Quiver Full of Good in the World

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

An Arkansas woman who inherited a good portion of a local cemetery put them to good use

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It was a most unusual inheritance: Ruth Coker Burks said she was given 262 plots in a historic cemetery, after a family feud pitted her mother against her uncle: "My mother got in a huge argument with her brother when I was 10, and bought all the remaining spaces in the family cemetery so he and his family couldn't be buried with the rest of us. That was the meanest thing she could think to settle the score.

"What am I gonna do with a cemetery? You know, a nice ring or watch, but not a cemetery!"

The plots sat mostly unused until the AIDS crisis hit Hot Springs, Arkansas.  "Death and I got to be old friends," she said.

When asked how many people were buried there, Coker Burks replied, "There are over 40 here." She admits her memories are a little fuzzy, and maybe that's not so bad. "Back then it was just incomprehensible that this would go on and on and on, but it did," she said. 

 

[mango_fandango]

I’ve seen a few stories about people leaving angry notes on ambulance windscreens (usually complaining that the ambulance is blocking their driveway), which are always horrible to read. This girl left 12 kind notes on various emergency vehicles, as well as chocolate bars! 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/50646075

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

The Army did good

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The United States Military Academy at West Point removed a motto from a spirit flag used by the school's football team because of its connection to hate groups.

The letters GFBD, which stand for “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t,” were emblazoned on a skull and crossbones flag the academy says had been used since the mid-1990s to emphasize teamwork, loyalty and toughness.

The administration at the academy was made aware that the phrase also is associated with extremist groups. The change was made in early September after an internal investigation.

Awaiting the fornicate face rage tweeting over this.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"She never attended a university, but her estate will give nearly $10 million to community colleges"

Spoiler

Money was scarce when Eva Gordon graduated from her Oregon high school, and attending college was not an option. But her fortune, amassed over decades of investing what little money she could scrape from her paychecks, will enable students at 17 community colleges to fulfill the dream that she had to forgo.

“Eva had a tremendous heart and liked to throw a rope to help people climb,” John Jacobs, her godson and a representative for her estate, said in a statement.

Gordon left nearly $10 million to community and technical colleges in western Washington state when she died in June 2018 at age 105. Each college’s foundation will receive roughly $550,000 to help students pay for housing, transportation, books and other needs in a state where many community college students also have jobs and family responsibilities.

Gordon grew up on an orchard and graduated high school at the top of her class, according to Jacobs’s statement. She then worked as a legal secretary and as a trading assistant for a Seattle investment firm.

With each paycheck, Jacobs told the Seattle Times, his godmother bought partial shares in oil companies, Seattle utility companies and other businesses. In addition to being thrifty, Gordon was an early investor in Nordstrom, Microsoft and Starbucks, Jacobs told the Guardian.

With her husband, whom she married in 1964, Gordon taught classes at McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington. Ed, a stockbroker, taught business practices, and Gordon led warm-up exercises.

The couple did not have children. When Ed died in 2008, he left more than $3 million to South Seattle College in a display of the dedication to higher education that he and Gordon shared.

Gordon wished later in her life that she had attended college, Jacobs told the Guardian. That unfulfilled desire, combined with her volunteer work for children’s and educational programs, may have contributed to her decision to leave her wealth to colleges, Jacobs said.

Although college officials said Gordon’s gift — announced this month — is among the largest donations that they have received, Jacobs told the Times that his godmother did not flaunt her money. She dressed well, he said, but drove older cars.

“A lot of people didn’t know the wealth she had,” Jacobs said in the statement. “If there was a coupon for two-for-one at Applebee’s, she was all about that.”

At Renton Technical College, Gordon’s gift will be used to confer scholarships and grants upon students with financial and other barriers to attendance. The funds will help pay for tuition and other education-related expenses, as well as for financial emergencies, Renton said in a statement.

A representative of Shoreline Community College told the Times that it plans to put some of its gift into scholarships for new students. Most of the college’s scholarships currently go to students who have completed at least one semester, Mary Brueggeman, vice president of advancement, told the Times.

