A commuter train came alive with “The Sound of Music” as cast members of the show pulled off a flash-mob performance.
The cast caught a train in Brisbane where the show was being staged during its Australian tour.
Once they were underway, Amy Lehpamer who plays Maria, launched into “Do-Ri-Me,” which passengers assumed was a solo performance. Little did they suspect the entire clan of von Trapp children were hiding among the rows.
The surprised and amused passengers broke out in applause before the cast could even return to their seats.
(WATCH the video below) — Photo: Allport Millernery, Facebook video
First trip ever on the Brisbane trains and this happens! .... Just your average Thursday afternoon... A flashmob singing on the train. #thesoundofmusic #childhoodflashback #averagethursday Queensland Rail
My name is Philippe, and I’m from France. I am a mechanical engineer by background and worked in the car industry for 12 years. I had a nice career, but somehow felt out of place there.
I moved to San Francisco with my American wife, and I found the inspiration to quit my job and start a positive blog project called Dreemit.
I interview people on the streets of San Francisco and Europe and ask them about their dreams in life. It has been an amazing experience as I get to connect with strangers who open their hearts and share their biggest dreams to a stranger, me. Of course we have differences, but I’ve learnt that we each have so much in common – we are all looking for health, fulfillment, connection, and happiness in many ways.
On the streets of Barcelona, for example, I met Svetlana, who is from Siberia in Russia. I saw this shining young woman in her wheelchair. She told me:
“My dream is to get the gold medal in the Paralympics game in Rio this year. I had a car accident 11 years ago that put me in a wheelchair. At some point I found a sport that was crazy fun and gave me back my mobility: hand-cycling. I got better and better, now I am representing Russia.”
“My first crazy dream was to go to the London 2012 games, and I made it, and I won my bronze medal over there. I then decided that in 4 years, in the next games, I will go for more and for gold! It is a lot of dedication for me, and going to the games, it means to experience the crazy spirit of people united from all over the world, it is always a giant story behind every paralympic athlete.”
Svetlana Moshkovich is a big wake-up call to life; such a kind, humble, person radiating energy and full of hope. She inspired me – hopefully she can inspire you too.
Follow the Dreemit Facebook for more inspirational interviews with strangers.
Share This Post With Friends So They Can Follow Svetlana’s Performance in Rio
Imagine a couple meeting for the very first time, yet their daughter was already a year old.
The happy duo was conceived despite odds as unlikely as a sperm cell reaching an egg.
Londoner Aminah Hart was single at age 42 but wanted a child. She turned to a sperm bank to help with In Vitro Fertilization and selected the donor from three anonymous candidates.
After baby Leila was born, Aminah became increasingly curious about the father and tried to contact him anonymously through the IVF register.
10,000 miles away, Australian cattle farmer Scott Andersen was under no obligation to be in touch with the baby and her mother, especially since the girl was a minor, but she looked so much like his four other children from two previous marriages, he wanted to meet her right away.
Aminah and Scott met for the first time in Melbourne, Australia just days after Leila’s first birthday. The first meeting went so well, they started getting together every few weeks until they fell in love.
One night Scott left to pick up some milk at the store, but came back with an engagement ring instead.
Aminah has recounted the ‘back to front’ love story in a new book, “How I Met Your Father,” which is already set to become a movie — with the most unusual “meet-cute” ever seen on the screen.
(WATCH the video below from ABC News) — Photo: Aminah Hart, Facebook
There are many different shapes and sizes of rebellion; whether they be emotional, physical, mental, or political.
But it takes an artist to rebel against ISIS and its careless destruction using the exact shape or size required for resurrection.
In a Toronto art exhibit titled “Material Speculation: ISIS”, Morehshin Allahyari has given new life to historical Assyrian artifacts and sculptures destroyed by the terrorist organization in 2015 by recreating the pieces using 3D-printing technology.
By collaborating with archaeologists and painstakingly pouring over files, analysis, and data, the Iranian artist collected photos and information on her native country’s treasures until she was able to recreate them exactly–beautiful works like the King Uthal piece (above) and Lamassu (below).
At the center of each piece is a USB drive filled with all of the information on the artifact.
“Like time capsules, each object is sealed and kept for future civilizations,” Morehshin explains on her website. ”The information in these flash drives includes images, maps, PDF files, and videos gathered in the last months on the artifacts and sites that were destroyed.”
