Survivalist donates his stash of 'doomsday' food to Puerto Rico

Joe Badame was feeling pretty low. The 72-year-old recently lost his wife, and his house was in foreclosure. An estate auction was underway as part of the foreclosure, and Badame watched his worldly possessions slip away.

But he didn't want to lose all the food. He and his late wife Phyllis had constructed an underground 'doomsday' bunker beneath their home (8500 square feet!) large enough to shelter 100 people. Outfitted with kerosene refrigerators, coal furnaces, and lead walls, Badame spent decades stocking the bunker with barrels of dried and preserved food. 

The day of the estate sale, Tony and Tori's food truck was on hand to feed the crowd. Badame learned that the food truck's sales were going to help Tori's family in Puerto Rico. Tori's family was safe, but homeless and hungry in Arecibo following Hurricane Maria. Badame gave Tori $100, then showed her the bunker.

He then donated all the food barrels, about a hundred of them, containing rice, beans, flour, powdered eggs, and dry milk. Each barrel holds enough food for 84 people to live for four months on 2,000 calories a day. The barrels will ship to Puerto Rico starting Monday.

So the doomsday Badame expected never arrived. But his stored food will be eaten by people thousands of miles away surviving a different kind of doomsday. 

This Cat in the Hat gives free birthday parties to kids who wouldn't have one otherwise

About six years ago, Meg Yunn was working as the director of volunteer services at a small college near Pittsburgh. She sat with 12-year-old Beverly at a local youth program to help the girl with her vocabulary homework. One of the words was 'accustomed' and Meg used the word in a sentence, something on the order of "When people are at a birthday party, they are accustomed to eating cake." Beverly looked confused and told Meg she'd never had a birthday party or a slice of birthday cake.

Meg was shocked. The mother of three burst into tears on her way home from work and told her husband she had to do something about it.

Within a year, Meg left her job and started "Beverly's Birthdays," a non-profit, using $2500 seed money from contest winnings. Beverly's Birthdays' mission is to partner with local agencies to offer free birthday parties (including cake, favors, and gifts) for children who are poor, homeless, or for other reasons would not celebrate their birthday. The 43 Pittsburgh-area agencies who have partnered with Meg on this project include homeless shelters, schools, and social-service agencies, and donations come in from both individuals and corporations.

Now including over 200 volunteers, Beverly's Birthdays hosts 120 group birthday parties a year in the Pittsburgh area. This spreads the fun over 2,000 children and guests, each and every year. Meg still gets into the thick of things, donning her Cat in the Hat costume and handing out donated gifts to the birthday boys and girls.

Meg and Beverly's Birthdays didn't stop at group birthday parties. Working with local food banks, they also offer birthdays-in-a-bag for families to take home, complete with balloons, cake mix, and candles. Birthday boxes are available for schools too, for those occasions where families don't have the means to send in something to celebrate in the classroom. And recently, Beverly’s Birthdays began to host baby showers for new mothers who might not otherwise have one.

All because one woman listened to the pain behind a child's words.

Once bullied for her love of bugs, 8-year-old co-authors scientific paper

Before I start, please check out a piece I wrote a while back. It's the 'teaser' for this fan club's upcoming magazine issue. I hope it brings a smile to your face. British Beatles Fan Club: All I Need Is Love…and The Beatles

Now, onto my blog. 
Eight-year-old Sophia Spencer adores bugs. Grasshoppers are her particular favorite, and she was often seen giving one a ride on her shoulder. Classmates made fun of her for this habit, calling her weird and gross for her love of insects. Sophia's mom Nicole, didn't want Sophia to turn from her natural interest because of the teasing. In fact, she wanted to encourage Sophia's passion. She wrote to the Entomological Society of Canada (ESC) for support, hoping for penpal for her daughter. 

ESC did one better. A tweet went out to their membership. 

A young girl who loves insects is being bullied & needs our support. DM your email; we'll connect you! #BugsR4Girls pic.twitter.com/kjtfSJSlre

— Ent Soc of Canada (@CanEntomologist) 

Responses poured in, giving both Nicole and Sophia assurance that a bug-loving girl was not weird, that it was in fact totally cool. Then Sophia joined forces with an entomology grad student named Morgan Jackson. Together, they wrote a paper about how to use Twitter to promote women in science. So yes, this formerly ostracized 8-year-old has a publication credit to her name. 

Let's hope her classmates don't bug her anymore. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) 

Cake-decorating stranger saves a wedding cake from disaster

Like other engaged couples, Millie and Matt wanted their wedding day to be special. Millie, an avid and accomplished baker, decided to personalize their day by making the wedding cake herself. She created a three-level beauty of a cake, fully decorated and anchored with dowels and rigid bases between the layers.

But a hot day and heavy traffic on the way to the hotel reception site wreaked havoc on the buttercream and fondant, causing the entire middle layer to collapse when Matt lifted it from the car. Millie was prepared to accept the damage and enjoy the day anyway, but Matt felt horrible. He repeatedly apologized. Nothing Millie could say calmed his sense of guilt.

It so happened that Clare Vaz was in the same hotel at that time, delivering a batch of cupcakes. The owner of a bakery, Clare was approached by a hotel manager. He told her of the damaged wedding cake and asked if she might be able to help. She said she would do her best to restore the cake to its former beauty.