Gordon’s gift comes as Washington and some of its cities try to lessen the financial burden of attending college, the Times reported. State legislators in May passed a law that will make 110,000 low-to median-income students each year eligible for financial aid to attend the state’s public or private universities. In Seattle, graduates of public high schools now can go to any of three community colleges for two years tuition-free.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Arkansas cop buys groceries for family after dad is charged with shoplifting food"

Spoiler

Kenneth Martin, a field training officer for the Fort Smith Police Department in Arkansas, was at Walmart buying footballs and basketballs to donate to his town’s Toys for Tots program when the call came in on his radio.

A man and woman had been detained for attempting to shoplift groceries from the same store Martin was shopping in on Fort Smith’s Zero Street.

Martin, 50, walked to the front of the store that day, Nov. 30, and was saddened by what he saw.

A nervous young couple was talking to a store loss-prevention agent as their two little girls watched from a shopping cart. The children appeared to be about 2 and 4 years old, he said. They watched quietly as the security employee told Martin that the couple hadn’t scanned about half of the items they’d bagged at the self-checkout, including canned goods, pasta, ground beef and a teddy bear.

After the employee said that the store had decided to press shoplifting charges against the man, but not his wife, Martin carried the allegedly stolen items to the customer service desk.

His body cam was rolling. The video, which has been shared all over the Internet since it was posted in recent days by a Fort Smith city employee, shows what happened next:

“Ring it all up again so I can pay for it,” Martin is heard telling two customer service clerks. “They’re stealing food, and they’ve got kids. I have to take him to jail, but I don’t have to make the kids think I’m an a******.”

The video then shows Martin returning $30 worth of groceries and the teddy bear to the woman, telling her, “I took care of these for you, okay? I understand this is food and things that you need, but if y’all need help, ask for help, okay? Don’t do this, not with babies.”

Later, as he drove the arrested man to jail in his patrol car, Martin told him something similar, he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

“I felt bad for the guy and told him, ‘Look, I understand what you’re doing, but you guys need to go about this in a different way,’ ” Martin recalled. “I told him that if the store had decided to prosecute both of them, child protective services would have been called, and there would be nothing I could do about it.”

Martin, who has worked in law enforcement for 16 years, is softhearted by nature, according to those he works with.

“Officer Martin realizes that everyone has their own struggles in life,” said Aric Mitchell, a public information officer for the Fort Smith Police Department. “He doesn’t ever really count anybody out.”

It's a lesson Martin said he's taken to heart because he's been there.

“I’ve been a young parent, wondering where I was going to stretch that nickel to,” he said. “And when I was growing up, I learned that when a mom and dad don’t have the means, you don’t let the kids suffer.”

“If I see somebody down on their luck, I’ll try to help them however I can, and I’m not the only one,” he added. “There are thousands and thousands of officers who do the same thing every day and never get any recognition for it.”

Martin was recognized for his kindness because an off-duty police officer shopping at the same Walmart that day learned what had happened and later nominated him for the police department’s January employee of the month.

“Field Training Officer Martin is a wonderful example of what we all strive for,” the anonymous officer wrote. “Let’s use his example of kindness to treat each other better in 2020.”

Although Martin is somewhat bewildered by the praise, he said that’s an initiative he’ll proudly stand behind.

“We see people at their best and their worst, sometimes in the same call,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t make the best choices, that doesn’t mean their children should suffer. There are a lot of people in need. Sometimes, even a small kindness can make a big difference.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

10 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

I'm not crying...you're crying!

[fraurosena]

Just a small example of what people — strangers even!— can do if they work together.

 

[47of74]

There was some good news yesterday

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A U.S. Coast Guard officer accused of stockpiling weapons and compiling a hit list of government and media figures was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors said Lt. Christopher Hasson was inspired by racist murder cases and "intended to exact retribution on minorities and those he considered traitors." If not for the actions of law enforcement, said U.S. Attorney Robert Hur, "we now would be counting bodies of the defendant's victims instead of years of the defendant's prison time."

