The glorified shed, where you’ll always be “a regular”, comes with:
Sticky floors, duh
An actual bar with Miller High Life tap handles
Quirky bar stools
A popcorn machine
A spot for a bouncer if your neighbors try to crash your bar
All the wood paneling you could ever want
The dimmest of lighting
Quirky beer artwork
Doors that open completely to allow for patio season
Enough beer to live the high life from your own yard for the rest of the year
“All of this from the comfort of your own yard!” touts Miller in a press release.
To enter the Backyard Dive Bar giveaway, you have to be 21+ years old. Just text “DIVEBAR” to 90464 to receive a link for the simple entry form. Or, you can enter by visiting www.HighLifeDiveBar.com.
Even before the pandemic, Girl Scout Lucy Stimson knew there was a growing problem in her community. Stress was a huge part of her life—and many of the people in her community felt the same way.
That’s why Lucy chose to take a stand in Lincoln, Rhode Island, and help others while earning her Girl Scout Gold Award.
The Gold Award is the highest award a Girl Scout can earn, and requires 80 hours of volunteering to create a sustainable difference in the community.
She started a Facebook Page, Making a Stress-Free Breakthrough, and has been regularly posting tips since April. The page features different ways to reduce stress, with topics ranging from meditation and mindfulness to pep talks and fun videos. She has recently included a Stress Workshop Guidebook containing a variety activities, like how to make a stress ball.
She also posted a homemade coloring book for getting into the zen of artwork at home, and an excellent animal crossword puzzle that you can download.
Lucy making a video
When asked how the project has effected her life and community, Lucy told GNN, “The project has helped me by opening up to my family about mental health. I found it in myself to tell my parents about my stress and anxiety.”
“I have been using some of the techniques to calm myself when I get overly stressed. This helped me to put what I have been feeling into perspective, and to ask for help.”
She also created her own stress-busting website that has all the tips and tricks neatly arranged on the homepage.
“Sometimes stress is so overwhelming and it seems to consume you, but that doesn’t mean that you have to settle for that. I have done my project because I have been there. I know how it feels, it’s hard. If I can help even one person, it will all be worth it,” Stimson added.
“I think we all need a little help sometimes,” said Lucy. “Especially now.”
Seeds from the time of Jesus and the Maccabees are being renewed—and grown amid the fruits of Jewish-Arab unity.
We all know the resurrection story from 2,000 years ago described in the pages of the Christian bible. Recently, a restoration of life, in a sense, took place in the Holy Land—but with 2,000-year-old dry date seeds from the same region where the religious legends began.
In the 1960s, when archaeologist Yigal Yadin dug at Masada, an ancient fort that is one of Israel’s most popular tourist attractions, he found a catchment of Judean date seeds.
Through radiocarbon analysis, the seeds of the species Phoenix dactylifera were shown to be around 1,990 years old, or from 35 BCE to 65 CE, when the Roman philosophers Strabo and Pliny were writing about the Judean date’s medicinal qualities.
15 years ago, Dr. Elaine Soloway of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, along with Dr. Sarah Salon of Hadassah Medical Center, were able to miraculously germinate one of the seeds.
In honor of its longevity, it was named Methuselah, after the longest-living human being in the Bible (Genesis 5: 21-27). Methuselah, however, being a male tree, would not be able to produce a date without a female partner. So in 2014, six seeds were germinated from 32 that were unearthed in archaeological digs in the Judean Desert and near the Dead Sea, from a similar age.
They were also given Biblical names, but only one female—Hannah—flowered.
In the spring of this year, she was pollinated using the powdery grains from Methuselah. And soon, Hannah produced 111 dates that were recently harvested..
Most of the semi-dry dates with reddish-blonde color will be used for research, but the masterminds behind the project got to taste a few, with Dr. Soloway enjoying the “honey or caramel aftertaste.”
