From ERIC SHACKLE in Sydney, Australia. <ericshackle*bigpond.com>
My friend Mike Rubbo, a talented film maker and artist, spends much of his time riding an electric-powerered bicycle.
He believes more people ought to ride bikes, both to improve their health and to lessen pollution.
He also thinks most Australian cyclists adopt the wrong posture when they lean forward; he says
they should sit upright, as practised in Europe.
Mike has put togther a large collection of photos, drawings and some of his own sketches and lino
cuts, for an exhibition in Sydney.
It will be held in the TAP Gallery, 278 Palmer Street, Darlinghurst, from July 4 (12 to 6pm daily).
You can preview some of the exhibits by visiting Mike's website: http://www.situp-cycle.com/
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
World's Oldest Blogger, Bernando la Pallo, is 109
From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia. <ericshackle*bigpond.com>
Brazilian-born Bernando la Pallo, who now lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is almost certainly the world's oldest blogger. He will celebrate his 110th birthday on August 17.
He looks half his age, and is a shining endorsement of his motto: "Age more, eat less."
He moved to the U.S.with his family when he was five, and lived in New York for most of his life.
After studying abroad, he became an internationally renowned chef. He said he spent decades cooking for prominent people including Winston Churchill.
LaPallo has four children and four grandchildren. He hopes to live until he's at least 125.
Asked what are his favorite foods. he replied,"Garlic, olive oil, cinnamon, chocolate and honey."
Here's a story by Alexis Vance, a Fox-10 TV reporter who interviewed him on his 109th birthday:
"Believe him when he says he’s 104 "
Aging skipped Bernando LaPallo’s genes. He marked 104 years of life Wednesday, still defying every truth to getting old.
Barely a gray hair on his head, with saber-sharp social skills and shiny cocoa skin that shuns wrinkles.
I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes, much less my ears, at the fact he’s 104. He tires of the fuss people make over this number, but really, you can’t blame their awe — or envy.
I still looked for clues at his Mesa apartment, not so much because of doubt, but for a personal reality check. On a shelf, one trophy honored 20 years of service for his work as a chef on cruise lines. LaPallo got the trophy in 1957.
The disbelief, as hard as it is to put down, must go. LaPallo has earned every year on this planet through faith, education and taking care of his body.
He doesn’t eat meat, and for that matter, doesn’t indulge beyond satisfying hunger. Vegetables, fruit, fish and an overall organic diet do the trick.
Born Aug. 17, 1901, in Brazil, LaPallo moved to the United States with his family at age 5, where he was raised in New York and Philadelphia. Educated at a prestigious culinary arts school in Paris, his lifelong career path has included stints as a chef, podiatrist, herb specialist and massage therapist. Those topics dominate shelves filled with encyclopedias, textbooks and more.
It’s no surprise that longevity runs in the family. His father lived to be 97. His mother lived to be 105. In fact, photos of her at ages 104 and 68 just made me shake my head in amazement once again.
Georgette, his wife of 46 years, credits him for revitalizing her health. With the help of good nutrition and herbal supplements, her medication intake has been reduced from more than 20 pills to only two daily.
One would think LaPallo could make some serious money by selling his example of healthy living. I even suggested it, but he insists his philosophy would clash with the health care industry’s profit goals.
About a year ago, the couple moved from North Carolina to a modest Mesa apartment, where a good share of the residents run on the younger side.
For a guy who still hits the bowling alley — he recently bowled a 210 — LaPallo, in a way, really isn’t out of place.
"I have a friend who asks, ‘When are you going to age? When are you going to get old?’ ’’ he said.
"I ask myself the same thing.’’Yvette Leslie of Mesa is LaPallo's unofficial adopted daughter who considers LaPallo her mentor. The two met 25 years ago and learned how to do theatrical and street makeup together at the Robert Fiance Hair Design Institute in New York.
After studying abroad, he became an internationally renowned chef. He said he spent decades cooking for prominent people including Winston Churchill.
LaPallo has four children and four grandchildren. He hopes to live until he's at least 125.
Asked what are his favorite foods. he replied,"Garlic, olive oil, cinnamon, chocolate and honey."
