Rural Rays
By Flickr Member Elisabeth Shroyer PhotographyThursday, March 26, 2009
Good News From Mary March 26, 2009
Flood forecast worsens in tired Fargo
North Dakota's largest city moved to the brink of potentially disastrous flooding Thursday, with earlier optimism fading as officials issued an updated forecast with an even higher crest by the weekend.
North Dakota's largest city moved to the brink of potentially disastrous flooding Thursday, with earlier optimism fading as officials issued an updated forecast with an even higher crest by the weekend.
The National Weather Service raised its Red River crest forecast at Fargo to as much as 43 feet. The service had been predicting a crest of 41 feet by Saturday afternoon. The new guidance is for the city to expect between 41 and 42 feet, but not to rule out 43 feet.
Click here to read the rest of this story.
Bucket Baths Make Babies Happy
Anyone who has spent time with a newborn knows how stressful bath time can be. Now a Dutch company has come up with a product that claims to “make bath time enjoyable from birth.”
Click here to read the rest of this story.
How Connected Are You to Your Doctor?
For several years, I cared for a patient whom I’ll call Marcus. Compact and wiry, with a shock of white hair and blue eyes, Marcus was in his 70s when he developed liver cancer. At our first meeting, I was hesitant to put him through an operation based on his age alone. But then he mentioned the work he had done during his youth: he had been a lion tamer.
“Weren’t you ever scared?” I blurted out.
“No,” he replied with a sly smile. “And if I was, I didn’t let the lions know.”
Click here to read the rest of this story.
Natasha's lesson helps save Ohio girl
Connie and Donald McCracken were watching CNN one evening last week when they learned of the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson from a head injury. Immediately, their minds turned to their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan, who was upstairs getting ready for bed.
Two days earlier, Morgan, her father, and brother had been playing baseball in the yard of their Mentor, Ohio, home when her father hit a line drive that landed just above Morgan's left temple. A lump formed, but the McCrackens iced it down and the swelling subsided within an hour.
Click here to read the rest of this story.
Make No Mistake: To Err IS Human
Erasers … delete buttons … spot removers … that annoying woman on the GPS device ("Recalculating…") … all depressing evidence of the obvious:
We're destined to make mistakes.
Documentary filmmaker Ric Burns says it may be history's greatest lesson: Mistakes happen … again and again … from missteps to miscues, to misadventures with happy outcomes.
Click here to read the rest of this story.
Thursday, March 26, 2009 Good News Now Stories
Music May Help Stroke Patients
"Listening to music you like is a mood booster, and it may also help stroke patients with visual awareness problems do better on neurological tests.
That news appears in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
British researchers -- including David Soto, PhD, of Imperial College London -- studied three patients with visual 'neglect' due to stroke."
Click here to read about this study.
Hands-On History Lessons
"THE quince hedge was already covered with salmon-pink flowers the day Lawrence Griffith, the curator of plants at Colonial Williamsburg, planted 19 varieties of heirloom flowers from seed.
Not indoors in pots, mind you, something the colonists rarely did. Mr. Griffith sprinkled these seeds over meticulously prepared soil, raked them in a bit and tamped them down with the back of the rake."
Click here to read more.
Loving the Neighbor in Our Own Home
"A wise priest once said to me, “It is often easier to love the orphans in Africa than it is to love our own siblings.” I thought of that quote today as we were doing a lesson on “loving one’s neighbor” in third grade CCD. The first page of the lesson talked about how we should love all people as our brothers and sisters. Note to Religious Education publishers: this is a bad analogy to use in a textbook aimed at eight and nine year-old children. The teacher’s manual prompted us to ask the students how they should treat their brothers and sisters. Interestingly, the only student who answered “we should be kind to them” was the one who doesn’t actually have any brothers or sisters. The others proceeded to give a run-down of all the mean things their siblings and they do to each other. As a mother of two boys, nineteen months apart, I can relate. I’m actually pretty lucky. My children get along well most of the time. But when they don’t, I feel like refereeing international disputes at the United Nations might be an easier task than trying to keep them from killing each other. They swear that they will never speak to each again, only to be best friends an hour later."
Click here to read more.
Media effort draws 92,000 inactive Catholics back home to church
"An estimated 92,000 inactive Catholics in the Phoenix Diocese have come back to the church in the last year thanks in large part to a groundbreaking television advertising campaign called Catholics Come Home.
The promotional spots featured people and locations from around the Phoenix Diocese to promote the church during prime-time television. The cornerstone of the campaign, the Catholics Come Home Web site, addresses often misunderstood aspects of the faith."
To read more, click here.
Stimulus for a Spiritual Recession
"Dying to Live, Clive Calver offers a powerful corrective to the human soul that injects hope and peace into a world that is looking for something real. Calver gives insight into what it means to 're-start' a stale Christianity in favor of a walk with God that is marked by power and abundant life. But Calver's proposed stimulus isn't found in a surface Christianity filled with the excesses of legalism and emotionalism. Instead, he sets forth the idea that true life, true power, and true stimulus can only be achieved through death"
Click here to read more.
"Listening to music you like is a mood booster, and it may also help stroke patients with visual awareness problems do better on neurological tests.
That news appears in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
British researchers -- including David Soto, PhD, of Imperial College London -- studied three patients with visual 'neglect' due to stroke."
Click here to read about this study.
