Pete Kaiser has become the latest Alaska Native to win the Iditarod dog sled race.

Kaiser won the race for the first time early Wednesday, crossing the finish line in Nome after beating back a challenge from the defending champion, Norwegian musher Joar Ulsom.

 

Crowds cheered and clapped as Kaiser came off the Bering Sea ice and mushed down Nome’s main street to the famed burled arch finish line.

 

The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) race began March 3 north of Anchorage.

 

Kaiser, who is Yupik, is from the southwest Alaska community of Bethel.

 

Four other Alaska Native mushers have won the race, including John Baker, an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, in 2011.

 

Kaiser will receive $50,000 and a new pickup truck for the victory.

 
…

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Pete Kaiser has become the latest Alaska Native to win the Iditarod dog sled race.

Kaiser won the race for the first time early Wednesday, crossing the finish line in Nome after beating back a challenge from the defending champion, Norwegian musher Joar Ulsom.

 

Crowds cheered and clapped as Kaiser came off the Bering Sea ice and mushed down Nome’s main street to the famed burled arch finish line.

 

The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) race began March 3 north of Anchorage.

 

Kaiser, who is Yupik, is from the southwest Alaska community of Bethel.

 

Four other Alaska Native mushers have won the race, including John Baker, an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, in 2011.

 

Kaiser will receive $50,000 and a new pickup truck for the victory.

 
…

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Pete Kaiser has become the latest Alaska Native to win the Iditarod dog sled race.

Kaiser won the race for the first time early Wednesday, crossing the finish line in Nome after beating back a challenge from the defending champion, Norwegian musher Joar Ulsom.

Crowds cheered and clapped as Kaiser came off the Bering Sea ice and mushed down Nome’s main street to the famed burled arch finish line.

The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) race began March 3 north of Anchorage.

 

Kaiser, who is Yupik, is from the southwest Alaska community of Bethel.

Four other Alaska Native mushers have won the race, including John Baker, an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, in 2011.

 

Kaiser will receive $50,000 and a new pickup truck for the victory.

 

 
…

your ads here!

Pete Kaiser has become the latest Alaska Native to win the Iditarod dog sled race.

Kaiser won the race for the first time early Wednesday, crossing the finish line in Nome after beating back a challenge from the defending champion, Norwegian musher Joar Ulsom.

Crowds cheered and clapped as Kaiser came off the Bering Sea ice and mushed down Nome’s main street to the famed burled arch finish line.

The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) race began March 3 north of Anchorage.

 

Kaiser, who is Yupik, is from the southwest Alaska community of Bethel.

Four other Alaska Native mushers have won the race, including John Baker, an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, in 2011.

 

Kaiser will receive $50,000 and a new pickup truck for the victory.

 

 
…

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Most people wouldn’t consider the global refugee crisis a laughing matter, but American comic actor Ben Stiller says humor can help draw people’s attention to it.

Humor can help tell the stories of the more than 25 million refugees around the world, said the actor in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Tuesday.

“I do think you can reach a lot more people that way,” said Stiller, who recently returned from a visit with Syrian refugees in his role as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR). He has held the role since last year.

“I don’t want to get people depressed. I want people to see that these are human beings,” he said. “Humor’s an important part of it.”

People might shut out the refugee issue because it is overwhelming but humor can capture their attention, Stiller said. “I’m trying to find that,” he said. “It’s interesting to try to find humorous ways to tell the story.”

Stiller, 53, an actor, producer and director known for such films as “Zoolander,” “Meet the Fockers” and “There’s Something About Mary,” visited Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Photographs and videos from his trip, posted on Twitter, show him visiting students in an art class and playing soccer with refugee children.

“The memories I take back from these trips are of laughing with the kids and families,” Stiller said. “We’re finding things in common and laughing about things that are funny, and humor is a part of life.”

Using humor to talk about refugees does pose a challenge, he added. “You don’t want to in any way make it seem trivial or make fun of it.”

But a little humor can help in grim situations like those facing refugees, he said.

“People I find have really wonderful resilient attitudes towards their experiences, and the ones who find the humor in it are able to find a way to survive.”

More than 5.6 million people have fled Syria since 2011, when civil war erupted, according to UNHCR. More than a million of them live in neighboring Lebanon, most in poverty.

Stiller, a New York native, said he would like to see Americans be less fearful and more welcoming of refugees, more supportive of countries hosting refugees and open to more resettlement in the United States.

He also has visited refugees in Jordan and in Guatemala with UNHCR.

“I walk away feeling it is important to get the word out about what these people are going through,” Stiller said.
…

your ads here!

Most people wouldn’t consider the global refugee crisis a laughing matter, but American comic actor Ben Stiller says humor can help draw people’s attention to it.

Humor can help tell the stories of the more than 25 million refugees around the world, said the actor in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Tuesday.

“I do think you can reach a lot more people that way,” said Stiller, who recently returned from a visit with Syrian refugees in his role as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR). He has held the role since last year.

“I don’t want to get people depressed. I want people to see that these are human beings,” he said. “Humor’s an important part of it.”

People might shut out the refugee issue because it is overwhelming but humor can capture their attention, Stiller said. “I’m trying to find that,” he said. “It’s interesting to try to find humorous ways to tell the story.”

Stiller, 53, an actor, producer and director known for such films as “Zoolander,” “Meet the Fockers” and “There’s Something About Mary,” visited Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Photographs and videos from his trip, posted on Twitter, show him visiting students in an art class and playing soccer with refugee children.

“The memories I take back from these trips are of laughing with the kids and families,” Stiller said. “We’re finding things in common and laughing about things that are funny, and humor is a part of life.”

Using humor to talk about refugees does pose a challenge, he added. “You don’t want to in any way make it seem trivial or make fun of it.”

But a little humor can help in grim situations like those facing refugees, he said.

“People I find have really wonderful resilient attitudes towards their experiences, and the ones who find the humor in it are able to find a way to survive.”

More than 5.6 million people have fled Syria since 2011, when civil war erupted, according to UNHCR. More than a million of them live in neighboring Lebanon, most in poverty.

Stiller, a New York native, said he would like to see Americans be less fearful and more welcoming of refugees, more supportive of countries hosting refugees and open to more resettlement in the United States.

He also has visited refugees in Jordan and in Guatemala with UNHCR.

“I walk away feeling it is important to get the word out about what these people are going through,” Stiller said.
…

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The first and only ice hockey team in Kenya continues to defy the odds by playing and practicing the sport in one of the few ice rinks found across Eastern and Central Africa. This pioneer team is now inspiring a new generation of ice hockey players who hope to expand the sport in Kenya.

Training sessions are held at least three times a week at this ice rink in Nairobi. It is here at Kenya’s solar-powered Panari Sky Center that the Kenya Ice Lions, the first ice hockey team in Kenya, was born.

Tim Colby moved to Nairobi from Ottawa in 2010 to work for the Canadian Embassy. Several months later, he would help train and coach Kenya’s first ice hockey team.

“A few years ago, a few Kenyans wanted to take it up. Step it up a notch, play a lot more seriously and get into real hockey games,” Colby said. “So, we took it up with a few other Americans, Canadians, Slovaks, Swedes and others. We started helping out a bit, but soon it didn’t take time for the Kenyans to take off by themselves.”