Researchers Dr. Elaine Soloway of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (left) with Dr. Sarah Salon of Hadassah Medical Center, moments after picking the dates – MARCOS SCHONHOLZ
The home of these extraordinary trees is the Kibbutz Ketura campus of the Arava Institute located on the Israeli-Jordanian border in the dramatic Arava Valley—with the steep, mile-high, red mountains of southern Jordan – biblical Edom – on one side and the whitish limestone from ancient ocean floors on the Israeli side, in a section of the Great Rift Valley between Syria and Africa.
Photo by MARCOS SCHONHOLZ, Arava Institute
There is something else remarkable about the home of these dates. Since 1996, the Arava Institute has brought together Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian college students to learn how to cooperatively solve the regional and global challenges of our time.
Foster cross-border environmental cooperation through discourse at a time when it is so needed, the leaders here engage civic organizations and individuals representing Jews and Arabs with both state and private interests to discuss, develop, and negotiate formal and informal environmental agreements.
The Arava Institute reminds participants that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is about land—more precisely, the borders that nations draw on the land. When the land is looked upon solely as a geopolitical instrument, it is viewed as one of the major stumbling blocks to any reconciliation or just settlement of the conflict. However, when the land is approached, as it is at Arava, from an environmental perspective—which knows no political borders, walls and fences—new frameworks open up, including in the political sphere: New dynamics are created.
The student body of the Arava Institute is made up mostly of Jews, Christians, and Muslims—and in those three religions, born in the deserts of the region, dates and date trees have always played an important role, according to Rabbi Michael M. Cohen, who teaches at the Arava Institute and also at Vermont’s Bennington College.
“Following the example of Muhammad, Muslims traditionally break their daily fast during Ramadan with a date. In the Jewish Torah, dates are considered one of the seven most important species of the Land of Israel. And Jesus was reportedly welcomed into Jerusalem with his supporters waving date palm branches.”
Grown on this campus steeped in faith, the dates of Methuselah and Hannah, like all the great redemption stories, remind us that what today appears to be dead or beyond reach can in fact be revived to help create a better, more just, and redeemed tomorrow.
SHARE The Fruits of History and Peace With Friends On Social Media…
Quote of the Day: “Love is all around, no need to waste it; you can never tell, why don’t you take it. You’re gonna make it after all.” – Mary Tyler Moore theme (debuted 50 years ago)
Photo: by Steven Aguilar
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Like many elderly Americans, Gloria Scott lives on a limited income. Sometimes, that means making hard choices. If money’s tight, home repair and maintenance are often the first things to fall by the wayside.
Gloria’s Gladiators/Facebook
When Scott’s overhead light fixture went out, however, she decided living in the dark wouldn’t do. Though she knew her budget would take a hit, she called in electrician John Kinney to make the necessary repairs.
Little did the 72-year-old know, she wasn’t just getting an electrician, she was getting a knight in shining armor as well.
Deeply troubled by the extreme state of disrepair he found Scott’s house in, Kinney couldn’t get the woman’s desperate situation out of his head. “No lights, running water… I [saw] her on a Friday and it stuck with me over the weekend… I said, ‘I got to go back there,’” Kinney told CBS.
Rather than walk away, Kinney went back to Scott’s place and started working on some other much-needed repairs—free of charge. But he didn’t stop there.
Kinney set up a “Nice old lady needs help” Facebook page to solicit other local tradespeople to lend a hand as well. The enthusiastic response was pretty amazing.
With an impressive chunk of the Woburn, Massachusetts community rallying to the call, so far, Scott’s home has gotten new electricical and plumbing systems, new windows, and extensive repairs to the crumbling walls, ceilings, front steps, and porch.
Meanwhile outside, as neighbors toiled on landscape cleanup and new planting projects, a steady flow of food donations streamed in to feed the volunteers.
To say Scott was blown away by the outpouring of generosity is an understatement. “Look at these people!” she exclaimed. “…[You] can’t even comprehend the gratitude that I have.”
