true-story

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Chuckles from the Top of Everest
by LuCxeed

Love delivers kisses aplenty
so does lust or affection
so does scheme or infatuation
so does courtesy or flirtation

chuckles from the top of Everest
laughing at the rest
of romance fled
as Daylight brooms the bedroom

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From pages 19 & 20 of the book: Love’s Footsteps ~ dedicated to a Bridge for Wisdom to Walk on

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Matt Harding is a 32-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on.

In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is. A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do that dance. I'll record it." He was referring to a particular dance Matt does.

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Caroline Kennedy

This card, from the US Senate-hopeful, read: "In this season of Joy, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum thanks you for your friendship and good will and we wish you a year of peace and happiness."

In the photo, President Kennedy fed bread to a deer in Lassen National Park, Calif., in September 1963. The next morning when the president asked why there was no toast with his breakfast, he was told he had fed the entire supply to the deer.

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Photos courtesy of Cecil Stoughton

Original Source: Boston Globe

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This year’s Armistice Day anniversary, com- memorating the millions of lives lost in the so-called War to End All Wars, comes 90 years after the guns fell silent in 1918. Anyone who was a part of it would have to be at least 108 by now. Astonishingly, there are still three men who fit the bill, three survivors who were in uniform 90 years ago as the First World War drew to a close. Yesterday, this trio marked Remembrance Sunday to the best of their abilities.

The men - all well into their 100s - will attend a service at the Cenotaph in central London. Harry Patch, 110, a veteran of the horrors of Passchendaele, is the only survivor of the trenches. He ignored the rain and attended a parade at Wells, near his Somerset home. Allingham, Britain's oldest man at the age of 112, was an aircraft mechanic who saw action at sea, in the Battle of Jutland, and ashore on the Western Front. Bill Stone, a young pup of 108, ended up fighting two World Wars for the Royal Navy. Today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all three men will be on parade in London at the Cenotaph to mark the exact moment when the guns fell silent. Of the five million men and women who served in Britain's armed forces in the war, only four are still alive. The other surviving veteran, Claude Choules, 107, lives in Australia and will mark the 90th anniversary at local events there.  read more »

A movie you must see –

"Young @ Heart" documents the true story of the Young at Heart Chorus, a singing group whose average age is 81, as they rehearse for a concert in their hometown Northampton, Massachusetts, celebrating "25 Years of Unpredictable Art." Their music is unexpected, going against the stereotype of their age group, performing punk, rock, and disco songs, for example, by James Brown, and Sonic Youth. Many of the 24 members must overcome ill health and other hardships to participate, adding new songs to their repertoire - including "Yes We Can Can", "Schizophrenia" and "I Feel Good" - with the help and encouragement of chorus director Bob Cilman. Although they have toured Europe and sang for royalty, this account focuses on preparing the new songs, not an easy endeavor, for the concert in their hometown, which succeeds in spite of several real heart breaking events. (Movie directed by Stephen Walker, 2007)

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When the Young@ Heart began in 1982 the members all lived in an elderly housing project in North- ampton, MA called the Walter Salvo House. The first group included elders who lived through both World Wars. Anna was a stand-up comic who at 88 told jokes that only she could get away with, she sang with the group until she was 100.  read more »

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TO INFINITY and beyond. But first, Kent. Daredevil Swiss pilot Yves Rossy soared into the record books yesterday by making the first solo flight across the English Channel - using a single, homemade rocket-powered wing strapped to his back. Mr Rossy, nicknamed "Fusionman", navigated the crossing from Calais to Dover in less than 15 minutes before proclaiming it was now possible for all of mankind to "fly a little bit like a bird".

Yves Rossy, 49, who calls himself Fusionman - half man, half bird - made the 21-mile, jet-powered flight from Calais, France, to Dover, England, in just less than 15 minutes while traveling at speeds of more than 125 mph, The Daily Telegraph said.

An airline pilot by day, Mr Rossy's attempts to traverse the 22-mile stretch had twice been thwarted by typically overcast British weather conditions. But by yesterday lunchtime, a crisp autumn day allowed the 49-year-old to drop from a light aeroplane 8,000 feet above the French coast and set off into clear blue skies.

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For the com- manding officer of the Nor- wegian King's Guard, it was a moment as surreal as it was moving. As Lieutenant-Colonel Ingrid Gjerde surveyed the scene before her in Edinburgh yesterday, she must have wondered whether she was dreaming. For the King's Guard was about to award a knighthood to what was already the world's most decorated penguin.

Nils, or now Sir Nils Olav, waddled into the history books Friday when he was knighted by a visiting royal Norwegian regiment in Scotland. The king penguin became the first black-and-white pint-sized Norwegian Sir with wings after inspecting the Norwegian King's Guard, which is visiting Edinburgh for the annual Military Tattoo.

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China launched the 29th summer Olympics on Friday with a glittering opening ceremony combining 5,000 years of its history with a modern firecracker of a show.

The 91,000-strong crowd in the National Stadium, and more than a billion television viewers, earlier saw the hoisting of the Chinese flag which was carried into the stadium by children from China's 56 ethnic groups after 2,008 drummers had started the show.

