This year’s program will feature Irish hymnody spanning 500 years. The program will feature Samantha Gillogly on fiddle and Edward Harkey on guitar. The Festival Choir and Bell Choir of St. Luke’s will also be featured.

The music will be under the direction of Robert Summers Potterton III, St. Luke’s Minister of Music. Mr. Potterton recently graduated with his Masters in Music (focusing on organ performance) from Boston University, having studied under Peter Sykes.

There is a suggested donation of $5.00 per person that will be used to support St. Luke’s Music Ministry. A reception will follow.

More information can be found on the church’s website at www.stlukesdedham.org.

Click here to download a poster about the event.

Who could use an inspirational video to brighten their day? If so, the following clip of a young man performing gymnastics for the first time after losing his leg to cancer in 2009 is sure to do the trick.  Watch and prepare to be amazed.

The young man performing in the video is one Adam Starr, who shows us the triumph of the human spirit over anything.  Bravo to you, Adam!

By Lisa Johnson Mandell

One of the many things that Jim Orr, of Camus, Wash., had to give up when he was diagnosed with advanced melanoma was coaching his son’s little league team. He stuck with it as long as he could during treatment, but hadn’t been able to attend a game since June.

Orr was discussing this with paramedics as they were transporting him in an ambulance to his next bout of radiation therapy, when they got an idea. Paramedics Della Bornman and Dan Carlton decided to secretly arrange to swing by the ballpark where his son was playing, and surprise everyone with a visit, according to KATU in Camus.

“We thought it would be a great experience for Jim, maybe a healing experience for him, give him a little more motivation,” Bornman told aKATU reporter. She and Carlton rolled Orr on a gurney up to the backstop, where he could watch part of the game.

Sure enough, spirits were lifted — not just Orr’s but the entire team’s and the community’s in general. Orr’s son, who was playing that day and had no idea his father would show up, was especially elated. He ran up to his dad, gave him a big hug, and started crying tears of joy. There wasn’t a dry eye on the field.

Orr is still in treatment, and the Little League season is continuing in his absence. The paramedics went above and beyond the call of duty to bring Orr, his family and his team a little extra happiness. If you would like to do the same, you can stop into any Columbia Credit Union and make a deposit to the Jim Orr account. You may be able to help him live on to play another inning.

Read the article here.

Jim Orr with his Little League team

WEYMOUTH — His wife was screaming, his terrified 12-year-old daughter was in the water and the motor boat was circling her.

Bruce Williams told himself to keep calm, then jumped in with one thought in mind: “Keep her from getting hit, save my baby any way I could.”

Six times, the driverless boat, its throttle stuck, circled them in the waters of the Back River between Weymouth and Hingham.

“The throttle was stuck on high and the boat was stuck so it just kept going around in circles,” Williams said, shaking his head. “Basically, it was possessed. It went by us six or seven times, trying to attack us. It seemed like every 10 to 15 seconds, it was going by us.”

Each time, Williams, a lineman for the Braintree Electric Light Department, tried to block the 10-foot inflatable boat with his powerful upper body. Each time, he took hold of his daughter, Emily, and pulled her down beneath the surface with him as the propeller blades just missed them.

Once, the blades hit his hand, and the sixth time, he felt the blows on the top of his head. He surfaced into a pool of blood, with two lacerations on his scalp, a deep gash in his thumb.

“I almost went out, but I thought, ‘Don’t lose consciousness, don’t go out,’ and I just woke up and somehow swam Emily over to the other boat,” he said.

Williams, his wife, Patrice , and Emily had anchored their 21-foot Stamus power cruiser at a mooring near the South Shore Yacht Club and were readying to take the small inflatable into the yacht club dock.

Patrice Williams was still on the bigger boat when Bruce Williams and Emily got clear of the circling inflatable. She reached down, grabbed Emily’s hand and pulled her out of the water to the safety of the deck. Bruce Williams was able to climb the ladder on the side.

“You see your daughter, your baby, in trouble . . . I don’t think there is much that would stop me, to tell you the truth,” he said Sunday.

Emily, an 8th-grader at St. Jerome’s School in Weymouth, turns 13 on Aug. 28. She was shaken but otherwise unharmed in the close call.

Bruce Williams, 57, was called a hero by Weymouth Harbormaster Paul Milone.

Standing on the dock at the yacht club Sunday afternoon, Bruce Williams wore a bandage covering two long rows of surgical staples in his scalp. His injured left hand was bandaged and in a sling.

The inflatable boat, with a piece of Emily’s blue bathing suit still wrapped around the propeller, was in the water beside him.

Williams said he wasn’t a hero.

“I wasn’t in the boat (the inflatable) with her, and I should have been,” he said. “There is a lesson. … Just make sure you stay with your kids, take care of your children and don’t be stupid yourself.”