The project was such a success, Kinney decided to take it to the next level. Naming the initiative Gloria’s Gladiators, he hopes to inspire a legion of like-minded knights in shining armor—electric or otherwise—to help needy seniors in their own communities.
Not only does Kerry Wiles hold down a full-time job as a scientist; on weekends, she works as a ride-share driver who uses her fares and tips to make meals for Tennessee’s homeless community.
Channel 5 News
Kerry began her side gig with Lyft and Uber after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018. She loves people, and thought the job could be a great way to know the stories of others.
Along the way, she began using her ride-share earnings to make lunches for the city’s large and growing homeless population.
As she drives people around the city, on Saturdays and Sundays she’s able to drop off homemade PB&Js to around 100 homeless people.
These days, this is no one-woman sandwich delivery operation. Early on in her side gig as a driver, Kerry—who works Mondays to Fridays as a scientist at the Cooperative Human Tissue Network at Vanderbilt University Medical Center—gave a lift to a 24-year-old local named Ryan Caldwell.
“Without sounding too ‘quirky’, he just has an amazing ‘aura’,” Kerry tells GNN. “When you meet him, his kindness and charisma immediately puts you at ease. When he said he wanted to help deliver lunches with me, I knew he was sincere.”
Caldwell felt just the same way. “She’s been my best friend since we started,” he told News Channel 5.
Now the friendly pair go out delivering turkey rolls together.
“If anyone out there needs a young man to be a role model, he is it,” says Kerry.
The world definitely needs more ‘Ryans!'”
The two-person team are currently putting together a list of shoe sizes for the local homeless community so they can get them boots for winter.
This isn’t the first time Kerry has gone out of her way to help others. We wrote about the ‘secret society’ initiative she founded to help struggling kids back in 2017.
For Kerry, helping others is no struggle. She says, “Small steps in a larger problem can make a beautiful impression on your heart and soul.”
(WATCH the video featuring Kerry and Ryan’s story below at News Channel 5.)
SHARE The Love And Send This Story To Your Friends On Social Media…
A new state of the art satellite imaging program will allow California fire authorities to map every individual tree in the state as a means to better plan and monitor for fires.
Dominik Lange
The catastrophic fires typifying the last few fire seasons in California’s forests have had scientists brainstorming new and better ways to combat them, and one effort from the startup Salo Sciences, called the California Forest Observatory (CFO), uses satellites and AI to create a map covered in small green points.
Each of these points represents a real tree, which together represents one of the most ultra-detailed satellite pictures of the earth’s surface available. This will allow wildfire authorities to predict and plan where fires are starting, where they might be headed, and how damaging they might become using information like wind speed and direction, canopy height, and ground vegetation cover.
The CFO creates these pictures from a string of 100 bread-loaf-sized satellite cameras managed by a private company formed by NASA scientists called Planet.
Spinning in a line around the earth, they act in unison like a barcode scanner of our planet’s surface, taking images at about three meters per pixel, an order of magnitude higher than those taken from larger, older satellites.
The satellites are then aided by lidar, a laser technology that gathers information, mounted on a plane, before both streams of data are fed into a deep-learning algorithm which determines things like tree height.
David Marvin, co-founder and CEO of Salo Sciences notes there is nothing on Earth like it, and traditional use of lidar—mounted on a low-flying aircraft, is a very slow and expensive process.
A trip to Sequoia National Park teaches you that California’s forests evolved to regularly catch fire, and that some trees—like the sequoia—actually need fire to remain healthy.
The reality is that the California fire authorities became so good at quickly extinguishing brush fires that over time, the smaller vegetation growing between the trees that would normally burn fast and at low temperatures, began to grow larger and live on.
As climate change has made California summers hotter and drier, the fires that now race through these masses of small vegetation can damage even the trees that have evolved to protect themselves from fire.
“If these fires didn’t have continuously dense fuels to burn, it would be much more difficult for them to get out of control,” says David Martin to Fast Company.
