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The Maryland State Lottery Agency issued the following news release:

Thomas Lee of Lexington Park really enjoys Maryland Lottery instant tiffany accessories. While he's played many different games over the years, Ruby Red 7's has recently become his favorite. Why? First, because this ticket was given to him by his daughters as a birthday gift, and then because it turned out to be a top-prize winner

"I didn't scratch the ticket right away," said Thomas, a builder of helicopter flight simulators for the military. "With all the excitement of my daughters' visit and the party I didn't get a chance." The brand-new 65-year-old finally found some time to play a few days later, after his family had gone home and the house had quieted down. "I didn't really believe my eyes. I studied the entire ticket, sure that it was a joke."

A call to his daughters to share the news tiffany bracelet met with disbelief, "They were even more surprised than I was." Thomas made a second call to his fishing buddy. "We'd talked about a fishing trip to Alaska - this money is going to make it happen."

The Ruby Red 7's birthday gift was purchased at the Rod N' Reel, 18161 Notch Rd. in Lexington Park.

When I graduated from high school in [mumble mumble], some of my friends' parents gave them cars. My tiffany bracelets gave me a walnut rocking chair from E. A. Clore. This might seem an odd choice for a graduation present, but consider this: I still have the chair, and I certainly would not still have the car, given how many years ago [mumble mumble] was.

The University of Nebraska-Omaha issued the following news release:

A $1 million donation by Minneapolis resident and Omaha native John Morgan to the silver necklaces of Nebraska Foundation has funded a new re-entry initiative at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) to address community needs, including inmates in the Nebraska prison system.

The re-entry program, known formally as the Transformation Project, is housed in the UNO College of Arts and Sciences and is administered in collaboration with the following groups: the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service; the UNO College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media; the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation; and the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.

Dr. Manning Marable, a leading Malcolm X expert and professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, serves as a consultant to the Transformation Project.

As part of the project, the life of Malcolm X is studied and taught. Malcolm X strongly believed in education, commitment to purpose and self-transformation, and personal growth as the method for rising above one's circumstances. The project helps inmates explore beliefs, attitudes and actions silver pendants are central to successful re-entry by using the practices of motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral theory. The Transformation Project uses examples and experiences of Malcolm X to help inmates determine their core values and identify choices and actions that support those values as a means to successfully re-enter communities.

The project's inaugural session lasted July through December of last year, with 21 inmates completing the program at the Omaha Correctional Center, 2323 Ave. J. Classes were held weekly and lasted about 90 minutes. Topics included education, employment, housing, positive social networks, and mental and physical health.

A new session began April 20 at the Omaha Correctional Center, and will wrap up this summer. Later this year a third session begins at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.

A future site for the project will likely be in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A presentation on the Transformation Project will also be given at an American Correctional Association national meeting in August.

Chris Rodgers, a member of the Douglas County Board of Commissioners silver rings 2004 and a senior community services associate at UNO, leads the Transformation Project. Rodgers earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in business administration from Creighton University. He also received a master's degree in public administration from UNO.

UNO students and faculty have been responsible for creating, administering and evaluating a model for self-transformation that can be used in prisons or by anyone wishing to make significant life changes. Information has been collected from local, regional and national experts.

Emporia State University issued the following news release:

The crowd gathered for a Friday evening banquet at Emporia State University was the first to silver cufflinks of two major gifts to the university from the estate of an Emporia couple.

The William J. and Aloha Preston Trust is providing $1,231,844 to the ESU Foundation. Income from the trust is earmarked for current and future student scholars in accounting and women's athletics, two areas that figured prominently in the lives of the donors.

"This is the fourth largest single gift received in ESU's history," noted Judy Heasley, the Foundation's president and chief executive officer. "It is another testament to the institution that the Prestons believed in ESU enough to give so much back."

The donation was announced during a social hour preceding Friday's Beta silver earrings Psi banquet. Traditionally known as the honorary accounting fraternity, all accounting, finance, and information systems majors are eligible for Beta Alpha Psi membership.

The gift reflects the Prestons' longtime association with Emporia State University. Both received degrees from the institution. Dr. Bill Preston taught accounting courses in ESU's School of Business for 15 years before retiring.

"Bill fell in love with teaching," said Dr. John Rich, a School of Business faculty colleague of Preston's. "He often said it was his most fulfilling experience," Rich added.

Aloha Preston taught physical education classes at ESU and the College of Emporia. "Aloha was an avid supporter of anything dealing with athletics at ESU, especially women's sports," Rich said.

Bill Preston died in June, 2008. Aloha Preston died in December, 2009.

