Category: Miscellaneous

Last week a co-worker sent around an email with an evil .pdf file attachment of an amazing article from Sports Illustrated. Happily, I was able to find the article reproduced on the Internet. The world’s strongest dad, in case you were wondering, is not a muscle-bound Mr. Olympian who happens to have a couple of kids. He’s a 65-year-old Massachusetts man named Dick Hoyt who has spent the last quarter-century competing with his wheelchair-bound son in marathons, climbing mountains with his son on his back, and towing his son in a dinghy in swimming competitions:

"[A]fter a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out [on his computer], ‘Dad, I want to do that.’

"Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ‘porker’ who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ‘Then it was me who was handicapped,’ Dick says. ‘I was sore for two weeks.’

"That day changed Rick’s life. ‘Dad,’ he typed, ‘when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!’"

And so Hoyt kept giving his son that physically-liberating experience by continuing to take his son on sporting adventures. Rick Hoyt has given back to his father by keeping his dad in such great shape that the senior Hoyt survived a heart attack doctors told him he might not have survived without the strength he’d gained from exercising. Rick does have one wish though:

"’The thing I’d most like,’ Rick types, ‘is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.’"

GET THE (LIFE-AFFIRMING) STORY.

There are those who would say that Rick Hoyt’s severe physical disabilities meant that his life wasn’t worth living. Dick and Rick Hoyt have proved them wrong. And that’s how we’ll rebuild the Culture of Life:

One family at a time.

Yesterday I had a close encounter with an animal of the same kind you see here. Though briefly shaken, I was unconcerned until I read in AARP Magazine’s July/August issue (sorry, story not available online) that deer account for more human deaths in the U.S. than any other animal.  Dogs? Shark attack? Not even close.

Here is the breakdown, with the number of human deaths per year:

• Deer       –    150
• Dogs       –    18
• Snakes    –    15
• Sharks    –     2
• Bears     –    .5

Now, I am sympathetic with those who would put deer into a different category because, after all, they don’t really "kill" people (or do they?…). I am even reluctant to call them a nuisance when we are the ones driving into them at half-a-hundred miles per hour. I would sure rather die in a collision with a deer than be mauled to death by zombie dogs.

Still, I didn’t know there were so many human deaths associated with deer wrecks. As Michelle has said, be careful out there.

Word to the wise: When traveling abroad, be sure to find out exactly what ingredients are used in the food you buy. Even the fast food:

"With Japan under fire for plans to expand its whaling program, a fast food chain is offering a new product aimed at using up stocks from past hunts — whale burger.

"The 380 yen ($3.50) slice of fried minke whale in a bun went on sale Thursday at Lucky Pierrot, a restaurant chain in the port city of Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.

"’The taste and texture are somewhere between beef and fish,’ said Lucky Pierrot manager Miku Oh. ‘People in Hakodate have a long history of eating whale, so customers are looking forward to trying it.’"

GET THE STORY.

Word to the wiser: My dad, who was an extremely finicky eater when he knew what was being offered, developed an effective means of dealing with strange food offered by well-meaning friends or relatives. He would eat just about anything as long as the person serving it did not tell him what was in it. It might not work in a restaurant, but it goes a long way toward preserving friendships.

Sacking is going on at Krispy Kreme, and it’s not just the doughnuts that are being bagged:

"Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc., on Tuesday said six officers have left the company under pressure from a board committee that is looking into accounting practices that are the subject of a federal probe.

[…]

"Krispy Kreme, a one-time Wall Street darling, has been hard-hit by probes into the way it accounted for franchise buybacks as well as by sagging sales of its signature doughnuts."

GET THE STORY.

… again.

"Two pilots, in a jovial mood as they flew an empty commuter jet, wanted to ‘have a little fun’ by taking the plane to an unusually high altitude last October, only to realize as the engines failed that they were not going to make it, according to transcripts released Monday.

"The plane, which the two were ferrying from Little Rock, Ark[ansas] to Minneapolis, crashed and both Capt. Jesse Rhodes and First Officer Peter Cesarz perished.

"The cockpit voice recording, released by the National Transportation Safety Board at the start of a three-day hearing into the Oct. 14, 2004 accident, revealed how the pilots cracked jokes and decided to ‘have a little fun’ and fly to 41,000 feet — the maximum altitude for their plane. Most commuter jets fly at lower altitudes."

GET THE STORY.

Tragic as this story is, I can’t help but speculate on this pair’s intake interview with St. Peter outside the Pearly Gates.

PETER: "Reason for being here?"

PILOT: "We, ah, well…. We wanted to have a little fun."

PETER: "I see. And are you having fun now?"

Got woke up this morning by an earthquake. Just one of the fringe benefits you get for living in California.