Here's a story by Alexis Vance, a Fox-10 TV reporter who interviewed him on his 109th birthday:
MESA, Ariz. - On August 17, Bernando LaPallo turned 109 years old! This Mesa resident lives on his own, still drives and walks around just fine - it's incredible, so I asked him to share some of his secrets.
Bernando eats primarily raw fruits, veggies and fish. Meat is a treat only once a year.
"This is my lifesaver, it keeps me alive..superfood..plus I take it everyday since 1979 - I never miss." said LaPallo.
He believes his clean lifestyle is why he's still alive.
"Well, I don't think I know that eating it's what you eat, you've heard people say you are what you eat, well you are."
Bernando reads daily, walks a mile and a half as soon as he gets up and his favorite product to use on his skin is olive oil.
Extra virgin olive oil is an age old secret he's practiced for years.
His faith is his foundation and his father his role model.
At 109, he's a popular man. He consults people who are trying to change their life for the better and makes speeches around the country. He's written one book, Age Less and Live More and is working on a second. His phone never stops ringing.
"I get calls from all over..Miami, Italy..I'm on TV in South America."
I asked him if he thinks about his final days. "I never gave dying any thought. I still don't. I know I've got to die. Everybody dies." said Bernando.
So what's next for a man who's lived over a century? He wants to open a restaurant here in the valley with raw foods on one side and healthy American food on the other. But on his birthday, he's going to take a break from his busy days and celebrate another year of life.
Four years earlier, Andy Hobbs, from the East Valley Tribune, interviewed Bernando, and reported:
Four years earlier, Andy Hobbs, from the East Valley Tribune, interviewed Bernando, and reported:
"Believe him when he says he’s 104 "
Aging skipped Bernando LaPallo’s genes. He marked 104 years of life Wednesday, still defying every truth to getting old.
Barely a gray hair on his head, with saber-sharp social skills and shiny cocoa skin that shuns wrinkles.
I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes, much less my ears, at the fact he’s 104. He tires of the fuss people make over this number, but really, you can’t blame their awe — or envy.
I still looked for clues at his Mesa apartment, not so much because of doubt, but for a personal reality check. On a shelf, one trophy honored 20 years of service for his work as a chef on cruise lines. LaPallo got the trophy in 1957.
The disbelief, as hard as it is to put down, must go. LaPallo has earned every year on this planet through faith, education and taking care of his body.
He doesn’t eat meat, and for that matter, doesn’t indulge beyond satisfying hunger. Vegetables, fruit, fish and an overall organic diet do the trick.
Born Aug. 17, 1901, in Brazil, LaPallo moved to the United States with his family at age 5, where he was raised in New York and Philadelphia. Educated at a prestigious culinary arts school in Paris, his lifelong career path has included stints as a chef, podiatrist, herb specialist and massage therapist. Those topics dominate shelves filled with encyclopedias, textbooks and more.
It’s no surprise that longevity runs in the family. His father lived to be 97. His mother lived to be 105. In fact, photos of her at ages 104 and 68 just made me shake my head in amazement once again.
Georgette, his wife of 46 years, credits him for revitalizing her health. With the help of good nutrition and herbal supplements, her medication intake has been reduced from more than 20 pills to only two daily.
One would think LaPallo could make some serious money by selling his example of healthy living. I even suggested it, but he insists his philosophy would clash with the health care industry’s profit goals.
About a year ago, the couple moved from North Carolina to a modest Mesa apartment, where a good share of the residents run on the younger side.
For a guy who still hits the bowling alley — he recently bowled a 210 — LaPallo, in a way, really isn’t out of place.
"I have a friend who asks, ‘When are you going to age? When are you going to get old?’ ’’ he said.
"I ask myself the same thing.’’
She was shocked at his age when she first met him, and she still marvels at how well he's aged. "His memory is amazing," said Leslie, 52, a licensed massage therapist. "I've never seen him angry. His skin is so tight and in perfect condition. It just blows me away. "He's an amazing man. I've been blessed to have him in my life."
and see (and hear) him in videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj7knA3-YUs
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UlfJwn9GIU&featu
Friday, 27 May 2011
Was Little Miss Muffet a Local Girl?