The Ice Lions have never had another team to play. In 2018, the Canadian restaurant chain Tim Horton’s flew 12 of them to Toronto to play their first real game, a friendly against a team of firefighters.

WATCH: Kenya’s Ice Lions

Eighteen-year-old Gideon Mutua was part of the team.

Mutua, who started out as a speed and roller skater in 2012, says ice hockey changed his life forever.

“My biggest dream is to play in the NHL, whereby you get paid just to play. And one day, I think my dream will be fulfilled,” Mutua

Youthful players like Mutua are where the future of Kenyan hockey lies, says Robert Opiyo, one of the Ice Lions pioneer team members.

“Most of us we are quite senior, but the future really lies with the youth. This is where most of the time, the energy and effort are being invested in. For us we are just taking in all of the pain, the hardships, the trials so that they can have it a lot more easier,” Opiyo said.

Tim Colby believes there is a future for ice hockey in Kenya, even though the country sits on the equator. 

“What’s really important for the sport here is that we have youth playing, young girls, young boys, so more and more we are getting. This used to be about 10, 12 Kenyans playing. Now we are about 30, at least half of them are young. When I say young, I mean under 15, which is really good for the sport in the future,” Colby

Ali Baba from China and Tim Horton’s have given sponsorship and equipment to the team. Support for the team has also come from Finland, Sweden and Czechoslovakia.

There are plans to bring in teams from Tunisia, Egypt and South Africa in July for a tournament. The teams will play for a new trophy — the Africa Cup. 
…

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The first and only ice hockey team in Kenya continues to defy the odds by playing and practicing the sport in one of the few ice rinks found across Eastern and Central Africa. This pioneer team is now inspiring a new generation of ice hockey players who hope to expand the sport in Kenya.

Training sessions are held at least three times a week at this ice rink in Nairobi. It is here at Kenya’s solar-powered Panari Sky Center that the Kenya Ice Lions, the first ice hockey team in Kenya, was born.

Tim Colby moved to Nairobi from Ottawa in 2010 to work for the Canadian Embassy. Several months later, he would help train and coach Kenya’s first ice hockey team.

“A few years ago, a few Kenyans wanted to take it up. Step it up a notch, play a lot more seriously and get into real hockey games,” Colby said. “So, we took it up with a few other Americans, Canadians, Slovaks, Swedes and others. We started helping out a bit, but soon it didn’t take time for the Kenyans to take off by themselves.”

The Ice Lions have never had another team to play. In 2018, the Canadian restaurant chain Tim Horton’s flew 12 of them to Toronto to play their first real game, a friendly against a team of firefighters.

WATCH: Kenya’s Ice Lions

Eighteen-year-old Gideon Mutua was part of the team.

Mutua, who started out as a speed and roller skater in 2012, says ice hockey changed his life forever.

“My biggest dream is to play in the NHL, whereby you get paid just to play. And one day, I think my dream will be fulfilled,” Mutua

Youthful players like Mutua are where the future of Kenyan hockey lies, says Robert Opiyo, one of the Ice Lions pioneer team members.

“Most of us we are quite senior, but the future really lies with the youth. This is where most of the time, the energy and effort are being invested in. For us we are just taking in all of the pain, the hardships, the trials so that they can have it a lot more easier,” Opiyo said.

Tim Colby believes there is a future for ice hockey in Kenya, even though the country sits on the equator. 

“What’s really important for the sport here is that we have youth playing, young girls, young boys, so more and more we are getting. This used to be about 10, 12 Kenyans playing. Now we are about 30, at least half of them are young. When I say young, I mean under 15, which is really good for the sport in the future,” Colby

Ali Baba from China and Tim Horton’s have given sponsorship and equipment to the team. Support for the team has also come from Finland, Sweden and Czechoslovakia.

There are plans to bring in teams from Tunisia, Egypt and South Africa in July for a tournament. The teams will play for a new trophy — the Africa Cup. 
…

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Tick tock, tick tock. The Tokyo Olympic clock has hit 500 days to go.

 

Organizers marked the milestone on Tuesday, unveiling the stylized pictogram figures for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. The pictogram system was first used extensively in 1964 when the Japanese capital lasted hosted the Olympics _ just 19 years after the end of World War II.

 

A crude picture system was first used in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and later in London in 1948. But the ’64 Olympics originated the standardized symbols that have become familiar in every Olympics since then.

 

Japanese athletes posed with the pictograms and their designer, Masaaki Hiromura. Organizers also toured regions that will host Olympic events, including the area north of Tokyo that was devastated by a 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and resulting damage to nearby nuclear reactors.

Unlike other recent Olympics, construction projects are largely on schedule. The new Olympics stadium, the centerpiece of the games, is to be completed by the by the end of the year at a cost estimated at $1.25 billion.

 

That’s not to say these Olympics are problem free.

 

Costs continue to rise, although local organizers and the IOC say they are cutting costs — or at least slowing the rise.

 

As an example, last month organizers said the cost of the opening and closing ceremonies had risen by 40 percent compared with the forecast in 2013 when Tokyo was awarded the games.

 

Overall, Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to host the Olympics. About 75 percent of this is public money, although costs are difficult to track with arguments over what are — and what are not — Olympic expenses. That figure is about three times larger than the bid forecast in 2013.

 

Tsunekazu Takeda, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a powerful International Olympic Committee member, is also being investigated in a vote-buying scandal that may have helped Tokyo land the Olympics.

Takeda has denied wrongdoing and has not resigned from any of his positions with the IOC or in Japan.

 

He is up for re-election to the Japanese Olympic Committee this summer and could face pressure to step aside.
…

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Tick tock, tick tock. The Tokyo Olympic clock has hit 500 days to go.

 

Organizers marked the milestone on Tuesday, unveiling the stylized pictogram figures for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. The pictogram system was first used extensively in 1964 when the Japanese capital lasted hosted the Olympics _ just 19 years after the end of World War II.

 

A crude picture system was first used in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and later in London in 1948. But the ’64 Olympics originated the standardized symbols that have become familiar in every Olympics since then.

 

Japanese athletes posed with the pictograms and their designer, Masaaki Hiromura. Organizers also toured regions that will host Olympic events, including the area north of Tokyo that was devastated by a 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and resulting damage to nearby nuclear reactors.

Unlike other recent Olympics, construction projects are largely on schedule. The new Olympics stadium, the centerpiece of the games, is to be completed by the by the end of the year at a cost estimated at $1.25 billion.

 

That’s not to say these Olympics are problem free.

 

Costs continue to rise, although local organizers and the IOC say they are cutting costs — or at least slowing the rise.

 

As an example, last month organizers said the cost of the opening and closing ceremonies had risen by 40 percent compared with the forecast in 2013 when Tokyo was awarded the games.

 

Overall, Tokyo is spending at least $20 billion to host the Olympics. About 75 percent of this is public money, although costs are difficult to track with arguments over what are — and what are not — Olympic expenses. That figure is about three times larger than the bid forecast in 2013.

 

Tsunekazu Takeda, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a powerful International Olympic Committee member, is also being investigated in a vote-buying scandal that may have helped Tokyo land the Olympics.

Takeda has denied wrongdoing and has not resigned from any of his positions with the IOC or in Japan.