“So this is what we first saw was a major problem. What we wanted to tackle was, how do we get at identifying the areas to begin treating and removing these overgrown forests?”
With the CFO being updated at the end of every fire season, sometimes even more often, these little tinderboxes will be found much sooner, preventing a simple brushfire from turning into a raging inferno.
SPREAD This Innovation Like Wildfire By Sharing on Social Media…
For several years now, collagen-rich bone broth—created by boiling bones to extract the gelatin and marrow within—has become popular on the health and wellness magazine circuit. And for good reason.
Shutterstock
The simple dish confers a set of valuable nutrients, like glutamine and collagen, that are uncommon in other foods.
According to Healthline, animal bones are also rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and other trace minerals that help build and strengthen our own human bones.
Bone broth also promotes gut and digestive health, supports joint mobility, skin, hair, teeth, and nails, and even better sleep. Other health benefits include an improved immune system and faster muscle recovery.
But while the soup, made simply by boiling the bones of animals, is always referred to as “bone broth,” is there any meaningful difference between it and the cooking stock our mothers used as the base for chicken noodle soup when we were sick?
The answer is very important, because there are likely many people who could benefit tremendously from bone broth’s health benefits, but can’t afford to buy health food store prices.
Stock vs bone broth
On a surface level, the answer is no, but it depends on the ingredients list, as a product can call itself anything—bone broth, cooking stock, chicken stock, or just “broth,” but unless it has the ingredients of something like Kettle & Fire or another commercial kind of bone broth, it’s just flavored water.
Many broth recipes lean heavily on things like bayleaf, onion, carrot, celery, sage, or other vegetables and aromatics to add flavor to soup, and should not be considered a dietary supplement in the way commercial bone broth is.
On the other hand, while some high-profile bone broth companies like the aforementioned Kettle & Fire charge $8-10 a quart, there may be common beef or chicken stock at your average supermarket (Trader Joe’s comes to mind) with very similar levels of bones and nutrients to something you’d see in a health food store that costs 4x as much.
All you have to do is look at the nutrition facts. What are the first and second ingredients? Somewhere right at the top should be something like beef knuckles or chicken carcass. You don’t want to see things like vegetable oils, or aromatics of: onion, carrot, peas, and so on, as this doesn’t actually indicate the presence of vegetables.
Next look at the nutrient values. Good bone broth should have higher amounts of protein and sodium, and small amounts of calcium and potassium. This likely indicates the presence of collagen, glutamine—which is where the health benefits are.
Tips to making your own
Bone broth is easy to make, and requires only a bit of intuition and common sense.
Ask your local butcher if he has bones to get rid of or that he would consider selling at a low price. Bones on the legs, feet, and spine of a cow or chicken will have greater densities of marrow and gelatin and should be preferred to other kinds.
Use any leftovers you have from any animal. If you’re buying bone-in meats, see about getting those with larger bones.
Use vegetables and especially herbs to give it a bit of flavor and stop your broth from tasting like gristle.
Use a pan with a lid! You likely don’t want your house to smell like bone broth.
SHARE The Bone Broth Benefits With Your Friends On Social Media…
One medically retired veteran of the U.S. Army is helping recreate the brother and sisterhood people often find in the service through his YouTube channel that focuses on gaming—and self-care.
After Christopher Boehm left the army, he learned from a friend the staggering statistic that 22 veterans die each day by suicide.
Being injured and having a past struggle with alcohol abuse, he connected with the pain of these veterans.
He decided then that he wanted to help others leaving the service smoothly transition to civilian life.
When he learned that the U.S. Army uses Twitch, a live streaming platform for gamers, for recruitment purposes, he knew he could do something similar to connect with veterans and prevent the social isolation and depression that exists in the veteran community.
Christopher set up his own YouTube channel, Bayonet X-Ray, where he plays video games live for 22 minutes at sunrise each morning—representing the 22 veterans that die by suicide each day.
