Headline: “FAA investigates failed Red Bull plane swap that resulted in crash”: Were you wondering how the “pilot swap” skydive in AZ went? Well, headline says it all. Both pilots are safe, but only one made it back to a plane. Oooops.
How about a good Aww story: Gus the Goldendoodle hadn’t swam since he lost a leg to cancer. The 6-year-old dog’s owners weren’t certain he could ever swim again after getting his leg amputated in February, his owners told FOX 9. But on Sunday, April 17, the dog jumped into a Minnesota river and came out with a baby otter. Gus and his family were spending Easter Sunday outdoors when he jumped into the St. Croix River and swam out at least 50 feet from shore. The family was shocked that Gus was swimming just as well as he did before the amputation, but they were more shocked when he emerged from the water. “First time swimming with three legs and he comes out of the water with a baby otter in his mouth,” Ella Hammerstrand, granddaughter of Gus’s owner. Both Gus and the otter are doing fine.
Just asking: Did any of the money earmarked for “Covid Assistance” actually get spent on that? All I read about are scams, swindles, frauds, phonies, and liars. And I don’t read anything about anyone trying to get any of it back.
Sometimes a song hits you and stays there: Last night I happened to hear Denny Brooks singing “San Antone”. Denny was a background singer and guitarist for John Denver from 1976 to 1986. Moreover, Brooks was a frequent opening act for singer/songwriter Hoyt Axton and sang background vocals on Dory Previn’s 1971 album “Mythical Kings and Iguanas.” Brooks self-titled album was released in 1969. In addition, he also performed songs on the soundtracks for the Western “Mustang Country” and the Chuck Norris action vehicle “Breaker! Breaker!”. Brooks sang the beautifully moving country song “San Antone” on the soundtracks to the films “Rolling Thunder” and “The Ninth Configuration”, two movies about veterans but with very different stories to tell. “Rolling Thunder” is a favorite of mine and has been cited as a great movie by Quentin Tarantino. “San Antone” always makes me smile. Unfortunately, we lost Denny in 2018 and there seems to be very little of his recorded work to be found. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH47xPX7c8o (copy/paste for the song)
Someone paid for this: Some female spiders have a reputation of eating their mates after copulation. But some male orb weaver spiders have worked out a dramatic survival mechanism: catapulting themselves to safety at high speeds. “Using a mechanism that hadn’t been described before, the male spiders use a joint in their first pair of legs to immediately undertake a split-second catapult action, flinging themselves away from their partners at impressive speeds”. The discovery came about as the team studied sexual selection in the orb weavers, which live in large communities together. They observed 155 successful matings with 152 ending in a catapult to freedom. The three that didn’t catapult became dinner. You know what they say; It’s a spider-eat-spider world out there.
Finally, some place I can get coffee.
Yes, it’s a real place. Got it’s own website and all.
Storytellers Blog 