We're in the money...

While I'm not a gambler, at least with money, and I do not see the point of the lottery, I have more than once wished to come into some money without committing a crime or losing a relative. The following stories are all about the wildly good fortune of some people who are/were really down on their luck.

USAToday reports on the Covenant Life Worship Center in Michigan. The 25-member church won the $70 million second prize in the Lucky 7s raffle from the Michigan state lotto. The $10 ticket will net the entire prize money since the church is a tax-exempt group. The pastor told USAToday she will put the money toward the church building fund, setting up a missionary fund, and supporting community service projects.

In the story on CBS News, a member of the clergy is the one giving away the cash. The Rev. Guy Blair, a priest in Wisconsin, donated 14 pieces of his mother's silver to raise money for a homeless shelter. He is hoping for $50,000. His mother, who passed away in July, agreed the collection should be auctioned to raise money for charity. Some of the pieces date back to the 1790s.

Lastly, 19 year-old Bjorn Halvard received a couple pieces of luck on his way to winning the 2009 World Championships of Monopoly. The cash prize was $20,580, or the total of the money in the game's "bank," according to MSNBC. But Halvard's winnings were real. He won when his opponent landed on two of his properties consecutively and couldn't afford the rent. Halvard plans to take a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon and the Vegas skyline before finishing off his first-ever trip to the US by visiting friends in Los Angeles.

Thursday roundup...

Today's post is vaguely science-y...I'm not normally a science/math/logic person and do usually confound those who are with my thought processes, but that's another topic for another day. These science stories were easy enough for me to understand and fun to boot.

MSNBC reported on a new strain of super bees. Perhaps not good news for those who are afraid of bees, but this strain should take over the world any time soon. In an effort to root out the parasite suspected of causing the current, massive bee die-off, scientists have bred bees who showed an ability to sniff out the parasite in their hives.

On the non-agricultural side of the discipline, ABC News posted a story on a recent collaboration between American and Cuban scientists. President Barack Obama is trying to improve relations with the nation state to our south, and this delegation - the first in 12 years - is a step toward fostering goodwill.

You can file this last story in the "Duh" category. Today's Idea blog on the New York Times site highlights a story about silly scientific research. For every break-through on cancer treatment, there is a study published on what happens when you give monkeys typewriters. Denise Winterman's article creates two new categories for science journals - "Duh" (for things that should have been obvious in the first place) and "Huh?" (see monkey-typewriter example).

CNN published a story on the benefits of yoga for children who have been diagnosed, perhaps wrongly, with ADHD or depression. An unofficial study has noted these children are more focused and less crazily energetic since starting to practice yoga. Personally when I was little, I think I would have enjoyed a class called "Charlie and the Chakra Factory" too...

(Photo courtesy of MSNBC)

You don't need to be Michael Phelps to have a world record...

You apparently just need to be able to pull a double-decker bus with your hair...Yeah, I don't know either. But folks around the world tried for their 15 minutes of fame on Nov. 12, the fifth annual Guinness World Records Day.

Children from the Carrs Glen Primary School in Belfast, Northern Ireland went for gold in a category they created - largest gathering of storybook characters. The Belfast Telegraph reported pupils from the school dressed up as everyone from Hansel and Gretel to the Gingerbread Man. The children were joined by an official Guinness judge and enjoyed a story-telling session before receiving their certificates.

Speaking of gingerbread men, this next story is a double dose of record-setting. Eight-foot, one-inch Sultan Koesen of Turkey was on hand at a Norwegian IKEA of all places to unveil the world's largest gingerbread man. The cookie weighed a whopping 1,435 pounds and beat the previous record-holder by about 100 pounds. Shockingly MSNBC filed this story under "weird news."

The London Times posted a little snippet of what could be called weird if you are at all familiar with stereotypes of the British. Known for their collective stiff upper lip, Brits broke tradition when they set the Guinness world record for longest group hug. One hundred and 12 people - a lot of them strangers - hugged for one minute at St. Pancras train station.

(Photo courtesy of MSNBC)

Reverting back to childhood...

My parents have a picture of me when I'm really little, three or four, and my little twin bed is covered in a ruffly spread and weighed down by at least 34 stuffed animals. I'm on the bed too, lost in the crowd of bears and dogs and cats and other breed-indeterminate fuzzies. Clearly, stuffed toys were my childhood crack.