While gaming, Boehm shares strategies for combating PTSD and depression, daily motivation, and tips on healthy eating and breathing. He also provides general camaraderie for isolated veterans.
“My goal is to connect with veterans that can’t access other services,” explains Boehm. “This YouTube channel is my way of helping my brothers and sisters, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is especially important to stay connected and break up the day to day monotony.”
Quote of the Day: “If you work on something a little bit every day, you end up with something that is massive.” – Kenneth Goldsmith
Photo: by Paul Zoetemeijer
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
When a young Texas woman realized how much her dad’s food truck has been struggling in the pandemic, she made a single post on Twitter asking for help.
Giselle Aviles and her father Elias have a close relationship, so she’s often been inquiring about his health and business.
It’s been hard for Taqueria El Torito, he’s admitted. Daily earnings for the Humble, Texas food truck have been as low as $60. $40. Even $20 for a full day’s work.
When Elias mentioned to his daughter that revenue one Saturday was just $6 after putting in a 12-hour shift, she was stunned.
She told CNN, “I just said well we have nothing to lose and I decided to make the tweet that day.”
The 21-year-old wrote on social media, “I wouldn’t normally do this, but my dad’s taco truck business is struggling, he only sold $6 today. If you could retweet, I would appreciate you so much!!”
Her plea to the world worked. By Sunday night, her post had been retweeted over 2,000 times.
Giselle told her dad he should probably get ready for some new customers. By 8 a.m. the next day, he had a line of customers waiting for his fresh tortas Cubanas—and some had been waiting there since six in the morning.
It was such a busy period that Elias even had to close the truck for a short while in order to restock. Luckily, Giselle was able to help out with orders that day.
During her Monday shift, Giselle estimated that more than a hundred customers came through for Mexican specialties.
“I’m so moved because finally people know that his food is good,” Giselle told KHOU. “There were so many people, and [my dad] was kind of shocked because he didn’t think there would be a turn around that quickly.”
Since then, Giselle has helped her dad set up an Instagram account for his business.
Over the past few weeks, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has been in an ongoing drum battle with a 10-year-old girl.
Now he’s really gone and raised the bar, penning one awesome song for England’s Nandi Bushell.
The big drumming challenge began when Nandi challenged Grohl to drum to his own hit song “Everlong.” Grohl then responded with “Dead End Friends” by Them Crooked Vultures.
When Nandi matched him beat for beat (seriously, she’s an incredible drummer), Grohl took things like a champ, admitted “you got me,” and conceded defeat in round one of their competition.
Then he wrote Nandi a theme song befitting of a young superstar.
Why? “Every superhero needs a theme song,” he says.
Ok @Nandi_Bushell....Round 2! Every superhero needs a theme song. Here’s one for you! Mad props to The Grohlettes for the background vocals. pic.twitter.com/js9xBasbpw
Cue the whole world turned into Grohl—and Grohlettes!—super-fans.
The lyrics Grohl made up came “off the top of my head.” And how do they go?
“She got the power/She got the soul/Gonna save the world with her rock & roll!”’
The words don’t stop there. “Nandi, the No. 1 supergirl / Nandi, the best drummer in the world / Nandi, always right on time / Nandi, hero wunderkind,” he sings.
So what did Nandi think about getting her very own tune? She described it on Twitter as “the best song EVER, in the WORLD, EVER!!!”
Have a listen and see what you think.
I cant believe Mr. Grohl wrote a song about me!?! This is so so so #EPIC!! I think its the best song EVER, in the WORLD, EVER!!! Thank you so much Dave. You have raised the stakes to all instruments! I accept your next challenge! Thank you to the whole Grohl family! @foofighterspic.twitter.com/rWgTBwEtyb
The protein behind Type 2 diabetes has finally been caught in the act, and could lead to a breakthrough in treatment.
Hush Naidoo
More than 400 million people live with diabetes around the world, and the majority have Type 2—which develops when the body cannot produce enough insulin or when the insulin produced does not work properly.
