Great Song, Great Video About The Importance of Photos In Our Lives

Over at the other blog I operate, Matt's Weather Rapport, which caters to anyone interested in the weather, I touched on efforts to return photographs to their owners after the momentos were scattered far and wide by tornadoes that struck the Midwest last month.

This man saved a wedding photo from the wreckage
after a tornado hit Washington, Ill. last month.
Other people lost important photos in the storm.  

All the more reason to store our photos in "the cloud" so if our houses burn down or get blown or washed away in a disaster, we don't lose these important documents and touchstones.

In my Weather Rapport post, I included a wonderful music video by Laura Marier for her song "Running For Photographs" which is a great song and great video in its own right, whether or not you're interested in the weather.

So I decided to included it here, too, because the song is definitely worth listening to and the video is totally worth watching.

Rare Treat: A Christmas Song Done Well, And With Innovation. Must See!

As part of my bah-humbug attitude toward Christmas, I must say I hate most Christmas carols and songs.

The Piano Guys performing "Angels We
Have Heard On High"  

They tend to be horribly sappy, way too sentimental, and/or just extremely, annoyingly stupid. "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer," anyone?

There's a few good ones, of course. Darlene Love's "Christmas Baby (Please Come Home)" comes to mind, for instance.

I wonder if I can consider Elton John's wonderful but dark song "Levon,"  which is one of his best, a holiday song because it includes the lyrics "He was born on a Christmas day/When the New York Times said God is dead/And the war's begun."

Probably doesn't qualify as a cheerful Christmas tune, huh? But I'll enjoy it anyway.

I did find another Christmas song and video that is definitely worth enjoying. These four men called "The Piano Guys" perform "Angels We Have Heard On High" using just one piano in often totally interesting, cool ways. And the music they produce sounds wonderful.

It looks like they do other songs, too, like that music from the Charlie Brown Christmas show

But you really gotta see the video for the Piano Guys "Angels We Have Heard On High."

 Here it is:

After Weird Alabama Murder, We Need Good Sportsmanship Antidote

The most depressing sports-related news I've come across lately concerns a murder in Alabama.

This woman is charged with murder after
allegedly killing a woman she thought was
insufficiently upset at Alabama's football  loss Saturday.  

For those of you who missed it Auburn beat its archriva Alabama  Saturday in one of the most dramatic endings to a college football game anyone has seen.

At a party after the game, police said, Alabama fan Adrian Laroze Briskey, 28, murdered Michelle Shepard, another Alabama fan,  because the victim seemed insufficiently upset that Alabama had lost. 

That, of course, is the ultimate in bad sportsmanship, something we have long seen too much of on and off the field.

So I was pleased when I found a compilation video on YouTube containing great examples of good sportsmanship.

In the video, I especially like the ultimate fighters, who participate in the most brutal and violent of sports. In these cases when one fighter accidentally injures another, or defeats his opponent badly, the victors react tenderly and kindly toward the people they defeated or hurt.

I also like the clips of people going out of their way to let people who can't normally participate in sports because of disabilities have their moment in the sun.

After watching the video, I now feel better about sports again. You will too:

Feel Good Or Feel Bad: People Who Do Things Much Better Than You

Tell me: Are you willing to try anything the people in this video are doing?

You're braver than me if you do want to try anything in the video.  I got dizzy just watching some of the people in there. But it is awesome to watch, because as the video is called, people are awesome.

Watch and enjoy:

Outrage: United Airlines Almost Kills Dog, And Won't Pay Vet Bill Because Owner Won't Shut Up About It

The public relations people at United Airlines must be the stupidest people on earth.

Sedona, almost killed by United Airlines, has
thankfully recovered.  

It's not because their employees almost killed somebody's dog by leaving the poor thing on a hot tarmac in the middle of summer with no water, though that was pretty stupid.

The public relations stupidity came when the dog's owner justifiably complained that United basically tortured her greyhound.

In July, a woman named Janet Sinclair and her greyhound, Sedona, were moving from San Diego to Boston.

The airline's policy was to make sure the dog wasn't exposed to a temperature of 85 degrees for more than 45 minutes, according to Consumerist.

Instead, United workers left the dog out in 91 degree or more  heat for a long time in the sun, in a crate, at a Houston airport during a changeover.