Investigators said they considered Hasson a domestic terrorist, but there are no such charges in the federal system. For that reason, the case was an example of the difficulty prosecutors face when law enforcement action may have prevented potential attacks. His lawyers, however, said the government vastly overstated the threat.

"There is little if any doubt he was planning a mass casualty assault to further his white nationalist views," said US District Court Judge George Hazel. But Hazel said Hasson "is not being sentenced for his views. He's been sentenced for the actions he was planning."

I hope he enjoys prison. 

[47of74]

Someone stuck it to a Reich wing fuck knob 

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The kids seem to be quite alright with their ability to take down figures of hate like the odious Katie Hopkins. It hasn't been a great week for Ms. Hopkins. Yesterday she also had her Twitter account permanently banned for hate speech. She had over a million followers, and Trump had retweeted her several times.

YouTuber Josh Pieters has revealed that he pranked far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins by flying her to Prague and presenting her with a fake award. Hopkins, who is frequently retweeted by President Trump and was recently suspended on Twitter, was awarded with the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, abbreviated as C.U.N.T. And if you think that’s mean, just wait until you hear her hate-filled acceptance speech for the award.

Pieters flew from his home in London to Prague and set up hidden cameras to capture the prank from a number of angles before Hopkins got there. Hopkins, who has previously echoed Nazi language by tweeting about the need for a “final solution” to the problem of terrorism, never seems to understand that the YouTuber’s banquet is a joke.

“We made Katie Hopkins fly 1,600 miles and accept a fake award and put the word ‘cunt’ behind her without her noticing,” Pieters says in the video. “You might wonder if this is a bit mean. For a moment I did too. But then she made her speech and told us what she really thought.”

 

[RosyDaisy]

Best prank ever!?  The bitch deserved it!

[front hugs > duggs]

An 8-year-old boy paid off the lunch debt for his entire school by selling key chains

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You may have heard of celebrities or multibillion-dollar companies donating money to cover students' lunch debt. But Keoni Ching from Vancouver, Washington, is just your normal 8-year-old who wanted to help his schoolmates.

With his handmade key chains that go for $5 each, Keoni raised $4,015 to erase the lunch debt of students from his school and six others.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"A couple flew home with their adopted infant. Strangers threw an impromptu baby shower on the plane."

Spoiler

It had been nine long years of fertility treatments, miscarriages and adoption stress, but Dustin and Caren Moore finally were on a flight home with their adopted baby girl in their arms. They nervously cradled their daughter, who was just 8 days old.

Midflight from Colorado to California on Nov. 9, Dustin Moore realized that the baby needed a diaper change. A Southwest Airlines flight attendant named Jenny led the couple to a space where they could change their slightly fussy newborn.

“Jenny and another passenger complimented my beautiful daughter and politely asked what had prompted a flight with such a young infant,” he wrote in a Twitter thread this week. “I gave them the shortened adoption story, to which they hastily offered congratulations, and shared a few more kind remarks.”

Back in their seats, a flight attendant named Bobby approached the Moores, inquiring about their little girl. When he left, Dustin Moore, 33, and Caren Moore, 35, looked at each other, confused about the attendant’s interest.

“Five minutes later, Bobby came on the intercom and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a very special guest on the flight today. She’s only 8 days old and she’s traveling home with her mom and dad,’ ” Moore said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The flight attendant announced that he’d be passing out napkins and pens for anyone who wanted to jot down a message for the new parents. The cabin erupted into cheers and applause. A steady stream of people came by to coo and congratulate the couple.

“We had no expectation they would have done something like that,” said Dustin Moore, his voice cracking. “I get choked up thinking about it.”

One of the napkins read: “I was adopted 64 years ago. Thank you for giving this child a loving family to be part of. Us adopted kids need a little extra love. Congratulations.”

The crew collected all of the napkins and read a few of them aloud.