“Bruce was a hero, and I love him a lot,” Patrice Williams said.

Saturday had begun quite normally, with Emily, a budding sailor, participating in a race at the Town River Yacht Club in Quincy.

Around 6 p.m., the family returned to their own yacht club in the Stamus cruiser with its 175 horsepower outboard. They left the cruiser in the Back River at a mooring by Stoddard Neck. They were getting ready to off-load their gear into the inflatable, with its small outboard motor attached, to return to the dock. Emily got in the inflatable alone. She attached the kill switch cord for the 9.8 horsepower engine to her life jacket and to the engine.

“She was itching to use the inflatable, and I told her to start it up,” Bruce Williams said. “The boat started over-revving, and I told her to rev it down, and she reached over and knocked it into gear.”

Emily was thrown backwards into the water; the boat began circling around her. Bruce Williams went into the water. His whole train of thought: “I got to keep her from getting hit.”

Club members had hurried out onto the dock and came in other boats to help. When Patrice Williams looked as if she might jump in to help, a woman told her, “Don’t you dare jump off, or we’ll have to get three of you.”

Other club members tried to head off the circling boat and eventually knocked it upside down, stopping it.

Williams and his daughter were taken by ambulance to South Shore Hospital, treated in the trauma room and released before midnight.

“I want to thank all the people who came over and lassoed the boat,” Williams said. “They were wonderful. The doctors at the hospital were wonderful as well.

“We had a tense few moments, but everyone is OK.”

Sunday afternoon, the Williamses brought Emily back to the club to help her absorb the shock of what had happened. They spent a half hour on the dock, as she walked around, and at the end, she managed a weak smile.

“There is a lesson to be . . just make sure you stay with your kids,” Bruce Williams said. “Sometimes your kids are excited and want to do things before they are ready. This is not her fault. She is a very good sailor. It is my fault, I should have stayed with her. And make sure the kill switch is attached properly.”

Standing by the boat, he patted his daughter’s head and said, “She wasn’t touched, by God’s intervention.”

“I think there was divine intervention involved, ” Patrice Williams agreed.

Click here to read the original article.

Do not miss this incredible rescue story! On August 5, 2011, a large church youth group went to the beach for day of fun and fellowship. But their day took a frightening turn when a strong riptide pulled two boys out to sea, leaving the church group to watch in despair and disbelief. They prayed and prayed.

One boy was rescued quickly, however Dale Osterander was not as fortunate. He was caught underwater for 20 minutes before rescuers could retrieve him. They presumed he was dead…but God had a different plan for him. This emotional story will give you goosebumps!

To continue following Dale’s story, read his blog: http://www.prayersfordale.blogspot.com

Rachel Beckwith's fund-raiser for charity:water has received donations from all over the world. (Picture courtesy of Samantha Paul)

By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, Aug. 10, 2011

Perhaps every generation of geezers since Adam and Eve has whined about young people, and today is no different. Isn’t it clear that in contrast to our glorious selves, kids these days are self-absorbed Facebook junkies just a pixel deep?

No, actually that’s wrong at every level. This has been a depressing time to watch today’s “adults,” whose talent for self-absorption and political paralysis makes it difficult to solve big problems. But many young people haven’t yet learned to be cynical. They believe, in a wonderfully earnest way, in creating a better world.

In the midst of this grim summer, my faith in humanity has been restored by the saga of Rachel Beckwith. She could teach my generation a great deal about maturity and unselfishness — even though she’s just 9 years old, or was when she died on July 23.

Rachel lived outside Seattle and early on showed a desire to give back. At age 5, she learned at school about an organization called Locks of Love, which uses hair donations to make wigs for children who have lost their own hair because of cancer or other diseases. Rachel then asked to have her long hair shorn off and sent to Locks of Love.

“She said she wanted to help the cancer kids,” her mother, Samantha Paul, told me. After the haircut, Rachel announced that she would grow her hair long again and donate it again after a few years to Locks of Love. And that’s what she did.

Then when she was 8 years old, her church began raising money to build wells in Africa through an organization called charity:water. Rachel was aghast when she learned that other children had no clean water, so she asked to skip having a ninth birthday party. In lieu of presents, she asked her friends to donate $9 each to charity:water for water projects in Africa.

Rachel’s ninth birthday was on June 12, and she had set up a birthday page on the charity:water Web site with a target of $300. Alas, Rachel was able to raise only $220 — which had left her just a bit disappointed.

Then, on July 20, as Rachel was riding with her family on the highway, two trucks collided and created a 13-car pileup. Rachel’s car was hit by one of the trucks, and although the rest of her family was unhurt, Rachel was left critically injured.

Church members and friends, seeking some way of showing support, began donating on Rachel’s birthday page — charitywater.org/Rachel — and donations surged past her $300 goal, and kept mounting. As family and friends gathered around Rachel’s bedside, they were able to tell her — even not knowing whether she couldn’t hear them — that she had exceeded the $47,544 that the singer Justin Bieber had raised for charity:water on his 17th birthday.