The architecture of amyloid fibrils, a fibre-like structure that is the hallmark for Type 2 diabetes, has now been observed for the first time by scientists, according to a 2020 study published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
Amyloid fibrils are produced from “clumps” of the peptide protein Amylin, which regulates the body’s glucose levels.
Study author Professor Neil Ranson, of the University of Leeds, said the finding is “really exciting” because it “is crucial in understanding the disease process… with these structures we’re getting the first glimpse at what might be going on.
The latest electron microscope technology, known as cryo-electron microscopy, was used to visualise the structure of the fibres.
Protein samples were frozen and then analyzed to a resolution where individual atoms can be observed.
People with early-onset Type 2 diabetes have a specific genetic variant of amyloid fibrils known as S20G. The researchers compared S20G with amyloid fibrils found in the general population, which they call the wild-type.
How amylin molecules stackup to form fibrils was observed by analyzing thousands of images.
The molecules formed intricate structures like rungs in a ladder, the researchers found.
The wild type fibrils, however, had two copies of amylin per rung, whereas some of the S20G had three, suggesting fibrils can form templates onto which more copies of amylin can lock.
Co-author Professor Sheena Radford, of the Astbury Centre, added that the breakthrough is important, “Not just for understanding amylin—but for understanding many amyloid diseases in which run-away fibril formation occurs.”
The build up of amyloid fibrils is also linked to other diseases such such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Disease.
A better understanding of amyloid fibrils structure could, then, pave the way to better diagnosis treatments for the millions of people who will suffer from amyloid diseases. That’s exciting news indeed.
Power Up With Positivity By Sharing The Good News With Your Friends On Social Media…
Most people are familiar with McRibs, that guilty pleasure that sometimes graces the McDonald’s menu, but how many of you know what a McRig is?
Andrew Herashchenko
Thanks to the quick thinking of one generous McDonald’s franchise owner, residents of storm-ravaged Lake Charles in Louisiana got to see what the company’s mega-version of Meals on Wheels was truly capable of.
Laura is the most powerful hurricane to hit Louisiana since 1856. With widespread flooding, downed power lines, and extensive damage to homes and businesses, residents were left without power, running water, and many other basic necessities.
When Rikesh Patel, who owns and operates 25 McDonald’s locations in the area, realized the storm’s full impact the day Laura made landfall, he knew he had to take action.
“Pictures don’t do it justice,” he said of the devastation in an interview with CNN. “It’s so much worse than what you’re seeing on social media.”
Figuring hot meals would be hard to come by for those impacted by Laura’s wrath, he made a call to corporate headquarters with a plea for help. The McRig, a ginormous self-sustaining portable kitchen was dispatched from a Kentucky location and arrived the following day.
Patel and his restaurant staff kept the extreme food truck running for six days, serving 10,000 free meals made up of McDonald’s cheeseburgers, fries, and bottled water.
“(McDonald’s founder) Ray Kroc believed we must give back to [the] communities that we do business in,” Patel tweeted on the fourth day. “Thank you to our amazing crew and managers for making this belief come alive.”
In the last 4 days we have provided over 10,000 free @McDonalds meals to our community. Ray Kroc believed we must give back to our communities that we do business in. Thank you to our amazing crew and managers for making this belief come alive. #HurricaneLaura#lakecharlesstrongpic.twitter.com/xj3mX9aecV
Quote of the Day: “We don’t choose our wildest dreams. They choose us.” – Tama Kieves
Photo: by Macau Photo Agency
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
One Wisconsin man has been very busy during the pandemic: He’s planted two million sunflowers to give joy to others.
Guests at Thompson Strawberry Farm pay $25 per car group, and are invited to cut and take a dozen of the bright flowers home once they’re done wandering through the fields, taking pictures, and having a good time in the late summer sun.
