This guy’s video about learning to cope with mental and physical illness made my day.
Wow.
I’m not sure that’s feel good, exactly. But it sure is impressive.
To me it really felt triumphant.
Plus the quote, in psychological warfare there are victims, and students really resonated with me.
He had psychosis and Lyme disease. A prime example of how we can make art out of our suffering to make things just that much easier for people like us.
follow up on epic swim
That is really a story full of heroes.
A food pantry and soup kitchen in the small Illinois city where I used to live got a donation of 13,000 pounds of meat, from a regional farm collective that uses this organization to sell their processed meat products. I may order a case from them when my freezer empties out, just to show my support.
My baby turns six years old today.
It’s a big deal. He opened his long-awaited present this morning. He is obsessed with a Lightning McQueen squishmallow he calls Beep Beep. He had five of them. We told him he was limited to one per year because it was really getting out of hand.
So he got his sixth Beep today and it was immediately welcomed into the family and introduced to the other Beeps. He was over the moon. He also got a remote control Lightening McQueen so really he has seven Beeps now.
But that’s not all.
He’s getting his first laptop so he can play Minecraft and other games. We picked it out as a family this weekend and it should arrive today.
And he’s going to start getting an allowance so he can save up for said games.
We cancelled his evening social skills group so he has time tonight to play.
He’s getting so big, and he’s maturing quickly. He hasn’t had a behavioral note from school in over a month. He’s most likely starting a new school in the Fall for kids like him. I think he’s going to love it.
I’m just really proud of him.
Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch!
After 30 years of waiting, a father and son’s birthday wish comes true
Wintzell’s Oyster House has a sign that reads: "Free oysters to any man 80 years old accompanied by his father.”
Jimmy Rush began planning his 80th birthday celebration about three decades ago.
He got the idea when he spotted a sign at a restaurant in Mobile, Alabama, that read: “Free oysters to any man 80 years old accompanied by his father.”
Rush, then around 50, decided that’s how he would mark the milestone.
“My dad is in good health, and I thought he could make it, which he did,” Rush said.
Indeed, on Rush’s 80th birthday, Feb. 23, he walked into Wintzell’s Oyster House with his father, Jim Rush, to claim their free oysters. Jim Rush is 99.
“We were delighted,” said Jim Rush, who has been frequenting Wintzell’s Oyster House since it opened in 1938 as a six-stool oyster bar downtown. He would often go with his own father.
…
He [Clay Omainsky, the current owner] doesn’t know exactly when the father-son free oysters sign was put up, but said it could have been nearly 90 years ago, when the average life expectancy was about 61.
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Omainsky said he believes the Rushes are the first pair to claim the free oysters at the original location. A different father and son cashed in on the offer at the West Mobile restaurant about 10 years ago.
…
What a great story! Dad Jim Rush looks pretty danged good for 99 (he’s the one in the middle).
Wow, that’s incredible. To be father and son at that age - I have to wonder if there’s a qualitative difference between being 80 and being 99, the same way there’s a difference between 40 and 60. Does he still seek his father’s wisdom?
Kids today, they just don’t listen to their elders.
The popups and ads on this page are super-annoying. But if you can find your way to the story, it is goosebump-level inspirational and totally worth the effort.
…
Back in the 1990s, exhausted physically and emotionally after documenting the horrific barbarity of the Rwandan genocide, he [Sebastiao Salgado] returned home to his native area of Brazil, which was once covered in a lush tropical rainforest. He was shocked and devastated to find that the area was now barren from forest trees and devoid of wildlife, but his wife Lélia believed that it could be restored to its former glory.“The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed,” Salgado said in The Guardian back in 2015. “Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees. Then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn – this was the most important moment.”
…
After a decade as a Yale hospital janitor, she is now a doctor there
“I still can’t believe it,” said Shay Taylor-Allen, who landed a residency at Yale New Haven Hospital, where she was born and spent most of her adult life on the cleaning staff.
For about a decade, Shay Taylor-Allen walked the halls of Yale New Haven Hospital pushing a janitor’s cart. She mopped patient rooms, disinfected surfaces and emptied the trash.
Soon, she’ll walk the halls of the hospital again, this time wearing a white coat.
Taylor-Allen, 32, recently matched into an anesthesiology residency at Yale New Haven Hospital — where she spent most of her adult life working as part of the cleaning staff.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “It is surreal.”
…
[BIG SNIP!]
…
Taylor-Allen said her past will shape how she approaches her job.“I want to build a bridge between doctors and other service workers,” she said. “When I was there as a janitor, I felt like I couldn’t speak to the doctors … they were so untouchable.”
There are so many good things in this story! I can’t summarize them all. Take a break from world/national bad news crap and read about this wonderful young woman.
I’d like to; but all I can see is the bit that you quoted.
Looks like a good story, though.
Here’s a non-paywall version
Woman returns as doctor at hospital where she worked as a janitor - ABC News Woman returns as doctor at hospital where she worked as a janitor - ABC News
That was supposed to be a gift link–it wasn’t?? Seriously–what did you get when you followed the link?
The mild snark (“I’d like to, but…”) stung a little. EVERY SINGLE TIME I post a link to a Washington Post, New York Times, or Atlantic article it’s ALWAYS supposed to be a gift link. I never assume that every random Doper has a paid subscription.
Thanks ever so.
This is what happens when clicking on the gift link. It’s not a pay wall, but the fact that you need to create an account before you can look at the article is a different type of barrier:
GIFT FROM A POST SUBSCRIBER
Create an account to redeem your FREE article
Enter email here
Oh, okay. That’s helpful and extremely aggravating!
Rats.
I have a Yahoo email account that I use for requests like that. I rarely give out my main email address.
I guess I’ll start posting a standard disclaimer with a “gift link with strings.” I don’t know if the Atlantic and NYTimes gift links behave the same way.
My sincere apologies. I had no idea. Generally, I summarize/quote enough of an article (as much as I can get away with) so that you don’t have to follow the link unless you feel compelled to. But this story was so meaty that I didn’t want to do that.
ThelmaLou is through groveling and leaves the building.
I didn’t mean to snark at you — sorry!
WaPo and some other sites have gotten really weird about gift links, demanding email even to see a gift link. This time I didn’t get that, though — but all I could see was the first paragraph of the article; and yes I did scroll down to see if there was more hiding beneath a whole bunch of ads. I don’t know why I didn’t get their now-standard demand to create an account; I thought maybe they’d stopped doing that (it’s relatively new, a few years ago they didn’t do that); but since @gkster did get that demand apparently they are still doing it.
When I took another look just now, though, intending to quote to you what I could see, the whole article was there. I don’t know why it wasn’t before. Or why I could see it without giving an email.
That’s weird. But good. I appreciate the note.