69 Marathons for Pauline

A British woman has just completed her 69th marathon - on her 69th birthday.

Pauline Newsholme of Devon began long distance running in 1982, to raise money for a children's charity after her young daughter, Clare, was paralyzed following complications from measles. Clare recovered and Pauline continued to run for charity.

Her latest marathon was in Edinburgh, and she has raised about £20,000 so far. "I may be at the age when most grannies are taking it easy, but not me," she said. "I'm not ready to hang up my running shoes just yet."

Go, granny, go.

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The Blue Man Group is Green

They never say a word, do some pretty strange things on stage to make music and get you to ask "How'd they do that?" All in all, they come across as relatively harmless and it turns out, they respect the planet. [read more]

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Rocco Come Home!

Five years after running away from his home in Queens, N.Y., a beagle named Rocco was reunited with his owners after he turned up 850 miles away. Thanks to a microchip embedded in his skin, the Liberty County Animal Control in Hinesville, Ga. revealed that he belonged to the Villacis family.



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A Night in the Boiler Room

Our house church had the opportunity to learn more about a neighborhood ministry known as the stockbridge boiler room, which was featured in a local newspaper article yesterday. One of the three interns and a friend came over to talk with us about his life's journey and how he ended up where he's at now. Then we walked to the house for a quick tour and an hour of prayer and worship. We met some awesome people doing some great things - I guess you had to be there.

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Rescue Deja Vu

A Chinese man is being hailed as a hero for diving into a pond to save a drowning 7-year-old boy - 20 years after he jumped into the same pond to save the boy's father. Wang Weiqing, 58, sprang into action when he saw the child struggling in the water as he walked past. Only when the boy's grandfather arrived did the two men recall their previous encounter two decades earlier.

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On Death and Dying

Today would have been my mom’s 73rd birthday – if she hadn’t died 3 weeks ago. Mom had been under hospice care for 9 months, living in a nursing home. I was able to be with her when she died and I gained a great appreciation for those who provide comfort to the dying. I held her hand, wiped the sweat from her brow, stroked her hair and told her it was okay.

Earlier in the day, she had become fixated on a screw head holding up the bulletin board next to her bed. She wasn’t able to speak well at this point so we weren’t able to figure out why she was staring at it and rubbing it with her fingers. Did she see it as part of the gate into heaven, the face of Jesus, a shining light, or simply a point at which to focus while she put herself into a meditative state. I’d like to believe it was all of the above. When she finally fell asleep, I kept watching her chest moving up and down with her shallow breaths, the only indication I had that she was still there.

I sat next to the bed reading and 90 minutes later, she gave a heavy sigh with her voice and her last breath. I know that there were many others that would have wanted to be with her at the end, but I view it as one of the greatest gifts I have been given, to be alone with her, just like when I was born.

Cheers…

Reverse Graffiti

What if instead of spraying paint on public property to form images, you instead wiped off years of grime to reveal the clean walls of a tunnel? That's exactly what Alexandre Orion did in a São Paulo street tunnel: He wasn't painting city property, he was cleaning it. For over two weeks last year, the Brazilian artist selectively scrubbed soot from the tunnel until the white surface underneath stared through as a cemetery's worth of skulls.

Every night he worked, the reverse graffiti artist says, he had at least five encounters with state police or the city traffic department. They sound less than pleasant.

"The São Paulo state police are usually very forceful, often holding guns trained on my face, and shouting very loudly," he says. "When they had confirmed that I really was cleaning, they eased the authoritarian attitude and lowered their guns, a few smiled hesitantly, made a few remarks among themselves, and there were even a few words of support."

The only way the city could put a stop to this inconvenient spoof was to beat Orion at his own game. Early in the morning of July 26, they washed the skulls away. When he kept working on the rest of the tunnel, they washed the whole thing. Then, for good measure, they washed all the other tunnels in the city. Check out his clean getaway:



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