“I think she secretly had a crush on him, but she would never admit it,” her mom said. “I think she would have been ecstatic.”

When it was clear that Rachel would never regain consciousness, the family decided to remove life support. Her parents donated her hair a final time to Locks of Love, and her organs to other children. Word spread about Rachel’s last fund-raiser.

Contributions poured in, often in $9 increments, although one 5-year-old girl sent in the savings in her piggy bank of $2.27. The total donations soon topped $100,000, then $300,000. Like others, I was moved and donated. As I write this, more than $850,000 has been raised from all over the world, including donations from Africans awed by a little American girl who cared about their continent.

“What has been so inspiring about Rachel is that she has taught the adults,” said Scott Harrison, the founder of charity:water. “Adults are humbled by the unselfishness of this little girl.”

Yet this is a story not just of one girl, but of a generation of young people working creatively to make this a better world. Mr. Harrison is emblematic of these young people. Now 35, he established charity:water when he was 30, and it has taken off partly because of his mastery at social media. (He’s not as experienced in well-drilling, so the wells are actually dug by expert groups like International Rescue Committee.)

Youth activism has a long history, but this ethos of public service is on the ascendant today — and today’s kids don’t just protest against injustices, as my contemporaries did, but many are also remarkable problem-solvers.

As for Ms. Paul, she’s planning a trip on the anniversary of her daughter’s death next year to see some of the wells being drilled in Africa in her daughter’s name. “It’ll be overwhelming to see Rachel’s wells,” she said, “to see what my 9-year-old daughter has done for people all over the world, to meet the people she has touched.”

Rachel Beckwith, R.I.P., and may our generation learn from yours.

Click here to read the original article.

Watch this MSNBC video for more on the story:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This young man received a baseball souvenir that had been dropped by another little boy at a MLB game. He then felt it was the right thing to do to give the ball back to the first boy.

His actions were caught on camera, and he was rewarded by the sportscasters with a Gracie Contract that included four free tickets, a booth visit, and signed memorabilia.

Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo (AP Photo/J.Pat Carter)

BOSTON — A post office in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston has been named for Lance Cpl. Alexander Scott Arredondo, a Randolph Marine who was killed in Iraq.

Starting Aug. 8, the post office at 655 Centre St. will be called the “Lance Corporal Alexander Scott Arredondo, United States Marine Corps Post Office Building.”

The dedication took place Sunday Aug. 7, about eight months after President Barack Obama signed a law designating the post office in honor of Arredondo. The legislation was backed by Massachusetts’ congressional delegation.

Efforts to honor Arredondo began in 2005, first led by the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Arredondo died in combat in Najaf, Iraq, on Aug. 25, 2004, during his second tour of duty. He was shot by a sniper as he was checking on fellow soldiers.

In the battle leading to his death, Arredondo led his fellow Marines through a two-story building, working to clear and secure it. His squad gained control of the building after enduring intense enemy fighting, during which Arredondo was mortally wounded.

He was a Randolph resident but grew up in Jamaica Plain, less than a mile from the post office.

He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, as well as the Navy Cross with Combat V.

Arredondo, who had just turned 20, was a 2002 graduate of Blue Hills Regional Technical High School in Canton.

Click here to read the original article in the Patriot Ledger.

She happened to be U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

For those few who don’t who she is, Giffords was shot in the head in January by a gunman who killed six people in Tucson, Ariz., injuring 13 others. Giffords’ story has been tugging at our hearts ever since, as have the stories of others affected by this terrible tragedy.

Giffords was thought initially to have died in the shooting. Then we learned of her grave injuries. Since then the nation has been following her struggle toward rehabilitation. She flew to Florida to watch her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, take off on the shuttle Discovery’s final mission. And we cheered her then, too.

But then she entered the House chamber recently to cast her vote in favor of the debt ceiling deal forged by President Obama and congressional leaders. Only a handful of her closest friends knew she’d be there. And when she entered the room, it erupted in applause. For one brief moment, Democrats and Republicans put aside their partisan differences to cheer this valiant public servant’s return to her post.

The bitter divide over the debt ceiling has created plenty of hard feelings on both sides of the aisle. It has, in many respects, produced something approaching the worst of American politics.

Rep. Gabby Giffords’ triumphant return to the House of Representatives — and the love that flowed her way from her friends and colleagues — gave us a glimpse of our political system’s best side.

This article appeared here in the Amarillo Globe News on Aug. 6, 2011.

Selina Fischer, left, and Nellie Louisa Clarke were both British war brides and passengers on the same ship, which arrived in New York May 1, 1946. By chance, they now share a room at the Life Care Center. (Photo by Emily Clark, Wicked Local)

By Emily Clark, Wicked Local Plymouth, July 18, 2011

PLYMOUTH — Their paths crisscrossed, linked up and intersected. But they never officially met.

