Everyday Heroes 12/13

Merry Fishmas!  For this yule tide Everyday Heroes I remembered an XMas miracle that happened about 15 years ago.  The old couple involved--I don't know their names--are this month's Everyday Heroes.

It was Christmas Eve, I think 1997.  I had just been doing some shopping in Bay City, Michigan and was going home on US 10 when a tire blew out!  I managed to get the car to the side of the road and then got the paraphernalia out of the trunk to change the flat.  I knew where everything was because just a month ago--on my birthday even--a different tire had gone flat.

So I get the jack out and set it up beneath the car and then get the car into the air.  I start trying to get the nuts off and there's just one problem--the lug wrench breaks!  Seriously the crappy lug wrench GM included cracked like an empty Solo cup left on the floor of a kegger for some frat boy to step on--how's that for a colorful simile?

And again this was 1997, so we didn't all have cell phones back in those days.  I couldn't just whip out my iPhone and call AAA for assistance.  This stretch of road was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in farm country with the nearest town being miles down the road.

Then a car pulls up and this old guy gets out to ask if I needed any help.  He got his lug wrench but it didn't fit.  So he offered to give me a lift into Auburn, which was the nearest town.  Since it was that or walk miles in the cold, what do you think I did?

They drove me to the pharmacy in town and I was able to call AAA from a pay phone.  The old guy's wife (presumably) gave me a little church program that I still have in a Ziploc bag as a memento.  Unlike in Hollywood me and the old couple didn't become the best of friends.  I don't even remember their names and by this point they might not even be alive.  But they definitely saved me from spending a large chunk of Christmas Eve walking to find a phone.

While I'm at it I got two other helpful strangers who are Everyday Heroes in car-related mishaps.  The first was back in probably 1996 or maybe 1995.  My sisters and I were in Bay City and I stupidly locked the keys in the car.  To sum up our reactions it was basically, "Oh shit what are we going to do now?"  I could have called my mom or dad to bring spare keys, which would have taken a while.

But then a tow truck shows up and the driver asks if we need help.  Then he got out a tool to reach down through the window and pull the lock up.  This was a 1977 Chevy Nova so it had those old-school locks where you could do that.  And then he was on his way.

The funny part was the name of the tow truck company:  Serendipity.  I'd say it was very serendipitous.

And the last story was in 2003 or 2004 or so.  My Bonneville's fuel gauge had been acting up recently, so I really had no idea how much gas I had.  I was on I94 going home and it turned out I didn't have very much gas left!  I managed to get it up a ramp, where it finally ran out.  Unlike other people who just leave their cars any damned place, I got out and pushed the car over to the side of the road.  I tried to get it into a church parking lot so it'd be out of the way but the incline was too steep and obviously I am not Superman who can lift a car over his head.

Enter another helpful stranger who helped me push the car up the rest of the way.  Then he gave me a ride down to the corner to a gas station so I could get gas.  Contrast this to the jerk gas station attendant who made me pay for a can to put gas in.  He was an Everyday Villain.  But on the plus side at least I had a can for if I ran out of gas again.

So there you go, Everyday Heroes (and Villains) are all around us!  It could even be YOU!

Everyday Heroes 11/13

It's November now and that means winter is just around the corner.  This is an old article but it's a good reminder that annual coat drives, food drives, and so forth should be happening soon.  Be an Everyday Hero and do your part this year!


VALORIE EVERSOLE - Daily Union Reporter CNHI

SHELBYVILLE, IL. — The recent Jason Jordan Coat Drive netted more than 300 coats of all sizes, meeting the needs of not only the local community, but also aiding those in homeless shelters in neighboring communities.

Dawn Reeves, mother of the late Jason Jordan organized the first annual coat drive held for a couple of weeks after Christmas. The collected coats were shared between the Shelby Christian Church, Big Momma’s Closet, the Pregnancy Crisis Center, and shelters in Mattoon and Decatur.

“We collected 314 coats this year,” Reeves said. “I am so proud of what we were able to do this year. Those at the shelters who received coats were seriously grateful.”

“I want to thank each and every one of you who personally filled the boxes and allowed me to remember Jason and help someone in this memory,” Reeves continued.

In addition to coats, Reeves received monetary donations which she is using to buy coats, especially those on clearance, to stockpile for next year’s drive. She will also accept coats in all sizes.

“Next year children will need new coats again,” Reeves said. She noted that it costs a family an average of $200 a year to buy new coats for their children.

Reeves emphasized that the coat ministry at the Shelby Christian Church is a ministry.

“It is not an income-based program. If you need a coat, contact the church to get one,” she said.

Reeves expressed thanks to those who helped in the coat drive.

“I want to especially thank Richie Singh at the Marathon Serice station for picking my cause to help. He put the information out on his sign. I think that really helped remind people everyday. It was a blessing from someone that I don’t know,” Reese said.

She also gives thanks to Shelby Christian Church, Traci Zientara, Meagan Stenger, Ladies of the Moose, Custom Care Cleaner, Donna Storm Susan Stephens, Krista Smith and family, County Market, Walmart, Qik N Ez, Casey’s, Shelbyville Chamber of Commerce, all Communty Banks of Shelby County locations and employees.

Reeves continues to collect coats at Community Banks anytime.

“My boss supports what I’m doing – we’re trying to take care of my community,” she said.

This year’s drive is set for December 15 – 29.

Everyday Heroes 10/13

I really have no idea what 3D printers are, but they sound cool.  Anyway, someone figured out how to make a replacement hand with a 3D printer for a little boy.  I bet Luke Skywalker was jonesing for one of those after "The Empire Strikes Back."

 A 3-D printed prosthetic hand has changed the life of a 5-year-old South African boy who was born without fingers on his right hand, and may be a model for people seeking a low-cost prosthesis.

The boy, named Liam, benefited from work done by Ivan Owen, a part-time mechanical special effects artist in Washington. He was collaborating online with Rich Van As, a woodworker from South Africa, who lost four fingers in a workshop accident. Liam's mother came across their blog posts about the "robohand" they were developing.

"I had never connected the dots between what I was doing and that it had a practical application," Owen told ABCNews.com.