This one took place at 8:41 a.m. and the epicenter was located six miles east of Anza Borrego in the desert northeast of San Diego. (I stayed there overnight once.)

I checked, and the quake was centered 56 miles from where I live, and the quake was strong enough to wake me up–not surprising if you look at the map above and discern from the big red box that the magnitude of the quake was in the 5 range.

In fact, it was 5.6. It only lasted a few seconds (at least the shaking here, 56 miles away, only lasted that long), but it was violent enough that my bed and my whole bedroom wobbled so forcefully that it snatched me, protesting, from a dream.

CHECK OUT THE RECENT QUAKE TOOL I USED TO GET THE ABOVE MAP.

A Virginia family found themselves the unwitting host of a mama bear who burst into their home while defending her cub:

"Karla Irving was walking her dog, Rosie, around 9:45 p.m., and she apparently got between a mother bear and her cub, which was in her backyard.

"’The dog alerted me,’ Irving tells The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. ‘She began barking at something that was near a tree in my backyard. I looked up, and something was going up the tree. I thought it was a raccoon but it was way too black and way too large to be a raccoon.’

"Irving believes Rosie noticed the other bear on the opposite side of the fence before she did, because Rosie quickly started running toward the house and went in.

"’When she ran, I ran, too,’ she says. ‘About that time, the mother bear came over the fence, took about three steps and was pushing on the door, as I was trying to shut the door.’

"The bear brought the door down and followed Rosie all the way to the basement, while Karla Irving managed to sneak out to the back yard, shutting the door behind her and alerting the family."

GET THE STORY.

Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt, but the bear will not be invited back for tea and crumpets anytime soon.

No doubt the success of the television show Supernanny has inspired other nannies to tell tales about their employers’ foibles. Exhibit A: The director of a Maryland-based nanny agency that provides childcare to The Rich And Powerful in Washington, D.C.:

"In Barbara Kline’s new nonfiction book, White House Nannies, her account of finding nannies for Washington’s rich and pretentious, the parents are as deliciously horrible as you would want them to be. "They call her Bethesda agency and start off by describing how important and busy they are. ‘By the way, Barbara, I run an empire,’ says one. Or they have their chief of staff call: ‘I represent a very prominent family.’ Eventually, after listing all their titles and every advanced degree, they toss in a phrase or two describing their children: ‘eight-year-old brilliant twins, a four-year-old gymnast, and a brand-new baby girl who can already sing on key.’

[…]

"[I]f a dispute arises months after Kline has placed the nanny in the home, the clients are back on the phone demanding someone else: ‘You know, Barbara, if I’m not happy with a watch from Cartier, they take it back and give me a new one.’

"Yes, says Kline, who started White House Nannies 21 years ago, someone actually said this to her.

"She won’t say exactly who."

GET THE STORY.

Moral of the story: Even the temporally omnipotent must watch what they say to their servants. After all, the servants may one day decide to write a book.

(Nod to HMS Blog for the link.)

Rather than wax philosophical on Christian feminism, which I may do at some point but not right now, I thought it would be fun to look at an interesting conundrum within the overall issue. Concrete dilemmas are usually more intriguing than abstract philosophies anyway.

So, you’re an orthodox Catholic woman who is getting married soon. Do you have to change your surname to your husband’s surname? Given the Church’s silence on the issue, some might shrug their shoulders and say it’s a matter of personal choice. You’d be surprised though how many heated debates I’ve seen in cyberspace over the issue. A good many orthodox Catholics react to the suggestion of a Christian woman keeping her own surname as if they’d nearly stumbled over a snake — quite likely the one that tempted Eve, at that.

The subject came to mind for me when reading the thoughts of Karen Miller, an Orthodox Jewish blogger. Ms. Miller referenced a 2004 article by Slate on the maiden name debate that I also found interesting. Most interesting of all, for me at least, is that many proponents of name change and many dissenters from name change appear to assume that the standards of the English-speaking world prevail the world over.  They also apparently assume that the practice of a woman keeping her own name is only thirty-or-so years old. 

Fact is, the maiden name debate is a cultural phenomenon in the English-speaking world. In some parts of the world, it is a complete non-issue. For example, in Spanish-speaking countries, women do not give up their family names because the family name is considered an important identification with one’s heritage. In addition to that, the children are given both the father’s and mother’s family names. And, this custom is quite ancient. Indeed we have a sixteenth-century Catholic saint to attest to it:

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was born Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada, named for her father Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and her mother Beatriz Davila y Ahumada.

As for me, I haven’t faced the decision yet. Should I one day (hopefully) marry, I would choose to take my husband’s name. I like the idea of a family being known by one name, and in our culture that name has been traditionally the man’s. Of course, if his last name is one he’s always hated for one reason or another (e.g., embarrassing connotation, difficult to spell or pronounce), he may ask to take my surname….