A Cinderella story…

There is a mysterious shoe and a fitting to find its rightful owner. There’s even a wedding. But, at least for the shoe’s alleged owner, there is no happily ever after.  The story begins with a van plowing into the bathroom of a house in Holiday, a suburb of St. Petersburg, Fla. Residents Sandy McCombie and her fiance, Michael Toth, watched the van’s driver flee across their front lawn - leaving a shoe behind.

The Florida Highway Patrol was investigating about an hour later when John Glen Aquista, 43, of Holiday walked up to the scene.  The man was bloody, wearing only boxer shorts and, most important, shoeless. His injuries looked as if his face had smashed into a steering wheel, investigators said. Aquista denied involvement in the crash but the van was registered to his address, the patrol said.

When a trooper asked him to slip on the wayward shoe, “it was a perfect fit,” the FHP said.  Aquista was charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving property damage and driving without a valid licence. He was being held in the Pasco County jail in lieu of US$1,250 bail Monday, jail records show. It was not clear whether he had a lawyer.  McCombie, 46, and Toth, 39, plan to be married Friday

It Happened in Shelbyville, IN

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Two of the oldest people in the United States met Saturday. A relative drove 113-year-old Bertha Fry of Muncie to a Shelbyville nursing home to visit Edna Parker, who celebrated her 114th birthday Friday.  Members of both families attended the meeting along with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who presented Parker with a Sagamore of the Wabash. The award recognizes Hoosiers who have endeared themselves to the people of Indiana.  A representative of Guinness World Records also was on hand to confirm the event.  The women’s combined age is more than that in any other meeting of two humans on record. Together, they accounted for 227 years and 142 days as of Saturday, breaking the previous record of 219 years. “I’m glad you have come,” Parker told Fry. “We have a lot to be thankful for.”  

Parker, born April 20, 1893, became the second-oldest person in the world in January.  She took that spot following the death of Emma Faust Tillman of East Hartford, Conn., who was 114 and 67 days old when she died, according to the California-based Gerontology Research Group.  The only person older than Parker is Yone Minagawa of Japan, who turned 114 on Jan. 4.  The group lists Fry, born Dec. 1, 1893, as the third-oldest person in the United States and the fifth-oldest in the world.  Both Parker and Fry are former school teachers.

In a surprise turnaround, the Wangs win…

A new study has refuted the notion that Li is China’s most popular surname.  A 2006 survey of 296 million people in 1,100 counties and cities by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that Li led the ranks of family names with about 7.4 per cent of the population.  However, state media reports a recent analysis of household registration data covering nearly all of China’s population revealed that Wang is, in fact, the most common name in the country.  It says data shows almost 93 million mainland Chinese are called Wang, or about 7.25 per cent of the total population.  Zhang is the country’s third most popular name.

No more cheese please.

The Chicago Skyway is open again, thanks to work crews who spent several hours scraping chunks of mozzarella cheese off the busy roadway. The southeast-bound lanes of the heavily travelled route into Indiana were blocked for hours on Sunday after a tractor-trailer hauling mozzarella was involved in an accident.  The trailer ended up spilling its contents onto the pavement near the Skyway tollbooth.  A police spokesman says some of the cheese had come out of its packaging, so the cleanup crews had to pick it up by hand.  He says the workers spent more than nine hours cleaning up the scene of the accident and removing the truck and trailer.

Grandmother flying cross-country makes emergency landing in muddy field

A grandmother of five was flying her small plane cross-country when the engine quit in mid-air and she was forced to make an emergency landing in a muddy field.  Emma Hanner, 78, was flying her two-seater plane home to Denver from Lexington, N.C., when the propeller stopped suddenly west of St. Louis.  “It just quit,” said Hanner. “When the propeller on the front of the plane goes around, it keeps the pilot cool. But when it stops, that’s when the pilot starts to sweat.”  Fortunately, there were plenty of open spaces below her.  As the plane hit the ground, one wheel dipped into an irrigation ditch and buckled underneath the plane. That bent the plane’s nose down and spun it around, Hanner said, jolting her forward with her face hitting the steering yoke. A cut below her nose was her only injury.Hanner said it was her first emergency landing in nearly four decades of flying. She described the 1970 Grumman AA1 as “like a Cessna 150, but it’s got a bigger engine - more powerful.”  She flies several times a week and planned to have the plane repaired. She plans to return to Missouri and get it, then fly home.  “I love that plane,” she said.

The History of the Easter Bunny

It is thought that the idea of the Easter Bunny was developed by German Protestants, who wanted to retain or re-introduce the Catholic custom of eating colored eggs for Easter, but did not want to introduce their children to the Catholic rite of fasting, which was the reason for the abundant availability of eggs at Easter time (they were forbidden to Catholics during the fast, thus eggs layed during the fast were stored until the feast).

The idea of an egg laying rabbit came to the United States in the 1700s. German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the “Osterhase” (also: “Oschter Haws”) or Easter Bunny. Only the good children received gifts of coloured eggs in the nests that they had made in their caps and bonnets before Easter. Presumably, the Oschter Haws laid them when they were not looking.

