Stories for Halloween...Do You Believe?

Baby Ghost


A woman named Mrs. Andrews was visiting the grave of her daughter in a cemetery in Queensland, Australia in 1946 or 1947. Her daughter Joyce had died about a year earlier, in 1945, at the age of 17. Mrs. Andrews saw nothing unusual when she took this photo of Joyce's gravemarker.

When the film was developed, Mrs. Andrews was astonished to see the image of a small child sitting happily at her daughter's grave. The ghost child seem to be aware of Mrs. Andrews since he or she is looking directly into the camera.

Is is possibly a double exposure? Mrs. Andrews said there were no such children nearby when she took the photograph and, moreover, did not recognize the child at all – it was no one she would have taken a picture of. She remarked that she did not believe it was the ghost of her daughter as a child.

Investigating this case, Australian paranormal researcher Tony Healy visited the cemetery in the late 1990s. Near Joyce's grave he found the graves of two infant girls.

Grandpa's Ghost


This photo was received from Denise Russell. "The lady in the color photo is my granny," she says. "She lived on her own until age 94, when her mind started to weaken and had to be moved to an assisted living home for her own safety. At the end of the first week, there was a picnic for the residents and their families. My mother and sister attended. My sister took two pictures that day, and this is one of them. It was taken on Sunday, 8/17/97, and we think the man behind her is my grandpa who passed away on Sunday, 8/14/84.

We did not notice the man in the picture until Christmas Day, 2000 (granny had since passed away), while browsing through some loose family photos at my parents' house. My sister thought it was such a nice picture of granny that she even made a copy for mom, but still, nobody noticed the man behind her for over three years! When I arrived at my parents' house that Christmas day, my sister handed me the picture and said, "Who do you think this man behind granny looks like?" It took a few seconds for it to sink in. I was absolutely speechless. The black and white photos show that it really looks like him.

Ghostly Grip



This interesting photo was taken sometime around the year 2000 in Manilla, Republic of the Philippines. According to The Ghost Research Society, two girlfriends were out for a walk one warm night. One of them entreated a passing stranger to photograph them using her cell phone's camera (hence the low-resolution picture). The result is shown here, with a transparent figure seeming to tug on the girl's arm with a firm if friendly grip.

Without further information on this photo, we have to admit that the ghost could have been added with image processing software. But if it's genuine and untouched, it certainly qualifies as one of the best ghost photos.

Truly Popular, Truly Powerful

Why is it that people feel the need to make others feel bad? Why is it that people need to exert power over others in order to feel powerful? Answer: because somewhere inside, the people who do this are unsatisfied with, or lack confidence in themselves.

Want to be truly popular and feel good about yourself? Go out of your way to do something nice to someone. Give someone a compliment. Offer someone a hand with something with which they're having difficulty. Just say "hi" to someone by name. Do all of these things sincerely, and soon you will have the respect of more people and more friends than you ever had before.

I know. I speak from personal experience.

So, if being nice to people results in more friends, why don't more people do it? There's a simple answer to that too: being friendly and complimentary and helpful opens you up to being hurt in return. Safer to be mean because it puts others on the defensive.

I'll tell you this much: if you're genuinely nice to others, you will be repaid in kind 10, 100, 1000 times over. It's worth the risk.

This will give you a true kind of power. Not power over people but power of people. Not the power of intimidation, but the power of cooperation. There's even a word for this: synergy

I know. I speak from personal experience.

Finally, remember this:

"No one can make you feel inferior unless you let them." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Ducks on the Pond

A creek passes within about 150 feet of my home. There is a eddy in the creek just where it goes under my street, which creates a deep pool. The pool attracts a lot of wildlife. Every time I pass it on my way to and from school, I stop to see if anything's happening there. It's a little window into the natural world around us.


Every year around this time, a life and death struggle takes place there. The contestants are baby steelhead trout and ducks.

Over the course of each summer, I see a gradual increase in the number of steelhead fingerlings in the pool. I've never seen any adult steelhead there, so I guess the fingerlings drift downstream from their birthing place and stop in the pool because it is so deep. By the time school starts, there are hundreds of fingerlings in the pool. After awhile, ducks and other birds discover the fish and start hanging out at the pool too.