 

He is up for re-election to the Japanese Olympic Committee this summer and could face pressure to step aside.
…

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When Washington resident Joshua Clark snuggles with his son in a comfy armchair and reads to him, it brings back uncomfortable memories.

Reading for fun

“I remember my mom almost forcing me to read books [for] those summer reports right before you got back to school, and it was tough,” he says. And it became a chore. That prompted him to decide early on that when it came to his own child, he would make sure reading was an enjoyable experience.

“When you can present things in a joyous way and not a task, you’re more willing to do it, and I wanted to provide that for my son.”

The young father has been able to read many great stories to 3-year-old Mason, thanks to the Books from Birth program, which provides free books to every District resident under the age of 5.

A book in every home

Launched by the city three years ago, the ambitious program mails one high-quality book every month to the family’s doorstep.

Clark signed up for the program before Mason was even born.

“I knew I could use this tool to not only bond with my son, but also give him skills that he would need in everyday life,” he says.

Thrive by five

The books are designed to coincide with the child’s age, so early ones may focus on shapes and sounds, and become more sophisticated as the child grows.

Three years into the program, Clark says he’s already noticed the impact on Mason.

“He will repeat a word and understand it and later on repeat it and use it in a way that was used with him,” he says. “And I realized that his exposure to these books has really expanded his vocabulary.”

And that is the main point of the program, said Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser at a recent press conference celebrating the program’s third anniversary.

“We know from all of the research that children who are read to, sung to as well, at home, have a vocabulary that is vastly larger than children unfortunately who come to school without that type of preparation,” she said. “And we know having that expanded vocabulary is what allows our children to read sooner, to comprehend sooner, and to really take advantage of pre-K when they enter pre-K.”

Tackling early childhood literacy

DC Council member Charles Allen, who introduced the legislation that established the project, worked closely with the mayor to launch it.

“When I first got elected to the Council, I had a 2-year-old daughter — she’s 6 now — and I saw that in her bedroom she had dozens and dozens if not a hundred books. That’s not the reality for every home in DC. And I wanted to do something quickly about early childhood education and early literacy,” he said.

“And recognizing what Books from Birth can do, I was able to help create this program that made sure that every kid in DC — no matter where they live, under the age of 5 has one book per month free in the mail with their name on it.”

Reading skills and more…

Mason’s mother, Margaret Parker, says she really loves the program, especially the dual language component of the books.

“Teaching him another language is something I’ve always had an interest in,” she says. “And getting that exposure to another language at an early age is definitely important. So getting those English-Spanish books have been a great follow-up to songs that we sing, or words that I teach him, or things that he picks up at school.”

Parker says the books are carefully selected to teach other important skills as well. She gave an example of a book she had read to Mason about bugs.

“We were outside exploring, and one of his friends wanted to step on one of the bugs and he said, ‘Oh no, don’t squish bugs’ — a part of one of the books that we read with him — so I thought that was pretty cool to see him make that connection between the two,” she said.

When the library comes to you

The DC Books from Birth program is a local affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The singer-songwriter started the program in 1995 in her home county of Sevier, Tennessee, in honor of her father, who couldn’t read or write.

The organization mails a book a month to a child’s home, from birth until his or her fifth birthday, no matter the family’s income. It oversees the selection, creation/customization, and fulfillment of more than 1.4 million books each month. The book-gifting organization has, to date, sent more than 115 million books to children in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Britain and the United States.

Tackling the achievement gap

The goal in the nation’s capital is to have 100 percent participation by families — especially those in lower income communities, says DC Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes-Gavilan.

He explained how difficult it can be for some working families to make it to the library on a regular basis, so through Books from Birth, “the library comes to them.”

The library has an extensive outreach program through local churches, shelters, barber shops and various festivals to try to sign up as many families as possible.

“Ultimately what we want to see happen is what Mayor Bowser wants to see happen, what Council member Allen wants to see happen. We want to see kids in third grade showing that they’re reading at level… and if so, studies over and over have shown that they will be much more likely to graduate and launch careers,” Reyes-Gavilan said.

That’s good news for little Mason Clark, who’s well on his way to achieving that goal, and so much more.
…

your ads here!

When Washington resident Joshua Clark snuggles with his son in a comfy armchair and reads to him, it brings back uncomfortable memories.

Reading for fun

“I remember my mom almost forcing me to read books [for] those summer reports right before you got back to school, and it was tough,” he says. And it became a chore. That prompted him to decide early on that when it came to his own child, he would make sure reading was an enjoyable experience.

“When you can present things in a joyous way and not a task, you’re more willing to do it, and I wanted to provide that for my son.”

The young father has been able to read many great stories to 3-year-old Mason, thanks to the Books from Birth program, which provides free books to every District resident under the age of 5.

A book in every home

Launched by the city three years ago, the ambitious program mails one high-quality book every month to the family’s doorstep.

Clark signed up for the program before Mason was even born.

“I knew I could use this tool to not only bond with my son, but also give him skills that he would need in everyday life,” he says.

Thrive by five

The books are designed to coincide with the child’s age, so early ones may focus on shapes and sounds, and become more sophisticated as the child grows.

Three years into the program, Clark says he’s already noticed the impact on Mason.

“He will repeat a word and understand it and later on repeat it and use it in a way that was used with him,” he says. “And I realized that his exposure to these books has really expanded his vocabulary.”

And that is the main point of the program, said Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser at a recent press conference celebrating the program’s third anniversary.

“We know from all of the research that children who are read to, sung to as well, at home, have a vocabulary that is vastly larger than children unfortunately who come to school without that type of preparation,” she said. “And we know having that expanded vocabulary is what allows our children to read sooner, to comprehend sooner, and to really take advantage of pre-K when they enter pre-K.”

Tackling early childhood literacy

DC Council member Charles Allen, who introduced the legislation that established the project, worked closely with the mayor to launch it.

“When I first got elected to the Council, I had a 2-year-old daughter — she’s 6 now — and I saw that in her bedroom she had dozens and dozens if not a hundred books. That’s not the reality for every home in DC. And I wanted to do something quickly about early childhood education and early literacy,” he said.

“And recognizing what Books from Birth can do, I was able to help create this program that made sure that every kid in DC — no matter where they live, under the age of 5 has one book per month free in the mail with their name on it.”

Reading skills and more…

Mason’s mother, Margaret Parker, says she really loves the program, especially the dual language component of the books.

“Teaching him another language is something I’ve always had an interest in,” she says. “And getting that exposure to another language at an early age is definitely important. So getting those English-Spanish books have been a great follow-up to songs that we sing, or words that I teach him, or things that he picks up at school.”

Parker says the books are carefully selected to teach other important skills as well. She gave an example of a book she had read to Mason about bugs.

“We were outside exploring, and one of his friends wanted to step on one of the bugs and he said, ‘Oh no, don’t squish bugs’ — a part of one of the books that we read with him — so I thought that was pretty cool to see him make that connection between the two,” she said.

When the library comes to you

The DC Books from Birth program is a local affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The singer-songwriter started the program in 1995 in her home county of Sevier, Tennessee, in honor of her father, who couldn’t read or write.

The organization mails a book a month to a child’s home, from birth until his or her fifth birthday, no matter the family’s income. It oversees the selection, creation/customization, and fulfillment of more than 1.4 million books each month. The book-gifting organization has, to date, sent more than 115 million books to children in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Britain and the United States.

