Win or lose, the Saints playing in the Super Bowl is like a healing, a laying on of hands for New Orleans, La. As I wrote on Twitter February 4, followed by hash tags #whodat and #Saints, "Super Bowl mania hangs in the air, palpable like Mardi Gras beads in trees, like August here, thick and hot, like a good rain."

Part two of a two-part post: Caitlin Boyle of OperationBeautiful.com and Gaby Montero of GivesMeHope.com both seem to say based on their experiences with being more positive and how people have responded to their motivational Web sites and blogs that we humans greatly underestimate thinking positively.

I believe that when we consistently stumble into the same messages, or the same thoughts flit across our mental screens repeatedly -- and those thoughts are reasonable, not crazy -- that the universe is speaking to us, and we should pay attention. So, when a BlogHer staff member suggested a contributing editor write about the blogs Operation Beautiful and Gives Me Hope and interview their founders, I raised my hand in cyberspace, "Oooh! Ooh-ooh-ooh! I'll do it!"

Multiple news sources, including The Root, report that R&B legend Teddy Pendergrass died yesterday of colon cancer at age 59. The Philadelphia, Penn., native passed away in a Philadelphia hospital. Dan DeLuca, the Philadelphia Inquirer's music critic opens his piece on Pendergrass, saying:

Do you ever feel that we spend too much time talking about how we're different? Some of us spend a lifetime dissecting others by race, gender, nationality, culture, and political leanings, and so it's refreshing to see a documentary that asks what makes us the same: What do we all share in common?