Craig Ruvere

09Sep 2019 by CJ

A bone marrow donor can share their blessings with others

Today, I received two cotton swabs in the mail. No, it’s not a reminder to clean my ears, but part of my Be The Match kit, which will add me to the thousands of other people who are already on the bone marrow donor registry. From their website: “For the thousands of people diagnosed every year with life-threatening blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, a cure exists. Over the past 30 years Be The Match®, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP), has managed the largest and most diverse marrow registry in the world. We work every day to save lives through transplant.” You might be asking why I decided to become a bone marrow donor at 44 years old. It’s simple really. My life is insanely blessed. Even with…

18Aug 2019 by CJ

Salaries should be contingent upon your contributions to society

Life & Living

Salaries are always a point of contention in our national economy, most likely because there’s such a disparity among them. Here’s just one example. According to a recent release by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) entitled Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers, the median weekly earnings of the nation's 117.6 million full-time wage and salary workers was $908 in the second quarter of 2019, which translates to roughly $47,216 a year. In contrast, according to a recent posting on etonline.com, salaries for the cast of the BH90210 revival are $70,000 an episode, while the cast of the rebooted Will & Grace are earning $250,000 an episode. Let’s say an hour-long drama takes about two weeks on average to film, and the popular, half-hour comedy format about…

03Aug 2019 by CJ

Mowing the grass – 3 really good reasons to keep on doing it

Information & Education, Life & Living, Youth

I’ve been mowing the grass since I was about twelve-years-old, when my father finally deemed me tall enough to push our gas-powered lawn mower on my own. Soon, every Saturday and throughout my summer vacation, keeping our lawn perfectly manicured was now my job. While this might sound a bit like child labor to you, in truth it provided me with a sense of responsibility and even helped me build the strong worth ethic I still have today. Fast forward a few years and not only was I mowing my parents’ grass, but my grandparents on occasion as well. Though admittedly I never really minded mowing their lawn for my grandmother would always dote on me and feed me something wonderful afterwards. But I digress. I’m now 44 years old…

21Jul 2019 by CJ

Abundance is something many have but fail to realize

Generosity & Kindness

“As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance—an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love—then external lack is bound to be temporary.” ― Marianne Williamson, Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles This weekend, I set aside a few hours for the unenviable task of organizing my garage. One would think it’s an occasional task – perhaps yearly or even every other. But in my house, it seems to happen with a great deal of regularity as one project leads into another and time seems to constrict one’s ability to leave things as orderly as they were before. I experience the same pattern of behavior in my basement as well – oftentimes leading to a full-on cleaning spree one…

07Jul 2019 by CJ

A modest childhood doesn’t mean you’re missing out

Youth

I grew up with a very modest childhood. Believe me, that’s not meant to be an insult. Quite simply my parents and grandparents understood the importance of sharing their time with my sister and me. Of creating memorable experiences rather than buying us an abundance of toys which ultimately lost their value almost as soon as they were taken out of the box. For some reading this post, you might assume I grew up deprived that my modest childhood wasn’t filled with every toy imaginable. I suppose it does contradict the parenting of today where toys and “things” seem to define one’s childhood. But a study out of Germany, echoed by a recent study by the University of Toledo, makes for some interesting contrasts. In a German kindergarten class,…