Kim Phuc became a living symbol of the Vietnam war, in a photograph in which she runs wailing toward the camera, her arms flung away from her body, naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes.Late last month, Phuc, 52, began a series of...
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Phan Thi Kim Phuc was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph taken by Associated Press photographerNick Ut. As a result of the photo, Phuc became known around the world as the “Napalm Girl.”
Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
For 43 years, Phuc has suffered excruciating pain caused by a napalm blast that had taken out her home village of Trang Bang. In the photograph shot by Ut, Phuc is nine years old. She is naked and wailing. Her skin is melting off of her body.
The photograph was one of the many harrowing images that began to change public opinion about the Vietnam War. It was shot on June 8, 1972, the day that the Vietnamese village of Trang Bang was bombed. In the photo, Phuc and members of her family are seen running away from a cloud of dark smoke. They are running in terror and agony.
Phuc had torn off her clothes because they were on fire. Napalm was still sticking to her skin. The substance would not come off and it burned through her flesh, leaving scars that covered a third of her body, four times the thickness of normal skin. Most people who experience burns over ten percent of their bodies had died, reports the Associated Press on Oct. 26.
Now Phuc is undergoing a series of laser surgeries that will change her life. She cries tears of joy. She thought that she would have to wait until she died to be scar and pain free.
Miami dermatologist, Dr. Jill Waibel is donating her services and administering Phuc’s treatments over the course of nine months. The treatments, used primarily to smooth out wrinkles around the eyes, will in Phuc’s case be used to melt her skin to a point where it can heal. After heating her skin to boiling point, Phuc’s scars will be ablated and then, collagen-building treatments will be applied.
Nick Ut and Kim Phuc have kept in touch throughout the years. In fact, Ut is documenting Phuc’s healing process. “He is the beginning and the end,” says Phuc. “He took my picture and now he’ll be here with me with this new journey...new chapter.”
It’s a dream come true for Kim Phuc, who is happy to have Nick Ut, a man she considers to be her uncle, by her side during the process. Soon the pain from nerve damage that she has suffered all these years will be eased. She’ll experience increased range of motion and the hardened scars she carries will be softened and smoothed with treatment. It’s “heaven on earth for me!” she says.
Phuc also works with the U.N. She founded an organization called Kim Foundation International, a charity that helps children of war. Her organization helps by building hospitals, schools and homes for orphaned children. “I look at that picture and I just wish and dream that I never see another child suffer like that,” she says.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
President Barack Obama offered a forceful defense of the Black Lives Matter movement on Thursday, while also explaining in detail the frustration with the use of the phrase 'all lives matter,' which has been used by some opponents.
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It is difficult not to think, just from hearing it alone, that the #blackriflesmatter hashtag is anything but racist. Just last month, Buzzfeed reported that a t-shirt created and sold by Elephant Hunter Clothing was touting the slogan at a recent law enforcement convention.
The creator of the shirt, Chuck Garcia, insisted that the slogan had nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter movement and that any resemblance to it was absolutely unintentional. Surely, someone would have pointed out the slogan’s bad taste in lieu of the numerous killings by law enforcement which prompted three black activists to initiate the Black Lives Matter movement in the first place.
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
It is nothing new, but recent news has been spotlighting the culture of law enforcement militarization paired with the tendency for racial profiling by police forces across the nation. Walter Scott, Jerame Reid, Philip White, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Freddie Gray, Aiyana Jones, Sandra Bland, Kimani Gray, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Miriam Carey, Sharonda Singleton, Emmett Till, Tommy Yancy, Jordan Baker, and Amadou Diallo are just some of the names on a long list of black people who have been gunned down or killed by police.
The Black Lives Matter website states that the movement “is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” The movement is a collective act in restorative justice, an approach that focuses on the needs of those who have been targeted, hurt, or destroyed by unjust and illegal actions of law enforcement who – as in the case of Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman – are not held accountable for their actions.
So it doesn’t look good at all when a police officer wears a t-shirt with the words “Black Rifles Matter” emblazoned across the front. It’s a slogan that not only misses the point in failing to acknowledge that black people are faced with a very real possibility of discrimination or of victimization in a world that deems black lives disposable. It also steals from the movement and attaches it to a gun, bringing back the image of a police officer’s finger on a trigger.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
To find out who we are—especially to find our joy—we’ll try just about anything.