Scott Thompson is a fourth-generation berry farmer based in Bristol, Kenosha County. Speaking with Patch, he said this year people have been coming from Milwaukee, from Chicago, and everywhere in-between.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘We just needed to get out of the city and come out to a place where I could take my mask off for a couple of hours.'”
Thompson and his family are welcoming of everyone, including budding Instagrammers and professional photographers.
In fact, they’ve planted fields of short sunflowers precisely because “it makes for pretty awesome pictures. We grew shorter ones for the perfect selfie so you can get that sea of yellow behind you.”
For Thompson, the goal is simply for people to enjoy a nice day in the country and bring home something beautiful.
Wisconsin seems especially enamored with the power of sunflowers. In 2015, a man planted a four-mile stretch of sunflowers to honor his late wife. Then he began selling their seeds to raise money for cancer with his Seeds of Hope.
Sunflower season should last till the end of September, meaning it’s probably time to scoot on over to Thompson Strawberry Farm and get some blooms for yourself.
An artist has created a giant image of a seal and her pup using the natural contours of an iconic beach known for its marine mammals.
SWNS
Claire Eason used a garden rake to carve a 300ft picture so big it can be seen from space.
The retired family doctor came up with the idea after spotting the seal-shape hidden in the natural formation of an inlet of Beadnell Bay in Northumberland, England.
55-year-old Claire, from Worksop in Nottinghamshire, said, “I am always keen to use the natural shapes for my artwork and I often use aerial images for inspiration.
SWNS
“I’ve been to Beadnell hundreds of times over the years but I’ve never noticed that an inlet leading to a bridge at the far side of the beach resembles the outline of a seal.
This area is well known for seals and there are thousands living at the Farne Islands which is just off the coast.
I drew a sketch of the seal on a piece of paper and headed up to the beach with my trusty garden rake.
SWNS
“It took a few hours to complete and I had no idea whether it would work until I got my drone up to see the whole picture, but I was delighted with the result.
“What was most incredible was that I hadn’t realized there was a much smaller shape of a seal pup just under the larger one, so unbeknown to me I had a mother and her baby in the same image.”
It sounds like this seally good image was just meant to be.
(WATCH the accompanying video of the mega-sized artwork below.)
SHARE This Aerial Beauty With Your Friends On Social Media…
Some may not know that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is a talented photographer.
She is also a patron of London’s National Portrait Gallery, where she got to engage her passion to unveil a much-anticipated digital exhibition featuring 100 portraits of British life in the time of COVID-19.
The Hold Still community project was launched in May 2020 to create a unique collective portrait of the UK during the pandemic.
People of all ages, from all across the country, were invited to submitted a portrait taken during May and June under three themes: Helpers and Heroes, Your New Normal, and Acts of Kindness.
The response was overwhelming. 31,598 entrants, ranging from 4 to 75 year-old, based everywhere from Belfast to Cornwall, submitted their best work to a panel of judges that included Princess Kate.
Simran Janjua, London: This photograph shows my sister-in-law with her grandmother (Dadi in Punjabi) meeting after months of being apart. In this moment I felt the depth of love they feel for each other, captured by both the joy and longing in their eyes. Separated by a window but connected by love.
On the launch of the exhibition, the Duchess said, “We’ve all been struck by some of the incredible images we’ve seen which have given us an insight into the experiences and stories of people across the country.”
Now, all 100 photos are available to explore on the gallery’s website to see a unique record of what the curators call an “extraordinary period in our history.”
Hassan Akkad, London: During the peak of the pandemic, I signed up to work as a cleaner in a Covid-19 ward at my local hospital, Whipps Cross. Within days, Gimba, our ward host, called me ‘my son’; I noticed she loved eating rice. Gimba migrated from Nigeria to Britain and has been working at the hospital for over a decade, commuting for 2 hours to get to work. I took this photo while Gimba was having lunch in the staff room, after having prepared meals for all eighteen COVID-19 patients in our ward.
