By AMY MCCONNELL SCHAARSMITH, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Many boys today would rather play video games than pitch a tent, but the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America believe the group's founding principles -- to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent -- still can engage and inspire children and their parents.

At Katie Pugh's house, the kids don't ask to play Guitar Hero or watch yet another princess movie after the family eats dinner.
Instead, her 6-year-old son, Jake, and 3-year-old daughter, Josie, are thrilled to play a board game before bedtime.
"They're way into it," Pugh said. "They ask for it every day."

When Larry Mays died near a bike trail in downtown Pittsburgh in April, he became the seventh homeless person to perish in Allegheny County this year, two short of the number of homeless deaths in all of 2008.

Film director Spike Lee, one of the few African-American filmmakers to achieve widespread success, prescribed a formula recently to college students who want to follow his example: Find a trade they love, hone their skills and work hard even when they don't feel like it.

With her husband fighting a war 7,000 miles away in Iraq, Heather Midcap thought she'd have to give birth to their daughter at Wheeling Hospital without him.