By the time the greyhound got to Boston, Sedona was in full heat stroke, bleeding and near death.

Somehow, a veterinarian managed to save the dog's live, but the bill for the medical treatment came to $2,700 or so.

So far, you can't entirely blame all of United Airlines for almost killing the dog. It's certainly not United's policy to torture defenseless animals. This had to be the work of some clueless employees. It would have been nice, though, to train employees the basics of animal care.

The real travesty was the utterly weasily way United try to get out of paying, and then trying to hush up the whole thing.

First, United tried to claim Sedona had a pre-existing condition, but the dog's vet said no, the problem was caused entirely by United.

So United agreed to pay the $2,700 vet bill. But there was a catch. They would only pay if Sinclair  agreed to a non-disclosure agreement to not tell anybody what happened. Or as United sleazily put it, the dog's owner "declined to accept the terms of the agreement."

There are SO many problems with this. First of all, who is United to dictate the terms of any so called agreement?  It was United that fucked up. If anyone should dictate terms of any agreement, it should be the dog's owner.

Secondly, when someone makes a mistake, a public apology is in order. It's just much more honorable to admit an error, and promise to make sure it doesn't happen again. In United's case people, including the dog's owner, probably would have accepted this, and we would have never heard about this case.

That would have solved United's problem with being embarrassed about the situation.  The public relations people could have done the right thing, and that would have accomplished what they wanted, which is to not let this blow up into a PR nightmare, with no extra work on their part.

Did United actually think they could strong arm Sinclair into shutting her mouth?  Has the United Airlines public relations department never heard of social media?  It's been around for quite awhile now, you know.

Of course, Sinclair has  heard of social media and have created a Facebook page called "United Airlines Almost Killed My Greyhound"

"I still want to be reimbursed," the dog's owner told NBC Bay Area "But I'm not going to be quiet"

So, she's using the Facebook page to great effect in alerting the media. It's getting the attention of tiny little blogs and news outlets like this one, and much bigger television stations and media in other cities. Reuters, the news wire service did a story.  So did the Huffington Post.

The "United Airlines Almost Killed My Greyhound" Facebook page is still very active, at last check.

It's a drip, drip, drip of embarassment for United. But they seem to be still trying to cover things up.

Back around Halloween, somebody tried to block the Facebook page, likely through Facebook's report abuse or spam feature. It's unclear if it was United, some loyal employee of the company or some troll, but it was suspicious.

Plus, since people are paying attention to Sinclair's activism and Sedona's near death, the media are showing this wasn't an isolated incident. WTOP-TV in Washington DC said United killed a dog named Bam Bam by leaving the dog in a crate out on the tarmac.

And other stories have been trickling out.  And probably will continue to trickle out. United might hope this is going to go away, but based on how other outrageous stories have played out, it won't. Social media has become too strong for that.

United has a lot of work to do. Stop killing pets, for one. And maybe, if they're not willing to do the  honorable thing, at least do the public relations competently.

I'll try to reach out to the United Airlines PR department to ask why signing the nondisclosure agreement was so important and why they think they have the right to do that, but I'm not optimistic.

They've just been releasing that bland statement to the media about wanting to care properly for passengers and they offered to reimburse but that stubborn Sinclair wouldn't sign the nondisclosure agreement.

As if the nondisclosure agreement was far more important than Sedona's life, or any other dog or cat's life.

Doctors Won't Do Transplants For Developmentally Disabled, And A Woman Named Bebe Shows Why That's Wrong

I was disturbed by a CNN report that came out in the past few days about how many doctors won't do organ transplants on people with development disabilities. 

The late, great
Bebe Lopez hugging a
tiger. She hugged everyone.  

The doctors often come up with some other excuse not to do the transplants, but secretly, or not so secretly, according to CNN, the reason is the development disability.

I can understand the dilemna. There are not enough organs ready for transplants for the number of people who need them. Hard choices have to be made. None of the choices are good because somebody will not get a transplant, and die.

But I still have a huge problem with not giving transplants to people with Downs Syndrome or other developmental issues.  One of the reasons I feel this way is a woman named Bebe.

Bebe Lopez passed away a few days before Thanksgiving. I went to her funeral Saturday.