The artist believes that by refusing to forget her culture’s masterpieces, people can partake in a form of activism that will restore a nation’s history through memory, care, and appreciation for the past.
Share Her Rebellion With Your Friends… Morehshin Allahyari Photos by Morehshin Allahyari
Costco is joining the ranks of retail giants recognizing the need for a higher minimum wage.
For the first time in nine years, Costco announced that they are raising the hourly pay of its lowest paid workers from $11.50 and $12, to $13 and $13.50.
“This is a physically challenging job, on your feet, pushing cases, lifting carts so we thought it was time to do it,” the company’s chief financial officer, Richard Galanti, said on a conference call last week.
Meet Smokey the horse, the gentle giant that thinks he’s a human.
Smokey starts mornings off by knocking on the door, opening it with his mouth, and coming into the kitchen for a piece of toast. Similarly, the equine would throw a fit when everyone else was wearing sunglasses but him, so they bought him some as well.
As it turns out, this strange little act became inspiration for an actual human boy.
While Smokey’s owner, Anna Louise Tayler, was going through school in London, there was a classmate who loathed wearing his spectacles. Anna showed him pictures and clips of the horse and said “If Smokey likes wearing glasses, why don’t you give it a try?”
Pope Francis visiting England - credit, Catholic Church of England and Wales CC 2.0.
Pope Francis changed decades of Catholic tradition today, declaring women can now be included in an annual Easter week ritual which formerly included only men.
The pope’s foot-washing ritual this year also included Hindu and Muslim refugees – a first for any pontiff.
The foot-washing ceremony, added to Catholic liturgy in the 1950s, commemorates Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. Each year since, the pope and Catholic priests around the world have repeated the ceremony with their congregations, but included only men.
This year, the Pope Francis has made the inclusion of women in the ceremony part of the “Roman Missal,” the book that guides worldwide Catholic practices.
“After careful consideration”, Francis said, “I have decided…that from now on, the pastors of the Church may choose the participants in the rite from among all the members of the People of God.”
Francis may be suggesting that those “People of God” might even include non-Catholics in the future. He’s chosen to include Orthodox, Muslim, and Hindu refugees in the foot-washing ritual today.
He traveled to a center outside Rome that supports asylum seekers and refugees to perform the Holy Thursday ceremony.
Eleven of the 12 people chosen for this year’s ceremony are migrants or refugees. They included three women — all Coptic Christians — along with three Muslim men and one Hindu man.
President Obama scored a home run with the Cuban people by bringing along “baseball diplomacy” on his historic trip to the island nation this week.
For the first time in 17 years, a Major League Baseball team played an exhibition game there, as the Tampa Bay Rays took on the Cuban national team playing to a packed stadium Tuesday, while Obama and his family cheered from the stands alongside Cuban President Raul Castro.
The two leaders even joined the crowd in doing “the wave,” as it swept around around the arena (see video above).
President Obama called baseball one of the things that “bind these two countries together,” and said they are the only country that might have more passion for the sport than the U.S.
The love of the game — and desire to play it on American diamonds — had always come at a steep price for Cuban players. More than 100 of the nation’s athletes have taken the field for big league teams since the countries broke ties in the late 1950s, despite the requirement that they renounce their citizenship to do so.
President Obama singled out Chicago White Sox First Baseman Jose Abreu, a Cuban national who has not seen his infant son in years. The president said playing in “the big leagues” means Abreu can support his family, still in Cuba, but he couldn’t return to see them.
“That can’t be the kind of policies we want to promote,” President Obama told ABC News. “My hope is this becomes just one more part of this stitching back together of the United States and Cuba.”
Obama this week became the first U.S. President to visit Cuba since 1928. In the past 15 months, he’s pushed steadily to renew ties with the communist neighbor 90 miles from the coast of Florida despite more than a half-century of Cold War tension.
His speech, televised nationally there, pressed for Cuba to improve its human rights record and take advantage of new trade opportunities with American businesses, even while his administration pushes Congress to lift the trade embargo levied on the island in 1960.
Three dozen Congress members and a large delegation of business leaders accompanied the president on his trip to emphasize that point.
But the athletic line drives and base hits may have accomplished more than diplomats and executives could ever do to get his message across to the Cuban people.
Tuesday’s game was the first between teams from Cuba and MLB since 1999 when the Baltimore Orioles played an exhibition game in Havana.
