Preview: Real Sociedad vs. Dynamo Kiev - prediction, team news, lineups
Many of us dream of retirement: Traveling, visiting family and friends, having more control over our daily choices and schedules. But what happens when those dreams are suddenly shattered by a sudden injury, unplanned move, or loss of a job? Margaret (Maggie) Combs experienced the shattering of her dreams more than nine years ago due to an injury that took her health, her job, her home, and forced her into a nursing facility at age 64. A former speech pathologist, she suddenly found herself living in a shared room, far away from former friends, and subject to the schedules of others. She admits to being “frightened beyond her imagination,” feeling isolated, and barely coping after a near death health scare. Her reaction: A deep depression. Medical intervention helped. It did not relieve the ache and pain of dreams and a life lost. Like flowers, people need to bloom, but how does one do that when they are in rocky soil? The National Council for Aging in their publication, “Aging Mastery Playbook,” cites six critical components of healthy living. Three of them were missing in Maggie’s life: Connections and Community, Creativity and Learning, and Legacy and Purpose. Without them, she was struggling to find ways to adjust to her “new normal.” She felt lost, invisible, and out of control. Enter the Quilters. One of the volunteers for Maggie’s living facility also happened to be the president of the Columbia River Gorge Quilters’ Guild. She invited Maggie to visit a guild meeting to “get outside.” Although she had only done a “bit of sewing” growing up, Maggie accepted the invitation. Nervous about being around “such amazing quilters,” she tried to hang out on the edges. However, quilters are notorious for being social. Maggie suddenly found herself surrounded by a group of people who immediately accepted her and made her feel welcome. She left with donations of fabric, a loaned sewing machine that allowed her to hand control the sewing speed rather than use a foot pedal (Maggie uses a wheelchair for mobility), and a pattern for a 9-patch block. Lessons followed, and she started by making simple blocks with squares and triangles. Craft-based activities can help people improve their mental health. Research shows that working with bright colors is psychologically uplifting. Quilting is a challenging craft, requiring concentration and mastery of new skills. Quilters often find themselves “lost in the flow” while working, leading to reduced anxiety and helping with pain management. Quilting is also a “group activity” with quilters meeting frequently to work on projects, share skills, take classes, and have fun. “Quilting saved my life,” Maggie tells folks. “Without it, I do not know if I would even be here.” She has found quilting to be stimulating and enjoys finding quilting related websites and online ideas. She has made new friends who stop by regularly to visit. She attends monthly sewing sessions, guild classes, and volunteers at the guild’s annual fall quilt show. She especially enjoys getting “lost” in her hobby, forgetting where she lives and the many restrictions on her life. Perhaps the biggest “save” was Maggie finding a purpose. When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, Maggie went into high gear, making more than 1,000 cloth masks that were dispersed to the facility residents and staff, schools, and doctor ‘s offices. The facility business manager collected donated fabric and orders for Maggie’s masks. One doctor told Maggie that she had likely saved more than 100 lives by providing cloth masks before PPE was readily available. Post pandemic, Maggie has returned to making quilts for her family and for guild charity projects. She spends her days learning new skills, looking for new patterns, organizing her “stash,” and planning her new projects. She has a goal for making sure everyone at her living facility has a wheelchair quilt and plans to host sewing sessions on site. She now has her own larger sewing machine. Staff and visitors often poke their heads in to peek at Maggie’s latest sewing project. “Create with the heart, build with the mind,” is a quote by Chris Jami. It is never too late to learn to express yourself creatively and keep your mind active. It is essential for living and aging well. Start today — create! About the author In this installment of Through the Eyes of an Elder, Kim Vogel interviews Maggie Combs. Vogel lives in Hood River and volunteers as the Long-Term Care Ombudsman for facilities in Hood River County and The Oregon Veteran’s home in The Dalles. A retired public educator, she has been quilting for more than 45 years. “Through the Eyes of an Elder” “Through the Eyes of an Elder” is contributed monthly by the Aging in the Gorge Alliance. Its purpose is to enhance understanding and appreciation for Mid-Columbia’s older adults, their loved ones, and caregivers. Email suggestions for future columns to EyesofanElder@gmail.com .
Strong fish stocks – reds, snook and trout We might need to search a little deeper this year for reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving. If we are reading this, there is already a lot to celebrate. If we’re healthy, we have even more to be thankful for. These have certainly been challenging times. Many of us [...]