The men decided to make Liam his own "robohand" and the result has been life-changing. He can now throw a basketball, push a shopping cart and even pick up a coin using his prosthetic hand.

The hand is powered by cables and return bungees. The fingers and wrist hinge were made using a 3-D printer - a computerized device that, given the dimensions of an object, can create copies of it by adding layers of resin or other material.

Owen and Van As, who both have day jobs, met for the first time in November in South Africa. Most of the collaboration was done online, Owen said.

After seeing how well their invention worked for Liam, Owen said their dream is to form a nonprofit to educate people on how to create and assemble robohands.

"We want to provide materials, parts and knowledge, and then someone in the community can assist them with assembly and fitting," Owen said. "We see that as most realistic way to get this idea to the people who need it, and at the largest scale possible."

Everyday Heroes 9/13

This month was Labor Day so here's an article on Labor!  This lists the 20 Best Employers according to some groups.  I wish there were a little more detail about these companies to know what makes them so good.  Anyway, socialists like me love to bitch about Corporate America, so here are some corporations who may be less evil than others.  (And if you're wondering, I read an article a while back that listed Dish Network as the worst employer to work for.  Basically their CEO makes Mr. Burns on The Simpsons look like a liberal.)

It's possible to love your job and get a good salary too: You just have to work for the right company.
The first annual list of the best employers in America by PayScale and Business Insider evaluates companies by both pay and happiness.

The winner is a company you've probably never heard of: a New Jersey biopharmaceutical company called Celgene Corporation. Many of the best companies were also in the health care industry.

The famously indulgent tech industry also did well on this list, including Google (#2), Yahoo (#8), and Microsoft (#14).

Companies in the 2012 Fortune 500 were ranked using PayScale's salary and survey database. Happiness represented 57 percent of the final score and was measured through questions about satisfaction, feelings of meaningfulness, stress, and schedule flexibility. Pay represented 43 percent of the final score and was measured by looking at median pay after five years and pay compared to industry peers.

20. Dow Chemical Company

Headquartered in Midland, Mich., this chemicals company has about 50,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of flexibility (85%); high rates of satisfaction (78%) and meaningfulness (66%); and average rates of relaxation (35%).

Median pay is very high at $90,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.

[Grumpy Note:  I assume they're talking about white collar jobs.  My dad sure as hell didn't get no $90K a year from Dow.]

19. Booz, Allen and Hamilton

Headquartered in Tysons Corner, Va., this management consulting company has 26,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of relaxation (48%); and high rates of flexibility (83%), satisfaction (72%), and meaningfulness (61%).

Median pay is very high at $93,100 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.



18. Johnson & Johnson

Headquartered in New Brunswick, N.J., this pharmaceutical company has 117,900 employees.

Employees report very high rates of meaningfulness (73%); and high rates of relaxation (39%), flexibility (83%), and satisfaction (72%).

Median pay is very high at $92,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.


17. 3M Company

Matt RourkeHeadquartered in Two Harbors, Minn., this conglomerate company has 84,198 employees.

Employees report high rates of relaxation (44%), flexibility (79%), satisfaction (77%), and meaningfulness (59%).

Median pay is high at $82,400 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.



16. The Boeing Company

Headquartered in Chicago, Ill., this aerospace and defense company has 171,700 employees.

Employees report high rates of relaxation (45%), flexibility (80%), satisfaction (76%), and meaningfulness (68%).

Median pay is high at $85,900 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.



15. Amgen Corporation

Paul SakumaHeadquartered in Thousand Oaks, Calif., this biopharmaceutical company has 17,800 employees.

Employees report very high rates of meaningfulness (81%); high rates of flexibility (78%) and satisfaction (75%); and average rates of relaxation (37%).

Median pay is very high at $98,500 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.


14. Microsoft Corporation

Headquartered in Redmond, Wash., this computer software has 94,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of flexibility (92%); high rates of relaxation (39%) and meaningfulness (60%); and average rates of satisfaction (69%).

Median pay is very high at $111,000 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.


13. Abbott Laboratories

Headquartered in North Chicago, Ill., this pharmaceutical company has 91,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of meaningfulness (81%); and high rates of relaxation (39%), flexibility (83%), and satisfaction (77%).

Median pay is high at $88,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.



12. ITT Exelis

Headquartered in Tysons Corner, Va., this defense company has more than 20,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of relaxation (63%), flexibility (84%), and satisfaction (79%); and high rates of meaningfulness (58%).

Median pay is very high at $102,000 after five years, and average compared to industry peers.



11. Pfizer, Inc.

Headquartered in New York, N.Y., this pharmaceutical company has 103,700 employees.

Employees report very high rates of flexibility (84%) and meaningfulness (77%); high rates of satisfaction (73%); and average rates of relaxation (36%).

Median pay is very high at $93,200 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.


10. Williams Companies, Inc.

Headquartered in Tulsa, Okla., this oil and gas company has 3,913 employees.

Employees report very high rates of relaxation (54%) and satisfaction (80%); and high rates of flexibility (79%) and meaningfulness (65%).

Median pay is high at $79,000 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.



9. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co.

Headquartered in Wilmington, Del., this chemicals company has 70,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of flexibility (84%) and satisfaction (84%); and high rates of relaxation (43%) and meaningfulness (67%).

Median pay is high at $80,700 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.



8. Yahoo! Inc.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., this internet company has 14,100 employees.

Employees report very high rates of relaxation (46%) and flexibility (88%); high rates of satisfaction (81%); and average rates of meaningfulness (55%).

Median pay is very high at $120,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.



7. Chevron Corporation

Headquartered in San Ramon, Calif., this oil and gas company has 62,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of satisfaction (81%) and relaxation (47%); and high rates of flexibility (80%) and meaningfulness (58%).

Median pay is very high at $102,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.


6. MasterCard Worldwide

Headquartered in Purchase, N.Y., this financial services company has 6,700 employees.

Employees report very high rates of satisfaction (81%), relaxation (63%) and flexibility (85%); and average rates of meaningfulness (54%).

Median pay is very high at $103,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.