Tackling the achievement gap

The goal in the nation’s capital is to have 100 percent participation by families — especially those in lower income communities, says DC Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes-Gavilan.

He explained how difficult it can be for some working families to make it to the library on a regular basis, so through Books from Birth, “the library comes to them.”

The library has an extensive outreach program through local churches, shelters, barber shops and various festivals to try to sign up as many families as possible.

“Ultimately what we want to see happen is what Mayor Bowser wants to see happen, what Council member Allen wants to see happen. We want to see kids in third grade showing that they’re reading at level… and if so, studies over and over have shown that they will be much more likely to graduate and launch careers,” Reyes-Gavilan said.

That’s good news for little Mason Clark, who’s well on his way to achieving that goal, and so much more.
…

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Kelly Catlin, an Olympic track cyclist who helped the U.S. women’s pursuit team win a silver medal at the 2016 summer games in Rio de Janeiro, has died at the age of 23.

USA Cycling announced her death in a statement Sunday, saying the community has “suffered a devastating loss.”

“Kelly was more than an athlete to us, and she will always be part of the USA cycling family,” USA Cycling President and CEO Rob DeMartini said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by Kelly’s passing, and we will all miss her dearly. We hope everyone seeks the support they need through the hard days ahead, and please keep the Catlin family in your thoughts.”

In addition to her Olympic success, Catlin was also a member of teams that won world championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and she competed in road races as a member of the Rally UHC Pro Cycling Team.

VeloNews reported it received a letter from her father, Mark Catlin, stating his daughter committed suicide.

“There isn’t a second in which we wouldn’t freely give our lives in exchange for hers,” he told VeloNews. “The hurt is unbelievable.”

A native of the northern state of Minnesota, Catlin was a graduate student at Stanford University pursuing a degree in computational mathematics.
…

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Kelly Catlin, an Olympic track cyclist who helped the U.S. women’s pursuit team win a silver medal at the 2016 summer games in Rio de Janeiro, has died at the age of 23.

USA Cycling announced her death in a statement Sunday, saying the community has “suffered a devastating loss.”

“Kelly was more than an athlete to us, and she will always be part of the USA cycling family,” USA Cycling President and CEO Rob DeMartini said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by Kelly’s passing, and we will all miss her dearly. We hope everyone seeks the support they need through the hard days ahead, and please keep the Catlin family in your thoughts.”

In addition to her Olympic success, Catlin was also a member of teams that won world championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and she competed in road races as a member of the Rally UHC Pro Cycling Team.

VeloNews reported it received a letter from her father, Mark Catlin, stating his daughter committed suicide.

“There isn’t a second in which we wouldn’t freely give our lives in exchange for hers,” he told VeloNews. “The hurt is unbelievable.”

A native of the northern state of Minnesota, Catlin was a graduate student at Stanford University pursuing a degree in computational mathematics.
…

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Five minutes late, Darrell Todd Maurina sweeps into a meeting room and plugs in his laptop computer. He places a Wi-Fi hotspot on the table and turns on a digital recorder. The earplug in his left ear is attached to a police scanner in his pants pocket.

He wears a tie; Maurina insists upon professionalism.

He is the press — in its entirety.

Maurina, who posts his work to Facebook, is the only person who has come to the Pulaski County courthouse to tell residents what their commissioners are up to, the only one who will report on their deliberations — specifically, their discussions about how to satisfy the Federal Emergency Management Agency so it will pay to repair a road inundated during a 2013 flood.

Last September, Waynesville became a statistic. With the shutdown of its newspaper, the Daily Guide, this town of 5,200 people in central Missouri’s Ozark hills joined more than 1,400 other cities and towns across the U.S. to lose a newspaper over the past 15 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by the University of North Carolina.

Blame revenue siphoned by online competition, cost-cutting ownership, a death spiral in quality, sheer disinterest among readers or reasons peculiar to given locales for that development. While national outlets worry about a president who calls the press an enemy of the people, many Americans no longer have someone watching the city council for them, chronicling the soccer exploits of their children or reporting on the kindly neighbor who died of cancer.

Local journalism is dying in plain sight.

A rock outcropping painted by a local tattoo artist to resemble a frog greets visitors who follow the old Route 66 into Waynesville. Along with its sister city St. Robert, the military towns are dominated by the nearby Fort Leonard Wood, which has kept the county’s population steadily around 50,000 for the past decade.

Five of Waynesville’s eight city council members are former military, and Mayor Luge Hardman says the meetings run efficiently as a result.

“This is a small town where you can be from somewhere else and not feel like an outsider,” said Kevin Hillman, Pulaski County prosecuting attorney.

The Daily Guide, which traces to 1962, was a family owned paper into the 1980s before it was sold to a series of corporate owners that culminated with GateHouse Media Inc., the nation’s largest newspaper company. Five of the 10 largest newspaper companies are owned by hedge funds or other investors with several unrelated holdings, and GateHouse is among them, said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a University of North Carolina professor who studies news industry trends.

Critics have said GateHouse and some other newspaper companies follow a strategy of aggressive cost-cutting without making significant investments in newsrooms. GateHouse rejects the notion that their motivations are strictly financial, pointing to measures taken in Waynesville and elsewhere to keep news flowing, said Bernie Szachara, the company’s president of U.S. newspaper operations.

All newspaper owners face a brutal reality that calls into question whether it’s an economically sustainable model anymore unless, like the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, the boss is the world’s richest man.

That’s especially true in smaller communities.

“They’re getting eaten away at every level,” said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst at Harvard’s Nieman Lab.

Newspaper circulation in the U.S. has declined every year for three decades, while advertising revenue has nosedived since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center. Staffing at newspapers large and small has followed that grim trendline: Pew says the number of reporters, editors, photographers and other newsroom employees in the industry fell by 45 percent nationwide between 2004 and 2017.

In the mid-1990s, when former Daily Guide publisher Tim Berrier was replaced, the newspaper had a news editor, sports editor, photographer and two reporters on staff. Along with traditional community news, the Daily Guide covered the Army’s decision to move its chemical warfare training facility to Fort Leonard Wood in the 1990s, and a flood that swept a mother and son to their deaths in 2013.

As recently as 2010, the Daily Guide had four full-time news people, along with a page designer and three ad salespeople.

But people left and weren’t replaced. Last spring, the Daily Guide was cut from five to three days a week. In June, the last newsroom staffer, editor Natalie Sanders, quit — she was burned out, she said. She made a bet with the only other full-time employee, ad sales person Tiffany Baker, over when the newspaper would close. Sanders said three years; Baker said one.

The last edition was published three months later, on Sept. 7.

“It felt like an old friend died,” Sanders said. “I sat and I cried, I really did. Because being the editor of the Daily Guide was all I wanted for a really long time.”

The death of the Daily Guide raises questions not easily answered, the same ones asked at newspapers big and small across the country.

Did GateHouse stop investing because people were less interested in reading the paper? Berrier said about 3,600 copies of the Daily Guide were printed in the mid-1990s. At the end, GateHouse was printing 675 copies a day.

Or did people lose interest because the lack of investment made it a less satisfying read?

“As the paper declined and got smaller and smaller, I felt that there wasn’t as much information that really made it worthwhile, so I did eventually stop” subscribing, said Keith Carnahan, senior pastor at Maranatha Baptist Church in St. Robert.

