When it comes time to close on the purchase of a home, being mute can be costly. A recent Housing and Urban Development study showed that two identical borrowers with the same credit scores, income and loan amount could see a $1,000 difference in their closing costs. The reason: many people pay the closing costs the lender is charging, no questions asked.

Just a few blocks from the harried intersection of state roads 50 and 436 sits Gale Johnson’s neighborhood, a quiet oasis in an unending sea of traffic. That’s the way her rural hamlet has been for the 51 years she has lived there, and that’s how she wants it to remain. “We’re almost isolated, and I kind of like it,” Johnson said of her cul-de-sac neighborhood. “We don’t want you to bring big development into our community.”

Much has been made over the steadily declining teen pregnancy rates in the United States — from 117 pregnancies per 1,000 girls in 1990 to 75 per 1,000 girls 12 years later — though it’s still the highest in the developed world, twice as high as England, eight times as high as Japan. Fourteen percent of the decrease is attributed to abstinence, while 86 percent came from contraceptive use, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute.

Feeding the homeless can be quite an adventure. One very memorable night, Sheila Sablin, a 46-year-old mother of five, took her husband’s motorcycle out for a spin with her best friend, Lynn Henry, looking for a few homeless folks displaced from their camp in the woods.

Athird party will soon join Lori Cunniff’s 50-mile carpool from Merritt Island to the Orange County offices in downtown Orlando. She and another co-worker have been sharing a vehicle to work for two years, originally doing it to save the earth and are now reaping the benefits of saving green, as in cash. More people are trading in their solo ride and buddying up with colleagues who live nearby.

NorthLake Park residents say they consider themselves one step closer to getting what they want in their backyards. Last year a group of residents formed the NLP Fuel Farm Task Force to fight plans by the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority — the Orlando International Airport’s governing body — to build five million-gallon fuel tanks and a 34-jet hangar on wetlands near their homes.

Sandra Clark finds herself constantly yelling at food distributors. Clark, the Gator’s Dockside director of operations, was irritated when fuel surcharges started showing up on their bills, but her ire was really raised the second time flour prices were increased in the last two months.

Dry cleaners are big environmental offenders. Toxic detergents can evaporate into the air and pollute drinking water if improperly stored. The liquid must be hauled away by special companies and carefully disposed of. Massive machines that clean the clothes use huge amounts of electricity and give off so much heat that the temperature in back of a dry-cleaning business can exceed 110 degrees.

Nearly a dozen stray shopping carts huddle near a bus stop along East Colonial Drive between State Road 408 and Alafaya Trail. Another was deserted in a nearby ditch where it collected trash and debris, clogging the drainage system to the point where it could no longer function properly.

Jeannette Rivera felt as if she was on top of the world. She owned JR Express Mail, a delivery company that contracted with the U.S. Post Office. She enjoyed a comfortable salary and had plenty of time to spend with her two children.