Paul Newman - a mensch

(I'm moving this to the top, since I think it is important. I'm sure Mr. Newman would not mind me doing so).

...in the spirit of Mr. Newman's philanthropy, something simple you can do:
When my sister Laura was handicapped by multiple sclerosis, adaptive computer technology made the difference between sitting around watching TV all day and having an active, interesting life online.

This man, a former firefighter needs the same type of technology that helped Laura so much.

Please click on the link above and click "like it" next to the number of votes so that he can win a $5000 tech makeover. I don't know him but I would love to see him get the help he needs.

Please tweet, link, email, blog, whatever. He will need at least 1,000 votes to win.

Edited to add: Woo hoo! Keep it up! It has gone from 125 votes to 242 290 345 in one day.

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Paul Newman was the first man I ever had a crush on. I was a very young teen and he was already in his 40s, but I saw some pictures of him in a magazine and I got this funny tingly feeling...dang, that was a man!



He never stopped being hot as hell, and the glowing love he expressed for his wife, Joanne Woodward, made him even sexier.

One of the most attractive things about him was that he always looked like he was having a ball while living his life. The word "gusto" was made for him. He raced cars, he made salad dressing, he set up camps for kids with life-threatening illness and he changed the world doing it.

Before him, no one had thought of giving every penny of a company's profits away to charity. It was a crazy idea that worked. Newman's Own ended up donating more than $220 million to charities and made some fine salad dressings and cookies to boot.

I heard author and psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo tell a story at a writer's workshop:

Palumbo worked helping people with their writing and got hired by Robert Redford, with whom he was flying to Colorado on Redford's private plane. He was thinking to himself how amazing it was that a guy from a poor Italian family ended up flying around with Robert Redford on a private jet.

Redford looked off in the distance and said out of nowhere "You know who has it made? Paul Newman. That guy has everything. He's had a great career that has lasted for decades. He has a beautiful wife and a great family..." and so on.

Palumbo told the story to show how almost everyone, no matter how well they have it, tends to think there is someone else that has it better. But maybe Redford was right. Maybe no matter who you are, you could still have had it better if you had been Paul Newman.

Newman's Goodbye Video (not safe for mascara)