5. Biogen Idec, Inc.

Headquartered in Weston, Mass., this biotechnology company has 4,850 employees.

Employees report very high rates of satisfaction (83%), flexibility (89%), and meaningfulness (89%); and average relaxation (33%).

Median pay is very high at $97,800 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.



4. Qualcomm, Inc.

Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., this telecommunications company has over 20,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of satisfaction (81%) and flexibility (92%); high rates of meaningfulness (65%); and average relaxation (37%).

Median pay is very high at $106,000 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.


3. Huntsman Corporation
Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, this chemicals company has approximately 12,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of relaxation (50%) and flexibility (94%); high rates of meaningfulness (63%) and satisfaction (75%).

Median pay is very high at $95,600 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.



2. Google, Inc.

Mark BlinchHeadquartered in Mountain View, Calif., this internet company has more than 30,000 employees.

Employees report very high rates of satisfaction (81%); high rates of relaxation (44%), meaningfulness (61%), and flexibility (81%).

Median pay is very high at $119,000 after five years, and very high compared to industry peers.


1. Celgene Corporation

Headquartered in Summit, N.J., this biotechnology company has more than 4,500 employees.

Employees report very high rates of satisfaction (91%), meaningfulness (86%), and flexibility (91%); and high rates of relaxation (41%).

Median pay is very high at $118,000 after five years, and high compared to industry peers.

Appropriately, tomorrow is a review of a book called Money.

Everyday Heroes 8/13

[BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:  A Hero's Journey (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #1) is FREE on Amazon from August 26 to August 30!    Also, leading up to this from August 21-25 the Tales of the Scarlet Knight promo comic will be free on Amazon, so if you have a Kindle Fire or something you can read that to whet your appetite for the main course. ]

This one is fresh off the presses from today's Huffington Post.  The NRA says we all need to be armed to protect ourselves from gun violence, but when a gunman showed up at a school yesterday, a woman used only her words to eventually disarm him.  That definitely gets you Everyday Hero status!

DECATUR, Ga. — A man with an assault rifle and other weapons exchanged gunfire with officers Tuesday at an Atlanta-area elementary school before surrendering, a police chief said, with dramatic overhead television footage capturing the young students racing out of the building, being escorted by teachers and police to safety. No one was injured.

Just a week into the new school year, more than 800 students in pre-kindergarten to fifth grade were evacuated from Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, a few miles east of Atlanta. They sat outside along a fence in a field for a time until school buses came to take them to their waiting parents and other relatives at a nearby Wal-Mart.

When the first bus arrived about three hours after the shooting, cheers erupted in the store parking lot from relieved relatives, several of them sobbing.

The suspect, identified later as 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill, fired at least a half-dozen shots from the rifle from inside McNair at officers who were swarming the campus outside, the chief said. Officers returned fire when the man was alone and they had a clear shot, DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric L. Alexander said at a news conference. Hill surrendered shortly after and several weapons were found, though it wasn't clear how many, Alexander said. Police had no motive.

Though the school has a system where visitors must be buzzed in by staff, the gunman may have slipped inside behind someone authorized to be there, Alexander said. The suspect, who had no clear ties to the school, never got past the front office, where he held one or two employees captive for a time, the chief said. Hill, who had address listed about three miles from the school, is charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. There was no information on a possible court date.

A woman in the office called WSB-TV to say the gunman asked her to contact the Atlanta station and police. WSB said during the call, shots were heard in the background. Assignment editor Lacey Lecroy said she spoke with the woman who said she was alone with the man and his gun was visible.

"It didn't take long to know that this woman was serious," Lecroy said. "Shots were one of the last things I heard. I was so worried for her."

School clerk Antoinette Tuff in an interview on ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer" said she worked to convince the gunman to put down his weapons and ammunition.

"He told me he was sorry for what he was doing. He was willing to die," Tuff told ABC.

She told him her life story, about how her marriage fell apart after 33 years and the "roller coaster" of opening her own business.

"I told him, `OK, we all have situations in our lives," she said. "It was going to be OK. If I could recover, he could, too."

Then Tuff said she asked the suspect to put his weapons down, empty his pockets and backpack on the floor.

"I told the police he was giving himself up. I just talked him through it," she said.

A woman answering the phone at a number listed for Hill in court records said she was his mother but said it wasn't a good time and rushed off the phone.

DeKalb County Schools Superintendent Michael Thurmond praised faculty and authorities who got the young students to safety, staying calm and following plans in place. All teachers and students made it out of the school unharmed.

"It's a blessed day, all of our children are safe," Thurmond said at the news conference. "This was a highly professional response on the ground by DeKalb County employees assisted by law enforcement."

School volunteer Debra Hayes said she encountered the suspect without knowing it.

She stopped by the office at the end of her shift and saw a man talking to a secretary but she did not see a gun.

"I heard him say, `I'm not here to harm any staff or any parents or students. He said he wanted to speak to a police officer."

"By the time I got to 2nd Avenue, I heard gunshots," she said.

Complicating the rescue, bomb-sniffing dogs alerted officers to something in the suspect's trunk and investigators believe the man may have been carrying explosives, Alexander said. Officials cut a hole in a fence to make sure students running from the building could get even farther away to a nearby street, he said. SWAT teams then went from classroom to classroom to make sure people were out.

Police had strung yellow tape up blocking intersections near the school while children waited to be taken to Wal-Mart where hundreds of people were anticipating their arrival. The crowd waved from behind yellow police tape as buses packed with children started pulling up along the road at the store. The smiling children waved back.

Regional superintendent Rachel Zeigler used a megaphone to say children were organized on the buses by grade level and that each bus would also be carrying an administrator, a teacher and a Georgia Bureau of Investigation officer. Relatives had to show ID, sign each child out and have their photo taken.

The school has about 870 children enrolled. The academy is named after McNair, an astronaut who died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986, according to the school's website.

Jonessia White, the mother of a kindergartner, said the school's doors are normally locked.

"I took (my son) to school this morning and had to be buzzed in," she said. "So I'm wondering how the guy got in the door."

Jackie Zamora, 61, of Decatur, was at the Wal-Mart waiting and said her 6-year-old grandson was inside the school when the shooting was reported and she panicked for more than an hour because she hadn't heard whether or not anyone had been injured.