Proceeds from another gift of the Prestons figured in to another announcement from silver key rings during the reception. As part of the Memorial Union renovation campaign, the Preston Trust has provided funds to rename the Union's Kanza Room the "Preston Family Room." It was in that room that the announcement of the Preston Trust gift was made Friday evening.

"I first met Bill and Aloha Preston in 2007 at this banquet held in this very room," recalled Dr. Michael R. Lane, ESU president. Lane noted that the Prestons contributed funds to install new, state-of-the-art wireless scoreboards at Glennen and Turnbull Fields at Emporia's Trusler Sports Complex.

Missouri State University issued the following news release:

Donor pledges to match $600,000 in gifts for new science labs, equipment Friday, April 30, 2010

An anonymous donor has pledged a gift that is hoped to yield up to $1.2 million for cheap rings Laboratory School at Missouri State University. The challenge gift is part of a $2.5 million campaign to build two 1,800 square foot modern, flexible laboratory environments that offer state of the art science technology at the lab school.

More than $1.3 million of the $2.5 million campaign goal has been raised to date. All new gifts and pledges made before July 1 will be matched by the donor up to a total of $600,000. If enough gifts are given to match the challenge, it will complete the goal for the campaign.

"This project is really gaining momentum and we want to cheap tiffany parents, alumni and friends of the school to take advantage of this very generous gift," said Brent Dunn, vice president for university advancement at Missouri State.

The $2.5 million campaign also includes transforming former science space into an elementary science center for Greenwood. The innovative lab space will provide an environment for inquiry based learning, problem solving and hands-on experiments for students in kindergarten through grade 6.

When the work is completed, Greenwood plans to offer opportunities for area students and teachers.

"This campaign will move us into the state of the art science facility and curriculum for silver bracelets through 12th grade," said Greenwood Director Janice Duncan. "Once finished, we will also be offering Summer Science Scholars' Academy that will address curriculum from a number of science professions. The first planned academy will be 'Health Care Advances - The Twenty-First Century in Action.' This will be an opportunity not just for our students, but for all students from the area as well.

With the world encouraging graduates to be productive, ambitious, effective, and, most of cheap money clips, very very busy, I like to provide balance with a gift of M. B. Goffstein's A Writer, which celebrates lying on the couch, and thinking; or, for a more detailed approach to the same idea, How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. I'm not sure it works. Everyone I've given the Hodgkinson book to has told me that they look forward to reading it one day but that right now they just don't have the time. SARAH ELLIS

Our first son was already a book lover when he graduated from being an only child. At two, he was well versed in Mother Goose and enjoyed identifying the bright pictures in Bruno Munari's ABC; still, he had yet to follow a real story. The advent of a baby brother precipitated a tenacious case of insomnia. How to calm him so we could all sleep? Night after night, I recounted his own day - familiar enough to follow, eventful enough to mimic plot, with a soothing happy ending: sleep. It worked. Better yet, it prepared him for the more complex cheap necklaces of what now became his favorite story: The Three Billy Goats Gruff, as illustrated by Marcia Brown. Each night, as the first two goat brothers outwitted the troll, he drew in his breath, holding it until the biggest billy goat tossed the troll into the river. Then he let out a great cathartic gust of a sigh, and was ready to snuggle down for a good night's sleep. JOANNA RUDGE Long

Of all the books we sell at the children's specialty toy store in Brookline Village, Massachusetts, where I work part-time, I repeatedly recommend one book besides Oh, the Places You'll Go! to customers looking for a great graduation gift: Watty Piper's and Loren Long's The Little Engine That Could. Typically I find our customers are looking to give a book to young children and this usually fits their request, but die book's nostalgic story and message are equally suitable and appealing to teenagers and adults.

This book exudes positive thinking, determination, and perseverance - lessons worth cheap pendants readers of at any new phase in their life. Not only is the Little Blue Engine humble and willing to play the Good Samaritan role - helping others when they are in need - but she is also confident and hard-working as she repeats the book's famous mantra to herself: "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." In her triumph getting over the mountain top, the Little Blue Engine smiles and puffs, "I thought I could," just as graduates celebrate their ability to turn their "I think I can" experiences into "I thought I could" successess. CYNTHIA K. RITTER

What Makes a Good Graduation Gift?

Since you know you can count on somebody else to purchase Oh, the Places You'll cheap earrings! and Chicken Soup for the Soul for the new graduate, the Horn Book staff and reviewers thought we might offer some alternative suggestions, based on personal experience - both what we've given and what we've received - and on what life has taught us about which words we might have needed or heeded back in the day.