In the United States, the Easter Bunny purportedly leaves baskets of treats (including Easter eggs and assorted chocolates) on Easter morning for good children. This is a common practice even in non-Christian households, as Easter has started to become a more non-sectarian festival, like Halloween or Valentine’s Day.

The History of the Easter Egg

Of all the symbols associated with Easter the egg, the symbol of fertility and new life, is the most identifiable. The customs and traditions of using eggs have been associated with Easter for centuries Originally Easter eggs were painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring and were used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts. After they were colored and etched with various designs the eggs were exchanged by lovers and romantic admirers, much the same as valentines. In medieval time eggs were traditionally given at Easter to the servants. In Germany eggs were given to children along with other Easter gifts.

Different cultures have developed their own ways of decorating Easter eggs. Crimson eggs, to honor the blood of Christ, are exchanged in Greece. In parts of Germany and Austria green eggs are used on Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday). Slavic peoples decorate their eggs in special patterns of gold and silver.

Austrian artists design patterns by fastening ferns and tiny plants around the eggs, which are then boiled. The plants are then removed revealing a striking white pattern. The Poles and Ukrainians decorate eggs with simple designs and colors. A number of eggs are made in the distinctive manner called pysanki (to design, to write).

Pysanki eggs are a masterpiece of skill and workmanship. Melted beeswax is applied to the fresh white egg. It is then dipped in successive baths of dye. After each dip wax is painted over the area where the preceding color is to remain. Eventually a complex pattern of lines and colors emerges into a work of art

In Germany and other countries eggs used for cooking where not broken, but the contents were removed by piercing the end of each egg with a needle and blowing the contents into a bowl. The hollow eggs were dyed and hung from shrubs and trees during the Easter Week. The Armenians would decorate hollow eggs with pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other religious designs.

Easter in July!

A minister told of a man at a motel in North Carolina. He described him as one of the most dynamic, happy-looking individuals he ever met. The minister commented on his happiness, and he told him, “This dates from Easter, July 1st.” “Easter was never on July 1st.” the minister replied. “It runs from March into April, but I never knew of Easter on July 1st.”
“My Easter was on July 1st.” he insisted. Then he described the sinful, unhappy, depressed, mixed-up condition he had been in. On the morning of July 1st, after a night of carousing, he was tired, depressed, and thinking of taking his own life. He had the radio in his car tuned to a station that was broadcasting a religious program. The radio preacher said, as if personally to him: “I promise you that if you’ll open up your life and let Jesus Christ take charge of it, all your tiredness, depression, and unhappiness will pass away.” The man pulled his car over to the side of the road. “I don’t know what impelled me to do it,” he said, “but I said ‘Jesus Christ, here I am. Everything else has failed me. Take me over.’ “Why,” he said. “I’d been up all night. But I would never have known it. In an instant I was so free, so released, so full of energy and joy—I was a new man. I was resurrected—on July 1st!”

Dead rat found in dementia patient’s mouth

Staffing was so inadequate at a California senior centre that a rat crawled into an Alzheimer’s patient’s mouth and died there before staff noticed, a lawsuit claims. The lawsuit, filed Thursday on behalf of 90-year-old Sigmund Bock, alleges that administrators at the Paragon Gardens Assisted Living and Memory Care Community overbooked their facility to receive corporate bonuses, but cut back on staff to increase profits. It seeks unspecified punitive damages. Bock’s lawyer, Stephen Garcia, said Paragon records show a staff person noticed Bock “playing with a rat in his room and eating candy . . . with the rat” on the morning of March 18. A short time later, Garcia said, paramedics called to the scene noted “possible ingestion of rat poison” in their report and an emergency room file says that Bock was “found in room in care facility with dead rat in mouth.” Melody Chatelle, a spokeswoman for Sunwest Management Inc., the company that operates Paragon, said the allegations were false. Chatelle said instead that Bock was found holding a glue trap that had been placed in his room by a pest control company to catch a single field mouse. She said the dead field mouse was inside the trap when Bock picked it up. “We take care of our residents, and find this negative publicity to be a disheartening affront to our professional caregivers and most especially to our residents and their loved ones,” she said. Garcia said two traps were placed in Bock’s room and both were laced with poison, not glue.
“I know I’d want to put my dad there - but only if I hated him,” Garcia said of Paragon Gardens.
Bock is now being treated in the psychiatric care unit at another facility, Garcia said.

Remember… Jesus died for you!

Today, approximately 2,000 years ago today at approximately 2:00 in the afternoon, Jesus died on the cross for you and me. Here is a hymn by Isaac Watts (revised) that gives the call to remember what Christ did for us. Isaiah 53 says “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Alas! and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die! Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?Was it for crimes that I have done, he groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity! Grace unknown! And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide, and shut its glories in, when God, the mighty maker, died for his own creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face while his dear cross appears; dissolve my heart in thankfulness, and melt mine eyes to tears.

But drops of tears can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe. Here, Lord, I give myself away; ’tis all that I can do.