Berrier blames GateHouse, who he said “set the Daily Guide up to fail.” Others are less sure. Sanders, the former editor, and Joel Goodridge, another former publisher, blame both GateHouse and the community for not supporting the paper.

Goodridge said some businesses found they could advertise much more cheaply in free circulars dumped at local stores. He now works at a college in the nearby town of Rolla. His job at the Daily Guide was eliminated during the relentless downturn.

“When I first got into the newspaper business, it was intriguing, rewarding and I felt like I was doing something more than generating profits,” Goodridge said. “I felt like I was doing something for the community. As the years went by, it changed.”

GateHouse said the Daily Guide, like many smaller newspapers across the country, was hurt by a dwindling advertising market among national retailers. The paper supplemented its income through outside printing jobs, but those dried up, too, said Szachara, the GateHouse newspaper operations president.

Given an unforgiving marketplace, there’s no guarantee additional investment in the paper would have paid off, he said. Szachara said the decision was made to include some news about Waynesville in a weekly advertising circular distributed around Pulaski County.

“We were trying not to create a ghost town,” he said.

---

Residents of Waynesville are coming to grips with what is missing in their lives.

“Losing a newspaper,” said Keith Pritchard, 63, chairman of the board at the Security Bank of Pulaski County and a lifelong resident, “is like losing the heartbeat of a town.”

Pritchard has scrapbooks of news clippings about his three daughters; Katie was a basketball player of some renown at Drury University. He wonders: How will young families collect such memories?

The local state representative, Steve Lynch, would routinely cut out a story about people recognized in the paper, add a personal note, laminate it and send it to them — a savvy goodwill exercise.

Historians worry about what is lost to future generations. Many of the displays in a small museum of local history in St. Robert are stories retrieved from newspapers.

Residents talk with dismay about church picnics or school plays they might have attended but only learn of through Facebook postings after the fact.

“I miss the newspaper, the chance to sit down over a cup of coffee and a bagel or a doughnut … and find out what’s going on in the community,” said Bill Slabaugh, a retiree. Now he talks to friends and “candidly, for the most part, I’m ignorant.”

Slabaugh acknowledges some complicity in the Daily Guide’s demise. He said he angrily stopped buying the paper when it wrote about a drag show at a local community center.

Beyond the emotions are practical concerns about the loss of an information source. The bank routinely checked the Daily Guide’s obituaries to protect against fraud; Pritchard said you’d be surprised by family members who try to clean out the accounts of a recently-deceased relative.

At a time when journalists and police are often at odds, it’s somewhat startling to hear local law enforcement unanimously express dismay at the loss of a newspaper.

Like many communities, Waynesville is struggling with a drug problem. The nearby interstate is an easy supply line for opioids and meth, police say. The four murders in Waynesville last year were the most in memory, and all were drug-related.

For painful, personal reasons, Pulaski County Sheriff Jimmy Bench wishes the Daily Guide was there to report on the December death of his 31-year-old son, Ryan, due to a heroin overdose. It would have been better than dealing with whispers and Twitter.

“Social media is so cruel sometimes,” Bench said.

Without a newspaper’s reporting, Police Chief Dan Cordova said many in the community are unaware of the extent of the problem. Useful information, like a spate of robberies in one section of town, goes unreported. Social media is a resource, but Cordova is concerned about not reaching everyone.

Local authorities still write news releases and, in the final days of the Daily Guide, the overworked staff often printed them verbatim — even giving front-page bylines to the marketing director for the Waynesville School District.

“I thought it was great,” said Waynesville School Superintendent Brian Henry, later adding: “Nobody’s really stepped in and filled exactly what we had with our newspaper.”

Posting press releases to official Facebook pages isn’t quite the same. County coroner Nick Pappas said readers are more suspicious of news releases than they would be of a fully reported news story.

“I’m not going to put out anything critical of myself out there,” said Hillman, the prosecuting attorney who just started his third term in the elective office. “I mean, that’s the truth. What politician is?”

---

This isn’t a hopeless story.

Dotted across the country are exceptions to the brutal new rule, newspapers that are surviving with creative business plans. In North Carolina’s Moore County, owners support the 100-year-old Pilot with revenue raised by side businesses — lifestyle magazines, electronic newsletters, telephone directories, a video production company and a bookstore.

Philanthropy is supporting other efforts to fill gaps created by journalism’s business struggles. Report for America, which sees itself as a Peace Corps for journalists, has sent young reporters into communities in Mississippi, Texas and elsewhere. It has relationships with newsrooms across the country, including The Associated Press. The American Journalism Project is raising money to fund local news, and recently announced $42 million in pledges.

What this effort means for Waynesville, and many small towns like it, remains to be seen.

It briefly had an alternative after the Daily Guide folded. A local businessman, Louie Keen, bankrolled a newspaper, the Uranus Examiner, that was delivered for free. The paper had some journalistic spunk, revealing that the Waynesville mayor had blocked some residents from seeing her postings on the city’s Facebook site. Mayor Hardman said it was inadvertent and quickly corrected.

The paper lasted five issues. Named for the tourist complex Keen owns, he said the Uranus Examiner was shunned by local advertisers because he used to own a strip club and uses sophomoric jokes to promote his businesses.

So Waynesville and St. Robert are left with Darrell Todd Maurina’s Facebook site, which he calls the Pulaski County Daily News.

A former Army civilian public affairs officer who worked at the Daily Guide in the 2000s, Maurina posts live from community meetings, reports on accidents on the nearby interstate and publishes obituaries. It’s meat-and-potatoes local news.

When he’s not at meetings, he works from a windowless office in the basement of his home. Court documents and papers are piled on the floor and coffee table near a police radio scanner, fax machine and television. On his desk are a well-worn Bible, small American flag and a signed photograph of President Gerald Ford thanking Maurina’s father for his support.

Maurina typically is awake before 5 a.m. to check the local radio station, if the scanner hasn’t roused him earlier.

“I really believe that as large newspaper chains cut staff of small newspapers, and small newspapers wither and die, that’s going to cause major problems in communities,” he said. “Somebody needs to pick up the slack and, at least in this community, I’m able to do that.”

Maurina’s efforts have some support, even from the city councilman who said he once threatened to throw Maurina out a window over a disagreement about a story.

“He’s an equal opportunity agitator,” said Ed Conley, another council member. “He tries to be fair, and to be honest about it, he does a good job, but he’s just one person and he’s limited by social media.”

Maurina declines to share many details about the finances for his online site. He also acknowledges some holes in his coverage, especially of sports.

For local athletics, some people turn instead to a Facebook site run by Allen Hilliard, a former Daily Guide stringer and school bus driver who has been posting photos, videos and newsletters about local youth and high school teams. Hilliard isn’t making much money from his time-consuming hobby, but like Maurina, he takes pride in providing a community service.

“If I quit doing it, then essentially there would be no (sports) coverage of anyone,” he said.

Maurina says he knows journalists need to go back to the basics to survive —or revive — in small-town America.

“We need to go back to what was done in the late 1800s — being everywhere at every event, telling everyone what the sirens were about last night,” he said.

Good idea. Who’s going to pay for it?
…

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Five minutes late, Darrell Todd Maurina sweeps into a meeting room and plugs in his laptop computer. He places a Wi-Fi hotspot on the table and turns on a digital recorder. The earplug in his left ear is attached to a police scanner in his pants pocket.

