Handband News

Soldiers hit funds target

June 22nd, 2009

Campaigners have raised £30,000 to support families of soldiers injured and killed in battle.

Soldiers with 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment – many from the county – spent a year raising the money through wristbands.

The news was welcomed by the father of Private Adam Morris, who was killed three years ago, aged 19, in a roadside blast near Basra, Iraq.

Nigel Morris, said: “It’s an excellent idea and it’s so nice that they have reached their target.

“There will be lots of families like ours who are down on their luck and this could help keep them going.”

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Weston teacher biking across country as lesson to students

June 12th, 2009

A Weston middle school teacher is biking from California back east, sending dispatches from historic sites and showing his students that careful planning pays off.

Where in the world is Mr. Giraldo?
This summer, Tequesta Trace Middle School history teacher Rafael Giraldo is taking education on the road. For the next couple of months, he’ll be biking across the country on a recumbent trike named Manifest Destiny, a modern-day version of an old-time adventurer.
‘’My trike,'’ he said, “that’s no different than the Conestoga wagon of the settlers.'’

But unlike the early settlers, he doesn’t have to wait for the Pony Express to send word home about his discoveries.

Giraldo, who expects to be ‘’somewhere in the Great Plains'’ when he turns 46 later this month, is equipped with gadgets like a Global Positioning System transmitter, a panoramic camera and a solar panel to charge his gear.

The former businessman who transitioned to teaching in 2004, said he wants to show his students the value of setting big goals and preparing to meet them.

‘’As a teacher, it is invaluable, the fact that I can tell a student this is something really enormous,'’ he said. “It can be done. Let me show you. Let me do it. And take that and incorporate it into your lives.'’

Giraldo, who teaches eighth-grade U.S. history, flew to San Francisco on June 5 with his bike and started the journey the next day at the Golden Gate Bridge. His path will take him over part of the old Pony Express trail, through part of the Oregon Trail, to St. Louis, and eventually to Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement.

He’ll hit St. Augustine on the way back south and then return to Weston by, he hopes, Aug. 16. His plan is to travel between 70 and 75 miles a day.

Followers can track the progress of his 5,000-mile, 70-day trip on his website, www.tourofdiscovery.com, and check out photos, which he is loading daily. Already, he has posted photos of local sights, wildlife, signs that warn of a ‘’rough road,'’ bike trails, himself in his biking gear and the trike parked next to horses, taco trucks and other larger vehicles.

He will also post blog items on the site each week and has a Facebook group dedicated to the trip.

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Student spearheads anti-drug campaign

June 12th, 2009

NORTHFIELD — Reading about Northfield’s drug-related issues in the media wasn’t enough for Carly Oto.

After watching the issue unfold in local and regional news for nearly two years, the recent graduate of Northfield High School decided during her last semester of school that something more had to be done.

Oto was enrolled in a service learning-oriented independent study with high school teacher Sarah Swan McDonald. After consulting with Swan McDonald and Melissa Larson, a social worker at the middle school, Oto decided to use the independent study as a platform to launch an anti-drug campaign aimed at creating a more positive atmosphere for Northfield Middle School students.

For four weeks over the spring semester Oto put up handmade posters with drug use statistics, drug facts or slogans like, “Maybe you just think that everyone else is doing it,” up in the hallways of the middle school. But she didn’t stop there.

Oto also spent two days in the middle school cafeteria, collecting anti-drug pledges from middle school students. In exchange for the pledges, which asked students to stay drug-free and create a positive environment in the middle school, middle-schoolers received a rubber bracelet with the word “Clean” stamped on it.

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For Duluth East grads, ‘a rough go of it’

June 4th, 2009

On Wednesday night, Josh Sorvik received his diploma at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center with the rest of his East High School graduating class, the culmination of 13 years of hard work.

Most days, though, the 18-year-old measures his successes in smaller increments.

For instance, on Monday he was able to remove the brace he’s worn for two months around his midsection to keep his bones from twisting.

“Ha, ha — I’m free,” Josh said as he ripped off the white brace decorated with a picture of Spiderman by one of his friends. “I haven’t been able to sit up without that thing since the accident.”

Even without the brace, Josh has a constant reminder of the March 29 fall at Spirit Mountain that stole the use of the lower half of his body: the wheelchair he uses to get around.

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West Mifflin pupils plant petunias to pay it forward

June 4th, 2009

Kaylee Beckinger, 14, held a white petunia Sunday as she walked barefoot through a flower bed along Lebanon Road in West Mifflin. Selecting what she considered the perfect spot, she planted the flower in loose soil, telling friends nearby, “I just hate when dirt gets under my nails.”

Kaylee, of West Mifflin, was taking part with several of her West Mifflin Middle School classmates at the Hot Metal Plaza in a community service project organized by Wendy Betten, owner of the Hot Metal Diner, and West Mifflin Middle School Principal Dave Deramo.

Ms. Betten’s diner is one of three businesses in the plaza.

“We started with 11 piles of dirt and 80 flats of flowers and now we have a garden,” Ms. Betten said, as she admired the scene. Nearly 30 volunteers with shovels, rakes and spades worked to plant hundreds of petunias in neat rows along the islands bordering the plaza parking lot.

Calling the planting effort “Pay it Forward Day,” Ms. Betten hopes to encourage West Mifflin residents to begin offering good deeds to strangers with no expectation of repayment, except that recipients provide a similar good deed for another stranger.

The pay-it-forward concept was popularized by a 2000 movie of the same name that was based on the book written by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

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