Because the gift of a book can be as much imposition as benefaction, I would go with something short, and undemanding in the nicest possible sense. Meaning, you will not be tested on this book by me or anyone ehe. Also compact, to make it that much more possible for the graduate to take along to wherever he or she is headed next. Any picture book by William Steig has all these qualities, in addition to being wise, generously spirited, and respectful of readers old and young. But which one? I think I'll go with Brave Irene, because it's about loving your mom so much you will leave home on her behalf, facing down the elements on your own and getting the job done, earning respect and cake in the end. roger sut ton Freshman year of college, I had a great roommate. Not only did we think alike, we looked alike - people called us the Madonna twins. We were Frog and Toad with blonde bobs and miniskirts instead of webbed feet and earth-toned jackets. Still, cheap jewelry friends once I left the high school womb didn't always happen so easily for me. Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith's hilarious picture book Cowboy and Octopus would have reminded me to look beyond superficialities. Because sometimes the kid with the eight arms and bad taste in hats and the wrangler with a thing for baked beans end up a perfect match. How do they discover their compatibility? As Scieszka and Smith show, they just have to start talking. Christine m. heppermann

The book I'd give almost any graduate, from preschool to high school, is Maria Frazee's picture book Walk On!: A Guide for Babies of All Ages. Dedicated to Frazee's college-bound son, the book truly is for beginners of any age, though its protagonist is one of the author- illustrator s trademark babies, a shiny faced, bald-headed tot, listening attentively to the narrator, who begins: "Is sitting there on your bottom getting boring? Has lying around all the time become entirely unacceptable? It is time to learn how to walk!" The book is full of good advice ("Remember to breathe"; "Go ahead and cry if it helps") that, coupled with Frazee's pictures of the determined toddler, wearing a diaper twice the size of his or her head, will get laughs from both kindergartners and teenagers. From getting started ("The first thing you've got to do is stand on your own two feet. It sounds easier than it is") to first step ("Don't look down at your feet. Look toward where you want to go. Imagine yourself as already cheap key rings"), readers will find gentle guidance ("You will need support... Be careful of things that are wobbly") and cool insights ("See how different everything looks from here?") - reminders that taking baby steps is a natural way to begin almost anything. JENNIFER M. BRABANDER

When people disagree with one another about deeply held convictions, especially cheap bangles based on religious beliefs, coming to peaceable agreement is no easy task. The vitriolic exchanges and even threats of physical violence that have been voiced in the process of reforming health care in the United States, for example, are quite different from the way the first Christians resolved their differences regarding observance of the Mosaic law in changing circumstances.

Today's first reading abbreviates Luke's description of the process, as it presents the problem and then jumps to the agreed-upon solution. It is helpful to look at the omitted verses from Acts 15 to see the steps by which communities of faith can accept and Uve out the gift of peace that Jesus promises his disciples in the Gospel.

As the Jesus movement spread outward to include more and more gentiles, heated debates ensued over whether these newcomers should keep the whole of the Mosaic law. Some said yes, some said no, and others argued for a compromise position: keep some observances, but not others. cheap bracelets next question was inevitable: if gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised or to observe all the dietary regulations, then should Jewish Christians continue to be bound by them:? How would a mixed community be able to eat together if some were keeping kosher and others not?

As Acts 1 5 recounts, albeit in an idealized way, there came a point when a group from Judea, not authorized by the Jerusalem leaders, came to Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas were recounting all that God was doing through them in their missionary travels among the genriles. The Judeans, who were arguing for full observance of the law by gentiles, created no little dissension and debate, as Paul and Barnabas took them on, holding that gentiles should not be bound by the law.

In the verses omitted from today's first reading, Luke describes how all the leaders gathered in Jerusalem to resolve the dispute. First there was intense listening by all sides. Paul and Barnabas reported what God had done through them in gentile lands. Then some of the Pharisees who had become believers spoke of their conviction that the whole law must be observed by all. After much debate, Peter finally stood and put forth a decisive argument: it was appâtent that God had given the Holy Spirit to the gentiles as well as to Jewish Christians, making no distinction between the two. He then argued for a relaxation of observance of the law. Then the leaders listened again to Paul and Barnabas as they described "the signs and wonders God had worked cheap cufflinks the gentiles through them" (15:12). Next James, the leader of the Jerusalem community, quoted a text from Am 9:11-12 concerning God's ingathering of gentiles. He then proposed a compromise, as we hear in the remainder of today's first reading.

The University of Texas issued the following news release:

Texas entrepreneur and businessman Red McCombs and his wife Charline will be necklaces at a gala on May 13 in recognition of his transformational gift to the school that now bears his name, McCombs School of Business.

The event will be held at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, a building McCombs was instrumental in getting funded.

Red McCombs

Red McCombs

"This isn't just a thank you," said Thomas W. Gilligan, dean of the business school, "but also a chance to reflect on how business education has impacted the lives of thousands of Texas students, because Red McCombs envisioned the potential for something truly world-class at The University of Texas at Austin."

