[Earth Day Edition] iHeart Celebrity Causes Highlights Jennifer Lopez's Lopez Family Foundation

As a society we like our celebrities and tend to support the causes they endorse with this status. Our celebrities are those that entertain and inspire us such as those that act in the movies, on television and the stage, our favorite musicians, athletes from our favorite teams or provide national pride representing at the Olympics, the authors of our favorite literary works and those that provide contributions in the world of art. Each month in this population-we™ (pop-we) series, I Heart Celebrity Causes, a celebrity will be chosen and the cause that they promote will be looked at.

I Heart Celebrity Causes!

This month in the 10th installment of I Heart Celebrity Causes the focus is on Jennifer Lopez and the Lopez Family Foundation. Lopez is a multi-media star who has excelled as an actress, author, dancer, producer, singer and song writer. She has eight studio albums which passed the 60 million sold mark, been in 26 movies which have grossed over $2 billion and can currently be seen as a judge on American Idol.

The Lopez Family Foundation was founded by Jennifer Lopez and her sister Lynda in 2009 with the goal to greatly increase the availability of quality healthcare and health education for women and children no matter their financial situation and ability to pay. The goals are to provide maximum impact in the areas of telemedicine and raising healthy children. The initial reach of the Foundation has been results in Bronx, NY, Puerto Rico and Panama.

The Foundation partnered with the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles in September 2010 to launch the Lopez Family Foundation International Telemedicine Program. The program provides specialized  healthcare services through innovative teleconferencing to address the needs of children globally. The inital focus is on Latin America as a presence has been established in Puerto Rico and Panama. Working relationships are in place with two hospitals in Puerto Rico where tele-genetics and tele-radiology programs have been developed. The telemedicine program launch in Panama works with three major pediatric centers, one rural hospital and three rural clinics with the goals of improving access and enhancing the quality of health care for children.

An effort closer to home for the Lopez sisters took place in June 2014 when they joined the Montefiore Health System to launch the Center for a Healthy Childhood in Bronx, NY. The Lopez Family Foundation made a $250,000 donation to Montefiore to help promote healthy living through community health programming, positive messages to raise children's self image and a healthy environment to assit every woman, child and family acheive their full potential. Jennifer Lopez said the Center will make her vision a reality by making her hometown a healthier place.

If you wish to contact the foundation it can be done through the Lopez Family Foundation website.

Most importantly, Bravo to pop-we I Heart Celebrity Causes--Jennifer Lopez--for her Take Action Hollywood! efforts.


Editor's Note: In celebration of the 45th anniversary of Earth Day population-we™ staffers will celebrate our love for planet earth with green posts the entire month of April! For this post we celebrate two Earth Mothers who are the founders of The Lopez Foundation. Thanks for reading our second Earth Day post. 

-population-we™ blog post by John Bohan 

© 2015 population-we, LLC

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[Earth Day Edition] Open Water Season Starts in Nebraska

Long at last, it’s open water season, and we have wasted no time finding fish.

The waters were warming up nicely until the cold front this past week. Water temps in the Tri County and Johnson Lake were all the way up to 50 at one point. Now I’ve heard the temp has dropped quite a ways, which is to be expected. We fished in water from 47 to 50 degrees and found the fishing to be slow. We managed only a few crappies in the canal, and only one sauger at Johnson. While talking with other friends out on the lake, their success has been similar. While we thought that the walleyes could easily move up on the dams at night real soon, that may have been pushed back just slightly because of this cold. But I do not believe it will be a big setback. With a slight warm up ahead in the forecast, the night fishing could be hot.

Largemouth Bass.

With snow melt coming from out west, the canal has been moving quite a bit of water. Last year at this time it was common to see water moving as slow as 1100 cubic feet per second (cfs). This week we’ve seen it up around 2000. When fishing the canal, it’s nice to keep the current in mind as it can really move the fish around. I believe that was part of the problem with our lack of success with crappies and saugers. The water is simply dictating some of their movement right now.

Now onto something completely different. My friends and I have been doing something lately that is new to us, which I’m sure will be old news to some of you. We have a variety of public and private sandpits that we’ve been targeting for big largemouth bass with stick baits. We have been working hard on trying all kinds of new baits and seeing which ones are doing the best for us. The baits that are doing the best for us are baits that suspend at rest, as this is a key part of our presentation. We’ll cast out, crank the bait down a few feet, then let it sit. Twitch it, reel slow, let it sit. There are all kinds of combinations of cadences you can use while doing this. We’re finding most of the time we do not need to let the bait sit longer than 5 or 6 seconds. The bass that are taking these baits are very aggressive, sometimes waiting until the lure is near the shore to come out and grab it. Some of our most fun catches have been heart stoppers when the water erupts at your feet. Another reminder that just because you’re almost at the end of your retrieve, you still need to be ready.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to fish with my friend Marty Hughes, who, as Kayakajak, is the foremost expert in kayak fishing in the region. We set out in search of monster bass at a public area near Elm Creek one day, and private waters the next. While we didn’t find the monster we were looking for, we did find a pattern that rewarded us with a few catches. Most all the fish we caught during the weekend were in shallower waters where it was the warmest, calmest part of the sandpit. These fish are moving up to warm up, and are often easily tricked into smacking a passing bait. It’s amazing at how much access you have while in a kayak. You can go many places that are otherwise hard to reach with larger vessels, or difficult to fish from shore. I learned a lot about kayak fishing this weekend, and you can too if you spend time with Marty on one of his adventures.

The nice thing about this recent cold weather is that patterns like the ones mentioned above will go a bit longer into the year. We’re having a lot of fun finding out which stick baits work best, and frankly, it’s just a fun way to fish. Having a bass smack a lure after it’s been motionless for a short time is real fun.

That said, be sure to get out and enjoy the springtime in Nebraska and get a great start to another great year.


Editor's Note: In celebration of the 45th anniversary of Earth Day population-we™ staffers will celebrate our love for planet earth with green posts the entire month of April! Our resident fishing blogger, Brian Robinson, is an outdoorsman who clearly has a love and respect for everything fishing. Thanks for reading our first Earth Day post. 

-population-we™ blog post by Brian Robinson 

© 2015 population-we, LLC

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