I have been thinking a lot over the last decade or so about who I am, who I want to be and where my joy is. I’ve been proactive about it, too. I’ve seen multiple practitioners, gone to therapy, read books, taken classes, visited healers, prayed, cried, beat my pillows and screamed for the answers.
I imagine many people are in similar situations.
We search for the answer through long-term meditation groups, journaling retreats, oracles and special spiritual processes to become more ourselves (or at least to touch upon the Divine).
We make dietary changes, fast, draw yantras and special symbols during certain phases of the moon.
We might even burn wishes as we spray our homes with strange oils or burn candles and smelly herbs while chanting ancient spells or mantras whose meaning we’re not even sure about.
For me, these practices always seemed to miss the mark, but I could never pinpoint why. I thought that surely I was doing something wrong. I could feel that I was changing for the better, but the answers hadn’t come and I certainly didn’t feel joyful.
There was always another level, another mantra, a certain crystal to buy, another process or retreat. I tried many of these things and I asked a lot of questions of many teachers. I even begged for healing from charlatans who made lofty promises. I read more books and—finally—I gave up. I put all of these things away, because through it all, there was only silence.
I didn’t understand right away that the silence was the most important clue to finding my joy.
I used to think that joy was an exuberance. I thought that it was that high energy we feel when we are elated. I thought joy was loud. Of course, elation is an ephemeral height. It changes like the seasons and cannot be eternally sustained. The calmness found in silence is sustainable, and it can be carried through every emotion, with practice, by way of the breath.
When I began to take time to focus on my breathing, I realized that the silence was the answer.
Focusing inward and just listening to the breath helped me to find a certain calm I didn’t know I was capable of. I no longer had to search for my joy.
Dorian Michael Willes answers the phone after just stepping into the door. He has just come from a meeting with a colleague about starting a Boise-based nonprofit organization that connects resources for amputees. It’s a venture he’s tried before, only under the wing of the Denver-based organization LIM359. He sounds excited about the venture: “My colleague and I got together because we want to start our own nonprofit in Boise. In the bigger cities, there are great support groups for amputees; in Boise there are a lot of amputees, but not enough communication about available resources.”
Dorian Michael Willes will represent the U.S. in this years Paralympics as a member of the bobsled and skeleton team.
Willes is himself an amputee, destined for the upcoming U.S. Paralympics on the bobsled and skeleton teams. He has competed in many competitions leading up to this, including events in bodybuilding and track and field. He has been recognized in the topmost ranks worldwide and with able-bodied athletes in some events. He explains that in his first track and field event, despite coming to training late, he was running alongside some of the fastest people in the world. “These are guys I’ve seen on TV. They were world record holders like David Prince, and I was running beside them.”
Willes never thought he’d be here. “It’s been a whirlwind,” he says. He travels the world with his wife, cage fighter Billy Edney, and he’s a committed father. He’s a successful business owner and spends a good deal of his time speaking to Idaho youth about the dangers of drugs. “I have one arm, one eye, and one leg that works, and I’ve never felt better in my life,” Willes says. “I’m not saying no to anything. I’m saying yeah, let’s do it,” he laughs.
Willes hasn’t always had it this good. He was for a time a meth head and a collector for drug dealers. In 2008, at the pinnacle of his life as a drug addict and a thug, an intense police chase, in which he crawled through ventilation shafts and punched through walls, ended with police shooting him 21 times when, as Willes relates, they mistook his middle finger for a weapon. He had been hiding from the police during house arrest as he awaited federal charges against him for being caught with an illegal sawed-off firearm. It was a weapon that he had used in collections, an activity that paid his drug dealer, and also, along with his fierce presence, inspired fear in those he collected from.
“People don’t think this stuff happens in Boise because it’s just a small town, but I was duct taping people and putting them in the trunk of my car. I was beating people half to death and emptying out their houses,” he said. “I was doing this for almost a year straight, supporting my habit and getting away with it because no one I was collecting from was going to call the cops on me. They were meth heads just like I was, and the the last thing a meth head wants is to deal with the police.”
“I have to live with these things for the rest of my life–I put guns to kid’s heads, just to make a point. You know, like: ‘You call the cops and I’ll come back and kill your whole family.’ I was a low life of society. I’d become a piece of garbage.”