The steelhead are at a big disadvantage because they have nowhere to go. By late summer/early fall the water level in the creek is so low that it isn't flowing to the bay. The trout are stuck in the pool. This allows the ducks to calmly float on the surface and casually pick off the trout one by one.

Last year the trout were almost wiped out. They weren't, obviously, because some came back this year to lay eggs, but it was close. One morning last fall I counted 14 ducks on the pond at once, all looking for a quick bite to eat.

I haven't seen more than 4 ducks at one time on the pool this year, which has helped the little fish. I still see dozens of 2" long fingerlings in the pool. Missing, however, are the big ones: a couple of fish that had grown to around 6 inches in length. Did they escape downstream, or did one of the ducks get them?

Each year, I find myself hoping for one good rainstorm to raise the level of the creek high enough that the fish can escape downstream to the bay. Would this save the fish?

Not really, for the bay and ocean are full of other predators. Still, it gives the fish a fighting chance.

Better than being stuck in a pond with no place to go and hungry ducks floating above.

Putting the "Revolution" in Revolution Foods

First off, let me say that I'm totally in favor of what Revolution Foods is trying to do: provide healthy, organic lunches from sustainable sources to all of you.

The problem is that a lot of kids don't eat the lunches.

Each day after you are excused from your lunch tables to go play, the Green Team is bombarded with uneaten lunches. It's as if the kids are revolting against Revolution Foods. Not exactly what the company owners had in mind when they named the company.


This creates another problem: a whole bunch of unnecessary waste being sent to our already overburdened landfills.

To me, this is a classic example of the so called "law of unintended consequences" in which an attempt to solve one problem creates a whole different one.

Perhaps the greatest example of this is rabbits in Australia. There, in 1859, a landowner brought in 24 rabbits, along with some other animals, in order to have something to hunt. Rabbits breed early and often and in Australia, it has no natural predators (animals that eat rabbits), so there was nothing to stop the rabbit population from getting bigger. 10 years later, 24 rabbits had become millions.


There were so many rabbits that they ate all the crops and all the food meant for farm animals. A "rabbit proof fence" was built to keep the rabbits away from the farmland. The fence is 2021 miles long (to get an idea of how long that is, the distance between Mill Valley and Lake Tahoe is about 200 miles, so the fence equal in length to about 5 round trips to Tahoe).



Now I'm sure that Revolution Foods won't cause any wild consequence like that, but the fact remains that kids basically don't like the food. The question is why not and what can Revolution Foods do about it?

I think that the problem has a simple cause and a simple solution. See, I like the food. Kids don't. This suggests that the food is being made for adult tastes, not kids'.

Kid have undeveloped palates. My two nieces' favorite restaurant meal is plain pasta with parmesan cheese. Kids are capable of tasting 4 basic things: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Many restaurant chefs know this. Go to some upscale restaurant (semi-fancy) which serves some exotic food like "pan-asian fusion cuisine" to adults and you will find a kids menu offering things like macaroni & cheese and chicken strips (fancy chicken strips, but chicken strips nonetheless). Kids don't like exotic and fancy, they like simple (my nephew is an exception, but that is a story for another post).

I know that Revolution Foods is very serious about their business. Their food is better this year than last, so I know they're trying to make the food tastier for you.

Here's how you can help them: Every now and then, someone from the company comes to Park and asks kids how they like the food. If they ask you, be respectful, but honest. If you don't like something, like the sloppy joes, try to explain why. Don't just say "it's gross". If you give them good feedback("it's dry", "all I taste is bread"), they will take it back to their bosses and the lunches will improve. Then we'll have a real food revolution - healthy food that kids will actually eat!

How to Wear a Pinnie

So, we played soccer in PE today and one of the teams wanted to wear pinnies so they could recognize their teammates. It took nearly 5 minutes for everyone to put them on, for a lot of the kids couldn't figure out to do it.

What they didn't realize is there are many ways to wear a pinny. So many in fact, that a pinny can be considered a fashion accessory. Take a look:

Normal


As a shawl


A tropical bare midriff look


V-neck vest


Off the shoulder