He wears a tie; Maurina insists upon professionalism.

He is the press — in its entirety.

Maurina, who posts his work to Facebook, is the only person who has come to the Pulaski County courthouse to tell residents what their commissioners are up to, the only one who will report on their deliberations — specifically, their discussions about how to satisfy the Federal Emergency Management Agency so it will pay to repair a road inundated during a 2013 flood.

Last September, Waynesville became a statistic. With the shutdown of its newspaper, the Daily Guide, this town of 5,200 people in central Missouri’s Ozark hills joined more than 1,400 other cities and towns across the U.S. to lose a newspaper over the past 15 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by the University of North Carolina.

Blame revenue siphoned by online competition, cost-cutting ownership, a death spiral in quality, sheer disinterest among readers or reasons peculiar to given locales for that development. While national outlets worry about a president who calls the press an enemy of the people, many Americans no longer have someone watching the city council for them, chronicling the soccer exploits of their children or reporting on the kindly neighbor who died of cancer.

Local journalism is dying in plain sight.

A rock outcropping painted by a local tattoo artist to resemble a frog greets visitors who follow the old Route 66 into Waynesville. Along with its sister city St. Robert, the military towns are dominated by the nearby Fort Leonard Wood, which has kept the county’s population steadily around 50,000 for the past decade.

Five of Waynesville’s eight city council members are former military, and Mayor Luge Hardman says the meetings run efficiently as a result.

“This is a small town where you can be from somewhere else and not feel like an outsider,” said Kevin Hillman, Pulaski County prosecuting attorney.

The Daily Guide, which traces to 1962, was a family owned paper into the 1980s before it was sold to a series of corporate owners that culminated with GateHouse Media Inc., the nation’s largest newspaper company. Five of the 10 largest newspaper companies are owned by hedge funds or other investors with several unrelated holdings, and GateHouse is among them, said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a University of North Carolina professor who studies news industry trends.

Critics have said GateHouse and some other newspaper companies follow a strategy of aggressive cost-cutting without making significant investments in newsrooms. GateHouse rejects the notion that their motivations are strictly financial, pointing to measures taken in Waynesville and elsewhere to keep news flowing, said Bernie Szachara, the company’s president of U.S. newspaper operations.

All newspaper owners face a brutal reality that calls into question whether it’s an economically sustainable model anymore unless, like the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, the boss is the world’s richest man.

That’s especially true in smaller communities.

“They’re getting eaten away at every level,” said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst at Harvard’s Nieman Lab.

Newspaper circulation in the U.S. has declined every year for three decades, while advertising revenue has nosedived since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center. Staffing at newspapers large and small has followed that grim trendline: Pew says the number of reporters, editors, photographers and other newsroom employees in the industry fell by 45 percent nationwide between 2004 and 2017.

In the mid-1990s, when former Daily Guide publisher Tim Berrier was replaced, the newspaper had a news editor, sports editor, photographer and two reporters on staff. Along with traditional community news, the Daily Guide covered the Army’s decision to move its chemical warfare training facility to Fort Leonard Wood in the 1990s, and a flood that swept a mother and son to their deaths in 2013.

As recently as 2010, the Daily Guide had four full-time news people, along with a page designer and three ad salespeople.

But people left and weren’t replaced. Last spring, the Daily Guide was cut from five to three days a week. In June, the last newsroom staffer, editor Natalie Sanders, quit — she was burned out, she said. She made a bet with the only other full-time employee, ad sales person Tiffany Baker, over when the newspaper would close. Sanders said three years; Baker said one.

The last edition was published three months later, on Sept. 7.

“It felt like an old friend died,” Sanders said. “I sat and I cried, I really did. Because being the editor of the Daily Guide was all I wanted for a really long time.”

The death of the Daily Guide raises questions not easily answered, the same ones asked at newspapers big and small across the country.

Did GateHouse stop investing because people were less interested in reading the paper? Berrier said about 3,600 copies of the Daily Guide were printed in the mid-1990s. At the end, GateHouse was printing 675 copies a day.

Or did people lose interest because the lack of investment made it a less satisfying read?

“As the paper declined and got smaller and smaller, I felt that there wasn’t as much information that really made it worthwhile, so I did eventually stop” subscribing, said Keith Carnahan, senior pastor at Maranatha Baptist Church in St. Robert.

Berrier blames GateHouse, who he said “set the Daily Guide up to fail.” Others are less sure. Sanders, the former editor, and Joel Goodridge, another former publisher, blame both GateHouse and the community for not supporting the paper.

Goodridge said some businesses found they could advertise much more cheaply in free circulars dumped at local stores. He now works at a college in the nearby town of Rolla. His job at the Daily Guide was eliminated during the relentless downturn.

“When I first got into the newspaper business, it was intriguing, rewarding and I felt like I was doing something more than generating profits,” Goodridge said. “I felt like I was doing something for the community. As the years went by, it changed.”

GateHouse said the Daily Guide, like many smaller newspapers across the country, was hurt by a dwindling advertising market among national retailers. The paper supplemented its income through outside printing jobs, but those dried up, too, said Szachara, the GateHouse newspaper operations president.

Given an unforgiving marketplace, there’s no guarantee additional investment in the paper would have paid off, he said. Szachara said the decision was made to include some news about Waynesville in a weekly advertising circular distributed around Pulaski County.

“We were trying not to create a ghost town,” he said.

---

Residents of Waynesville are coming to grips with what is missing in their lives.

“Losing a newspaper,” said Keith Pritchard, 63, chairman of the board at the Security Bank of Pulaski County and a lifelong resident, “is like losing the heartbeat of a town.”

Pritchard has scrapbooks of news clippings about his three daughters; Katie was a basketball player of some renown at Drury University. He wonders: How will young families collect such memories?

The local state representative, Steve Lynch, would routinely cut out a story about people recognized in the paper, add a personal note, laminate it and send it to them — a savvy goodwill exercise.

Historians worry about what is lost to future generations. Many of the displays in a small museum of local history in St. Robert are stories retrieved from newspapers.

Residents talk with dismay about church picnics or school plays they might have attended but only learn of through Facebook postings after the fact.

“I miss the newspaper, the chance to sit down over a cup of coffee and a bagel or a doughnut … and find out what’s going on in the community,” said Bill Slabaugh, a retiree. Now he talks to friends and “candidly, for the most part, I’m ignorant.”

Slabaugh acknowledges some complicity in the Daily Guide’s demise. He said he angrily stopped buying the paper when it wrote about a drag show at a local community center.

Beyond the emotions are practical concerns about the loss of an information source. The bank routinely checked the Daily Guide’s obituaries to protect against fraud; Pritchard said you’d be surprised by family members who try to clean out the accounts of a recently-deceased relative.

At a time when journalists and police are often at odds, it’s somewhat startling to hear local law enforcement unanimously express dismay at the loss of a newspaper.

Like many communities, Waynesville is struggling with a drug problem. The nearby interstate is an easy supply line for opioids and meth, police say. The four murders in Waynesville last year were the most in memory, and all were drug-related.

For painful, personal reasons, Pulaski County Sheriff Jimmy Bench wishes the Daily Guide was there to report on the December death of his 31-year-old son, Ryan, due to a heroin overdose. It would have been better than dealing with whispers and Twitter.