Since shootings in classrooms all over the country, the massacre at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary being the freshest in people's minds, schools have implemented security from metal detectors to armed guards. McNair had its own safety precautions.

White said the school has a set of double doors where visitors must be buzzed in and show identification to a camera to be allowed in.

"I don't know how this could happen at this school," Zamora said. "There's so much security."

___

Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy and Phillip Lucas in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Everyday Heroes 7/13

This is a sad edition of Everyday Heroes.  There are lots of stories about pets who've walked for miles and miles to find their way home and so forth.  In this case, a loyal pet stayed by his owner's side even after he died to help searchers locate the body.  


WEST MILFORD, N.J. (AP) — A loyal but frightened Labrador retriever stayed close to his owner after he died while hiking in a nature preserve, helping a search team find the body in the dark, authorities said Tuesday.

The search team spotted the dog, named Kentucky, late Saturday when its eyes reflected off their headlamps, police Lt. John Matarese told The Associated Press.

Nearby, the team found the body of 51-year-old Bjoern Waalberg, who had apparently died hours earlier.

There was no indication of foul play, police said.

Waalberg, from the borough of Kinnelon, and his dog set out for a hike mid-afternoon Saturday at the 576-acre Apshawa Preserve in northern New Jersey. The man's wife alerted authorities just after 7 p.m. when he didn't return by nightfall as expected.

His body was found just before 10 p.m., his dog close by.

After police found the man's car in the parking lot, authorities said rescue teams were sent out to search the heavily wooded, hilly preserve, calling out the names of Waalberg and his dog.

West Milford Search and Rescue director Dina D'Argenio told The Record newspaper that Waalberg's wife also helped aid the search through the tracking of calls he made on his cellphone.

Kinnelon Councilman James Freda told the newspaper that Waalberg, a married father of three, was an avid outdoorsman.

A sad story, but that is one good dog.

Everyday Heroes 6/13

At Everyday Heroes we don't endorse violence, unless it's violence in the service of a good cause.  And this story sounds like a good cause.

This is from ABC's Good Morning America via Yahoo!

 A Florida woman was aided by a group of teenagers she didn't know this weekend when a man police say appears to have mental problems allegedly attempted to kidnap her daughter and nephew in a Tampa-area recreational park.

Sharaya Smith, 28, was with her 4-year-old daughter and 3-year-old nephew at Lisa Lake Park in New Port Richie, Fla., Saturday when she was approached by 34-year-old Bienvenido Cintron, who began uttering strange phrases, police said.

"I am Obama. I have been sent by God to cleanse the country of drug dealers and prostitutes," Cintron said, according to a police report filed by the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.

After she told the kids to get down from the slide they'd been playing on, Cintron allegedly attempted to pull the kids away from her. Cintron then allegedly began to pull on her daughter Tatiana Ortega's hair and arm, and called her nephew Dante a drug dealer, according to the police report.

Smith tried to get away from the park and into the safety of a lit parking lot as she and the kids were being attacked, according to the police report. Soon her brother Chad arrived with his car to pick them up, the report stated. It is unclear at which point she contacted him, or whether he had already planned to meet them.

It was while Smith scrambled to put the two kids into the vehicle that a group of teenagers who saw what was happening approached the scene, according to the police report. To help protect Smith and the kids from Cintron, they circled around the three, creating a divide between them and their assailant, Sharaya Smith told police.

Once the kids were in the car, Cintron attempted to grab at Dante through a partially open door, Sharaya Smith told police. He also spit on the car, which was later used for DNA evidence to identify him as the attacker, police said.

Chad Smith's daughter Shaylin told investigators that once Sharaya Smith had gotten into the car and they were driving away from the park, Cintron approached the group of teenagers, who were at that point walking away. Cintron later said injuries he sustained on Saturday were from a group of unknown teens, according to police.

"At this point we haven't found teenagers that he said he scuffled with," Douglas Tobin with the Pasco Sheriff's Office told ABCNews.com. "We don't know for sure if it was the same teens."

Cintron was quickly located at his home in Port Richie by investigators, and after he was positively identified by Sharaya Smith, he was arrested.

Tobin said police have had run-ins with Cintron before, and that that he believes that the man suffers from mental health issues.

"He was not very coherent," he said. "He made very little sense as we were trying to talk to him."

Cintron has been charged with attempted kidnapping and attempted burglary. He is being held at the Land O' Lakes Jail on $150,000 bond.

Hopefully now this guy can get the help he needs.

Everyday Heroes 5/13

Mali has been a hotbed of violence in recent months as Al-Qaeda has taken up resident in the North African state.  As they did in Afghanistan previously, they've been destroying things they find "offensive" including books.  But some Everyday Heroes in Timbuktu have fought back to preserve some of these valuable books from being destroyed.  It's like "Schindler's List" only with books!

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — For eight days after the Islamists set fire to one of the world's most precious collections of ancient manuscripts, the alarm inside the building blared. It was an eerie, repetitive beeping, a cry from the innards of the injured library that echoed around the world.

The al-Qaida-linked extremists who ransacked the institute wanted to deal a final blow to Mali, whose northern half they had held for 10 months before retreating in the face of a French-led military advance. They also wanted to deal a blow to the world, especially France, whose capital houses the headquarters of UNESCO, the organization which recognized and elevated Timbuktu's monuments to its list of World Heritage sites.

So as they left, they torched the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, aiming to destroy a heritage of 30,000 manuscripts that date back to the 13th century.

"These manuscripts are our identity," said Abdoulaye Cisse, the library's acting director. "It's through these manuscripts that we have been able to reconstruct our own history, the history of Africa . People think that our history is only oral, not written. What proves that we had a written history are these documents."

The first people who spotted the column of black smoke on Jan. 23 were the residents whose homes surround the library, and they ran to tell the center's employees. The bookbinders, manuscript restorers and security guards who work for the institute broke down and cried.

Just about the only person who didn't was Cisse, the acting director, who for months had harbored a secret. Starting last year, he and a handful of associates had conspired to save the documents so crucial to this 1,000-year-old town.

