: Ted Williams.

Summary:
Bob Greene: Discussion about Ted Williams' remains is distasteful .
He recalls superstar player as a man who always strove to do his best .
Williams was baseball's last .400 hitter and a veteran of two wars .


Editor's note: CNN executive producer Suzanne Simons is the author of "Master of War: Blackwater's Erik Prince and the Global Business of War." Private contractor Xe flies military personnel in Afghanistan and helps train Afghan border police. The company formerly known as Blackwater, now called Xe much to its chagrin, has been at the center of the contractor debate for years. From the time four of its men were ambushed and murdered in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, to a shooting involving a team of its men in a Baghdad neighborhood in which at least 14 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2007, the company has drawn unwanted headlines. Blackwater owner Erik Prince downsized the company earlier this year when business failed to keep pace with investment. He changed the company's name after the Iraqi government banned it from doing business there. But those who thought contractors were going away under President Obama's administration couldn't be more wrong. According to the Department of Defense, there are some 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan today and more than 132,000 in Iraq. But those numbers aren't an accurate reflection of the total number of contractors because they don't include those working for other government agencies such as the Department of State. Many of those tens of thousands are third-country nationals, meaning they were hired from a third country to go to Iraq. Many earn between $400 and $700 a month; while Americans, particularly those performing dangerous security duties, can earn as much in a day. Despite being kicked out of Iraq, Xe still does a healthy business in Afghanistan, flying military personnel from one location to another and helping train Afghan border police charged with making the country's massive, porous borders more secure. It's one of the many jobs that the U.S. military just isn't staffed to tackle on its own. In fact, the U.S. military today is beefed up by a force of nearly a quarter million private contractors. There are even cases where contractors oversee the contractors. And that's the problem. The U.S. has come to rely on them so heavily, in such a short period of time, that the government has come under fire for not managing them adequately. Even among the eight-member team that makes up the Wartime Contracting Commission, a congressionally mandated effort to review the contracting process in Iraq and Afghanistan, the question of whether the United States needs the contractors isn't even an issue. The issue, rather, is how well the government is managing this massive support force called up in the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq. In its interim report released this month, the Commission found that "neither the military nor the federal civilian acquisition workforces have expanded to keep pace with recent years' enormous growth in the number and value of contingency contracts." The report also said, "the government still lacks clear standards and policy on inherently governmental functions. The decision has immediate salience given the decisions to use contractors in armed-security and life-support tasks for military units." One of the biggest nightmares for legislators is that the force that has grown into such a critical modern-day military support structure was for a long time operating in a legal gray zone with no clear avenue of justice should something unsavory occur. That has led to some tough work for both prosecutors and the FBI, as they take on the task of investigating allegations of wrongdoing by contractors overseas. Doug Brooks, head of the IPOA, an industry-friendly voluntary organization made up of 62 companies, spends much of his time doing outreach and making sure member companies measure up to the internal standards. "We have the power to kick people out of the association," Brooks said, but that's about where it ends. They can't prosecute anyone.  But to say that there has been no progress on the legal front wouldn't be fair. Legislation has been passed that essentially holds contractors accountable for their actions under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, but with everything in this business, there was a hang-up with that, too.  The legislation was written to cover contractors

who has garnered unwanted attention over the past few years?

Where does Xe do a great deal of business?

Answer: how well the government is managing this massive support force called up in the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq.

Answer: Blackwater, now called Xe

Answer: in Afghanistan,

Answer: Afghanistan,

Answer: private contractors.

Summary:
Blackwater, now Xe, has garnered unwanted attention over the past few years .
Though kicked out of Iraq, Xe does a great deal of business in Afghanistan .
Bottom line: U.S. relies heavily on private military contractors .
The issue is how well U.S. government manages this support force .


Editor's note: CNN has asked its journalists across the country to offer their thoughts on how the economic crisis is affecting their cities. In this installment, All Platform Journalist Jim Spellman reports from Denver, Colorado.

Hari Dallakoti says business at his UPS store in Denver, Colorado, is down 25 percent.

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- The conventional wisdom here in the Mile High City is that Denver entered the recession early and is pulling out of it ahead of the rest of the country.

Time and again I have heard politicians, journalists and business people tell me that it isn't so bad here, that Denver is poised to lead the nation in an economic recovery. Maybe, but the signs on the ground are a little harder to read.

Down on Broadway I stop by a UPS store a couple of times a week. The owner's name is Hari Dallakoti.

Dallakoti always has a smile on his face and seems to know all his customers by name -- he was calling out to me by the second time I entered the shop. People drop by to ship out packages, make copies and pick up deliveries.

There is always a crowd when I have been in, but Dallakoti tells me business is down 25 percent this month versus the same time last year.

