hellobeautifulcreatures

The gentleman on the other end of the line was sobbing. A moment ago, he had been yelling at me, but when that didn’t work, he turned to an emotional plea. He told me about his wife and children that he needed to support, his mortgage, his car payment, his utilities. He probably would have tried bargaining, but we both knew that would go nowhere. This conversation was about one thing: ending his unemployment benefits. I wish I could say I was moved. But I was two hours into my shift, and he was already the second sobbing person I had talked to. I knew there would be many more before my day ended. It was December 2010 and I was working as an operator at the Pennsylvania Office of Unemployment Compensation. It was a rough month. Many people were ending their run on unemployment compensation after collecting for nearly two years. It wasn’t because they had jobs. It was because the special period of extended benefits that allowed people to stay on the program ended every December. None of...

"Jared McLemore is live on Facebook." Those who clicked immediately saw a dark street scene with trees in the background. Then, McLemore, shirtless, rushes into the frame and sits crosslegged, his expression strangely blank . He pours gasoline over his body from a red can. Voices come from offscreen as he fumbles with matches. A second body rushes in, tackling him, but it's too late. The frame is filled with flames. Fully engulfed, but eerily calm, McLemore runs off screen. The screaming begins. *** Rock-and-roll came naturally to Alyssa Moore. Her parents were punk rockers in the Antenna scene of the 1980s. She picked up the guitar and wrote her first song at age 8. At 13, she played her first gig — a kid's birthday party. Music became her passion, her escape from reality. "I've had family problems my whole life," she says. "When I turned 14, 15, it was the worst it had ever gotten. They were fighting constantly. ... My dad was gone. My mom was...

I’m coming out as disabled. It’s about time. I’m a 25-year-old with 80-year-old bones. Inside my mother’s womb, I developed mostly normally. But my legs didn’t show much growth in the sonograms; there was a mutation lurking on the long arm of the COL2A1 gene of chromosome 12, involved in making Type II collagen . One letter switched in the gene, an amino acid wrongly substituted , cartilage forming too tender within me. My rare bone disorder , spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, causes collagen in the joints to form incorrectly, short stature, arthritis, neck instability, scoliosis, joint inflammation, chronic pain, and other issues. It’s actually a form of dwarfism; I just happen to be on the taller end of the spectrum at 4’6”. Facing all of this, knowing at a young age that my bones would deteriorate much quicker than my friends, wasn’t scary. I’d need joint replacements and surgeries. I knew my path. I learned to love my body for what it is and all I can do, even with pain. For many ...

Wheel Camper Fleet Self Contained http://www.truckcampermagazine.com/news/tcm-exclusive-2012-four-wheel-camper-fleet-self-contained/"> Wheel Camper Fleet Self Contained&BODY=I found this article interesting and thought of sharing it with you. Check it out: http://www.truckcampermagazine.com/news/tcm-exclusive-2012-four-wheel-camper-fleet-self-contained/"> Tom Hanagan, President of Four Wheel Campers, debuts the first production self contained Four Wheel Camper complete with a shower. Wheel Camper Fleet Self Contained" width="520" height="156" /> It’s no secret that truck camper customers want the impossible.  We want every feature, every amenity, and every accessory in the world, but none of the associated weight or cost.  Don’t tell us something isn’t possible.  Don’t cry to us about how expensive the materials are.  Just give us a light weight, energy efficient, low cost camper .  How hard is that? In...

Guinea trive members had never seen a white person before" /> New Guinea trive members had never seen a white person before ( ) Margaret Hastings " /> Margaret Hastings ( ) Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff Harper When Margaret Hastings found her best friend dead, all she could think about were her shoes. “I ought to have cried,” Hastings wrote in her diary. “I just sat there in shock, and all I could think was: ‘Now the shoes belong to me.’ ” That’s what paradise had done to the Women’s Army Corps corporal — stripped her of emotion, survival was the only imperative. If she was to make it out of the jungle alive, crying was a luxury. As World War II was drawing to a close, Hastings was part of a group of enlisted men and women who crashed in the middle of a “Shangri-La,” a hidden valley, untouched by the rest of the world, in Dutch New Guinea. But this Shangri-La was a far cry from the utopia coined by the 1933 novel “Lost Horizon.” Of the 24 passengers, only H...

Danny Lipford: This week is the second and final show on the renovation of Today’s Bath. Announcer: Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford , the voice of home improvement , with projects, tips and ideas to help you improve your home. Danny Lipford: We’re right in the middle of a two part renovation called Today ’s Bath, it involves the renovation and updating of two different bathrooms, one being a very small master bathroom that was in this area and then on the other side of the wall even a smaller bathroom that was kind of the guest bathroom and we’re making them a lot larger by encroaching into this area which was once the master bedroom . Now, by taking up this space we were able to create this very nice custom walk -in shower than a very long vanity, two different sinks, and this cozy little niche for the whirlpool tub. Also the existing guest bathroom ’s a lot larger, a lot more functional and we had enough space left over by encroaching into this bedroom to create a very nice...