9 minute read
That’s Odd
32 Health Access California, said, “This will represent the biggest expansion of coverage in the nation since the start of the AfThe Jewish Home | JULY 7, 2022 fordable Care Act in 2014. In California, we recognize [that] everybody benefits when everyone is covered.” Not everyone is happy about the change: Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, noted that the free health care will turn California into “a magnet for those who are not legally authorized to enter the country.” He added, “I think many of us are very sympathetic to the immigrant community, but we really wish we had better control of who enters this nation and this state.”
Terror at Parade
A mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago, Illinois, suburb of Highland Park has left six people dead and 30 others injured.
The injured in the attack range in age from age eight to 85, Dr. Brigham Temple, medical director of emergency preparedness at NorthShore University health center, said. NorthShore is treating 26 of the injured; at least four of the injured are believed to be children.
The person of interest has been named as Robert E Crimo III, 22. He was arrested by police hours after the attack after a brief chase by North Chicago police. It is believed that he carried out the shooting from a rooftop of a business just minutes after the parade started. He was using a high-powered rifle.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker told a news conference, “If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry. I’m furious. I’m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence.
“While we celebrate the Fourth of July just once a year, mass shootings have become our weekly – yes, weekly – American tradition.
“There are going to be people who say that today is not the day, that now is not the time to talk about guns. I’m telling you, there is no better day and no better time.”
Highland Park’s mayor, Nancy Rotering, said her community was “terrorized by an act of violence that has shaken us to our core.”
She added, “On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us.”
According to police, five adults died at the scene and a sixth died in a local hospital; one child was critically injured and taken for medical treatment.
Two Mexicans were among the wounded, and a third was among the dead. A Jewish woman, Jacki Sundheim, was also killed.
Hot Dog!
Well, he did it again.
Competitive eater Joey Chestnut once again won the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, making it his 15th win as he devoured a stomach-popping 63 hot dogs and buns in 10
He put away 15-and-a-half more hot dogs than his closest competitor, Geoffrey Esper, but came up well short of his own personal record of 76 set last year.
Truthfully, Chestnut should have been on the DL list, as he was plowing through hot dogs with his right foot in a cast. According to Joey, though, he was feeling OK (I guess it’s all relative) despite the injury.
In the women’s contest, Miki Sudo won her eighth championship, slamming 40 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. Sudo has now won eight of the last nine women’s titles after missing last year’s competition while pregnant.
According to Nathan’s, legend has it that the first contest of its kind was held on July 4, 1916, as four immigrants competed to show how patriotic they were.
Pass the ketchup – I mean, the mustard – please.
Mensa Member at 2
It’s official. Isla McNabb is pretty smart. In fact, she’s smarter than 99 percent of people in the world.
Isla is 2½ years old. A few months ago, her parents noticed that someone was putting toy letters spelling the words of objects around the house. Turns out, it was Isla.
The spelling shenanigans sparked their curiosity and they had Isla’s IQ tested in May. Her results proved that she had scored in the top 1 percent of the population, qualifying her for membership in Mensa, an organization of people who score in the top 2 percent on IQ tests.
That makes her the youngest Mensa member in the country, American Mensa spokesperson Charles Brown noted.
When Isla turned 2, in November, her parents bought her a tablet for her birthday and showed their daughter how to sound out certain letters of the alphabet. Then, Isla took off and began spelling and sounding out words.
“Everything we threw at her, it just seemed like she picked it up right away,” Jason, Isla’s dad, said. “It was incredible.”
Now she is able to read.
She is also able to count – and can even count backward. She can do simple math, and even has learned how to write.
Although she’s intelligent, Isla is also a normal toddler. She likes “Bluey,” an Australian cartoon about a blue heeler cattle dog, and “Blippi,” a children’s show on YouTube. Last month, she started going to preschool and has become obsessed with making friends and with her teacher, Miss Abigail. She also enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles and playing outside.
“Normal kid stuff,” her mother said, adding that Isla is, of course, a fan of reading and the library.