"Finally it's hitting in this area, and I believe that people are afraid of spending money," he says. "It's like a ripple effect, and I think I am feeling it now."

Dallakoti says customers who once sent birthday presents across the country are now only sending cards. Also, eBay-related shipping is down, and he has seen a falloff in people sending mortgage-related documents. He has five employees and says he hasn't had to let anyone go, but he has had to cut back their hours.

He agrees that business is better in Denver than in other parts of the country and is confident he will weather the economic storm, but it may be a while before things get better for him.

"In my opinion it's going to get worse for the next couple, three months, and I'm hoping it will turn around after June," he says.  Watch how the downturn is affecting Denver Â»

A block up Broadway is a little guitar store called Music Gear Guys. I play guitar, and this was one of the first businesses I stopped by when I moved to Denver in January. I have been in the shop four or five times and have been surprised that every time I drop by, the place is packed.

"The recession affected us a little last year but overall -- knock on wood -- it hasn't really affected me too much," says owner Gregory Decker, who thinks the recession may actually be helping his business.

"I have a feeling that people are looking for hobbies or different forms of entertainment that aren't too expensive," Decker explains. His store is crowded with new and used guitars, amplifiers and accessories.

He says guitars based on designs from the 1960s are the hot items in the store. Like Dallakoti, the UPS store owner, Decker seems to know all of his customers by name. He says that in this economy you have to focus on customer service to stand a chance. He doesn't advertise, instead relying on word of mouth, and keeps overhead low: He is the sole employee.

"Relationships are what make my business thrive. Without them I wouldn't be as successful," he says.

But even here in a relatively successful small business there are signs of the hard times other people have been experiencing. Beginning last year more customers started coming in to sell Decker their guitars in hopes of making ends meet.

"A lot of people are selling their gear due to job layoffs and needed the money," he says.

The recession started with free-falling housing values and, in this respect, the signs are harder to read.

Over the weekend I took my dog for a walk through my neighborhood near Sloans Lake

How is the UPS store owner's business doing?

What is one nickname for the city of Denver?

What are people selling to obtain money?

Who is the CNN journalist reporting in Denver?

The owner of what store says business is down 25%?

What were people in Denver selling to make money?

The CNN journalist weighs in on how what affects the city?

Who said that their business was down at least 25 percent?

Answer: is down 25 percent.

Answer: Mile High

Answer: their guitars

Answer: 25 percent.

Answer: Denver

Answer: Jim Spellman

Answer: UPS

Answer: their guitars

Answer: economic

Answer: Hari Dallakoti says

Summary:
Hardware store owner in Boston slams "negative story after negative story"
Worker laid off twice in two months says he's trying to stay positive .
Layoff also brings on feelings of rejection, worker says .
Gallery owner says business is down but not "devastating"


Editor's note: CNN has asked its journalists across the country to offer their thoughts on how the economic crisis is affecting their cities. In this installment, All Platform Journalist John Couwels reports from Orlando, Florida.

Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, has announced that it will lay off employees.

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- Orlando: What first comes to mind? Walt Disney World or Universal resorts, perhaps? The two parks are the nation's biggest tourist draws.

As a new resident of Orlando, I find that the tourist areas are more removed from the city than I thought. Still, some people in the area where I currently live either work or have business dealings at tourist attractions.

As with every city in the United States, Orlando is dealing with the fallout of an economic slowdown. Tourism officials expect an 8 percent to 10 percent drop in tourism dollars for 2009.

Nonetheless, during a recent visit to Disney's Magic Kingdom with my family, I experienced a packed park. My first visit in 10 years: The park did not seem any different except for the $129 I paid for a six-month Florida resident pass.

Disney World recently announced a major loss in income and that layoffs are expected. Sources within Disney say the layoffs could begin this week. Disney will not say how many people will be eliminated while it restructures and consolidates operations.

I have not heard panic among businesses and city officials over the Disney announcement, despite the fact Disney World says it is the biggest single-site employer in the United States with 62,000. Disney spokesman Mike Griffin said: "We are bigger than the Pentagon."

Disney told me cuts would be significant, affecting back office workers. Griffin said guests visiting the parks would not see any difference.

Danielle Courtney, spokeswoman of the Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said she was sure that "Disney will provide a value experience for their guests." But she said Disney is doing what every other business is doing: cutting costs.

Orlando's economic and development director, Bill Billingsley, said the city has not lost a significant amount of jobs. Billingsley is concerned about the Disney layoffs but optimistic on the limited effect on the city's economic health.

From the big corporations to the funky little tea and sandwich shop east of downtown, businesses are feeling the pinch.

The owner of Pom Pom's Teahouse and Sandwicheria was telling my friend how she had to cut everyone's hours to part time to save on expenses. The store has been open since 2006.