They might have passed each other on the Underground in London during one of the countless World War II air raids. Maybe Nellie Louisa Clarke sat on the double-decker bus Selina Fischer worked on as a conductress. Perhaps Fischer stepped into the milliner’s store, where Clarke worked as a model, and admired a hat or two.

Clarke lived southeast of London in a little town called Dagenham. Fischer grew up in Edmonton, North London, home to cockney characters like Liza Doolittle. They both married American servicemen, had a daughter, and traveled to America aboard the Edmund B. Alexander, which docked in Southampton bound for New York City.

It was May 1, 1946 when they arrived in New York Harbor, with babes in arms, awaiting hugs and kisses from their husbands.

Fast-forward 65 years.

Clarke, now 87, has been admitted to the Life Care Center in Plymouth, where she will share space with a roommate. A woman and her daughter approach, check out the room next door, where the occupant likes the shades drawn, and then opt for Clarke’s room, which is splashed with sunlight.

The daughter notes Clarke’s accent and asks if she’s British, because her mother is British, she says, adding she was a war bride. “I was, too,” Clarke says.

The woman explains that her mother immigrated to America in 1946. “I did, too,” Clarke says.

The daughter says her mom came over on the Edmund B. Alexander. “I did, too,” Clarke says, adding that it arrived May 1, 1946, and that she was on that boat with her baby daughter.

The picture is located, showing a handful of the 510 British war brides on the Edmund B. Alexander, all holding their babies. Fischer points to herself in the front row. Clarke points to herself in the back row.

Coincidences happen, or maybe it’s the hand of fate or divinity that brought these two women together. Clarke’s son, Ron Clarke of Carver, isn’t sure. What are the odds that these two war brides would, purely by accident, be admitted to the same room at the Life Care Center on the same day, he wonders?

Fischer, now 90, admits she searched for fellow Brits when she settled in Medford with her husband and baby. Meanwhile, Clarke was living just a few miles away in Malden with her husband and baby daughter.

“Why didn’t you look me up?” Fischer asks Clarke, as the room explodes into laughter.

“I didn’t know you were there!” Clarke responds, laughing.

“We’re friends for life now, so don’t you forget it!”

It was post World War II America, loaded for bear with an optimism that had vanished during the Great Depression. Employment was on the rise, and the Baby Boom was underway, as TV sets began appearing in homes and Howdy Doody, The Lone Ranger and Ed Sullivan became household names.

But, among all this change and prosperity, war brides like Clarke and Fischer missed their English parents and siblings and longed, occasionally, for those halcyon summer days in their homeland. The British lifestyle is, in general, less harried than the American one. There is tea time, a culture of more polite, calm behavior and clever banter. They visited their mums and dads when they could, raised their children, and instilled as much of that British charm into their families as could in the glare of American sensibilities.

But it was, partly, those sensibilities that had attracted these women to their American husbands in the first place.

Clarke worked as a model and piano player in a pub where she met Ronald Clarke while he was on R&R from his job as a crew chief maintaining Army Air Corps planes. But he wasn’t the only one who spotted the beautiful piano player. His commanding officer announced he was going to talk to her, but Clarke beat him to it, and the rest is history.

Meanwhile, another American soldier, John Fischer, stepped aboard a red, double-decker bus in London and couldn’t take his eyes off the lovely conductress checking tickets. He scribbled a note and slipped it into her hand. It wasn’t long before the proposal of a date turned into a marriage proposal.

The two women married their American soldiers in England, and, per military instructions, were sent to join their new husbands in the spring of 1946. A whopping 510 British war brides shipped off to America aboard the Edmund B. Alexander with 388 babies in tow, arriving May 1 in New York Harbor. The dispersal of these little families and couples was wide, to every corner of the U.S.

Clarke’s son, Ron Clarke, references the “Manifest of Alien Passengers” aboard the Edmund B. Alexander.

The names “FISCHER, Selina” and “CLARKE, Nellie L.,” appear in alphabetical order on the documents, showing an arrival date of May 1, 1946 in New York. At the top of these pages appears the statement, “Applying for admission to the United States under the Acts of December 20, 1945, and of accompanying United States citizen children.”

Their husbands have now both died, but the memories of those days are sharper than ever for Fischer and Clarke, who reminisce about food rations and air raids, dancing in the pubs to Glen Miller’s music and growing up in a very different time and place.

Fischer and Clarke both became Americans but, like so many immigrants, their homeland is still home.

For Ron Clarke, the coincidental meeting of these British-born women is providential, helping them both adjust to yet another new home as fellow passengers on life’s mysterious journey.

“I do have to warn them both not to entertain gentlemen callers,” Ron added.

Click here for the original article.