My favorite on was a faded, balding Care Bear. In an incident I remember with startling clarity, one day I thought Wishbear needed to feel the wind in his four strands of hair, so I held him out the car window while on a family trip to Grandma's house. Inexplicably I let go and lost him as my dad zoomed down Middletown Road. My squawking alerted my parents to Wishie's impending doom, and he was quickly retrieved with more than one exhortation to tell Mom and Dad what I was thinking doing that.

So I can completely related to five year-old Jessica Martin. She accidentally left her furry friend, Beary, on a park bench during a pit stop on her way to Grandma's house. Unfortunately it was not until an hour and a half later, Jessica realized her little companion was gone, according to the Pittsburg Morning Sun. She was heartbroken, so her parents decided to try contacting park services to see if Beary could be located. It was a long shot, but Ranger Dave Stark went on a search-and-rescue mission and "captured" Beary. Stark made the stuffed toy part of the park's "Bear Relocation" program and shipped him home to Jessica.

Teddy bears are pretty iconic childhood possessions. While toy icons are just generally accepted as such in daily life, I recently found out via The Boston Globe there is, in fact, a national toy hall of fame. Located in Rochester, N.Y., toys up for induction into the 11 year-old museum must be "widely recognized; foster learning, creativity or discovery through play; and endure in popularity over generations. The ball, along with the Big Wheel and Nintendo GameBoy, recently joined the pantheon of 41 classic toys. Personally, I can't believe it took this long to recognize the ball as an all-star, but maybe that's just me...

Another kind of ball is entertaining the young at heart. The Boston Globe did a feature on the Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Northbridge, Mass. The elderly residents have picked up a passion normally dominated by the nerd in the corner cubicle - fantasy football (sorry Joel). Due to H1N1 concerns, the seniors' usual visits with the children in a nearby day care had to be curtailed, so a young recreation director had to get creative in livening up Sunday afternoons. This is my kind of fantasy league - no keeping track of individual players scattered all over the NFL. Residents win whole teams through a lottery and then root for them all season long.

(Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe)

Your morning adorable...

Okay, so I'm totally stealing this blog title from the Unleashed blog at the LA Times. I already had a couple of stories involving dogs in the reserve, but when I saw this adorable video of a snowball/bichon frise on the Unleashed blog, I had to include it. Cutest. thing. you'll. see. today.

MSNBC provided the next two stories, and aside from being cute, they will warm your heart. Rev. Tom Eggebeen took over the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles and wanted to build a younger parishioner base. So he decided to do something priests and pastors have long been reluctant to do - embrace four-legged community members. Eggebeen now holds a weekly 30-minute doggie service - humans more than welcome - with canine prayers and doggie treats as offerings. While this does go against traditional church teaching, which says animals do not have redeemable souls, Rev. Eggebeen has acknowledged the love shared between pet and owner should be recognized by church leaders.

The following link leads to a video interview with the dog handler for the Broadway production of "101 Dalmatians." While most of the doggie "stars" of the show are cardboard cut-outs, fifteen former shelter dogs take center stage in the production. Rescued from all around the country, the dogs have been trained to perform simple tasks and follow cues. They now travel around the US in a tour bus better kitted out than some musicians'. The show is responsible, warning theatergoers that Dalmatians are not for everyone or as trained as those on stage.

Another well-trained dog is getting a hero's welcome this week. Sabi, an Australian bomb-sniffing dog, returned to her unit after spending the last 14 months lost in Afghanistan. The black Labrador disappeared during a firefight between Australian-Afghan troops and militants in Uruzgan Province. Sabi turned up on an isolated patrol base elswhere in the province, found by a U.S. soldier. She appears in good condition, so military officials speculate someone has been looking after her.

(Photo courtesy of Yahoo! News)

"[But] he was no enemy, because music had soothed the savage beast"...

"To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations..."

Former President Woodrow Wilson spoke these words in November 1919 at the first commemoration of Armistice Day when he proclaimed November 11 as a day to honor veterans for their patriotism willingness to sacrifice for their country. Signed into law on June 1, 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, November 11 became the official holiday to celebrate the efforts of all veterans to make the world a safer place. He inserted the word "Veterans" in place of "Armistice" since by then we'd fought in two more wars.