In April, when the rebels preaching a radical version of Islam first rolled into this city swirling with sand, the institute was in the process of moving its collection into a new, state-of-the-art building. The fighters commandeered the new center, turning it into a dormitory for one of their units of foreign fighters, Cisse said. They didn't realize only about 2,000 manuscripts had been moved there, the bulk of the collection remaining at the old library, he said.

The Islamists came in, as they did in Afghanistan, with their own, severe interpretation of Islam, intent on rooting out what they saw as the veneration of idols instead of the pure worship of Allah. During their 10-month-rule, they eviscerated much of the identity of this storied city, starting with the mausoleums of their saints, which were reduced to rubble.

The turbaned fighters made women hide their faces and blotted out their images on billboards. They closed hair salons, banned makeup and forbade the music for which Mali is known.

Their final act before leaving was to go through the exhibition room in the institute, as well as the whitewashed laboratory used to restore the age-old parchments. They grabbed the books they found and burned them.

However, they didn't bother searching the old building, where an elderly man named Abba Alhadi has spent 40 of his 72 years on earth taking care of rare manuscripts. The illiterate old man, who walks with a cane and looks like a character from the Bible, was the perfect foil for the Islamists. They wrongly assumed that the city's European-educated elite would be the ones trying to save the manuscripts, he said.

So last August, Alhadi began stuffing the thousands of books into empty rice and millet sacks.

At night, he loaded the millet sacks onto the type of trolley used to cart boxes of vegetables to the market. He pushed them across town and piled them into a lorry and onto the backs of motorcycles, which drove them to the banks of the Niger River.

From there, they floated down to the central Malian town of Mopti in a pinasse, a narrow, canoe-like boat. Then cars drove them from Mopti, the first government-controlled town, to Mali's capital, Bamako, over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from here.

"I have spent my life protecting these manuscripts. This has been my life's work. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer protect them here," said Alhadi. "It hurt me deeply to see them go, but I took strength knowing that they were being sent to a safe place."

It took two weeks in all to spirit out the bulk of the collection, around 28,000 texts housed in the old building covering the subjects of theology, astronomy, geography and more.

There was nothing they could do, however, for the 2,000 documents that had already been transferred to the new library, to its exhibition and restoration rooms, and to a basement vault. Cisse took solace knowing that most of the texts in the new library had been digitized.

Even so, when his staff came to tell him about the fire, he felt a constriction in his chest.

The new library is housed inside a modern building, whose sheer walls are made to resemble the mud-walled homes of Timbuktu. Cisse braved his fear to slip through the back gate on the morning of Jan. 24.

The alarm was still screaming. The empty manuscript boxes were strewn on the ground outside in the brick courtyard. All that was left of the books was a soft, feathery ash.

Cisse then entered the library. The glass cases in the exhibit room were empty. So was the manuscript restoration lab, its white tables blanketed in dust. The manuscripts left out were gone.

But the librarian knew the bulk of the books was in a storage room in the basement. With the alarm still screaming, he walked down the flight of pitch-black stairs.

The room had been locked shut. And he was too afraid to open it, because the mayor of Timbuktu had warned residents that the retreating rebels had mined the town and booby-trapped strategic buildings.

So he waited.

On Jan. 28, a column of more than 600 French troops rolled into the city.

The same day, they came to inspect the institute. They spraypainted in pink the word "OK" in front of each room they cleared, working their way to the basement. They pummeled the locked door. When the door slapped open, Cisse felt as if his chest was about to explode.

They beamed a flashlight into the darkness. In the pools of light, he made out the little bundles of parchments sitting on the rafters. They were where they had left them nearly a year ago, in a room the Islamists had never discovered.

The director-general of UNESCO toured the damaged library this weekend, alongside French President Francois Hollande, who made a triumphant visit to Timbuktu. She described the manuscripts as a global treasure. "They are part of our world heritage," said Irina Bokova. "They are important for all of Africa, as well as for all of the world."

Cisse estimates that what was lost in the end is less than 5 percent of the Ahmed Baba collection. Which texts were burned is not yet known.

He stresses that all the manuscripts, which date back over 700 years, are irreplaceable. They are hand-written in a variety of scripts, and include ornate illustrations embedded within the text.

The collection is itself only a portion of the estimated 101,820 manuscripts stored in private libraries here, the product of the confluence of caravan routes which passed through Timbuktu and fostered an extensive trading network, including in books. Among the most valuable are the Tarikh al-Sudan and the Tarikh al-Fattash, chronicles which describe life in Timbuktu during the Songhai empire in the 16th century.

"We lost a lot of our riches. But we were also able to save a great deal of our riches, and for that I am overcome with joy," Cisse said. "These manuscripts represent who we are.... I saved these books in the name of Timbuktu first, because I am from Timbuktu. . Then I did it for my country. And also for all of humanity. Because knowledge is for all of humanity."

Maybe this story will never get made into a Spielbergo picture, but it is an important story to remember.

PS if you're wondering about the comments, I read Jessica Stank's article on Google+ comments and decided to give it a go.  But then I read the fine print and it says you need a Google+ account or profile to comment and I'm pretty sure many of my regular commenters do not have that.  So everything old is new again!

Only Everyday Heroes 4/13

I saw this article on Yahoo! a couple months ago and when I saw the headline said Mississippi and gay marriage I assume it would be another ignorant Fox "News" type story.  Instead I was astonished to see a rural Mississippi newspaper taking a stand in support of gay marriage.

I just love the editor's response to all his bigoted readers who called in to complain about the story.  Way to stand your ground!  Those kind of journalistic principles definitely make you an Everyday Hero (though I suspect soon also unemployed).

A newspaper in rural Mississippi is defending its decision to run a cover story on what it called the first same-sex marriage in the county it serves.

On Feb. 7, the Laurel Leader-Call published the story Historic Wedding: Women wed in Laurel through smiles, tears about the wedding of Jessica Powell and Crystal Craven. Craven has been battling brain cancer. The women exchanged vows earlier this month at a ceremony in Laurel, Miss., attended by family, friends and Craven's doctors.

