Happy May, everyone! I just had to write and share an amazing experience the boys and I had this past week. We had a young man by the name of Michael Galardi stay with us for two days. He found us through a website community I joined last fall called Couch Surfing (www.couchsurfing.com) and contacted me in early April through that site. He said he was biking through the lower 48 and was hoping to crash at our house for a few days at the end of April on his way through Washington State. I checked out his website and told him we’d be glad to have him. He arrived on Wednesday and left Friday morning. This is a truly amazing young man. He’s 26 years old and one of the most positive people I’ve ever met. Prior to this undertaking, he hiked the Appalachian trail 2800 miles from Georgia to Canada. His motto is “Control nothing and nothing controls you” and “If there is always a positive and negative side to any situation, then why would one not focus on the positive?” He spent countless hours visiting with my boys, answering their questions and just being present and respectful of who they were and what they had to say. He spent an hour mesmerizing Eli’s 5th grade class, and just generally won the hearts of everyone he met here in town. And being from the south, he was totally polite and charming and just very easy to have around. We were all three sad to see him ride away on Friday morning but we know we’ll keep in touch. We all agreed this was a truly … [Read more...]
Article about Positive Blogs
Provocative vlogging Share Monday, April 27, 2009 at 10:33am The following originally appeared in The Sunday Paper on 4/26/09 www.sundaypaper.com When it comes to video blogging, or vlogging, everyone has something to say. But where’s the love, man? Take the case of Dana White, the 39-year-old president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, the Las Vegas-based concern recognized as the largest mixed martial arts organization in the world. From near obscurity in 2005, the UFC has been on a meteoric rise, with its programming now shown in 36 countries worldwide. White has been described as a volatile egomaniac and has long howled about how the UFC deserves mainstream media coverage. And now that he’s going to get it, he may not like it. Can you imagine what the repercussions would be if NBA Commissioner David Stern or NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell posted an obscenity-filled video blog rant that slurred women, homosexuals and the mentally disabled? Of course they’d be immediately relieved of their duties. But when White did precisely that earlier this month on YouTube, hardly anyone outside of those who follow MMA uttered a peep. Initially. It was a story by Sherdog.com MMA reporter Loretta Hunt about UFC’s credentialing policy for fighters’ agents and managers that drew White’s ire. He swears an estimated 35 times in the three-minute diatribe, calling Hunt an “[expletive] dumb bitch,” among other insults, referring to the … [Read more...]
