6-Year-Old Girl with Brain Cancer Hid Love Notes for Her Parents to Find After Her Death

I sure did -- hopped into my kangaroo suit (no pun intended), filled the pouch with candy and spent all night dancing around Main Street giving it out to kids.  They ran up for hugs, posed with me as their parents snapped pictures...I even got one toddler who was shy to run up for a hug!

Over the course of the night I got called a bear, a tiger, a rat...and one possessive little girl even told people I was "her" new pet bunny; sheesh!

It was wonderful though.  However, I think I'll go back to COLLECTING candy in addition to giving it out next year; what can I say, regardless how old you are Halloween just ain't the same if you can't sit in front of the TV late into the night prying into a massive stash of your loot!

GET ME DOWN FROM HERE!!!
 


 

Midwest Furfest sounds like an awfully fun (and BIG!) con...does anyone happen to know where people usually post to enquire about possible roomshare openings?  The MFF website itself, the MFF Livejournal community (if there is one), or even the Fursuitlounge?

Living here in Tatooine (I mean Vacaville...thanks for the joke, Hyenagirl!) we -- or at least I -- really get to missing that nice wet stuff plummeting from the sky by Summer's end.  And as I guess all of you Eastern folks are reading in the news right about now, the rains have come back upon us Californians, if only for a few days, with a fury that makes just stepping outside a thrill to send shivers down your spine!

And you know what that means: flooded farm roads, WEEEEE!  Anyone happen to have a car snorkel on them?

...And, flooded farms!  Yes, just yesterday that lake you're looking at was a FARM!

Now of course obligatory dancing in the rain was called for...especially now that I finally bought my first RAINCOAT in 14 years!  But I didn't bother to post that again here, that would be downright redundant...I already posted THAT here, so you get the idea!

http://www.asianrice.tv/media/Nodame-Cantabile-Episode-5/268/part/2  

I'd never seen it before, but it's apparently a comedy series about the love between two very talented music students from very different walks of life.  One of them, the titular character "Nodame", was supposed to put on an orchestra -- so she decided to lead a performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" dressed in a GIANT MONGOOSE COSTUME!

I love that kind of spirit in a person -- such a fun-loving view of life and such a love of making other people laugh as much as their own heart does, that they don't mind in the least shocking everyone by stepping out into even a formal setting dressed like that (or give a darn if some people think they're a total oddball for it)!

...So remember next time you run into a mongoose on the street: if you listen long enough, he just might play a lovely tune for you!

In the 1950s and '60s, experts across the planet held their breath for a massive die-off due in developing nations.  They were of the opinion that this was the only possible consequence of a skyrocketing human population which they felt providing enough food for was simply impossible.

Enter Norman Borlaug.  An unassuming Iowa farm boy who had initially pursued a career in forestry -- at one point spending months alone in the Idaho Rockies, he eventually turned to an academic career in plant pathology and genetics in which he successfully developed a unique strain of wheat.  This new strain was drought- and disease-resistant, and gave a much higher yield than traditional wheat varieties.  Borlaug instantly recognized that this could be the solution to the food crisis that many felt was inevitable.

Many a scientist would have just been content to sit back and see their discovery slowly catch on.  But not Norman Borlaug.  He left the comfort of his own home behind and went to the poorest corners of the world to personally oversee the planting of his new variety across formerly untenable lands...and between the 1960s and '70s, Pakistan, India, China and Mexico were successfully implementing his solution.  He spent the remainder of his life attempting to get these high-yield agricultural methods adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as educating a younger generation of agricutural scientists and speaking out across the world against the unnecessary plight of mass hunger.

The experiment, dubbed the "Green Revoluton", was a success: the dramatic world food crisis that had been feared was averted, and many estimates claim that 1 billion lives were saved because of his work.  1 billion -- just think of that.  Even saving a single person, a single child means everything in the world to not only that person, bbut  everyone else in that person's life: their parents, spouse, children, and everyone their  own life's work in turn touches.  Imagine the unparallelled fulfillment of knowing that you've saved one starving child from dying...and then multiply that a billion-fold.  If that isn't a crusade to be remembered, I don't know what is.  And as if that wasn't enough, the higher yield of his crops meant that millions of square miles of forestlands were also spared from being cleared for additional farmlands.

In recognition of his work, he was awarded among other honors the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970 in recognition of the many wars that would unquestionably have ensued in competition for dwindling resources had he not prevented this shortage.  He wasn't only a brilliant innovator, but a person with the determination to do all he could to put his ideas in the service of  those who needed it most.  And many, many lives are indebted to that undeterrable spirit of altruism.  He was also, by all counts, a very nice person.

Thank you, Norman Borlaug.  The world needs more like you.