And she did, even though it meant she needed to drop everything and devote hours to the task. To date, she still hasn't met the delighted bride and groom and hasn't asked to be paid for her time. She was just happy to restore a lovely cake to celebrate Millie and Matt's wedding day.

Dancing away the hurricane

Osceola County Deputy James Froelich was stationed at a shelter during Hurricane Irma. He was charged with making sure everyone stayed safe and calm while the storm raged outside. 

He noticed a frail elderly woman sitting alone, looking worried. He approached and asked her what he could do to help her feel more comfortable. Her response: dance. So he took her hand and they danced. He even provided the music, singing Bobby Darin's Beyond the Sea while the two swayed. 

A fellow evacuee captured their dance on video. The shared dance and the smile it brought to the woman's face says it all. 

Florida man gives a stranger his generator, then Lowe's gives him one for free

Pam Brekke of Sanford Florida did what many Floridians did before Hurricane Irma - she prepared. A generator was tops on Pam's list to maintain her elderly father's oxygen supply in the event of a power failure. She waited in line at the nearest Lowe's, about 30 miles from her home, to buy one of their 200+ generators. The customer in front of her got the last one. Brekke burst into tears.

Ramon Santiago of Orlando had a generator already in his cart. He was walking through the store picking up other items he needed when he saw Brekke break down and cry. Because English isn't his first language, he did not understand the details, just that Brekke needed a generator and didn't have one. He had planned to buy the generator to help his mother take care of his two aged grandmothers, but he offered the generator in his cart to Brekke. She accepted it with hugs and thanks.

Unbeknownst to Santiago and Brekke, Nancy Alvarez, a WFTV morning newscaster who happened to be in line behind Brekke, saw the whole transaction and filmed it with her smartphone. She shared the story on the station's social media within hours. It went viral.

Santiago wasn't aware of it until he walked into a doctor's office several hours later and the nurses stood and applauded him. And it got better. Lowe's management learned Santiago's identity and tracked him down when a new shipment of generators came in. They gave him one for free, their thanks for his kindness to a stranger in need.

LOC research day

In an effort to accurately portray era events in my novel-in-progress, I spent Wednesday conducting research at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. What a treasure trove we Americans have at our disposal - all open and free for the asking.

Beginning a couple weeks ago, I spent hours on the LOC website, scouring their archive. Some documents and images I was interested in were readily available on their website, while others were identified as 'available on site' at the LOC. For those items, I jotted down LOT numbers and contacted librarians in the Photographs room and Newspapers room by email and gave them the date of my planned visit. Within 24 hours, they responded to let me know the items were available and would be waiting for me upon arrival. And they were.

In one (very) long day, I saved over 300 images and newspaper articles onto my memory stick. Obviously I haven't had time to sift through them all, but some of my amazing preliminary finds include:

1. A private photo album of a Lebensborn home in Steinhoring, near Munich;

2. Two full-sized Nazi propaganda posters;

3. The apparent lack of any mention of the events of Kristallnacht in the Munich newspaper in the days following the violence.

In contrast, the New York Times was chock full of articles, op-eds, and letters to the editor for days.

Talk about the value of free press. Wow.

After I sift through the overwhelming volume of material obtained, I'll integrate relevant details and facts into my story's backdrop. My hope is to accurately portray what it must have been like to be 15 years old in Munich in 1938.

The Cajun Navy rides again

In a previous post on this blog, I reported on the unheralded rescue efforts of the self-proclaimed Cajun Navy during flooding in Louisiana in August 2016.  In the overwhelming aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas last week, the Cajun Navy rode again. Private boat owners, many from Louisiana, drove their own vehicles, towing their boats to areas of need. This shot of a highway exit ramp laden with volunteers and their boats warms my heart. Our own Dunkirk. 

Small boats made a huge difference. The scale of destruction, the speed of rising water, and the number of people needing help across such a large area completely overwhelmed local emergency services. These volunteers with their bass boats, airboats, and inboard/outboard motors supported the local effort with timely help and manpower. And boats, of course.

We're told that rescues totaled in the thousands over a period of days. It's unclear how many people were rescued by official emergency services, and how many by volunteers like the Cajun Navy. I doubt those who were rescued would make a distinction. A hero is a hero. Humanity at its best.

DIY writers retreat

I've just returned home from a DIY writers' retreat. This was the second time my friend Hildy Morgan and I traveled to the shore to carve out a time away, a time dedicated to concentrated effort on our works-in-progress. No meals to prep, no laundry or dirty floors calling, no weeds or seeds or countless other needs of home vying for attention. Just stories - telling them, discussing them, dissecting them, writing them. Hildy is a perfect partner for such a retreat.

Stories flowed as we watched the rising sun transform the visible world, the churning sea at first steel gray, then touched with a glowing band of red, then coral, then gold, until the full sun danced silver-white on the water. Who wouldn't be inspired?

In the days away, I wrote 5000+ words on my novel-in-progress, the sequel to Risking Exposure. That places me about two-thirds done with the first draft, on target with my goal - finish the first draft by year's end.

Next week, I head to Washington DC for a research day at the Library of Congress. I'll keep you posted.