Owner Pom Moongauklang, a trained pastry chef, told me she's doing whatever it takes to stay open. Pom cut her four employees' hours instead of their jobs, lowered prices and extended hours to 24 hours on the weekends.

Pom said of the 60- to 70-hour work week: "It's killing me, but it's working."

Along the epicenter of tourist hotels, restaurants and T-shirt shops, International Drive business owners say they are hurting.

Aby Aly, owner of a gift shop selling goods from T-shirts to plush dolls, said that "business is off by 35 percent, and people are not buying."

As I drive around town, I do not see a large number of closed-down stores. Like other cities, Orlando has seen big national chain closures like Linen-N-Things and Circuit City. Yet at two of the area's outlet malls, you would never know there is an economic crisis. I waited 10 minutes in line to enter the parking lot.

In the suburbs where foreclosures are their highest, more businesses have closed their doors. As I looked for a house to rent I was surprised how a one-bedroom condo in downtown was the same price as a four-bedroom house only five miles away.

Real estate agent Sue Bee Laginess said the city has a glut of homes and condominiums for sale or rent. She said her office has seen business double from four months ago because of the low prices.

The agent said owners

What does resort mecca Orlando, Florida feel the pinch of?

Answer: economic slowdown.

Answer: cutting costs.

Answer: Walt Disney World

Answer: cutting costs.

Summary:
Hardware store owner in Boston slams "negative story after negative story"
Worker laid off twice in two months says he's trying to stay positive .
Layoff also brings on feelings of rejection, worker says .
Gallery owner says business is down but not "devastating"


Editor's note: CNN has asked its journalists across the country to offer their thoughts on how the economic crisis is affecting their cities. In this installment, Bob Crowley reports from Boston, Massachusetts.

Hardware store owner Brendan Kenney says "people who have money should go out and spend it."

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Brendan Kenney has seen enough bad news about the economy.

"I'm also getting tired of being worried," he says.

His family has been running a small hardware store in Brookline, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, for about 56 years. He says business has slowed down a little, but mostly because winter is normally the slow time of year for them.

Though he hopes the stimulus plan will help his and other small businesses, he believes people shouldn't be afraid.

"I think the American consumer holds a lot of power," he continues. "I think people who have money should go out and spend it."

Like many in the Boston area, Kenney doesn't want to hear more discouraging stories and sees that as part of the problem.

"It's just negative story after negative story, kind of creating a crisis of confidence."  Watch Boston-area reaction to the economic slump Â»

South of Boston, Jose Nieto, from Plainville, has his own reasons to be discouraged. Between September and October of last year, he was laid off twice.

Nieto, a civil engineer who works on road construction projects, had felt fortunate. After losing his job of 14 years, he was able to find employment after only being out of work for two weeks.

After being on the new job for three weeks, however, he got called into the boss's office.

"I said, 'Oh, no. My God, not again.'" He was faced with looking for work in an industry that traditionally slows down in the winter months.

"It's more than losing your job. It gives you a feeling of rejection," he says. Yet, Nieto feels this is a time to learn valuable lessons, especially for those who need to dip into their savings when unemployment checks don't cover all of the bills.

"I think a lot of people will learn from this situation, and, going forward, they'll try to save more money."

He has been trying to stay healthy, busy and positive. Passing the time working on projects in his basement workshop and taking yoga classes has helped him get through the rough spots, and his luck is turning. He was offered a job that starts in March.

"It is a relief, because I'm employed," he says, "however, I'm taking a job for much less money."

Nieto believes that most employers cannot afford to hire at the salaries they could offer in the past.

Like Kenney's hardware store, Sue Stein's American craft gallery, also in Brookline, is not seeing any major shifts in her business, yet.

"Our business has been certainly down, but not devastating," she says.

Fire Opal, her gallery, sells everything from earrings to pottery to scarves, all made by artists from around the country.

To keep her business healthy, she says, she is trying to make adjustments like buying less merchandise. But she is changing her approach to her customers as well.

She says she tries to keep "understanding that people are having a hard time and trying to find things that are more in their price range."

Like Kenney and Nieto, Stein is also trying to stay optimistic.

"I think if we all are very careful," she says, "we'll sort of ride it out and then things will adjust."

How many times was the worker laid off who is trying to remain positive?

Number of times that worker had been laid off in two months?

Answer: "people who have money should go out and spend it."

Answer: Brookline,

Answer: "people who have money should go out and spend it."

Answer: twice.

Answer: Nieto

Answer: twice.

Answer: feeling of rejection,"

Answer: "people who have money should go out and spend it."

Answer: twice.

Summary:
Hardware store owner in Boston slams "negative story after negative story"
Worker laid off twice in two months says he's trying to stay positive .
Layoff also brings on feelings of rejection, worker says .
Gallery owner says business is down but not "devastating"