Around 11,000 athletes from a record 204 nations will compete in 28 sports for 302 gold medals at the first Olympics in China and third in Asia, following Tokyo in 1964 and Seoul in 1988.  read more »

Among those featured in Time special issue "100 Olympic Athletes To Watch":

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Dara Torres (United States) - 41, nine-time Olympic medallist in swimming and mother of a two-year old who has qualified for her fifth Olympic Games, something no other swimmer has ever done. The time in the 100m freestyle that got her a ticket to Beijing was 2.47 seconds faster than her Olympic effort in 1988, at age 21 - a lifetime in such a short race.

Liu Xiang (China) – 25. When Liu Xiang claimed victory in the 110-m hurdles in Athens, delivering China its first ever sprint gold, you could almost sense the alarm in the announcers' voices. Few had heard of this mystery athlete, much less knew how to pronounce his given name. What a difference four years make. In Beijing, Liu, 25, along with basketball star Yao Ming, will be the poster boy for China's mighty Olympic squad. His name (pronounced Sheeahng) means "to soar" in Chinese.

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DENALI NATIONAL PARK, Alaska (AP) — Two young backpackers rationed peanut butter sandwiches and granola bars, growing hungrier as they wandered for six days in the dense vegetation of Denali National Park. Erica Nelson and Abby Flantz were down to their last granola bar Wednesday, the day they were rescued. Trekking through the remote park, they regularly clicked on their cell phone until they finally found reception that led to their rescue. "We got a signal and I said, 'Wow, I have to call my mom,'" Nelson told reporters before heading with her family to Houston, where she plans to serve as maid of honor Saturday in her sister's wedding.

What started as an overnight hike June 12 turned into an intensive search that cost more than $118,000 and sometimes involved 100 people from volunteer groups and state and federal agencies, according to park spokeswoman Kris Fister. Rangers estimate the women logged at least 20 miles before they were picked up by a helicopter crew outside the northeastern side of the 9,400-square-mile park, Fister said.

Nelson, 23, of Las Vegas and Flantz, 25, of Gaylord, Minn., had no idea they had trigged a search of that magnitude. They were reported overdue when they failed to show up at work Saturday at Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, a hotel outside the park. But after a few days of being lost, they did figure that people might be concerned. "We were gone long enough, we knew there might be searches for us, but we didn't know it would be this big," Flantz said.

The women said they each packed only bare essentials, such as two sandwiches and granola bars, thinking that would be enough for their short trek. They brought a compass and a map but still lost their bearing, mistaking one river for another. They tried to follow the river, but that proved impossible many times, Flantz said. "There were steep hills, so we had to get away from them and there was this high brush we had to push through," she said. "I cried a little bit, but not much."

The days wore on and they rationed their food, but ran out of water and drank river water or melted snow. They ripped up a shirt to bandage scratches and blisters. Hiking exhausted them, but they trudged on when the weather was good, hoping their destination was over the next bend. At night they slept in a tent. Along the way, they saw plenty of bear tracks, steering far from the fresh prints. The only wildlife they saw, however, was a porcupine. The last couple of days it rained, so they mostly stayed in the tent, conserving their waning energy.

By Wednesday, the cell phone's battery was weak, but Nelson finally got through to her mother, Ellane, who was listening to park officials give a morning briefing on the search. That was the day Nelson's sister, Alecia, and her future brother-in-law were to decide whether to postpone their wedding. Nelson told her mother she and Flantz were alive and well but gave the wrong location of their whereabouts, so searchers couldn't find them. She called her mother again about 3:30 p.m., and officials told her to hang up and text message instead to save the dying battery. Then they were able to locate the signal several miles north of the 100-square-mile area they had been searching.

The search area, about 180 miles north of Anchorage, is a mix of national park and state-owned lands. It includes dense alder and willow, some black spruce forest, but also miles of tundra. Flantz, who plans to return to work on Saturday, said she's not giving up on outdoor adventures — but next time she'll be better prepared.

Officials said it was unlikely the women merely decided to extend their camping trip. Nelson was scheduled to fly Sunday night to Houston so she could be maid of honor in her sister's wedding. Nelson said she thought a lot about her sister when she was lost. "The whole time I was just, we got to keep going. I got to make it to her wedding," Nelson told KTUU.

Fister said she believed the wedding was still on.

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Photos courtesy of AP Photo/Matt Hage and Laurent Dick

Original Source: Associated Press and KATU

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A father leans out of a smoke-choked second-floor window. Just released from his grasp, his infant son hurtles backward through the air, pudgy arms flung wide. On the sidewalk below, a throng of men stare up at the baby. One holds his arms up, fingers splayed, ready to make the catch.

The dramatic moment, captured in a black-and-white photo taken by an amateur, has been retold countless times to William Sheridan Jr. since that morning 30 years ago yesterday, when his father, William Sr., dropped him into the arms of neighbor Tom Connally. Just moments before that, his father had dropped his twin sister, Nichole, who was snagged by another neighbor, Jimmy Madden. Minutes later, firefighters used a ladder to save his father and mother, Kathy Sheridan, from the raging blaze that tore through their home on East 2d Street in South Boston on May 28, 1978.