The Rays came out on top, 4-1 in Tuesday’s game, but the Cuban fans didn’t seem to mind. In diplomacy, like baseball, it isn’t always about winning or losing — but how you play the game.
(WATCH the White House video above, and WATCH the short baseball interview with Obama below)
Starbucks is crediting the employees in their local stores for brewing up a plan to donate 100% of the company’s leftover food to charities that feed the hungry.
The ready-to-eat offerings from all 7,600 U.S. stores are expected to add up to 50 million meals over the next five years.
Starbucks has been donating leftover pastries to food charities since 2010, but the company’s food safety policies required workers to throw out salads and other pre-packaged meals. Store employees, seeing how much food was being thrown away each day, wanted the company to do more.
American businesses often worry about legal liabilities they’d face if someone gets sick because of food they donated. But, contrary to those beliefs, a 20 year-old law has offered wide ranging protections since 1996 to companies that have donated food to charity.
Restaurant chains Chipotle, Olive Garden, KFC and Taco Bell, and are among the companies that have started donating leftover food. Many local restaurants and smaller chains also donate food with less attention.
The coffee mega-chain is working with two charities, Food Donation Connection and Feeding America, to get the meals to distribution centers and pantries that already feed the hungry.
“This food is going to make a difference,” Kienan McFadden, a Starbucks store manager said. “Rescuing food in this way from being thrown away will change lives. It makes me proud to know our partners are the heroes in this.”
The 7th busiest airport in India is breaking world records by soaking up the sun.
Kerala’s Cochin International Airport has become the first in the world to run entirely on solar power. With a 45-acre field of solar panels, the setup has a 12-megawatt peak capacity which means the airport will not have to spend a dime on electricity.
The airport plans on doubling the capacity to 26.5 megawatts after the initial six years needed to recoup the $9.3 million investment cost.
“We consume around 48,000 unit (KWh) a day. So if we can produce the same by strictly adhering to the green and sustainable development model of infrastructure development that we always follow, that would send a message to the world,” said managing director of the airport, Mr. V.J. Kurian IAS.
According to the company, over the next 25 years the solar power generated will have eliminated 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from a coal fired power plant, equal to planting 3 million trees.
Fly This Story To Your Friends… Click To Share (Photo by Intel Free Press, CC)
Coincidentally, two nursing felines didn’t mind taking in another mouth to feed – and the difference in species didn’t seem to get in the way of their motherly instincts.
The pups will be nursed to full health and independence before being shipped up to Minnesota for adoption.
Feed Your Friends a Purrfect Story… Click To Share
On February 26th, eleven teachers at Southern Lehigh High School in Pennsylvania agreed to go Bald for Bucks in support of their annual Pennies for Patients fundraiser.
The only female participating teacher, Spanish teacher Mrs. Joan Imms-Geiser, shaved her head for $4,000. After the haircut she was greeted by her husband, who presented her with flowers and took a seat in barber’s chair himself, saying, “I’m not letting you do this alone.”
“At this moment, the entire school came together in unity, there was not a dry eye in the crowd. It was this moment, everyone realized why they did what they did,” campaign manager of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Eastern PA Chapter said.
The fundraiser was spearheaded by the juniors of the Pennsylvania high school’s National Honors Society. The group set out to raise a total of $4,000, shattering the previous all-time record and tripling the previous year’s total. As a means to encourage the staff and students to donate, eleven teachers pledged to shave their heads for reaching fundraising milestones. In the end, the students raised $4,450.
This girl’s got game and plays basketball like a pro, even though she’s barely tall enough to dribble.
Jaliya Manuel’s parents discovered her love of the game when she was a year old and could barely walk. Five years later, she’s running circles around adults on the court with her superior ball handling skills.
When a doctor switched on Andrea Diaz’s cochlear implant for the first time, she experienced just one of two life-changing events that would happen in a matter of minutes.
Her boyfriend had been waiting for that moment so she could hear him propose to her.
Andrea burst into tears of joy once she was able to hear, thanks to the implant. But boyfriend Kevin Peakman waited until the doctor adjusted the levels so everything would be perfect, before getting down on one knee and opening a ring box.
When the manager of a supermarket found out why a man was shoplifting, he refused to press charges — and got downright generous.
Store manager Radzuan Ma’asan (above) offered the man a job, and even threw in some cash to help with current expenses and to send his oldest child to school.
The 31-year-old shoplifter, who remains anonymous, was caught in Malaysia stealing about seven dollars in food from a Tesco.