And he paid. He didn’t expect to live. “There was no white light. My life didn’t flash before me. I didn’t think about my kids or my family. All I felt was anger and resentment for what those cops had just done to me. The last thing I remember was them dragging me up a flight of steps, and then I blacked out.”
The paramedics who took him to the hospital didn’t expect Willes to live, either. They didn’t even think he was alive. “On the way to the hospital, the driver didn’t even turn on the lights or the sirens. They stopped at all the stoplights and took their time because they thought I was dead.”
When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, a sort of miracle happened: A nurse walked by Willes’ gurney and checked his pulse. “If it had been a minute or two later, I probably wouldn’t have made it,” Willes said. His pulse was beating very faintly. “What are you guys doing?” the nurse said. “This guy’s not dead!”
After the shooting, Willes was in a coma for three months. Then, after coming out of the coma, he went through a painful thirteen months of recovery and rehabilitation. He was then sentenced to two years in the federal penitentiary, shortly before he learned that he was going to lose his lower right leg.
“When I went to prison, I didn’t think I could get any lower,” says Willes. “But looking back, I know that prison saved my life. If I could have walked on my own and driven on my own, I would have gone right back to using.”
Willes’ redemption came during that time as an inmate and by way of the love of his family. “My mom was there. She took care of me and basically saved my life,” Willes says.
About halfway through Willes’ prison sentence, he received a note from his sister. “I don’t know what god I believe in. I consider myself a spiritual man, even if I don’t believe the same way my family does,” Willes says. “But my sister sent me a letter that said: ‘I know you’re having a hard time, but just know you’re not alone.’ With the letter, there was a card: Jesus was sitting on a bench with a rough looking kid. It said ‘lost and found’ at the bottom.”
“When she sent me that card, it was the first time in years that I really felt I wasn’t alone. I just sat on the bench crying because there was somebody out there who cares for me. From that day forward, I just started every day with things that were going to help me succeed when I got out of jail.”
Willes began reconnecting with family, repairing broken relationships and working towards solidifying his health. “I just knew that when I got out, I wanted to be better and I wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives. When I left those prison gates, I knew that I wanted to be a force to be reckoned with in a positive way.”
“I immediately started college. I started speaking with the Idaho Meth Project. All of my time was dedicated to giving to other people. Whatever I could do to help my community, I did. I felt that I was saved for a reason.”
“Competing in World Cup competitions and accomplishing what I have through athletics has opened so many doors on a larger scale for me. I have been able to not only share my story with kids, but people all over the world,” says Willes. “There are many other things I have yet to accomplish, but I know I will reach my goals the same way I have over the last 6 years, and that’s one foot in foot in front of the other, one step at a time.”
Dorian Michael Willes is currently preparing for his next World Cup competition on the U.S. bobsled and skeleton team. The events begin early next month in Calgary. Willes has been working hard, but still needs help. To help him get to the events and represent the U.S, check out and support his GoFundMe campaign.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
Cameras placed in the meerkat enclosure at Indianapolis Zoo capture resident meerkats playing with and eating a pumpkin ahead of Halloween.
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From monkeys to polar bears, animals are enjoying pumpkins this fall. It’s a bit of a tradition. Each autumn, many zoos across the nation treat their zoo residents to pumpkins, gourds and other seasonal fare. As can be seen in the slideshows attached to this article, it’s a treat for zoo visitors, as well.
It's good for the animals and it's fun for zoo visitors to watch: Zoos across the nation give their zoo residents pumpkins and let them do as they please with them, whether that be to eat them, play with them or destroy them.
There are many reasons for the seasonal treat, reports The Guardian on Oct. 17. According to Ron Evans, Cincinnati Zoo’s curator of primates, the pumpkins provide nutritional value. They also stimulate curiosity in the animals. Gigi Allianic, a spokeswoman for the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, said that the pumpkins “promote natural animal behavior and keep animals mentally stimulated.” The Detroit Zoo says that the pumpkins are part of a “comprehensive program...ensuring environments for animals are every-changing and appropriately complex.” Food items are often hidden inside the pumpkins to stimulate animals’ innate stalking and foraging behaviors.
Some zoos place pumpkins and jackolanterns for their resident birds, owls, lions, chimpanzees and even snakes. Zoo employees and volunteers set the pumpkins out even if the animals don’t like the pumpkins, leaving them to do with the pumpkins as they please. Sometimes, the animals eat them. Sometimes, they play with them. Sometimes animals hide inside of the carved out pumpkins, while other times, they simply destroy them.