“Social media is so cruel sometimes,” Bench said.

Without a newspaper’s reporting, Police Chief Dan Cordova said many in the community are unaware of the extent of the problem. Useful information, like a spate of robberies in one section of town, goes unreported. Social media is a resource, but Cordova is concerned about not reaching everyone.

Local authorities still write news releases and, in the final days of the Daily Guide, the overworked staff often printed them verbatim — even giving front-page bylines to the marketing director for the Waynesville School District.

“I thought it was great,” said Waynesville School Superintendent Brian Henry, later adding: “Nobody’s really stepped in and filled exactly what we had with our newspaper.”

Posting press releases to official Facebook pages isn’t quite the same. County coroner Nick Pappas said readers are more suspicious of news releases than they would be of a fully reported news story.

“I’m not going to put out anything critical of myself out there,” said Hillman, the prosecuting attorney who just started his third term in the elective office. “I mean, that’s the truth. What politician is?”

---

This isn’t a hopeless story.

Dotted across the country are exceptions to the brutal new rule, newspapers that are surviving with creative business plans. In North Carolina’s Moore County, owners support the 100-year-old Pilot with revenue raised by side businesses — lifestyle magazines, electronic newsletters, telephone directories, a video production company and a bookstore.

Philanthropy is supporting other efforts to fill gaps created by journalism’s business struggles. Report for America, which sees itself as a Peace Corps for journalists, has sent young reporters into communities in Mississippi, Texas and elsewhere. It has relationships with newsrooms across the country, including The Associated Press. The American Journalism Project is raising money to fund local news, and recently announced $42 million in pledges.

What this effort means for Waynesville, and many small towns like it, remains to be seen.

It briefly had an alternative after the Daily Guide folded. A local businessman, Louie Keen, bankrolled a newspaper, the Uranus Examiner, that was delivered for free. The paper had some journalistic spunk, revealing that the Waynesville mayor had blocked some residents from seeing her postings on the city’s Facebook site. Mayor Hardman said it was inadvertent and quickly corrected.

The paper lasted five issues. Named for the tourist complex Keen owns, he said the Uranus Examiner was shunned by local advertisers because he used to own a strip club and uses sophomoric jokes to promote his businesses.

So Waynesville and St. Robert are left with Darrell Todd Maurina’s Facebook site, which he calls the Pulaski County Daily News.

A former Army civilian public affairs officer who worked at the Daily Guide in the 2000s, Maurina posts live from community meetings, reports on accidents on the nearby interstate and publishes obituaries. It’s meat-and-potatoes local news.

When he’s not at meetings, he works from a windowless office in the basement of his home. Court documents and papers are piled on the floor and coffee table near a police radio scanner, fax machine and television. On his desk are a well-worn Bible, small American flag and a signed photograph of President Gerald Ford thanking Maurina’s father for his support.

Maurina typically is awake before 5 a.m. to check the local radio station, if the scanner hasn’t roused him earlier.

“I really believe that as large newspaper chains cut staff of small newspapers, and small newspapers wither and die, that’s going to cause major problems in communities,” he said. “Somebody needs to pick up the slack and, at least in this community, I’m able to do that.”

Maurina’s efforts have some support, even from the city councilman who said he once threatened to throw Maurina out a window over a disagreement about a story.

“He’s an equal opportunity agitator,” said Ed Conley, another council member. “He tries to be fair, and to be honest about it, he does a good job, but he’s just one person and he’s limited by social media.”

Maurina declines to share many details about the finances for his online site. He also acknowledges some holes in his coverage, especially of sports.

For local athletics, some people turn instead to a Facebook site run by Allen Hilliard, a former Daily Guide stringer and school bus driver who has been posting photos, videos and newsletters about local youth and high school teams. Hilliard isn’t making much money from his time-consuming hobby, but like Maurina, he takes pride in providing a community service.

“If I quit doing it, then essentially there would be no (sports) coverage of anyone,” he said.

Maurina says he knows journalists need to go back to the basics to survive —or revive — in small-town America.

“We need to go back to what was done in the late 1800s — being everywhere at every event, telling everyone what the sirens were about last night,” he said.

Good idea. Who’s going to pay for it?
…

your ads here!

A company that designs and develops musical instruments for people with physical disabilities has created a conductor’s baton which allows the visually-impaired to follow its movements. As Faith Lapidus reports, this opens up the potential for blind musicians to join more orchestras.
…

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Julia Ruth Stevens, the last surviving daughter of Hall of Fame baseball slugger Babe Ruth and a decades-long champion of his legacy, has died at age 102, her family has announced.

Tom Stevens said Sunday that his mother died Saturday morning at an assisted living facility in Henderson, Nevada, after a short illness.

In keeping with her wishes, her remains will be cremated with burial sometime this spring in Conway, New Hampshire, where she used to live, Tom Stevens said.

“She lived such a full, interesting life,” he said. “She was an ambassador for Babe Ruth.”

Tom Stevens said his mother moved from Florida to Arizona in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew and then to Nevada, where he lives.

Diane Murphy, a fellow resident at Prestige Senior Living at Mira Loma in Henderson, told The Associated Press that Julia Stevens had lost her sight but remained bright and vibrant.

Stevens was part of a circle of residents who read books aloud, according to Murphy.

“She was so sharp and laughed at the right moments,” Murphy said. “She was a lovely lady.”

Even well into her 90s, Stevens threw out first pitches at baseball games across the nation, attended Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, New York, and appeared at the annual Babe Ruth Little League World Series.

She authored three books about her famous father.

“As long as there is baseball, Daddy’s name is always going to be mentioned. He was one of a kind,” Stevens once said. “My goal in life is to keep his name alive. He was a wonderful father and I remember him as that and just not as a baseball player.”

Stevens was adopted by baseball’s biggest star soon after Ruth married her mother, Claire Hodgson, in 1929 when Julia was 12 years old. Hodgson died in 1976.

Julia was the older of two daughters adopted by Ruth. Dorothy Ruth Pirone, who was Ruth’s daughter from a previous relationship, died in 1989 at age 67.

Tom Stevens told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview earlier this year that it rankled his mother to be referred to as Ruth’s stepdaughter.

He said Ruth was a match to provide Julia a needed blood transfusion when she was hospitalized as a young adult.

“She said as far as she was concerned, between being adopted and the transfusion, ‘I’m his daughter, period,’” Tom Stevens said.

Babe Ruth retired in 1935, days after playing his last game. He was with the Boston Braves that year after starring for the New York Yankees from 1920-34 and the Boston Red Sox from 1914-19.

Ruth died from cancer at age 53 in 1948.

“I sometimes wonder if the designated hitter rule would have been in effect when Daddy played, his career would’ve lasted much longer and he would’ve hit a lot more home runs,” Stevens once said. “It was his legs that gave out. He had trouble with his knees.”

Stevens said Ruth taught her how to dance and how to bowl and “I couldn’t have had a better father than him.”

She made her final trip to Yankee Stadium at age 91 in 2008 to say goodbye to one of her dad’s favorite places where he hit many of his 714 career home runs.

Accompanied by her son and two grandchildren, Stevens got a warm reception from the crowd before New York’s 6-0 loss to Cincinnati.

