WHEN Adrian Smith was a child, she spent two weeks with a Fresh Air Fund host family in Poughkeepsie.
For the Otis family, the idea to become Fresh Air Fund hosts came from an ad in a parenting magazine.
For 125 years now, the Fresh Air Fund has been giving New York's disadvantaged inner-city children a chance to expand their worlds by going to a Fresh Air Fund camp or staying with a Fresh Air Fund host family.
For more information about being a Fresh Air Fund host family, or to make tax-deductible donations, please contact their offices at 800-367-0003 or 212-897-8900, 633 Third Avenue, 14th Floor, New York, NY, 10017.
Angel, 11, was introduced to this bucolic setting a few years ago after Mark and Dawn Hansen, his Fresh Air Fund hosts, relocated from upstate New York to Springvale, the southern Maine town where they grew up.
"I've lived in Brooklyn, and I imagine it's got to be rough for kids during the summer," she explained, adding that she first envisioned herself as a Fresh Air Fund host after reading newspaper articles about the program.
Through volunteer help and sponsorship, primarily from HBO, the backyard landscape was transformed into a festive playground for more than 50 Fresh Air Fund host families, friends and supporters living in the Suffolk County area.
Research institutions, funding bodies and individual researchers may all have an interest in protecting possibly profitable outcomes from the work that they fund, host, or execute.
In February, 2009, a private bank, Northern Trust, which had just received $1.6 billion in federal bailout funds, hosted a golf tournament and party in the Los Angeles area.
Embattled financial giant Citigroup Inc., which has received at least $50 billion in federal bailout funds, hosted a private conference call on Wednesday to build opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.
