Archive for the ‘Human Interest’ Category
One reason why I’ll be keeping my domain registration with GoDaddy.com
GoDaddy.com has put together a moving tribute to the U.S.A. for this year’s July 4th. I didn’t know this until reading Michelle Malkin’s post, but GoDaddy.com was founded by decorated Vietnam veteran Bob Parsons. Apparently, he’s quite the patriotic type. Good for him and his company.
Rock stars who died too young
I am fascinated by the history and evolution of rock music, especially the various people who made contributions to rock-and-roll as a form of art. What is troublesome are the disproportionate number of famous musicians who died prematurely, often (but not always) as a result of their own excesses. Michael Jackson certainly wasn’t the first. The most important thing I’ve learned from these people is that money and fame cannot by themselves make a person happy. I’ve never been wealthy or famous, so I can’t say this from first-hand experience, but just observing the way these people lived tells us quite a lot. I’m sure a lot of ordinary people like me wish they could live like rock stars. But I’d wager that there are a lot of rock stars who wish they could go back to living like ordinary people.
Here’s a list of famous musicians who died too young. I’m sure I’ve left out several. Help me out if you wish.
Hank Williams - died 1953, age 29, possibily the result of a mixture of drugs and alcohol
Buddy Holly - died 1959, age 22, plane crash
The Big Bopper - died 1959, age 28, plane crash
Ritchie Valens - died 1959, age 17, plane crash
Patsy Cline - died 1963, age 30, plane crash
Jimi Hendrix - died 1970, age 27, possibly the result of a mixture of drugs and alcohol
Janis Joplin - died 1970, age 27, drugs and possibly alcohol
Jim Morrison - died 1971, age 27, possible drug overdose
Jim Croce - died 1973, age 30, plane crash
Cass Elliot - died 1974, age 32, heart attack
Elvis Presley - died 1977, age 42, overuse of prescription drugs/heart attack
Ronnie Van Zant – died 1977, age 29, plane crash
Keith Moon - died 1978, age 32, drug overdose
Sid Vicious - died 1979, age 21, drug overdose
John Bonham - died 1980, age 32, alcohol
John Lennon - died 1980, age 40, murdered
Dennis Wilson - died 1983, age 39, drowned
Andy Gibb - died 1988, age 30, myocarditis (following years of drug/alcohol abuse)
Stevie Ray Vaughan - died 1990, age 35, helicopter crash
Freddie Mercury - died 1991, age 45, AIDS
Dee Murray - died 1992, age 45, stroke
Kurt Cobain - died 1994, age 27, suicide
Selena - died 1995, age 23, murdered
Tupac Shakur - died 1996, age 25, murdered
Michael Hutchence - died 1997, age 37, suicide
Laura Branigan - died 2004, age 47, brain aneurysm
Michael Jackson - died 2009, age 50, ?
The Price of Peace
Here’s one to warm your heart. The Gaddis Sisters wrote and recorded a song for their father while he was deployed serving you and I in the military. This has got to be one cool dad.
Right Minded declares June “Heterosexual Monogamy Pride Month”
A human spell-checker
The annual National Spelling Bee came to an end yesterday with a 13-year-old fron Kansas taking home the loot.
Kavya became the seventh Indian-American in 11 years to claim the title, including back-to-back winners who want to be neurosurgeons. Her role model is the one who started the run: 1999 winner Nupur Lala, who was featured in the documentary “Spellbound” and is now a research assistant in the brain and cognitive sciences lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kavya, from Olathe, Kan., was an obvious favorite, having finished 10th, eighth and fourth in her three previous appearances. Her winning word was the proper adjective “Laodicean,” which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. As with all her words, Kavya wrote the letters in the palm of her hand with her finger as she called them out.
Of course, the mainstream press is obsessed with race, so they can’t help but include her status as a hyphenated American, but to those of us who can see people as individuals and not merely as members of a group, that is one smart kid.
Aspiring neurosurgeon from Kansas is top speller – Yahoo! News.
Liberated
President Bush says a heavy burden has been lifted since he left the Oval Office. That’s an understatement.
It was a humbling moment for the former commander in chief: President George W. Bush was walking former first dog Barney in his new Dallas neighborhood when it stopped in a neighbor’s yard for relief.
“And there I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag on my hand,” he told a group of graduating high school students in New Mexico on Thursday. “Life is returning back to normal.”
We sure do miss you, Mr. President.
Bush: It’s ‘Liberating’ to Be Out of Office – Presidential Politics | Political News – FOXNews.com.
The Raven
ESPN ran a special on Sports Center a couple of days ago on a Miami man, Robert “The Raven” Kraft, who has run eight miles a day, every day, for more than 34 years. That’s 104,000 miles. This is one of the most remarkable examples of perseverence I’ve ever seen.
I qualify for two out of three
Rugged individualism
With so many Americans apparently willing to fork over their individual rights and liberties to the government these days, it’s heartwarming to see that some individuals still take the bull by the horns without relying on President Obama and the Democrats to spoon-feed them everything.
The retired jet pilot, Joe Cabuk, was unconscious. And though White had his pilot’s license, he had never flown a plane as large as this.
“I need help. I need a King Air pilot to talk to. We’re in trouble,” he radioed.
Then he turned to his wife and two daughters: “You all start praying hard.” Behind him, his wife trembled. Sixteen-year-old Bailey cried. Eighteen-year-old Maggie threw up.
White, 56, landed the plane on his own about 30 minutes later, coaxed through the harrowing ordeal by air traffic controllers who described exactly how to bring the aircraft to safety. The pilot died, but White somehow managed.
When a controller asked whether he was on autopilot, White replied: “I’m in the good Lord’s hands flying this Niner Delta Whiskey,” giving the code for the aircraft.