A New York sports writer dubbed the Bronx stadium “The House That Ruth Built,” and the Yankees retired Ruth’s No. 3 during their 25th anniversary celebration of Yankee Stadium on June 13, 1948, the great slugger’s final visit to the ballpark.

As Ruth’s daughter, Stevens’ family said, “she had many amazing experiences, which she was pleased to share with eager reporters and fans alike. Until the very end, she was very proud to call him ‘Daddy’ and she particularly loved recalling events from 1934 when she went on a ‘round the world’ tour with her parents” to Japan with a major-league all-star team.

She is survived by her son, two grandchildren and four great grandchildren, according to the family’s Facebook post.
…

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Europe’s largest Mormon temple will be dedicated over three days starting Sunday. Russell Nelson, president of the world’s 16 million Mormons, will be in Rome for the dedication ceremonies. No expense has been spared on Italy’s first temple, a magnificence, Mormons say, that is justified by faith.

The entire leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church, has for the first time gathered outside of the United States for a very special occasion, the dedication of its temple in the eternal city. For the more than 25,000 Italian Mormons and the many others who will travel to Rome, this temple has special significance, as Italy’s representative of the Mormons, Alessandro Dini-Ciacci explains.

“Rome is the center of Christianity. Here’s where the apostles Peter and Paul, the early apostles of the Church of Christ came to preach and bear their testimony. We are followers of Jesus Christ. We love the Savior,” says Dini-Ciacci. “The temple we just built as a statement of our belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world in our belief that life goes on after we die and that families can be together. That is the focus of our temples. The ordinances that bind families together.”

 

The Mormons have 162 temples in different parts of the world and 40 more have already been announced for a church growing in numbers. No expense was spared for Rome’s towering white “house of the Lord.”

“The temple was built with the finest materials, is very refined, as our offering of love. Our show of love for the Savior and his father. That’s why we choose the best materials possible,” said Dini-Ciacci. “There’s Carrara marbles, stained glass, fine fabrics. It is all a tribute to our heavenly father.”

 

Elder Dini-Ciacci said it took a decade to build the 3,800 square meter temple.

He would not give a figure for how much the temple cost but simply said “it’s a cost of faith.” One of the 10 commandments of the Mormons, he added, is to keep the law of tithing which allows the church to pay for temples and all operations. He said the money spent on temples is far less than what the Church spends on humanitarian aid.

 

Members of the Church abide by rules which include chastity outside of marriage.

 

“We keep the Ten Commandments. We ask people to treat their bodies as temples. So we ask them not to pollute them with drugs or alcoholic beverages. We ask them not to smoke. That is what we believe was revealed to one of our prophets for the benefit of all out members,” said Dini-Ciacci.

 

The church’s leader, Prophet Russel Nelson, met with Pope Francis on Saturday at the Vatican. It was the first time a head of the Church of Latter Day Saints met with a pope. While the two churches differ in doctrine, they share concerns like human suffering, the importance of religious liberty and of building bridges of friendship.

 

 

 
…

your ads here!

Europe’s largest Mormon temple will be dedicated over three days starting Sunday. Russell Nelson, president of the world’s 16 million Mormons, will be in Rome for the dedication ceremonies. No expense has been spared on Italy’s first temple, a magnificence, Mormons say, that is justified by faith.

The entire leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church, has for the first time gathered outside of the United States for a very special occasion, the dedication of its temple in the eternal city. For the more than 25,000 Italian Mormons and the many others who will travel to Rome, this temple has special significance, as Italy’s representative of the Mormons, Alessandro Dini-Ciacci explains.

“Rome is the center of Christianity. Here’s where the apostles Peter and Paul, the early apostles of the Church of Christ came to preach and bear their testimony. We are followers of Jesus Christ. We love the Savior,” says Dini-Ciacci. “The temple we just built as a statement of our belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world in our belief that life goes on after we die and that families can be together. That is the focus of our temples. The ordinances that bind families together.”

 

The Mormons have 162 temples in different parts of the world and 40 more have already been announced for a church growing in numbers. No expense was spared for Rome’s towering white “house of the Lord.”

“The temple was built with the finest materials, is very refined, as our offering of love. Our show of love for the Savior and his father. That’s why we choose the best materials possible,” said Dini-Ciacci. “There’s Carrara marbles, stained glass, fine fabrics. It is all a tribute to our heavenly father.”

 

Elder Dini-Ciacci said it took a decade to build the 3,800 square meter temple.

He would not give a figure for how much the temple cost but simply said “it’s a cost of faith.” One of the 10 commandments of the Mormons, he added, is to keep the law of tithing which allows the church to pay for temples and all operations. He said the money spent on temples is far less than what the Church spends on humanitarian aid.

 

Members of the Church abide by rules which include chastity outside of marriage.

 

“We keep the Ten Commandments. We ask people to treat their bodies as temples. So we ask them not to pollute them with drugs or alcoholic beverages. We ask them not to smoke. That is what we believe was revealed to one of our prophets for the benefit of all out members,” said Dini-Ciacci.

 

The church’s leader, Prophet Russel Nelson, met with Pope Francis on Saturday at the Vatican. It was the first time a head of the Church of Latter Day Saints met with a pope. While the two churches differ in doctrine, they share concerns like human suffering, the importance of religious liberty and of building bridges of friendship.

 

 

 
…

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Jennifer Lopez said yes to Alex Rodriguez’s proposal, and with the rock he presented, who could say no?

The couple posted an Instagram photo of their hands with a massive engagement ring on Lopez’s ring finger. The former Yankees shortstop captioned his photo with “she said yes” and a heart emoji.

 

The couple has been dating since early 2017 and later that year landed on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine with their celebrity couple nickname, J-Rod.

 

In January, Rodriguez told The Associated Press that he and Lopez had similar backgrounds and her latest film “Second Act” reflected the ties that drew them together.

 

“It really resembles a lot of the arc that Jennifer and I lived in our life: Both born in New York, both come from immigrant parents, both have two children, both Latino Americano — her from Puerto Rico, me from Dominican Republic. We’ve been through our ups and downs, but here we are in our 40s and trying to live the best lives possible and, at the same time, give back and pay it forward,” Rodriguez said.

 

It will be Lopez’s fourth marriage and Rodriguez’s second. Each has two children from previous marriages.

 

 
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Jennifer Lopez said yes to Alex Rodriguez’s proposal, and with the rock he presented, who could say no?

The couple posted an Instagram photo of their hands with a massive engagement ring on Lopez’s ring finger. The former Yankees shortstop captioned his photo with “she said yes” and a heart emoji.

 

The couple has been dating since early 2017 and later that year landed on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine with their celebrity couple nickname, J-Rod.

 

In January, Rodriguez told The Associated Press that he and Lopez had similar backgrounds and her latest film “Second Act” reflected the ties that drew them together.

 

“It really resembles a lot of the arc that Jennifer and I lived in our life: Both born in New York, both come from immigrant parents, both have two children, both Latino Americano — her from Puerto Rico, me from Dominican Republic. We’ve been through our ups and downs, but here we are in our 40s and trying to live the best lives possible and, at the same time, give back and pay it forward,” Rodriguez said.

 

It will be Lopez’s fourth marriage and Rodriguez’s second. Each has two children from previous marriages.

 

 
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