Aneta Paceskoski: May 2010

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'Meet Helen Keller'

Helen Keller was a wild child. She threw temper tantrums, kicking and screaming until she was exhausted. She grabbed food from everyone's plate at the dinner table and ate with her hands. Once she locked her mother in the kitchen for three hours.
Helen was not a "bad" girl. Her problems began when she was only 19 months old. After an illness called "brain fever," which may have been scarlet fever or meningitis, Helen lost her eyesight and hearing and couldn't speak. She was angry. She was frustrated. She had difficulty making herself understood. Helen's parents felt sorry for her and didn't know how to handle her. Yet despite her early difficulties, Helen became well educated and a respected leader who fought for the rights of the deaf and blind.
Helen, born on June 27, 1880, in the small farming town of Tuscumbia, Ala., was the oldest of three children of Arthur and Kate Keller. Helen also had two older half-brothers, born to her father before his first wife died. Her father was the editor of the town newspaper. They lived on a farm where they raised pigs, turkeys, chickens and sheep.
Through touching, tasting and smelling, Helen learned a great deal about the world she could no longer see or hear. She could recognize people and their ages just by the vibrations from their footsteps on a bare floor. When she walked around, she knew where she was by the different smells from the shops in town or from the flowers on the farm.
As she grew a little older, she tried to communicate. She shook her head to mean "no." A pull meant "come," and a push, "go." When people spoke, she touched their lips but couldn't understand their words. She tried moving her lips, but no one could understand her.
For years, Helen's parents took her to see many doctors and tried many treatments, but nothing would bring back her sight or hearing. It seemed she would forever live in a dark and silent world. Tuscumbia was a long way from any schools for the blind or deaf. A friend of Helen's mother suggested that they send Helen to an institution, wondering if she were even capable of learning.
But Helen's mother had read a book by Charles Dickens describing a deaf-blind girl he had met while visiting the United States. Dickens reported that this girl had been taught to communicate by finger spelling. Each letter of the alphabet was formed by moving fingers in different positions. Hoping Helen could be taught finger spelling too, the Kellers began looking for a teacher.

Article By: Sherrill Kushner, LA Times. 27th June 2005.

http://www.4hearingloss.com/archives/2005/06/meet_helen_kell.html

Angela Merkel

German troops in Afghanistan call on Angela Merkel to explain why they're at war

German soldiers are wearing their hearts on their sleeves - in the form of a badge that protests their country's involvement in the war in Afghanistan.
Some troops have taken to wearing the cloth accessory that states - ironically - 'I fight for Merkel' in a bid to persuade the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to explain exactly what they are fighting and dying for.
Four more troops were killed, and five badly injured, in Afghanistan last week.
Seven soldiers have died there so far this month, bringing the total to 43 in all since they were first deployed eight years ago.
Unable to engage the Taliban directly on the ground, frustrated by their government’s inability to acknowledge they are even engaged in a war and angered by the lack of popular support for their mission, the badges are a low-key mutiny that has sent shock waves through the top brass of the Bundeswehr.
Soldiers were warned this week that it is illegal to sew the cloth patches on to their uniforms.
But that hasn’t stopped them from buying the badges in their hundreds, in desert beige or NATO green, at the ISAF camp at Mazar-e-Sharif.
'They want the Chancellor, their ultimate boss, to finally find the clear words to put the war against the Taliban into black and white,' Bild Zeitung, Germany’s biggest daily paper, said today.
Chancellor Merkel is to make a statement to parliament tomorrow. Her spokesman said she wants to make clear her 'high-esteem' for the work of the German soldiers in Afghanistan in the light of the recent casualties.
But she will be speaking in the Reichstag after being put under pressure from U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who arrived in Germany today with a brief from the White House to get the Germans to do more in Afghanistan.
Germany has the third largest presence in Afghanistan after the U.S. and Britain. The German parliament approved the dispatch of a further 850 soldiers in February when it extended the mandate for the military mission.
Yet the political will for German troops to engage the enemy head-on remains lacking.
Cracks are growing in the parties that supported their engagement there up until now.
Ottmar Schreiner, a left-wing member of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), said his party has 'growing doubts' about German involvement in Afghanistan.
He said: 'If things haven't improved in Afghanistan by next year then I don't see where a majority for a new extension of the mandate is going to come from.'
The trouble for Mrs Merkel is that German involvement is deeply unpopular with some 80 per cent of the public, who want the troops to come home. Germany’s disastrous wars of the last century have left its public with a deep pacifistic streak.
The German press has been swift to condemn the government for its indecisiveness.
The Financial Times Deutschland said: 'With every dead German soldier in Afghanistan, the calls for an immediate withdrawal grow louder. This reflex shows that the German public is still not clear about the character of the mission.
'The politicians are largely to blame. Since the beginning of the mission eight years ago they suppressed a realistic description of the situation... Deaths, injuries, battles and heavy weaponry -- none of these suit the picture that was painted back then.'
The left-wing Berliner Zeitung said: 'Why are German soldiers in Afghanistan at all? As the chancellor and her government are still sticking to the military mission there it is their duty to explain it. But she has failed to do so.
'This can be explained by her basic attitude - it is only worth talking about problems when they become virulent.
'In the case of Afghanistan this is particularly catastrophic. Because the government has failed to make its case in what is the biggest foreign policy and security policy challenge in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.'

Article By: Mail Foreign Service.
http://angela-merkel-news.newslib.com/story/4679-3244033/

Miranda Kerr

Miranda Kerr bares all for koalas

"I feel strongly about the need to protect our natural environment because it supports our life - it really is that simple,'' Kerr tells the magazine, in stores on Wednesday.
Kerr shot the cover for Rolling Stone's first "green issue'' in Sydney in January, with photographer Carlotta Moye behind the lens.
The day-long shoot also included a real koala named Koral, as Kerr is the face of the Australian Koala Foundation's No Tree, No Me campaign.
The campaign aims to protect koalas' natural habitat, hence Kerr's only prop for the shoot is a chain locking her to a tree.
"It's a sad thing - there are only about 100,000 koalas left in Australia,'' Kerr said.
"Something like 80 per cent of the koalas' habitat has been destroyed since Europeans arrived in Australia.''

Kerr is also set to appear in American designer Marc Jacob's new Protect The Skin You're In T-shirt campaign, joining the likes of Eva Mendes, Heidi Klum, Dita Von Teese, Naomi Campbell and Victoria Beckham to raise awareness of skin cancer.
"I'm fully covered - at least, they've covered my bits with the words,'' she laughed.
Other celebrities to have ditched their clothes for a cause include Nicollette Sheridan, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Donovan and Leona Lewis. Given Kerr's high profile, these latest striking images are likely to be picked up by America's Rolling Stone magazine.
"The great thing about having people recognise you is you can try to make a positive difference - that's what I'm trying to do, especially for young women,'' Kerr said.
Rolling Stone's inaugural green issue includes other well-known Australian faces - John Butler, Ruby Rose and Xavier Rudd - talking about environmental issues close to their hearts.

"I believe every effort we make now has a reaction - if we're making positive changes, if we're all doing the simple, small things we can do to help the environment, it makes a big difference,'' said Kerr, who tries to eat only organic food.

Article By Jonathon Moran
From: The Sunday Telegraph
May 31, 2009.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/miranda-kerr-bares-all-for-koalas/story-e6freuy9-1225718588829