Earlier this month, Assiniboine Park Zoo treated the resident polar bears to the autumnal fruit. Pumpkins were placed around their zoo enclosure and it wasn’t long before the bears began eating them. Morning visitors got to watch the bears tear through their seasonal treat.
At the Detroit Zoo, treat-filled pumpkins, gourds and cornstalks captivated audiences as the bears, giraffes, wolves, apes, zebras, anteaters and wolverines, amongst others, ate and played with the pumpkins set inside of their enclosures.
To see more zoo animals interacting with their fall pumpkins, check out these slideshows at the New York Post,WFMY News, and Salon.com.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
After more than four years of observations with the Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers reveal that a bizarre star called KIC 8462852 has unexplained objects orbiting it.
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Anyone can become a scientific researcher. Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen-based science research company, recruits hundreds of thousands of people to become citizen scientists and researchers who investigate and analyze many topics across the sciences and humanities. Available topics for study include astronomy, zoology, history, archaeology, botany and much more. Volunteers help professional researchers collect and organize information, and provide measurable results for scientific study.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Wendy Stenzel
A recent example comes from Planet Hunters, an arm launched by Zooniverse in 2010 to enlist public help with data collected by NASA from the Kepler space telescope. CNN reports Oct.
16 that citizen researchers helped to make a recent significant find. The researchers used publicly available data from Kepler and found strange light fluctuations that pointed to the existence of a massive cloud of dust and debris orbiting the faraway star KIC 8462852.
Like many projects found on the Zooniverse site, an incredible amount of data is collected and then analyzed by algorithms. The process lacks “the human touch,” however, and doesn’t necessarily pinpoint details that are out of the ordinary, such as the patterns of dimmed light that citizen researchers found when checking out data from the Kepler space telescope.
Other projects on the Zooniverse site include the exploration of soldiers’ diaries from the First World War, identifying bat calls, the traits of chimpanzees, or differentiating individual humpback whales from others. Researchers can transcribe historical documents, help scientists define the planetary surfaces of Mars, and even help discover unknown exotic particles.
With the help of citizen scientists and researchers, professionals have composed numerous publications which summarize researchers’ collective finds. To find out how to become a researcher for one of the numerous projects at Zooniverse, visit the organization’s website and choose a project to get started.
*originally published at the now defunct Examiner.com
Handshakes can be dangerous during fluseason. They serve as the main way flu-causing germs are spread, especially in places such as conventions, classes, and other large gatherings. Luckily, alternatives exist to the traditional greeting. Fist bumps and even high fives have been proven to significantly lower chances of catching the flu.
Lifehacker suggests on Oct. 12 that before greeting someone, explaining the following can help stave the circulation of the influenza virus: Handshakes are being traded for fist bumps as a way to prevent others from getting sick. It’s to the point and diplomatic. Even so, many will inevitably protest. The fist bump isn’t exactly a professional greeting. In most cases, fist bumping the boss, professor, or a new client is far from appropriate.
This might help: A recent study published in the American Journal of Infection Controlshowed that fist bumps and high fives decreased participants’ frequency of passing along bacteria. They reported that nearly twice as many bacteria were transferred during handshakes in comparison with their alternatives.
In the case that fist bumps and high fives still do not fly, there are many other preventative measures available. Below follow five that will help keep the flu at bay.
Get the flu shotFreestock Photos
Get the flu shot
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests getting the flu shot each season. Flu season can start as early as October and continue on into May. According to the CDC, the flu shot can protect recipients from catching the flu (while preventing others from catching it from said recipient). It can also, if nothing else, make the symptoms of the flu virus less taxing. One 2011-2012 study noted by the CDC reported a 71 to 77 percent reduction in flu-related hospitalizations when flu shots were used.
Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouthWikimedia Commons
Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth
Often, germs are spread at the office via keyboards, doorknobs and in communal areas such as break rooms. Microbiology professor and researcher Charles Gerba reminds that “The hand is quicker than the sneeze in the spread of disease.” Viruses travel quickly and can inhabit 40 to 60 percent of building surfaces in the matter of a few hours. In other words, avoid giving them a lift to your respiratory system.
Handwashing: It's good for you and those around youWikimedia Commons
Handwashing: It's good for you and those around you
Wash your hands: This should go without saying, but many shirk a preventative and hygienic measure that takes all of 20 seconds. According to the CDC, handwashing removes germs that could cause sickness. It also significantly decreases the chances of catching the flu and spreading bacteria to food and drinks.