The blog title is a quote from Ret. Colonel Jack Tueller, a fighter pilot with the gift of music. Two weeks after D-Day, a day in which he played a significant role in helping the Allies land on the beaches, Tueller risked inciting a lone German sniper and played "Lilly Marlene" on the trumpet to calm his own nerves. The military police caught the sniper the next day; the German had not fired on Tueller because he was caught up in the thoughts of his family and sweetheart the song elicited. The CNN article goes on to profile Tueller, from his days at college where he met the love of his life (and wife of 68 years) to his enlistment and post-war career as a journalist.

Still celebrated as Armistice Day in Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared together in Paris - the first time since World War I the leaders of the two countries have celebrated Armistice Day together. The pair laid a wreath of flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and symbolically re-lit the perpetual flame to commemorate the 91st anniversary of the end of "the war to end all wars." The MSNBC story also highlighted celebrations in Belgium and in Ypres, France.

Many Americans have made their way to one of our own war memorials, particularly this week. Built in 1982 to honor the fallen of the Vietnam War, soldiers' families and other veterans began leaving mementos even before the wall was finished. Park rangers collected them, thinking the families would come back for them someday. But those early dog tags, combat boots, poems, letters and all other manner of ephemera became the basis of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, a private museum of personal items and notes stored at the Museum and Archaeological Storage facility in Maryland. The article on CNN.com notes the curator of the collection and his staff often have no context for the items and cites the poignant example of the meaning behind packages of M&Ms.

The historic and rightly famed Navajo Code Talkers are in New York today for the nation's largest Veterans Day parade. The Boston Globe notes about 50 of the 400 Code Talkers are still alive, but those men are frail, and their supporters are worried their legacy will die with them. Thirteen of the Navajo former soldiers will march and hope their presence will raise awareness of their efforts and help fund a museum slated to open in 2012. Navajo Marines developed an ultra-secret code transmitted verbally over radios, which helped the US to victories at Iwo Jima and other battles in the Pacific. The Japanese, who had no trouble breaking US codes with the help of expert English translators, were never able to break the Navajo codes.

Celebrating Veterans Day can seem like an oxymoron - remembering those who died in service to the country doesn't lend itself to a rollicking good time. Restaurants and stores nationwide are offering discounts to veterans and active duty personnel (and their families), which is a beautiful thought, especially in this economy. However, one effort on Huffington Post caught my eye. First, I was surprised to find an article on there by Kim Cattrall, aka Samantha from Sex and the City. I was doubly surprised to see it centered around veterans. Cattrall is promoting the Eleven-Eleven Campaign, a bipartisan collaboration between charities and bloggers from both sides of the aisle. Eleven veterans' charities are banding together to get 11 million Americans to donate $11 to the campaign by November 11, 2011 - 11/11/11.

This blog post is brought to you by the letter S...

Happy 40th anniversary, Sesame Street!!

The adorable cake pops to the left are the creation of Bakerella. You can see a demonstration of how she made them here. This woman is very talented and has even been on The Martha Stewart Show, showing the domestic goddess herself how to make the bite-size morsels of deliciousness known as cake pops.

Even First Lady Michelle Obama - and special guest for today's episode of Sesame Street - might allow these treats today. Newsday reports Mrs. Obama will be on today's show to help the Muppets plant seeds and learn about healthy eating habits. The Newsday provides a peek into the magical world of Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Snuffleupagus and their Muppeteers.

It shows what a cultural icon Sesame Street is when all the heavy-hitters weigh in on its anniversary. The New York Times has a two-page article on the evolution of Sesame Street from its first episode back in 1969 to its current, slightly-more-yuppified incarnation. While the set itself has modified from the urban skyline with a light coating of grunge, the mission of the show hasn't changed - serve the underserved and have loads of fun doing it.

This last article, on CNN.com, serves as both a stroll down memory lane and a review of the new DVD boxed set of Sesame Street. The story describes world of Sesame Street - graffiti-covered brownstones, kids riding bikes without helmets and a Cookie Monster who smoked a pipe - with which I am familiar and loved so long ago (Santa, are you listening?). I grew up in an age where some legitimate dangers were unknown (hello, second-hand smoke), but for the most part, even though I didn't have any of what kids today had in terms of toys or safety, I turned out fairly normal. Thank you, Sesame Street.