"I just remember my husband saying: 'Get up! Get up! Get up!" said Kathy Sheridan, who was 24 at the time. "And as soon as I opened my eyes, the whole apartment was full of smoke." Her husband, who was 25, grabbed the twins, but thick, black smoke blocked the stairway to the street. He broke open a window, and the couple saw neighbors on the street below, screaming, "Throw the babies!" "I just couldn't do it," Kathy Sheridan said. "All I could see was concrete." Her husband took the infants, leaned out, and dropped them. "It was just one of those crazy things," he said yesterday. "And for the most part I don't think about it."

The photo was taken by David G. Mugar, who was then a new owner of Boston's Channel 7 with a hobby of amateur news photography. He was parked in Dorchester when he heard the fire call on a scanner in his car, raced over, captured the shot, and later gave the $5,000 in proceeds from his photos to the Sheridans, whose belongings were destroyed in the fire. The photo won Mugar a number of awards, including second place in a World Press Photo Awards competition in Holland.

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Photos courtesy of David G. Mugar and Globe Staff / Dina Rudick

Original Source: Boston Globe

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They will always remember it as the most terrifying 48 hours of their lives. Five divers who were missing for two days off Indonesia, have described how they were plunged from one life-threatening crisis into another after being swept away by strong currents. The rescued group hugged and wept tears of joy on Saturday after first surviving for nine hours in treacherous, shark-infested seas and then fighting off the world's largest and most deadly lizards on a remote island. The divers, who had clung to a log in the sea to prevent them from drowning, were found by national park rangers on an island inhabited by Komodo dragons, carnivores capable of killing humans. The exhausted, dehydrated, sun-burnt and hungry group had to throw rocks to repel the most persistent reptile as it repeatedly tried to attack them. Komodo dragons grow up to 10ft long and can kill animals more than twice their size, including water buffalo.

The five vanished, and were feared dead, after a dive off Tawa Besar island inside the Komodo National Park on Thursday. They were swept 25 miles away from their original position by fierce currents. The three rescued Britons are Charlotte Allin, 24, and her boyfriend Jim Manning, 30, both from Devon, and Kathleen Mitchinson, who was living in Indonesia. The other divers, Helena Naradainen who is Swedish, and Laurent Pinel, who is French, are also safe.

Mr Pinel, 31, said yesterday that the party had been in the water for about nine hours before reaching land. He told how the group lived off mussels scavenged from the beach and had to repel a Komodo dragon during the 36 hours they waited to be spotted on Rinca, a tiny island. Mr Pinel said that while in the water the group had struggled against a strong rip tide for several hours, but eventually they stopped swimming and tied themselves together by their diving vests to conserve energy. Late on Thursday night, they saw a small island and desperately tried to reach land before they were swept out of the relative protection of the Nusa Tenggara island chain.

After swimming to land, the group spent two nights on Rinca, before being found by members of a 30-strong rescue party, which included Frank Winkler, a German, who runs another dive club. He was hailed as a hero for identifying where the party was most likely to be found. Mr Winkler, said : "It was a simple calculation, a little bit of luck. I thought, 'They finished their dive with a tide that was heading to the south, there was no way they were heading to the north.' So it was a couple of calculations, five knots an hour, so we just followed the route, and we calculated the current, the rising tide that was later coming from the south, and we calculated that they could be in that area." He described the moment the party was located. "I was driving the boat and I told my captain, 'Please look in that direction, they should be somewhere there'. And somebody was waving on the shore, standing on the rocks somewhere there. Of course it was an amazing moment after several hours."

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Photos courtesy of AFP/GETTY and Oby Lewanmeru/Associated Press

Original Source: Telegraph

"A simple truth, 'to make sure everyone, alive, makes it home' (as a soldier shouted out), has been debated by many on and on..." Following is excerpt from "He Fell", poem inspired by a true story. Poet: .D. LuCxeed (www.loves-footsteps.com) -
...
To snatch life out of the steel teeth of Death, he fell.
Have you, Heaven’s Grace, heard him?
Jason Dunham, a handsome heart above Hell,
- I want to make sure everyone, alive,
makes it home.

"Son, home is calling you, Jason Dunham."
"Young man, motherland needs you home."
To snatch life out of the steel teeth of Death, he fell,
down into the bosom of somber deserts.
Mourning mountains toll the bell.
...

*music by calpomatt

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PHOENIX (AP) — Thelma Keane, the inspiration for the Mommy character in the long-running "Family Circus" comic created by her husband, Bil Keane, has died. She was 82. She died Friday of Alzheimer's disease, the family said.

"Family Circus," which Keane began drawing in 1960, depicts the good-humored life of two parents and their four children. It is now featured in about 1,500 newspapers. "She was the inspiration for all of my success," Bil Keane, 85, told The Associated Press from his home in Paradise Valley on Sunday. "When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy that if she was in the supermar