After more applause, the flight attendants bundled the 60 napkins and gave them to the Moores, along with a set of pilot wings. The flight attendants also told the Moores they themselves are married, and a fellow flight attendant had done this for them while they were on their honeymoon. They wanted to pay it forward.

“What all of those perfect strangers and attendants did not know, was the emotionally tender state of two brand-new parents. Parents who after 9 years of trying had been blessed with their first child. Parents who felt scared, but determined in their new role,” Dustin Moore wrote on Twitter.

The Moores, who adopted their baby through an agency, were at the hospital in Colorado when the birth mother delivered. The adoption process is stressful and worrisome, Dustin Moore said, which made the celebration on the plane even more meaningful.

“Adoption is wild with uncertainty,” he said. “You wonder, is this birth mother going to choose us? What happens if she changes her mind, if she backs out?”

He said he tears up just thinking about the plane ride home because of the overwhelming support they felt at a time when they were also worried that their daughter might somehow be stigmatized.

“For an entire crew of strangers to come together like that, to partake like that, to show us that kind of love and kindness meant everything to us,” he said.

When they got home to Buena Park in Orange County, Dustin Moore contacted the airline to let it know about the gesture. His mother made the napkin notes into a book so the couple could preserve the advice and good wishes for her granddaughter.

Southwest Airlines released a statement Wednesday saying, in part, that the crew showed “kindness and heart” on that flight. “We join in the new parents’ joy and wish them a lifetime of love and baby snuggles,” the statement said.

Dustin Moore, who is a registered dietitian, is working toward a doctorate in public health at the University of California at Irvine and is also a graduate program coordinator at California State University at Long Beach. He said he was fuming on Sunday about something that happened at work, and considered writing about it on Twitter. But then he thought better of it.

“I said to myself, ‘How about pointing out something good?’ ” he said. “I was tired of going to my Twitter feed and seeing something horrible somebody had done. I wanted to contribute something uplifting.”

So he wrote about the flight, and people immediately started reacting, many telling their own adoption story. He said he and his wife were floored by all the comments, and grateful for the personal moments people shared.

Moore said their baby, whose name they decided not to share publicly, is thriving and has completely captivated them.

“It’s just amazing having a daughter,” he said. “All the little details that are mundane to other people are amazing to us. When she burps, we’re like, ‘What an accomplishment!’ It was a long, long wait for her, but every minute we had to wait was worth it.”

 

[47of74]

White supremacists being put where they belong.  Behind bars. 

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Sixty-four white supremacists have been sentenced to a combined total of 820 years' imprisonment in what is believed to be the largest collective prosecution of white supremacists in the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas.

On Thursday, Garry Cody Jones, 51, was sentenced to over 11 years in prison for his role in a drug dealing scheme, marking the 64th and final hearing in the second round of sentencing for a series of kidnapping and drug-related conspiracies involving hate groups.

"Not only do white supremacist gangs endorse repugnant ideologies, they also facilitate a violent drug and gun trade, putting our citizens in grave danger," U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox said in a press release. "We were alarmed – but not necessarily surprised – at the quantities of drugs and firearms recovered during this investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to dismantle these organizations, disrupt their criminal activities, and put their members behind bars."

Other defendants were charged with offenses ranging from threats to violent assaults. In one instance, a suspected neo-Nazi had "attempted to run over officers during his arrest."

Course it would be nicer if each one of these idiots got 820 years in prison each. 

[47of74]

Some good news out of Germany

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As a soccer match between German teams Preussen Munster and Würzburger Kickers went into its final minutes, a defender from the Kickers, 23-year-old Leroy Kwadwo, stopped to point out a problem in the stands.

A Munster fan was making monkey noises at Kwadwo, a black player of Ghanaian descent. It was a clearly racist heckling—an issue that has publicly plagued the international sport in various venues, even as recently as last week. But this time, the response from the crowd far outshined the racist in the stands.

First, the man was quickly identified by his fellow Munster fans and ejected from the game. While stewards escorted him from the stadium, the crowd chanted, "Nazis out! Nazis out!"

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"This man broke a hip while mowing his lawn. The EMTs who responded finished his yardwork."