The National Portrait Gallery noted in a statement the breadth of different photos submitted since the project was launched in May, “from virtual birthday parties, handmade rainbows and community clapping to brave NHS staff, resilient keyworkers and people dealing with illness, isolation and loss…
“The images convey humor and grief, creativity and kindness, tragedy and hope—expressing and exploring both our shared and individual experiences.”
Below is a photo of a NHS health worker Jen, and her little girl, Florence. Jen worked through the pandemic, and Florence absolutely loves dressing up like her mum.
Matt Utton and Jennifer O’Sullivan, London: Jen has described this photo as being one of her most treasured items because it represents a lovely moment in what was a pretty tough time emotionally and mentally. It’s clear from this photo how much they love each other, and really are one team.
Humor, creativity, kindness, and hope: These images are a powerful reminder of the beauty of being human.
(WATCH the National Portrait Gallery’s Hold Still video below.)
SHARE This Inspiring Virtual Exhibition With Your Friends On Social Media…
Since 1993, 48 mammal and bird species, including the scimitar-horned oryx, California condor, and black-footed ferret, have been saved from extinction by conservation actions, a new study finds.
Scimitar-horned oryx, Kduthler
According to the researchers’ models, this coordinated effort by governments, academic institutions, nonprofits, and others prevented the rate of mammalian and avian extinctions from reaching levels 300-400% higher.
This included some wonderful conservation efforts such as those for the Przewalski’s horse, of which 760 now roam the steppes of Mongolia once again after it went extinct in the wild during the 1960s, and the Iberian lynx, 176 of which have been reintroduced to the wilds of Spain between 2002 and 2010.
Iberian lynx, Program Ex-situ Conservation
It’s easy to say things would have been much worse, or that conservation has saved a lot of species, but how exactly does a scientist measure such things?
Saving our species
The researchers from Newcastle University used four different criteria to measure conservation actions, and compared the number of species listed as extinct in the wild or critically endangered, that historically have benefited from these criteria, to the flat number of known extinctions across two periods—1993-2020 and 2010-2020.
What they found was that between 1993-2020, extinction rates would have been 3.1 to 4.2 times higher for birds, representing about 21-32 different birds, and 2.4 to 4.2 times higher for mammals, representing about 7-16 mammal species that might have included the critically endangered Sumatran and Javan rhinoceros.
Wynand Uys
Dr. Rike Bolam from Newcastle University, co-lead author of the study, told the Guardian, “It is encouraging that some of the species have recovered very well. Our analyses provide a strikingly positive message that conservation has substantially reduced extinction rates for birds and mammals.”
Of all the rescued species, the largest numbers of birds saved was in New Zealand (6) and Brazil (5), and the largest number of mammals was in China (5) and Vietnam/U.S. (3).
The study also found that different families benefited differently from different conservation strategies. Birds benefited more from invasive species control and habitat protection, while mammals were saved more by government legislating and zoo reintroduction programs.
A global effort
The two periods correspond to the signings of major international understandings on the importance of biodiversity. The first is the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the second is the Aichi Conservation Targets, adopted by parties to the CBD in 2010.
The CBD treaty, signed during the first convention hosted in Rio in 1993, laid out a structure for modern, internationally collaborative conservation efforts that involved all the countries of the world, not only those in Europe and America.
“[The parties,] conscious of the intrinsic value of biological diversity and of the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components,” starts the lofty language of the treaty, “[resolve to pursue] the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.”
The CBD’s 2010 Aichi Conservation Targets were set for review in 2020, and include such ambitious goals as preventing the extinction of known threatened species, while simultaneously improving their conservation status.
“The loss of entire species can be stopped if there is sufficient will to do so,” said the study’s co-author Phil McGowan. “This is a call to action: showing the scale of the issue and what we can achieve if we act now to support conservation and prevent extinction.”
Quote of the Day: “Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.” – Jennifer Lee
Photo: by chelsea ferenando
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Some may not know that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is a talented photographer.