Bebe never needed an organ transplant, but I wonder about the reasons for not giving them to other people with developmental disabilities. Like most people with Down's Syndrome, Bebe never got a PhD, never found a cure for cancer, never broke athletic records, never became President of the United States (which is kind of too bad).

Bebe never became a renouned artist, at least in the traditional sense, never conquered the world.

Or did she conquer the world after all?   And maybe she was a top level artist, too.

Bebe's great friend Rick gave the eulogy at her funeral. Rick started by saying,  "To be Bebe or not to be Bebe, that is the question. The answer is to be Bebe."

Rick was spot on, of course. Everyone who knew her said the lesson she left behind was to be Bebe Lopez. That meant embrace the laughter, perform and sing to your heart's content, be happy, hug a lot, and be brave.

Those are simple rules, and not the kind of stuff you read about when you research History's Greatest Figures.

Bebe loved performing on stage. She loved drawing. Bebe was no Meryl Streep. She probably never would have won an Oscar no matter how long she lived. Her art is not displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But boy, did people love her theatrical performances. Boy, did they love her drawings. Mostly because of the exuberance of it all.  Bebe left everybody feeling better just by being there.  As memories of Bebe kept surfacing at the funeral, there was a lot of laughter.

Yep, Bebe left them laughing at a funeral. How many people do you know who can pull that off?

Which is the lesson I go back to on the organ transplants. Is the traditional form of potential greatness the litmus test of who gets an organ transplant and who doesn't?  Do just the people who might be in the news headlines day after day the ones who get the transplants?

Or is the potential greatness we're talking about somebody like Bebe. You can certainly argue Bebe touched and improved as many lives as any uber intelligent academic, scientist, politician or whatnot.

Bebe came to our housewarming party about three years ago. She gave a toy to our dog Jackson as a gift. Jackson, himself a pretty joyous being, still gravitates to that toy frequently, as if knowing of the sunny connection to Bebe and wanting to drink it in.  People always did the same as Jackson, just wanting to drink in Bebe's energy.

My husband Jeff and I wore somber colored clothes, appropriate for a funeral, to the Bebe services. But we also each wore bright red sneakers. The exuberant color and the implied movement and activity of wearing sneakers seemed like the best tribute to Bebe we could come up with.

You see, Bebe added a lot of color to what is otherwise a pretty gray world.

It's not easy to make the rules for who gets transplants and who doesn't.  Since Bebe touched so many lives and made them better, shouldn't people like her get a shot, too?

There's probably quite a few people like Bebe out there. A few of them might need organ transplants.

Just remember. We need more people to be Bebe.

West Rutland Cemetery Sign Is An Instant Classic

A few months ago, the people who run the biggest cemetery in my home town of West Rutland, Vermont  put up a new sign so that people could find it.

One of the world's most grand cemetery signs,
in West Rutland, Vermont  

The sign is an instant classic, as I was reminded when I visited West Rutland for Thanksgiving.

Click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to really see.

The cemetery is a run by local Roman Catholic chuches, usually a pretty staid outfit. But the sign design is basically Greek Orthodox meets Las Vegas.

I love the ornate crosses, the royal blue backround with the images and flowers and leaves.

The nicest touches are the arrows on either side of the sign that points to the ground, to tell us precisely where everyone is buried.

In case anyone needs to know, you see.

I think it could be improved upon, though. Why not go for broke? Wouldn't it be great if there were chaser lights on the sign that lead to those down arrows.  That would really tell you what this cemetery is about.

The sign could also use some accessories. Maybe one of those things that have fans going to make   little blow up figures wave around, like you see at used car lots during their Big Annual Sale.

These figures could also point toward the ground, reinforcing the message the down arrows on the sign already convey.

I also must say the gravestones in the cemetery lack a certain style. They're just your standard issue marble or granite markers telling us who is buried, maybe a line saying who loved them, or a brief, rest in peace sort of message.

Yawn.

The gravestones need pizazz!  You could create themes based on the people who died. The accountant could have money decorations plastered to the gravestone. The deceased lawyer could have a figure of a judge and a lawyer arguing on top of the marker. The possibilities are endless!

Yes, I know all this is sacriligious.  But we're always told at funerals that we're celebrating the life of the dearly department, and of course their journey to heaven (assuming that's where they're going)

So maybe West Rutland has the right idea. They've made the cemetery a bit more celebratory, and that's not such a bad thing