One drawback of Isla’s intelligence is her lack of sleep. Many children who are highly intelligent tend to sleep less. It’s tough on the McNabbs to have to wake up at 4a.m. for their toddler – even if she can read the cereal box they place in front of her.
Walking the World
Tom Turcich is now the tenth person on record to walk the world.
Yes, on March 21, 2022, Turcich, from New Jersey, finished his journey around the globe. His dog, Savannah, had accompanied him. Savannah is now the first dog to ever complete the feat.
It took the duo seven years. During that time, they walked 29,826 miles.
“It was very surreal,” Turcich said when he got back home. “I had imagined what the ending would be like for a long time. And when it happened, there were people lining the streets and walking with me.
“The primary emotion was just relief. This had dominated my life for 15 years, and to finally be able to kind of put it behind me was amazing.”
The inspiration for the trip stemmed from a sad loss in 2006, when his longtime friend Ann Marie died in a jet ski accident at the age of 17.
Turcich, who has been compared to Forrest Gump, the character Tom Hanks played in the 1994 movie, decided he needed travel and adventure in his life and began looking into all the different ways he could
After reading about Steven Newman, listed by Guinness World Records as the first person to walk around the world, and walking adventurer Karl Bushby, who has been circumnavigating the globe on foot since 1998, Turcich became set on taking on this challenge himself.
“It [walking] seemed like the best way to understand the world and be forced into new places,” he says. “I didn’t just want to go to Paris and Machu Picchu, I really wanted to understand the world and see how people were living day to day.”
Almost nine years after he first came up with the idea, Turcich took the first step of his walk around the world. He set off on April 2, 2015, just before his 26th birthday, pushing a baby stroller containing hiking gear, a sleeping bag, a laptop, a DSLR camera and a plastic crate, which he used to store his food.
He devised his route with two major factors in mind: he wanted to “hit every continent and travel with as little bureaucratic trouble” as possible.
Turcich’s journey was not just a walk in the park. At one point, he fell ill with a bacterial infection. He was also held up at knifepoint while in Panama. But Turcich was also invited to local weddings in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
Turcich walked from New Jersey to Panama. He found his four-legged friend in an animal shelter in Austin, Texas.
Once they reached Panama, the pair flew over the Darien Gap, a treacherous stretch of jungle between Panama and Colombia, they walked from Bogota, Colombia to Montevideo, Uruguay, where they took a boat to Antarctica.
Turcich walked across Spain, France and Portugal and eventually crossed over to North Africa. Then they walked through Italy and the other countries nearby.
After Greece, they headed to Turkey, where Turcich became the first private citizen to be permitted to cross the Bosphorus Bridge on foot.
During their world walk, the pair walked across six continents and 38 countries together, spending most nights camping.
Guinness World Records sets the requirements for a circumnavigation on foot as traveling 18,000 miles (around 30,000 kilometers) and crossing four continents – a goal surpassed by Turcich.
On an average day, he and Savannah walked between 18 to 24 miles (around 29 to 38 kilometers).
“Seven years is a long time,” he says. “Once the end was in sight, I just couldn’t wait to be back. I was just ready to be hanging out with my friends and family again, and not be packing up my tent every single morning.”
Hey, Turcich, we can’t judge a man until we’ve walked a mile – or 29,000 miles – in his shoes.
Flying High
Bette Nash is not slowing down.
The 86-year-old has been working as a flight attendant for the past 65 years. Recently, she was named the world’s longest-serving flight attendant by Guinness World Records.
Nash started working as a flight attendant in 1957 for Eastern Airlines and continues to this day at American Airlines without any lapse in employment, according to Guinness.
She has spent most of her career working on the New York-Boston-Washington shuttle because it allows her to return home at night to care for her son, who has disabilities.
Guinness said Nash is also the oldest currently serving flight attendant in the world.
Recalling what the job was like years ago, Nash told WJLA-TV, “You had to be a certain height, you had to be a certain weight. It used to be horrible. You put on a few pounds, and you had to keep weighing yourself, and then if you stayed that way, they would take you off the payroll,” she said.
That’s something that just wouldn’t fly today.