Toughing it out by heading to work or school will only make those around you sick, as well. In most cases, the flu is contagious starting from one day before symptoms develop and up to a week after getting sick. It is wise to stay home if someone is suffering from flu-like symptoms such as fever, the chills, fatigue, body aches, sore throat, and headache.
Don't just blow your boogers all over everyone else"Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases" by Herbert Mayo Bateman, October 1942 Catalogue ref: INF 3/407J -- The National Archives
Don't just blow your boogers all over everyone else
Do the vampire sneeze: Don’t use hands to cover the mouth when coughing or sneezing. Doing so will increase the risk of getting others sick. Make it a habit to cough into the crook of an elbow as a way to prevent the spread of germs.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
Catching up with Brooklyn-based poet, musician and artist Lynn Gentry has been as simple as finding him busking with his typewriter, taking requests from passersby and creating poems for them on the spot. It’s a vocation that Gentry has carried for seven years. Starting on the corner of Haight and Ashbury and then moving on to New York, Gentry has inspired many other artists along the way. “I wouldn't do what I do today if Lynn hadn't encouraged me to do it,” wrote Denver-based busking poet Abi Mott on her Facebook page Oct. 11. “He believed in me and lent me a typewriter four years ago in San Francisco, and for that I owe him everything.”
Gentry has written numerous new poems as a busker, and has supported himself and his family with the work. But times are changing. News hit Facebook last week that Gentry will be retiring from writing street poems, but not without first reaching for an ambitious goal. Here’s the challenge that Gentry is undertaking: He will write 700 new poems in the span of a mere seven days.
We caught up with Gentry on his webpage and chatted to find out why he was giving up busking poems. According to the Facebook event page that announced his retirement and goal, Gentry plans to only work public spaces on rare occasions from now on. He instead plans to pursue publishing, and other projects and collaborations that cannot yet be released to the public.
Tameca L Coleman: Why are you giving it up?
Lynn Gentry: I don't think of it as giving up, but more so moving on to other things. When your living comes from busking poetry on the street, to know that you can pay your bills, you have to write around eight hours a day, everyday. I had to make a choice between poetry and everything else, and knowing I have a family and other ambitions, I could not pick continuing to busk poetry.
TLC: Will this also make more time for your music? Publishing?
LG: Yes. What many don't understand is that while writing out all the time, I don't really have time to publish. I don't even have time to edit. If I brought the material out with me, there would be constant interruptions from patrons, who in that setting, are my real responsibility.
TLC: How do people participate in your event?
LG: First, join the Facebook event. You can submit the subject of your choice using the patron request on lynngentry.com, and I will write the poem. I am also available during this event around the clock via live chat to talk with patrons about their subjects. (The discussion is an aspect of writing that was mutually enjoyable while busking). Your poem will then be created, posted on the event page, and mailed to you at the close of the event. Your request will become a part of this live piece and a part of the collection of my last works as a poetry busker.
TLC: How did you become a busking poet? Were you inspired by anyone in particular?
LG: I started busking poetry after seeing Jacqueline Suskin at Oregon Country Fair in 2009. As soon as I got back to the city, I borrowed $31 from my sister and a typewriter from my ex-girlfriend's roommate and started writing; the first two days in Berkeley, then I settled on Haight and Ashbury for five years.
TLC: And how did you get started writing poetry?
LG: I started writing poetry in the 6th grade; it was a class assignment. I wrote two poems for the assignment. The first poem was about a feather, poking fun at how I thought all poets were fluffy people, and how the feather goes where the wind blows. The second was called “The Champion.” It was about a boxer coming to the decision to retire and the thought that not taking a blow took more bravery than to keep fighting.
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There is not much time left to take part in Lynn Gentry’s 700 poems in seven days challenge, as the event ends Wednesday, Oct. 14. To participate, patrons should join the Facebook event and then head over to Gentry’s websitewhere they can request a poem based on the subject of their choice. Patrons choose what they’d like to donate in exchange for the poem. Then, a copy of the poem will be posted on the event page, and the original mailed to their address at the close of the event.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
Play
"But never are we independent nor individuals": Here is a short film which follows Lynn Gentry a talented musician and poet living in Brooklyn who makes his living busking poetry.