"If chemo doesn't work, we don't know what happens after that," Craven told the paper.
"This is true love," Powell said. "Love is love, it knows no gender."
She added: "I don't remember voting on straight marriage, so why is gay marriage an issue?"
The story sparked a backlash among readers in a state that does not legally recognize same-sex marriage.

"We shouldn't have to defend every decision we make here at the Leader-Call," Jim Cegielski, the paper's owner, wrote in an editorial published on Saturday. "However, the intense reaction to our gay wedding front page story, which led to a deluge of hate calls, letters, e-mails, Facebook posts, soundoffs and random cross stares thrown in my direction, warrants some sort of response. So here it is."

Cegielski continued:

We were well aware that the majority of people in Jones County are not in favor of gay marriage. However, any decent newspaper with a backbone can not base decisions on whether to cover a story based on whether the story will make people angry.
The job of a community newspaper is not pretending something didn't take place or ignoring it because it will upset people. No, our job is to inform readers what is going on in our town and let them make their own judgments. That is exactly what we did with the wedding story. Our reporter heard about the wedding, attended it, interviewed some of the participants and wrote a news story. If there had been protestors at the wedding, we would have covered that the exact same way … but there weren't any. We never said it was a good thing or a bad thing, we simply did our job by telling people what took place.
I took the bulk of the irate phone calls from people who called the paper to complain. Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the headline, "Historic Wedding," and the fact that we chose to put the story on the front page. My answer to the "Historic Wedding" headline is pretty simple. You don't have like something [for it] to be historic.
The holocaust, bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Black Sox scandal are all historic. I'm in no way comparing the downtown wedding of two females to any of those events, even though some of you made it quite clear that you think gay marriage is much worse.

We have stories about child molesters, murders and all kinds of vicious, barbaric acts of evil committed by heinous criminals on our front page and yet we never receive a call from anyone saying 'I don't need my children reading this.' Never. Ever. However, a story about two women exchanging marriage vows and we get swamped with people worried about their children.
I had at least 20 or so readers express to me they think gay marriage is "an abomination against God." We never said it wasn't. We never said it was.
We were simply reporting to the best of our ability. However, I can't help but be saddened by the hate-filled viciousness of many of the comments directed toward our staff … No one here deserves to be berated or yelled at simply because we were doing our job.
[Fifteen readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest, according to the Cegielski.]
You have every right to cancel your subscription. But you have no right to berate and belittle anyone on our staff.

 I really wish we had more newspapers who had balls like that.

Everyday Heroes Blogfest!

Today is the Everyday Heroes Blogfest!  The point of the blogfest is to highlight the problem of violence in our world, as evidenced by the Newtown massacre last year.  I asked those participating to write a 500-or-so word story dealing with violence.

Here's my effort:

Hero:  A Fable

As soon as he heard the first shot, Bob Silver sprung into action.  He had prepared for this moment ever since Columbine.  When he’d seen the news reports about that, he’d sworn to himself no punks would get the drop on him like that.  That same day he’d run to the gun shop to buy himself a Magnum, the kind of gun that could drop someone in one shot, not like those pansy 9mms the clerk showed him.

For years he’d spent five nights a week at the range and most of his Saturdays.  By now he could hit the target dead center six out of six times—blindfolded even.  The Magnum had become as much a part of him as his own fingers and toes.

Not all of his colleagues had felt the same way.  The liberal tree-huggers had initially petitioned the school board to prevent him from carrying the weapon on school grounds.  It couldn’t happen here, they said.  But one massacre after another—Virginia Tech, Aurora, and finally Newtown—broke down their resistance.  And now they would finally see how right he’d been all along.

He took the gun from its shoulder holster and then opened the door.  He heard a gunshot, followed by screams.  From the direction of both, the shooter had to be near the library.  Twenty years as the vice-principal had allowed Bob to memorize the school’s layout.  He trotted away from his office, towards the computer lab.

A frantic girl threw herself at him.  He couldn’t understand what she said.  “Don’t worry, sweetheart.  I’ll take care of it.”  He motioned for her to go out the back doors.  When she tried to cling to him, he had to shove her away.  “Go!”

He found the computer lab empty.  He paused as he heard another shot.  Bob hurried over to the door that connected the lab to the library.  He flattened himself against the wall.  He paused a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow.  Then he took a few breaths to steady himself.  Here we go, he told himself.  Time to show this punk who’s boss.

He opened the door slowly with one hand.  Then he peeked out the doorway.  He heard only the whimper of another girl.  Don’t worry, he tried to tell her telepathically, help is here.  As he thought this, he saw the punk emerge from behind a bookshelf.  He wore a long black coat and a gas mask.  All Bob could tell about the punk was he was tall and skinny.  It wouldn’t matter much longer.

He counted to three before he lunged through the doorway.  As he straightened, he found the barrel of the punk’s AR-15 pointed right at him.  Bob’s eyes fixed on the end of the barrel; it seemed close enough to touch.  The Magnum began to tremble in Bob’s hand.  He blinked sweat out of his eyes.  Then he felt his underwear turn warm and damp.

The pistol slipped out of his grip.  “P-p-please.  D-don’t kill me,” Bob whimpered.  He closed his eyes, but he could still see the barrel of the assault rifle in his vision.

A shot rang out.  Bob waited for the pain.  He didn’t feel anything.  Had he already gone into shock?  Had he already died?

“Got him,” a man’s voice said.  “Target is down.  Repeat, target is down.”

Bob felt a hand on his shoulder.  The same man’s voice said, “It’s all right, sir.  We got him.”

Bob opened his eyes and saw the punk sprawled on the floor.  A man similarly dressed in black with a ski mask, goggles, and helmet obscuring his face stood over Bob.  Bob got to his feet and threw himself at the policeman.  “Bless you, sir.  Bless you.”

“Just doing our job, sir.”

Moral of the story:  gunfights are best left to professionals.

Saturday I was reading Vonnegut's Deadeye Dick, where the main character accidentally shoots a pregnant woman with a rifle and gains his eponymous nickname as a sort of scarlet letter.  The woman's husband, a newspaper editor, publishes these words in his paper:

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die.  There is evil for you.  We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.  I give you a holy word: DISARM.”