Many of those directly benefiting from that vision are student scholars such as Jessica Burch, an accounting student who received the Marquis G. Eaton Scholarship.

"Coming from a humble background, my mother a high money clips teacher and my father a sheriff's officer, my scholarship allowed me to achieve an education far beyond what my family was able to finance," she said.

The McCombs gift encourages the formation of scholarships at the school by matching the funds from other donors. As a result, more than 400 scholarships have been awarded to McCombs students in the last seven years. These challenge grants have also been used to hire top-tier faculty members, allowing the school to advance academic research (the school is ranked 10th in the nation in research productivity), while also reducing the size of classes.

"Red McCombs has maximized the value of his relationship to the university at every possible opportunity," Gilligan said. "The perfect example is the role he played in enabling the construction of the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. He not only supported the project with his own gift, but also personally worked to secure the AT&T involvement."

The AT&T Center is a state-of-the-art learning facility that hosts conferences, executive classes, corporate training and other academic outreach activities in pursuit of the University's mission.

"For the McCombs School of Business to be in the top 10, it is critical to have a facility of this nature," said John McStay, a Dallas business leader and member of the McCombs Advisory Council.

"At the time he pledged his gift, I remarked that Red was a dream donor, and he still is," said Bob May, dean of the business school when the McCombs gift was received. "His name rolls off the tongues of our students with such pride, and they bask in the recognition it has brought their school. We are blessed with one of tiffany engagement rings greatest patrons in higher education."

Speakers at the gala will include Don Evans, non-executive chairman of Energy Future Holdings Corp., Herb Kelleher, chairman emeritus of Southwest Airlines, and Tex Moncrief, president of Moncrief Oil. Attendees are supporting the effort to raise $500,000 to create a 40 Acres Scholarship in Red McCombs' name.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works issued the following news bracelets:

The County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works is hosting a collection event as part of its continuing efforts to encourage residents to recycle their used motor oil and oil filters. The event will take place at Franklin D. Roosevelt Park, 7600 Graham Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90001 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, 2010. During the event, County residents can receive free promotional items such as oil containers, oil filter containers, shop towels, or oil funnels while supplies last.

Why should residents recycle used motor oil and oil cufflinks? Just one gallon of motor oil can contaminate one million gallons of fresh water -- that's enough water for one year's supply for 50 people. Recycling used motor oil can also help protect the environment for future generations. Follow these steps to recycle used motor oil:

* Place used oil filter in a plastic bag.

* Store used motor oil in a seal-proof container.

* Do not mix oil with other liquid or materials including water.

* Mixing liquids contaminates the motor oil which cannot be recycled.

In addition to the collection event, residents can drop off used oil and oil earrings at weekend Household Hazardous Waste/Electronic Waste (HHW/E-Waste) collection events or at local Certified Collection Centers (CCC's). These centers will typically accept up to five gallons of uncontaminated used motor oil, and some will also accept used oil filters for recycling - all free of charge.

The University of Missouri at St. Louis issued the following news release:

The University of Missouri-St. Louis announced today a tiffany gift from the Ameren Corporation to benefit the construction of a College of Business Administration building.

This new building will streamline all current business school operations, offering students and faculty a centralized place to collaborate, interact and share ideas within their specific disciplines. It will feature cutting edge classrooms, modern computer laboratories, faculty offices, seminar and conference rooms and student organization suites.

"The University of Missouri-St. Louis provides its students with a tremendous education," said Warner L. Baxter, AmerenUE president and CEO. "In addition, UMSL plays a critical role in educating our community's future work force and leaders. We are proud of our association with such a fine educational institution."

UMSL's Gateway for Greatness Campaign seeks to raise $25 million in gifts and pledges for the bangles - $15 million to be used for the construction of the building and $10 million to fund endowed professorships and scholarships.

"This gift will help ensure that UMSL continues to provide St. Louis with innovative, award-winning academic programming and diverse alumni who assume leadership roles in companies and organizations large and small," said UMSL Chancellor Tom George. "Ameren's gift shows they recognize and support the unique role UMSL plays in educating St. Louis. We have more alumni living and working in this region than any other university."

UMSL's College of Business Administration was established in 1967 and offers bachelor's degrees in accounting, management information systems and business administration. Students may choose from five emphasis areas: finance; international business; logistics and operations management; management and organizational behavior; and marketing.

UMSL is a public metropolitan research university, rings excellent learning experiences and leadership opportunities to a diverse student body through outstanding faculty, ranked programs, innovative research and community partnerships.

With assets of $24 billion, Ameren serves 2.4 million electric customers and 900,000 natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.