Spoiler

Harold Storelee, 88, is a man who likes to keep his house and yard tidy. When he was cutting his grass one morning last week, he fell. He was unable to get up for about four hours and was out of view of passersby.

Three middle school boys walking by his home in Rochester, Wash., on Friday heard his cries and flagged down a car to call 911.

An ambulance rushed to the scene, and three emergency responders from the West Thurston Regional Fire Authority took Storelee to a hospital. He had broken a hip.

The trio of firefighter EMTs spent the rest of the day racing to car accidents and other calamities. At about 5 p.m., as things calmed down, firefighter EMT Alexander Trautman looked at his two co-workers and asked whether they would be up for going back to Storelee’s house to finish his lawn.

“There was no hesitation from anybody,” said Trautman, who has worked for the West Thurston department, near Olympia, for about 10 years. “We talked to our lieutenant and captain, and they were 100 percent behind it.”

So he and fellow firefighter EMTs Miranda Panuska and Garrett Bromley headed back to the partially mowed lawn and spent about an hour mowing, sweeping and tidying up, Trautman said.

“We knew he’d be down for a while,” Trautman said. “We figured the least we could do was go back and help out.”

Storelee’s grandson Aiden Martin said his grandfather has lived alone since his grandmother passed away five years ago. He said the lawn is his grandfather’s “pride and joy of the house.”

Martin posted a photo of his grandfather on Twitter, as well as a photo of the firefighter EMTs, which was taken by neighbor Cheryl Jones. Martin wrote: “My granddad fell this morning while mowing the lawn and broke his hip. The EMT’s that took him to the hospital came back and finished his job for him.”

Trautman said he remembered Storelee from a call about a year ago when Storelee had fallen off a ladder.

“We were familiar with him,” Trautman said. “He’s a really, really nice guy, the kind of guy who would never ask for help in any way, shape or form.”

Trautman said he and his co-workers are encouraged to help people beyond rendering medical aid.

“We’ve done similar things before. We look at it like a family community. I’ve seen people with broken porches and replaced a couple of boards,” he said. “If we see someone in need, we can go help and buy them groceries, and the department will refund us our money.”

Martin said that, while in the hospital, his grandfather was somewhat confused because of the medication he was given, but that he was happy to learn his lawn had been mowed.

He added that his grandfather needed hip surgery after the fall and is doing physical therapy to help him start walking again.

Robert W. Scott, operations chief for the West Thurston Regional Fire Authority, said his department’s 33 staff and 20 volunteers “are empowered to feel part of the community.”

“They were compelled to go back and take care of the job he was doing,” Scott said about the firefighter lawn mowers. “They wanted to do the right thing.”

He added that two of the three seventh-graders who found Storelee after hearing him moaning in pain initially didn’t tell their parents about their good deed because they were afraid they would get in trouble. As it turns out, they were not where they were supposed to be.

Two of the boys — Colby Dunkin and Hayden Lewis — were to go straight to the Boys & Girls Club after school, but instead they decided to walk a third friend — Adam Dillon — home first, something they didn’t have their parents’ permission to do.

“Me and Colby were supposed to be going to the Boys & Girls Club, but we thought we would be a little sneaky and walk Adam home first,” said Hayden, 12.

As the boys walked by Storelee’s home, they heard him yelling “Help me,” so they walked inside his fence to check on him, Hayden said. At first Hayden hesitated to walk into Storelee’s yard.

“I decided I’m not going to run away,” Hayden said. “I’m going to help this old guy who is asking for help.”

Once Hayden saw Storelee on the ground, he realized he needed to get an ambulance, so he and Adam flagged down a car and asked the driver to call 911, he said.

Bridget Lewis, Hayden’s mother, said she didn’t find out about what her son had done until Monday, three days after it happened.

“Hayden is not in trouble because he helped save a man’s life,” Lewis said. “But we did have a talk about following rules.”

 

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

Being dragged through the mud gets a whole new dimension.

 

[GreyhoundFan]