Amen.

If you've contributed a story, then put your link in the comments.  I'll add them to this throughout the day.  And be sure to tell your friends!

Briane Pagel:  Violins Is Never the Answer
Cindy Borgne 
David Powers King:  A Hero's Reward 
Tony Laplume:  Gun Shot

Everyday Heroes: Solutions & More Questions

Last month I announced the Everyday Heroes Blogfest, where you can write a 500 word story about violence and help spread awareness that maybe we should like stop killing each other and stuff.  I know, controversial!  Other than me only 4 brave souls have signed up so far.

They are:

Cindy Borgne
Tony Laplume
Briane Pagel
Rusty Carl

Obviously more participation would be great.  If you're a chicken shit about talking about gun violence like one person who shall remain nameless, then don't talk about guns.  As I told him, you can talk about wombat violence for all I care.  You know, make it a parody.  Incidentally that's what I'm doing, only not with wombats.

Enrollment is still open, just let me know via a comment, email, Twitter, Facebook...I'm pretty easy to get a hold of.

Anyway, after the Newtown Massacre the cowardly NRA eventually came out with their usual spiel about how gun laws don't work and really the only way to solve the problem is to make sure everyone has guns.  To which I would say bullshit.  You don't solve the problem by introducing more of the cause of said problem.  I mean it'd be like my doctor telling me that to lose weight I need to eat more candy.  Or if we want to deal with drugs then let's get everyone hooked on heroin.  It's a patently absurd notion, yet one that a lot of people seem partial to.

I think there's another solution other than turning America into a Wild West amusement park.  If you want to get really serious about the problem then basically we need to throw a few billion to hire hundreds of thousands of more police officers.  Put cameras all over the place.  Make sure streets are adequately lit--a real problem in bankrupt cities like Detroit.  Tear down vacant structures.  I think it was on Bloomberg I watched a segment on how in Oakland they have sensors now that can detect when a bullet is fired and direct police to the location--throw a bunch of those in too.

Will that solve every problem?  No.  But it will make it a lot more difficult for maniacs to run around armed to the teeth.  Does it sound somewhat fascist?  Yes.  But the NRA alternative sounds anarchist.  So I guess you pick your poison.  My own preference is to have the guns in the hands of people trained to use them as opposed to every slack-jawed yokel running around with an AR-15 assault rifle.

But really the solution always has to come from within.  Think again of dieting.  You can pay for a personal trainer and a chef.  You can pay for some kind of food bodyguard to make sure you don't eat that pizza in the fridge.  You can get all the surgeries you want.  None of that is ever going to really work for long unless you decide you really, truly want to lose weight.  Trust me on that one.  It's the same with drugs, alcohol, and other addictions.

And in many ways I think we're addicted to violence.  I hate to sound like Tipper Gore, but jeez just look at movie theaters, video games, TV and even some forms of music.  It's all laden with violence.  I mean we're pretty much like Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" where they strap him to that chair and force him to watch all sorts of terrible imagery.  And while most of us still don't necessarily run out and buy a gun and shoot people, is it any wonder some people do?

Then it saddens me to think that I contribute to the problem.  Or I would if anyone read my books.  I mean superhero books like mine are filled with violence.  My story Chance of a Lifetime features a woman who goes on a vendetta against the mobsters who killed her, three of whom get shot and one of whom gets his throat slit.  Really all I can do is shrug and like Ahh-nold in "True Lies" say, "Yes but they were all bad."

Really since the dawn of time we've been fascinated by violent action stories.  Though back in Homer's day the violence might have been more implied.  There have always been action heroes like Achilles, Odysseus, and Herakles right on up to John MacLane in "Die Hard."  We probably enjoy those stories because most of us are not action heroes and are oppressed by The Man in its many forms.  So we like a little escapist fantasy to interrupt the drudgery of our lives.

The problem is that some people think fantasy is reality and take things too far.  And I don't think making sure everyone can have guns is going to solve that.  If anything, it will only make the problem even worse.  I mean everyone has those moments where they get pissed off and fly off the handle; those moments can become deadly if said person has a gun within reach.

Also since I'm a fan of Star Trek and the like, I think some of this problem could be overcome with better technology.  Really what we need are better nonlethal defenses.  So that instead of a carrying around an AR-15 "for protection" you could just have a really good Taser to incapacitate people instead of killing them.  Basically something like a phaser on Star Trek (only with no kill setting) would be awesome.  Then you've got "protection" without bloodshed.  Win-win!

Anyway, if we really want to have a discussion of this, here are some facts I wish the NRA would wake up to:

• You don't need an assault rifle to hunt deer.  Or to hunt anything except people.
• Unless you expect Seal Team 6 to storm your house you don't need an assault rifle and fifty clips of ammo for "protection."
• We put common sense limits on freedom all the time, like laws that say you can't drive through residential zones at 90mph, you can't drive drunk, you can't vote until you're 18, and so forth.  Just because we have those laws doesn't mean we have a totalitarian regime.
• If Israel, a country that routinely faces terrorist violence, can survive banning guns then I think we can survive banning assault rifles and giant clips.

Those are my rambling thoughts, what about you?

Everyday Heroes...the Blogfest!

A couple weeks ago I finally wrote a flash fiction piece for Tony Laplume's Project Mayhem.  Anyway, I wrote a story about the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, which gave me the idea for a new blogfest.

The Everyday Heroes Blogfest!  To borrow from Tony it requires you write a short piece (fiction or nonfiction) of let's say 500 words or less.  The topic should be about violence--gun violence or other forms is up to you.  On March 20 then you post your entry on your blog.  If there are enough entries then I'll gather them together, put them into a little book, and sell it online through my imprint.  The proceeds from that will be donated to charity--a real charity, not the Human Fund.

I put a linky list dealie at the bottom here.  The signup is until March 1st.  That should give you plenty of time to come up with something.  If the linky thing isn't working, then just tell me you're in and leave a link in the comments.

I hope you'll embrace this chance to be an Everyday Hero!

Tomorrow I talk about some Grant Morrison comics...Tony Laplume is so stoked right now!