From ERIC SHACKLE in Sydney, Australia. <ericshackle*bigpond.com>
This story was first posted in 2001, in the Brookmans Park (London) newsletter.
The website also shows a page of colour photographs of local insects, most of which he would have recognised, for he was a famous entomologist, who wrote The Theatre of Insects, the first scientific catalogue of British native species.
Many Brookmans Park residents believe the good doctor, who lived from 1553 to 1604, was the father of Little Miss Muffet, and that he had composed the cute little nursery rhyme which millions of children around the world have recited since his day:
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
One theory suggests that his daughter Patience was Little Miss Muffet, but as the oldest printed version of the rhyme is dated 1805, that seems unlikely. Muffet had no children of his own; and the two stepdaughters from his second marriage to a widow named Catherine Brown would probably have been Little Miss Browns.
In that case, the doctor would have written Little Miss Brown / Went to Town...
A second theory was that Little Miss Muffet referred to Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587), who was said to have been frightened by John Knox (1505-1572), Scottish religious reformer. The rhyme might then have been Along came John Knox / That wily old fox.. The 1812 edition of Songs for the Nursery has a rhyme telling us that Little Mary Ester sat upon a tester. Thirty years later, Halliwell's 1842 collection included Little Miss Mopsey sat in a shopsey.
Curds and whey, the dish Little Miss Muffet enjoyed was none other than junket, a custard-like food made of sweetened milk, which is better-known in Britain than in America. It got its name because it was taken to market in little reed baskets called jonquettes (from Latin joncus, reed.) Jonquil has a similar derivation.
These days, junket describes a politician's luxury trip charged to the taxpayers. That use of the word dates back to 1814, when a picnic basket was known as a junket basket. The politicians were having a picnic at public expense. Curds and whey was also an old name for cottage cheese, the curds being lumpy and the whey milky.
There's doubt too, as to what sort of tuffet Little Miss Muffet sat on. It could have been either a low three-legged stool or a small mound of grass-covered earth. You can buy the former kind today from dozens of furniture suppliers advertising them on the internet.
The Little Miss Muffet mystery was revived last week (June 2001) in the London Times, in an article headed Riddle of Dr Moufet's vanishing mole kricket. Mark Henderson, the newspaper's science correspondent, and Mia Jarlov wrote:
"The mole cricket (Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa) was named in 1634 by the entomologist Thomas Moufet (from whom Little Miss Muffet got her name) in The Theatre of Insects, the first scientific catalogue of British native species. The name comes from the spade-like front legs with which it makes underground burrows similar to miniature molehills.
"Dr Moufet wrote: 'If we make names, we may call it Gryllotalpa; a Mole kricket, a Kricket because it makes the same shrill noyse which a Kricket doth towards night; a Mole, because it digs the earth continually. It is an insect ugly to sight and monstrous.'"
Researchers from the Natural History Museum, English Nature and London Zoo have asked the public to help compile a national census of mole crickets, known in Britain since the 16th century but sighted only four times in the last 25 years.
Dr Muffet didn't spend all his time studying insects. In 1595 he wrote in Health's Improvement: "[Sweet potatoes] nourish mightily...engendering much flesh, blood, and seed, but withal encreasing wind and lust."
You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but one website tells us that in those days, doctors in England used spiders as medicine. "To treat a fever, a doctor would roll a spider in bread crumbs and feed it to the patient," it asserts. "Dr. Thomas Muffet admired spiders so much, he kept them as pets and let them have the run of his house. His daughter, Patience Muffet, did not share her father's love of spiders.”
Another site says "Miss Muffet was a really little girl. Her father, Dr. Thomas Muffet, was a medical doctor and an expert on spiders. He believed that eating mashed spiders was a cure for the common cold. It was said that Miss Muffet ate her share of mashed spiders."
Yet another site says "Miss Muffet was a 16th century little girl whose name was Patience. Her father, Dr. Thomas Muffet (possibly Moffett or Moufet), an entomologist who died in 1604, wrote The Silkworms and their flies 'lively described in verse.' Patience did not share her father's love of bugs. One morning while eating breakfast, one of her father's bugs appeared. She leapt up spilling the curds and whey and ran out of the house."