Ma’asan questioned the man, who tried to exit the store with his son while carrying fruit and drinks. The man confessed immediately, shocking the manager with his honesty.
The father of three explained he’d had to quit his job to take care of his wife and children after she slipped into a coma during childbirth. A visit to a relative’s house where the family was staying confirmed his story.
His wife is now recovering at home and the store manager told The Star that his number one priority was to ensure that the seven-year-old gets enrolled in a school.
A group of employees at a Vancouver, Washington, coffee shop stopped what they were doing to console a grieving widow, while another customer shot a beautiful photo of the scene.
A Dutch Bros. worker noticed the young woman was distraught while ordering from her car.
Her 37-year-old husband had just passed away the night before. When the drive-thru cashier offered to pray with her, other employees also wanted to hold her outstretched hand.
The March 19 photo was snapped by Barbara Danner, who was in the car behind and later posted it to the Dutch Bros. Facebook page.
The comments on the page confirm that many others have experience this level of customer service from Dutch Bros., which began in Oregon, but now can be found in dozens of locations stretching to Arizona.
“When my parents were in a head on collision last year, the amazing kids at the Dutch Bros on Coburg Road in Eugene came together with their own tips to purchase my mom (a very regular customer) a beautiful card,” wrote Brenda King Eien. “They loaded up a gift card for her so she would not have to worry about paying for her coffee during her recovery for a long time!”
Sherrie Chapman Vieira reported the same great care when she stopped by after having to put down a beloved pet. “In my head a dutch bros coffee = comfort. They gave it to me for free along with some kind words. I’ve never forgotten that.”
The administrators at this teen’s high school made sure a dying father was able to see his daughter graduate –and did it with an official ceremony organized in only a matter of hours.
Bob Chambers, of Rockford, Michigan had a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia in December, but his body rejected the transplant and is now immune to any treatment.
He chose to return home from hospice care last week and spend quality days with his family. On Wednesday night, the Rockford Public School officials made sure he was able to see his daughter graduate bringing the pomp and circumstance to the family’s living room.
EK Lim envisioned giving persons with disabilities an opportunity to experience the sea–something that is almost impossible because boats and beaches are not so wheelchair-friendly.
With the help of a non-profit group in Malaysia, People Support People, his annual Marine Discovery Dive for people in wheelchairs is offering the experience of being able-bodied to people who may have forgotten what freedom of movement feels like.
“One of the most valuable lessons we learned on this trip is that disability is not about someone’s physical limitations,” said the filmmakers at Our Better World. “It’s about the environment. If we work to make it accessible, persons with disabilities have an equal chance of succeeding in everything that able-bodied people do.”
The Marine Discovery Dive 2016 is open to volunteers (those who dive and those who don’t) and persons with disabilities from around the world. Training is provided. Learn more about the story and how you can help at Our Better World.
(WATCH the video below from the digital storytelling initiative from the Singapore International Foundation)
But last week on the anniversary of the fateful flight, Don thanked God for how his life changed when he met the kind and generous people of Minnesota.
Trees have made a stunning comeback across New England, branching out to take over millions of acres of former farmland, and leading to a wildlife resurgence unlike anywhere else in the country.
Throughout the mid-1800s, farmers clear-cut acres of the towering trees to grow crops. Forests were left covering only about 28% of New England. Now, 160 years later, hardwoods and pines cover 80% of the horizon making the Northeast the most heavily wooded region in the U.S.
Farming, as a way to make a living, gave way to the Industrial Age, and families moved to cities and suburbs for better paying jobs. Wandering today deep into the woods, people can see the remains of stone fences that once bordered farm fields.
More woodlands give wildlife a chance at a big comeback, as well. Animals once thought hunted and trapped out of existence in the Northeast U.S. are thriving.
Bears, beavers, seals and birds ranging from woodpeckers to eagles have re-populated the land, as forests have taken over abandoned fields. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only a few hundred deer left in Massachusetts — now there are more than 85,000 in the state.
Just 10 years ago, Vermont had no nesting bald eagles. Last year, conservationists counted 14 pairs that hatched 24 chicks in the state.
“It feels almost like we’re entering an age of miracles,’’ John Banks, director of natural resources for the Penobscot Nation, a Native American tribe in Maine, told the Boston Globe. “New England is undoing many excesses of the industrial age. Fish are swimming freely to their ancient spawning places. Great birds are again bold in the sky.’’