Everyday Heroes: Public Service Announcement

I'm not going to point to a specific article or anything this month.  What with "Superstorm Sandy" last month, I'm sure there were a lot of articles about everyday heroes saving lives and property during that awful time.  Just like in 9/11 or Katrina or any other big disaster, the biggest heroes are the men and women on the front lines:  the cops, firemen, paramedics, ER doctors, and so forth you make sure people too stupid to get out of harm's way in the first place (when it's something you know is coming like a hurricane) don't pay for that idiocy with their lives.

Now Grumpy Bulldog will get on his soapbox for a moment.  A former paramedic once told me that the people most ungrateful for first responders like paramedics, fire departments, and cops aren't the big rich people but the ordinary middle-class types.  A lot of these people probably smoke from the Tea Party bag of rugged individualism...until a crisis strikes.  Then they're all "Where's the fucking cops?  Where's the fire department?  Someone help me!!!"

Brought to you by Grumpy Bulldog!

Here's the point:  you can't get help if you vote to slash funding for those services.  Or if you vote for people who will do that for you.  An extra $20 in property tax is worth it to have cops around to keep your streets safe or paramedics who can get to you quicker than a pizza delivery and don't have to worry their ambulance will breakdown when you're halfway to the hospital.  Or that you won't have to resort to the old bucket brigade when your house is on fire.

So really, let's stop talking out of both sides of our mouths on this stuff.  Let's not say, "You guys are heroes!" and then go to the polls and cut their funding.  Not all heroes are rich guys like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark.  Most of them don't make much, especially for the stress they're under.

Keep them well-funded and when the next disaster strikes you can feel confident that someone will be there to give you a helping hand when you need it.  Honor your everyday heroes by keeping them on the job.

Rant over. 

If you want to see another Everyday Hero, read this post on Briane Pagel's Thinking the Lions about a heroic candy company!

Tomorrow I review Young Hearts (Children of Eternity #3) by Claire Lachance...

Everyday Heroes Can Be Any Age

Just a reminder that today I will be on Rusty Carl's blog to discuss designing the cover.

It's time for another Everyday Hero!  The last two have involved people around me acting quickly to save lives--including mine!  This month is another story about quick thinking saving a life, only this time the quick thinker was just 11 years old!

From AOL Autos is the story of 11-year-old Jackson Bonar who was quick to take the wheel of his school bus when the driver suffered a heart attack.

An 11-year-old boy's quick thinking and heroic actions likely saved lives when a bus driver collapsed from a heart attack.

Robert Kelly collapsed while driving a school bus in Collier County, Florida, just a few blocks away from 11-year-old Jackson Bonar's house. Bonar was the last one left on the bus when he saw Kelly fall over, leaving the bus completely driverless and a serious risk to his life and others on the road. But, thankfully, Bonar knew exactly what needed to be done.

Using skills he gained from driving his family's recreational four-wheeler, Bonar grabbed the wheel of the bus, which was headed straight for a tree. He steered the bus into a much more malleable fence.

"I put my foot on the brakes, but the bus was still moving, so I turned the steering wheel [to make sure] that the airbag wouldn't go off and hurt him," Bonar said.

Bonar says that he doesn't see himself as a hero, but Kelly would like to disagree with him, according to WINK.

"Once in a while you get an extraordinary one like him, wise beyond his years," he said.

Congrats to him for his quick thinking!  And like the headline says, heroes can be any age!

To read about another young hero, buy my novel A Hero's Journey, just $2.99 in eBook format! 

Thanks to all the people who've bought it so far. You rule!

Tomorrow I review Young Family by Claire Lachance...

Everyday Heroes #4: Quick Thinking Saves Lives

For this month's Everyday Hero I'm reprinting an entry Michael Offutt wrote on his blog recently.  He and his co-workers are Everyday Heroes this month for their quick thinking in getting a co-worker to a hospital when she suffered a brain aneurysm.

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I have a friend named Joe that I haven't seen in years. We don't keep in touch anymore. He moved on, and so did I. But I remember the day Joe's dad died of a brain aneurysm. He had been working and reported that he suddenly felt a sharp pain in the back of his head. As if someone had struck him with a hammer. He made a phone call, got progressively worse within minutes of the event, and went unconscious soon after. He was dead in something like 25 minutes. It's that deadly, and that serious. Doctors reported that the vessel that burst near the back of his head caused blood to pool in the brain with such tremendous pressure, there was something like 400-pounds crushing his spinal column.

Well yesterday, I saw this happen to a woman with whom I work. It was morning, we were starting our meeting (it happens once a year and we had it at a local park), and this woman got up from her chair, staggered, and fell down next to a tree. I asked, "What's going on there?" And I was told she had a bad headache. Someone was looking in their purse for some Advil. I said, "headaches don't make people stagger like that. Where is it?" They said, "the back of her head." I said, "I think this is very serious." When I said that, the Manager in charge, dropped everything and acted upon it.

Someone went over, helped the lady to the car, and started driving her to the hospital. It got worse and worse and they called an ambulance. I found out later that day that she indeed had suffered a brain aneurysm. But because of swift thinking on everyone's part, and being in the heart of Salt Lake City where there are excellent medical facilities and some of the best neurosurgeons in the country, she has (I think) a good chance of beating this thing. At least I hope so.

My point in telling you this is not to scare you. But it is to tell you first-hand from someone that has now been around this thing twice, if you or someone you are watching complains of a sudden, severe headache that starts at the back of the head (like someone hit them with a hammer), and it's staggering, you need to drop everything RIGHT NOW. This is a life and death situation. Don't dismiss it. Don't go and grab some Advil or some Excedrin. And don't say, "this person must be faking this as a joke." You call 911 without hesitation.

Just as a disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional. I don't have medical training. But I know what I've seen, and I'm passing it on to you.

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Good job with the quick thinking there, guys!  That's how you too can be an Everyday Hero.  As I said last month, when someone is in distress, don't just stand there like an idiot.  Get involved!  I mean come on, you'd never see Batman just standing there while someone's dying, right?

Tomorrow I review The Changing Seasons by Paul L. Madden...