Hands-On History Lessons
"THE quince hedge was already covered with salmon-pink flowers the day Lawrence Griffith, the curator of plants at Colonial Williamsburg, planted 19 varieties of heirloom flowers from seed.
Not indoors in pots, mind you, something the colonists rarely did. Mr. Griffith sprinkled these seeds over meticulously prepared soil, raked them in a bit and tamped them down with the back of the rake."
Click here to read more.
Loving the Neighbor in Our Own Home
"A wise priest once said to me, “It is often easier to love the orphans in Africa than it is to love our own siblings.” I thought of that quote today as we were doing a lesson on “loving one’s neighbor” in third grade CCD. The first page of the lesson talked about how we should love all people as our brothers and sisters. Note to Religious Education publishers: this is a bad analogy to use in a textbook aimed at eight and nine year-old children. The teacher’s manual prompted us to ask the students how they should treat their brothers and sisters. Interestingly, the only student who answered “we should be kind to them” was the one who doesn’t actually have any brothers or sisters. The others proceeded to give a run-down of all the mean things their siblings and they do to each other. As a mother of two boys, nineteen months apart, I can relate. I’m actually pretty lucky. My children get along well most of the time. But when they don’t, I feel like refereeing international disputes at the United Nations might be an easier task than trying to keep them from killing each other. They swear that they will never speak to each again, only to be best friends an hour later."
Click here to read more.
Media effort draws 92,000 inactive Catholics back home to church
"An estimated 92,000 inactive Catholics in the Phoenix Diocese have come back to the church in the last year thanks in large part to a groundbreaking television advertising campaign called Catholics Come Home.
The promotional spots featured people and locations from around the Phoenix Diocese to promote the church during prime-time television. The cornerstone of the campaign, the Catholics Come Home Web site, addresses often misunderstood aspects of the faith."
To read more, click here.
Stimulus for a Spiritual Recession
"Dying to Live, Clive Calver offers a powerful corrective to the human soul that injects hope and peace into a world that is looking for something real. Calver gives insight into what it means to 're-start' a stale Christianity in favor of a walk with God that is marked by power and abundant life. But Calver's proposed stimulus isn't found in a surface Christianity filled with the excesses of legalism and emotionalism. Instead, he sets forth the idea that true life, true power, and true stimulus can only be achieved through death"
Click here to read more.
Good News for March 26 (posted by Mary Beth)
E-mail add-ons can tame even the peskiest inbox
"I don't have the sharpest memory around, but my computer forgets nothing. That's why I prefer to communicate via e-mail; it provides a permanent record of the conversation.
But with thousands of messages rolling in every week, how do you keep track of it all? My favorite e-mail software, Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook, has a pretty good set of management tools, but there's lots of room for improvement."
Click here for more information on organizing your inbox.
KFC's proposal: First pot pies, now potholes
"Everybody needs a little KFC. But maybe not Chicago.
The fast-food chain has sent off a letter to the nation's mayors, offering to patch their potholes for free. The company will leave behind a stenciled brand on the patch informing people the road has been 'Re-Freshed by KFC.'"
Read about KFC's newest strategy by clicking here.
Right whales in Cape Cod Bay
"In a rare congregation, about 70 North Atlantic right whales have gathered in Cape Cod Bay. The group represents approximately 20 percent of the endangered species' worldwide population."
Click here to enjoy a slideshow of images taken of this unusual gathering.
A baby's first Bluebonnet patch
"Nature's first green may be gold, but in Texas it's also blue, pink and orange. Take a look at how happy spring makes these kids."
To view the joy of kids and wildflowers, click here!
Bridging the past and present
"Sitting on the banks of the American River, Folsom has always had one engineering feat to aid its transportation needs — bridges.
And in celebration of the city’s newest bridge, the Folsom History Museum is highlighting the structures, both past and present, with a special exhibit that opened earlier this week and runs through May 10."
Click here to visit the Folsom History Museum and its new exhibit.
"I don't have the sharpest memory around, but my computer forgets nothing. That's why I prefer to communicate via e-mail; it provides a permanent record of the conversation.
But with thousands of messages rolling in every week, how do you keep track of it all? My favorite e-mail software, Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook, has a pretty good set of management tools, but there's lots of room for improvement."
Click here for more information on organizing your inbox.
KFC's proposal: First pot pies, now potholes
"Everybody needs a little KFC. But maybe not Chicago.
The fast-food chain has sent off a letter to the nation's mayors, offering to patch their potholes for free. The company will leave behind a stenciled brand on the patch informing people the road has been 'Re-Freshed by KFC.'"
Read about KFC's newest strategy by clicking here.
Right whales in Cape Cod Bay
"In a rare congregation, about 70 North Atlantic right whales have gathered in Cape Cod Bay. The group represents approximately 20 percent of the endangered species' worldwide population."
Click here to enjoy a slideshow of images taken of this unusual gathering.
A baby's first Bluebonnet patch
"Nature's first green may be gold, but in Texas it's also blue, pink and orange. Take a look at how happy spring makes these kids."
To view the joy of kids and wildflowers, click here!
Bridging the past and present
"Sitting on the banks of the American River, Folsom has always had one engineering feat to aid its transportation needs — bridges.
And in celebration of the city’s newest bridge, the Folsom History Museum is highlighting the structures, both past and present, with a special exhibit that opened earlier this week and runs through May 10."
Click here to visit the Folsom History Museum and its new exhibit.
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