The U.S. website Planet Proctor tells an even better story. "This once-famous 16th century naturalist got the notion that spiders were not only beautiful but therapeutic," it claims. "He turned a bunch of them loose in his house and when his little daughter got sick, he emptied a sackful of them on her head and body, thinking they would make her well. They didn't. She was terrified. The father was Thomas Muffet, the daughter the real-life Little Miss Muffet."
Planet Proctor promotes famous U.S. film and TV personality Phil Proctor, who supplies a voice for such animated series as Rugrats and The Tick and is featured in the Rugrats movie. He won praise in the summer of 1998 for his voice work as the drunken monkey in the Eddie Murphy movie Dr. Dolittle. By a happy coincidence, Phil and David Ossman also lend their voices to the Disney/Pixar animated movie A Bug's Life.
Back to Little Miss Muffet: In 1893, American poet Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873-1904) composed an engaging poem, which deserves to be reprinted here. It's full of clever rhymes reminiscent of W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, who wrote, in the Lord Chancellor's song from Iolanthe, “When you're lying awake, with a dismal headache"
The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet
By Guy Wetmore Carryl
Little Miss Muffet discovered a tuffet,
(Which never occurred to the rest of us)
And, as 'twas a June day, and just about noonday,
She wanted to eat - like the rest of us:
Her diet was whey, and I hasten to say
It is wholesome and people grow fat on it.
The spot being lonely, the lady not only
Discovered the tuffet, but sat on it.
A rivulet gabbled beside her and babbled,
As rivulets always are thought to do,
And dragon flies sported around and cavorted,
As poets say dragon flies ought to do;
When, glancing aside for a moment, she spied
A horrible sight that brought fear to her,
A hideous spider was sitting beside her,
And most unavoidably near to her!
Albeit unsightly, this creature politely, said:
"Madam, I earnestly vow to you,
I'm penitent that I did not bring my hat.
I should otherwise certainly bow to you."
Thought anxious to please, he was so ill at ease
That he lost all his sense of propriety,
And grew so inept that he clumsily stept
In her plate - which is barred in Society.
This curious error completed her terror;
She shuddered, and growing much paler, not
Only left tuffet, but dealt him a buffet
Which doubled him up in a sailor knot.
It should be explained that at this he was pained:
He cried: "I have vexed you, no doubt of it!
Your fists's like a truncheon." "You're still in my luncheon,"
Was all that she answered. "Get out of it!"
And the Moral is this: Be it madam or miss
To whom you have something to say,
You are only absurd when you get in the curd
But you're rude when you get in the whey.
Footnote: There's an enchanting painting of Little Miss Muffet by Scott Gustafson on the Internet. The caption reads, "There are so many light and interesting touches in this beautifully colored and bordered work. She sits in a formal garden of the 18th century, next to her faithful King Charles Spaniel. A suave little spider has come to 'sit down beside her' but perhaps this Miss Muffet will not be frightened away. Scott says: 'The sheet music at her feet is a Tarantella, a popular dance of the period that, according to folklore, when danced wards off the effects of the venomous bite of a tarantula. Whether or not that's true I don't know, but it was a nice musical tie-in to the spidery theme I was painting.'"
This story was first posted in 2001, in the Brookmans Park (London) newsletter.
Dr. Thomas Muffet, who lived in Brookmans Park in the 16th century, would have been delighted to see a news item featured on this website of his old hometown. Under the headline Rare hornet found in Brookmans Park, it says "A hornet seldom seen in England has been captured in Brookmans Park. A resident living in Woodlands spotted the large insect flying around his kitchen."
The website also shows a page of colour photographs of local insects, most of which he would have recognised, for he was a famous entomologist, who wrote The Theatre of Insects, the first scientific catalogue of British native species.