Flashback: Two Democrats on an escalator
Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 1968
A former liberal with an open mind
Ron Silver was indeed a rare breed.
Actor Ron Silver, who won a Tony Award as a take-no-prisoners Hollywood producer in David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” and did a political about-face from loyal Democrat to Republican activist after the Sept. 11 attacks, died Sunday at the age of 62.
“Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him early Sunday morning” in New York City, said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped found. “He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years.”
Silver, an Emmy nominee for a recurring role as a slick strategist for liberal President Jed Bartlet on “The West Wing,” had a long history of balancing acting with left-leaning social and political causes.
But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, longtime Democrat Silver turned heads in Hollywood with outspoken support of President George W. Bush over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Entertainment – Actor Ron Silver dies in NYC at age 62 of cancer.
More people are finding out who John Galt is
Added to my reading list
John Calipari is giving a series of speeches in advance of his forthcoming book. Yesterday, he was at the University of Memphis speaking to faculty and students.
Part of the key is making yourself indispensable. “You have to love the path as well as the prize,” he said, comparing it to “working to exhaustion and feeling good about it.”
And do it with a positive approach. “If you stay positive, people gravitate to you because you make them feel good.”
Like a sports psychologist as well as coach, Calipari said, “Your mind can make you do whatever you want it to do.”
Part of the process is habit. “If you want to change your life, start changing your habits. … You will be defined by your habits.”
Calipari used former Tiger Joey Dorsey now with the NBAs Houston Rockets as an example of someone who changed courses by changing attitude. “He grew up in an area where he was told he was going to fail. I told him, Write your own story — what you want the next year to be.”
And, remember, the coach said, “Everybody loves a comeback story.”
Happy Square Root Day!
On growing up
I normally don’t post e-mail forwards, but I was just sent this from a friend, and I absolutely love it. Perhaps you’ve seen it already. If so, please indulge me here. There’s a great deal of truth here. I, too, was guilty of most of these “sins” while growing up.
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s:
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps (not helmets) on our heads.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.
Riding in the back of a pick-up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. (This was always a particular favorite of mine.)
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. (Even more fun was when the hose got passed among several friends.)
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight. WHY? Because we were always outside playing!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, and X-Boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no person al computers, no Internet and no chat rooms. WE HAD FRIENDS, and we went outside and found them! (Actually, I did get an Atari when I was about 15.)
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. (I tore up my right knee at the age of 10 after jumping a hump in a sidewalk one-handed and losing my balance. I never tried that again.)
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. (I never did this.)
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. (I got my first BB gun at age 9.)
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever. (And bloggers!)
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
The upshot of being unemployed
You never would have seen this kind of news story during the Bush presidency, back when the liberal media and Democrats trotted out a continual parade of victims. But a Democrat is in the White House now, and so there’s good news even for those who have lost their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I love optimism, and appreciate stories like this. It’s just that optimism is something you rarely see from the left.
The unemployed are stressed out about unpaid bills, dashed retirement plans and the loss of workplace camaraderie. But many say life minus work also has its bittersweet upsides, including more time with family and friends, learning new skills, focusing on their health and pursuing hobbies.
There is a wide range of opinions, of course, about just how sweet, or bitter, the experience has been.
An idled auto worker in Wisconsin cherishes extra time with his kids, and his guitar. A former communications worker in Virginia finds time for hiking as a distraction from the job search. But two jobless friends in North Carolina whove played plenty of golf together say enough is enough: theyre ready again for the joy of earning a paycheck.
All of these people said they would give up their newfound free time in a heartbeat if they could land jobs. And most spend hours each day trying. But as unemployment spells drag on longer than anticipated, they have allowed themselves to enjoy activities not directly related to the job hunt without feeling guilty.
Unemployed use time for health, hobbies and family – Yahoo News.
Correcting a great injustice
I was really hoping that President Bush would either pardon or commute the sentences of former border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, and he has.
A quarter century
Fans of A Christmas Story, which is one of my own favorite movies, are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the making of that movie.
“It’s a film about being a kid and looking back,” said Brian Jones, who owns the house where the movie was shot and the neighboring museum dedicated to the film.
About 4,000 fans are attending the convention at Cleveland’s Renaissance Hotel, where they’ll meet some of the film’s actors, watch three documentaries made about the film and see the original 1938 fire truck from a famous scene in the movie involving a child’s tongue stuck to a frozen pole.
Wikipedia even has an entry on the house that was used to film the movie. The house has a story of its own: “In December 2004, Brian Jones, a San Diego entrepreneur and fan of the film since childhood, bought 
the house on eBay for $150,000. Jones used revenue from his business, The Red Rider Leg Lamp Company, which manufactures replicas of the “major award” Ralphie’s father won in the film, for the down payment. The previous owners had reconfigured the building into a duplex, installed modern windows, and covered the original wood siding with blue vinyl. Watching the movie frame by frame, Jones drew detailed plans of the interiors — which had been filmed on a Toronto sound stage — and spent $240,000 to gut the structure, reconfigure it to a single-family dwelling, transform it into a near-replica of the movie set, and restore the exterior to its appearance in the film.”
When life actually transcends baseball
Bill Lyon had an excellent column in the Philadelphia Inquirer today on Phillies’ manager Charlie Manuel losing his mother yesterday morning. The picture below is of Manuel being consoled by Manny Ramirez, left-fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, before yesterday’s Philllies-Dodgers game. Manuel managed Ramirez when they were with the Cleveland Indians years ago.
Bill Lyon: He does his momma proud | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/11/2008
The Gratitude Campaign
Here’s a neat way of saying thank you to a U.S. serviceman.