Many Brookmans Park residents believe the good doctor, who lived from 1553 to 1604, was the father of Little Miss Muffet, and that he had composed the cute little nursery rhyme which millions of children around the world have recited since his day:
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
One theory suggests that his daughter Patience was Little Miss Muffet, but as the oldest printed version of the rhyme is dated 1805, that seems unlikely. Muffet had no children of his own; and the two stepdaughters from his second marriage to a widow named Catherine Brown would probably have been Little Miss Browns.
In that case, the doctor would have written Little Miss Brown / Went to Town...
A second theory was that Little Miss Muffet referred to Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587), who was said to have been frightened by John Knox (1505-1572), Scottish religious reformer. The rhyme might then have been Along came John Knox / That wily old fox.. The 1812 edition of Songs for the Nursery has a rhyme telling us that Little Mary Ester sat upon a tester. Thirty years later, Halliwell's 1842 collection included Little Miss Mopsey sat in a shopsey.
Curds and whey, the dish Little Miss Muffet enjoyed was none other than junket, a custard-like food made of sweetened milk, which is better-known in Britain than in America. It got its name because it was taken to market in little reed baskets called jonquettes (from Latin joncus, reed.) Jonquil has a similar derivation.
These days, junket describes a politician's luxury trip charged to the taxpayers. That use of the word dates back to 1814, when a picnic basket was known as a junket basket. The politicians were having a picnic at public expense. Curds and whey was also an old name for cottage cheese, the curds being lumpy and the whey milky.
There's doubt too, as to what sort of tuffet Little Miss Muffet sat on. It could have been either a low three-legged stool or a small mound of grass-covered earth. You can buy the former kind today from dozens of furniture suppliers advertising them on the internet.
The Little Miss Muffet mystery was revived last week (June 2001) in the London Times, in an article headed Riddle of Dr Moufet's vanishing mole kricket. Mark Henderson, the newspaper's science correspondent, and Mia Jarlov wrote:
"The mole cricket (Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa) was named in 1634 by the entomologist Thomas Moufet (from whom Little Miss Muffet got her name) in The Theatre of Insects, the first scientific catalogue of British native species. The name comes from the spade-like front legs with which it makes underground burrows similar to miniature molehills.
"Dr Moufet wrote: 'If we make names, we may call it Gryllotalpa; a Mole kricket, a Kricket because it makes the same shrill noyse which a Kricket doth towards night; a Mole, because it digs the earth continually. It is an insect ugly to sight and monstrous.'"
Researchers from the Natural History Museum, English Nature and London Zoo have asked the public to help compile a national census of mole crickets, known in Britain since the 16th century but sighted only four times in the last 25 years.
Dr Muffet didn't spend all his time studying insects. In 1595 he wrote in Health's Improvement: "[Sweet potatoes] nourish mightily...engendering much flesh, blood, and seed, but withal encreasing wind and lust."
You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but one website tells us that in those days, doctors in England used spiders as medicine. "To treat a fever, a doctor would roll a spider in bread crumbs and feed it to the patient," it asserts. "Dr. Thomas Muffet admired spiders so much, he kept them as pets and let them have the run of his house. His daughter, Patience Muffet, did not share her father's love of spiders.”
Another site says "Miss Muffet was a really little girl. Her father, Dr. Thomas Muffet, was a medical doctor and an expert on spiders. He believed that eating mashed spiders was a cure for the common cold. It was said that Miss Muffet ate her share of mashed spiders."
Yet another site says "Miss Muffet was a 16th century little girl whose name was Patience. Her father, Dr. Thomas Muffet (possibly Moffett or Moufet), an entomologist who died in 1604, wrote The Silkworms and their flies 'lively described in verse.' Patience did not share her father's love of bugs. One morning while eating breakfast, one of her father's bugs appeared. She leapt up spilling the curds and whey and ran out of the house."
The U.S. website Planet Proctor tells an even better story. "This once-famous 16th century naturalist got the notion that spiders were not only beautiful but therapeutic," it claims. "He turned a bunch of them loose in his house and when his little daughter got sick, he emptied a sackful of them on her head and body, thinking they would make her well. They didn't. She was terrified. The father was Thomas Muffet, the daughter the real-life Little Miss Muffet."
Planet Proctor promotes famous U.S. film and TV personality Phil Proctor, who supplies a voice for such animated series as Rugrats and The Tick and is featured in the Rugrats movie. He won praise in the summer of 1998 for his voice work as the drunken monkey in the Eddie Murphy movie Dr. Dolittle. By a happy coincidence, Phil and David Ossman also lend their voices to the Disney/Pixar animated movie A Bug's Life.
Back to Little Miss Muffet: In 1893, American poet Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873-1904) composed an engaging poem, which deserves to be reprinted here. It's full of clever rhymes reminiscent of W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, who wrote, in the Lord Chancellor's song from Iolanthe, “When you're lying awake, with a dismal headache"
The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet
By Guy Wetmore Carryl
Little Miss Muffet discovered a tuffet,
(Which never occurred to the rest of us)
And, as 'twas a June day, and just about noonday,
She wanted to eat - like the rest of us:
Her diet was whey, and I hasten to say
It is wholesome and people grow fat on it.
The spot being lonely, the lady not only
Discovered the tuffet, but sat on it.
A rivulet gabbled beside her and babbled,
As rivulets always are thought to do,
And dragon flies sported around and cavorted,
As poets say dragon flies ought to do;
When, glancing aside for a moment, she spied
A horrible sight that brought fear to her,
A hideous spider was sitting beside her,
And most unavoidably near to her!
Albeit unsightly, this creature politely, said:
"Madam, I earnestly vow to you,
I'm penitent that I did not bring my hat.
I should otherwise certainly bow to you."
Thought anxious to please, he was so ill at ease
That he lost all his sense of propriety,
And grew so inept that he clumsily stept
In her plate - which is barred in Society.
This curious error completed her terror;
She shuddered, and growing much paler, not
Only left tuffet, but dealt him a buffet
Which doubled him up in a sailor knot.
It should be explained that at this he was pained:
He cried: "I have vexed you, no doubt of it!
Your fists's like a truncheon." "You're still in my luncheon,"
Was all that she answered. "Get out of it!"
And the Moral is this: Be it madam or miss
To whom you have something to say,
You are only absurd when you get in the curd
But you're rude when you get in the whey.
Footnote: There's an enchanting painting of Little Miss Muffet by Scott Gustafson on the Internet. The caption reads, "There are so many light and interesting touches in this beautifully colored and bordered work. She sits in a formal garden of the 18th century, next to her faithful King Charles Spaniel. A suave little spider has come to 'sit down beside her' but perhaps this Miss Muffet will not be frightened away. Scott says: 'The sheet music at her feet is a Tarantella, a popular dance of the period that, according to folklore, when danced wards off the effects of the venomous bite of a tarantula. Whether or not that's true I don't know, but it was a nice musical tie-in to the spidery theme I was painting.'"
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Death of a Truly Colorful Character
From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia. <eshackle*bigpond.com>
"Buster Martin said he was 101 when he ran the London Marathon in 2008.
"He was still working as a van cleaner at Pimlico Plumbers. His boss Charlie Mullins said:
'Buster sadly passed away last night at the age of 104.'
"Mr Martin was not awarded the Guinness World Record as the oldest person to complete a marathon after being unable to verify his age.
"He features in a film by American documentary-maker Mark Wexler being released in the US in May, called How to Live Forever.
"In a blog entry on London firm Pimlico Plumbers' website, managing director Charlie
Mullins wrote: 'I can't believe it, only yesterday afternoon was he in the canteen knocking back one of Buster's beers, and now today he is gone. Buster certainly enjoyed life and was living life to the full right up until the end.'
"Several months after his marathon run, Mr Martin claimed to have been issued a passport with a date of birth verifying his age, after there were suggestions that he was 'only' 94.
"Guinness World Records were still not able to verify the record because of the absence of a birth certificate.
"Pimlico Plumbers said that Mr Martin completed the 2008 marathon in just under ten hours, and he raised £20,000 for charity.
"A biography on the website for the film that features Mr Martin, described him as 'Britain's oldest working man' and said he enjoyed 'a beeror two and 20 cigarettes daily.'"
BBC News last month reported the death of Jean-Baptiste("Buster") Martin, a truly colorful character. I first
wrote about him two years ago. That story is posted at
wrote about him two years ago. That story is posted at
"A London man who claimed to be the world's oldest marathon runner has died," said the BBC.
"Buster Martin said he was 101 when he ran the London Marathon in 2008.
"He was still working as a van cleaner at Pimlico Plumbers. His boss Charlie Mullins said:
'Buster sadly passed away last night at the age of 104.'
"Mr Martin was not awarded the Guinness World Record as the oldest person to complete a marathon after being unable to verify his age.
"He features in a film by American documentary-maker Mark Wexler being released in the US in May, called How to Live Forever.
"In a blog entry on London firm Pimlico Plumbers' website, managing director Charlie
Mullins wrote: 'I can't believe it, only yesterday afternoon was he in the canteen knocking back one of Buster's beers, and now today he is gone. Buster certainly enjoyed life and was living life to the full right up until the end.'
"Several months after his marathon run, Mr Martin claimed to have been issued a passport with a date of birth verifying his age, after there were suggestions that he was 'only' 94.
"Guinness World Records were still not able to verify the record because of the absence of a birth certificate.
"Pimlico Plumbers said that Mr Martin completed the 2008 marathon in just under ten hours, and he raised £20,000 for charity.
"A biography on the website for the film that features Mr Martin, described him as 'Britain's oldest working man' and said he enjoyed 'a beeror two and 20 cigarettes daily.'"
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Is Luke, Zach, or Terry World's Best Whistler?
From ERIC SHACKLE in Sydney, Australia. <EricShackle*BigPond.com>
Our bid to find the world's best whistler has taken a new turn. First we had Luke Janssen of Sydney, Australia, and Zach Wade, of Columbia, Missouri, claiming the title. Now we've discovered that 60-year-old Terry Rappold, of New Orleans, Louisians, has won the 2011 world whistling championship, just as he did in 2007.
"I've been whistling since I was about five years old," he told George Gurtner in a story in Louisiana's Country Roads Magazine.
"Walking down the street, in the school yard, you name it, I was usually whistling. Growing up, my whistling was a constant source of irritation for my brothers and sisters. But into adulthood, as I progressed and got better, they came to appreciate it."
Gurtner recalled Mae West's comment, " You do know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow." He added. "... unless you're Terry Rappold, of course. Rappold is the king of the whistlers, the pucker's pucker, the warbling wizard of Louisiana, the man who is as apt to make a joyful noise through his trilling lips as he shaves as when he's behind the wheel of his car.
So now we have to decide which of the talented trio truly deserves to be called The World's Best Whistler.
You can hear (and see) them performing in these videos:
Luke Janssen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVTAvt8GiCc
Zach Wade: http://www.jschoolbuzz.com/meet-the-missouri-school-of-journalisms-youtube-celebrity/
Terry Rappold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE-uVX5hQic
Our bid to find the world's best whistler has taken a new turn. First we had Luke Janssen of Sydney, Australia, and Zach Wade, of Columbia, Missouri, claiming the title. Now we've discovered that 60-year-old Terry Rappold, of New Orleans, Louisians, has won the 2011 world whistling championship, just as he did in 2007.
"I've been whistling since I was about five years old," he told George Gurtner in a story in Louisiana's Country Roads Magazine.
"Walking down the street, in the school yard, you name it, I was usually whistling. Growing up, my whistling was a constant source of irritation for my brothers and sisters. But into adulthood, as I progressed and got better, they came to appreciate it."
Gurtner recalled Mae West's comment, " You do know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow." He added. "... unless you're Terry Rappold, of course. Rappold is the king of the whistlers, the pucker's pucker, the warbling wizard of Louisiana, the man who is as apt to make a joyful noise through his trilling lips as he shaves as when he's behind the wheel of his car.
So now we have to decide which of the talented trio truly deserves to be called The World's Best Whistler.
You can hear (and see) them performing in these videos:
Luke Janssen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVTAvt8GiCc
Zach Wade: http://www.jschoolbuzz.com/meet-the-missouri-school-of-journalisms-youtube-celebrity/
Terry Rappold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE-uVX5hQic
Characteristics of People Who Live Beyond 90
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