The 26-year-old man charged in last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO appeared in a Pennsylvania courtroom Tuesday, where he was denied bail and his lawyer said he'd fight extradition to New York City, where the attack happened. Luigi Nicholas Mangione was arrested Monday in the Dec. 4 attack on Brian Thompson after police say a worker at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, alerted them to a customer who resembled the suspected gunman. When arrested, Mangione had on him a gun that investigators believe was used in the attack and writings expressing anger at corporate America, police said. As Mangione was led into the Hollidaysburg courthouse Tuesday, he struggled with officers and shouted something that was partly unintelligible but referred to an “insult to the intelligence of the American people.” He left hours later without saying anything and was driven away. Mangione is being held on Pennsylvania charges of possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. Manhattan prosecutors have charged him with five counts, including murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a forged instrument. Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Mangione mostly stared straight ahead during the hearing, occasionally consulting papers, rocking in his chair, or looking back at the gallery. At one point, he began to speak to respond to the court discussion but was quieted by his lawyer. Judge David Consiglio denied bail to Mangione, whose attorney, Thomas Dickey, told the court that his client did not agree to extradition and wants a hearing on the matter. Blair County (Pennsylvania) District Attorney Peter Weeks said that although Mangione will create “extra hoops” for law enforcement to jump through by fighting extradition, it won’t be a substantial barrier to sending him to New York. In addition to a three-page, handwritten document that suggests he harbored “ill will toward corporate America,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Monday that Mangione also had a ghost gun, a type of weapon that can be assembled at home and is difficult to trace. Officers questioned Mangione, who was acting suspiciously and carrying multiple fraudulent IDs, as well as a U.S. passport, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Officers also found a sound suppressor, or silencer, “consistent with the weapon used in the murder,” she said. He had clothing and a mask similar to those worn by the shooter and a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, the commissioner said. Mangione, who comes from a prominent Maryland family, was valedictorian of his elite Baltimore prep school and had degrees from one of the nation’s top private universities. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania. Mangione's grandfather Nick Mangione, who died in 2008, was a successful real estate developer. One of his best-known projects was Turf Valley Resort, a sprawling luxury retreat and conference center outside Baltimore that he purchased in 1978. One of Luigi Mangione’s cousins is Republican Maryland state legislator Nino Mangione, a spokesman for the lawmaker’s office confirmed. From January to June 2022, Mangione lived at Surfbreak, a “co-living” space at the edge of touristy Waikiki in Honolulu. Josiah Ryan, a spokesperson for owner and founder R.J. Martin, said that Martin had learned that Mangione had severe back pain from childhood that interfered with many aspects of his life. Friends in Hawaii widely considered Mangione a “great guy,” and pictures on his social media accounts show a fit and smiling young man on beaches and at parties. Mangione likely was motivated by his anger at what he called “parasitic” health insurance companies and a disdain for corporate greed, according to a law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press. He wrote that the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and that the profits of major corporations continue to rise while “our life expectancy” does not, according to the bulletin, based on a review of the suspect’s handwritten notes and social media posts. Police said the person who killed Thompson left a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side at 5:41 a.m. last Wednesday. Eleven minutes later, he was seen on surveillance video walking back and forth in front of the New York Hilton Midtown, wearing a distinctive backpack. At 6:44 a.m., he shot Thompson at a side entrance to the hotel, fled on foot, then climbed aboard a bicycle and within four minutes had entered Central Park, according to police. Another security camera recorded the gunman leaving the park near the American Museum of Natural History at 6:56 a.m. still on the bicycle but without the backpack, police said. After getting in a taxi, he headed north to a bus terminal near the George Washington Bridge, arriving at around 7:30 a.m. From there, the trail of video evidence runs cold. Police have not located video of the suspect exiting the building, leading them to believe he likely took a bus out of town. Police said they are still investigating the path the suspect took to Pennsylvania. “This just happened this morning," Kenny said. "We’ll be working, backtracking his steps from New York to Altoona, Pennsylvania,” Kenny said. Associated Press reporters Jamie Stengle, Lea Skene, Matt O'Brien, Sean Murphy and Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report.No. 21 Creighton's Steven Ashworth doubtful for Players Era Festival opener against Aztecs
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NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes drifted lower Tuesday in the runup to the highlight of the week for the market, the latest update on inflation that’s coming on Wednesday. The S&P 500 dipped 0.3%, a day after pulling back from its latest all-time high . They’re the first back-to-back losses for the index in nearly a month, as momentum slows following a big rally that has it on track for one of its best years of the millennium . The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 154 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.3%. Tech titan Oracle dragged on the market and sank 6.7% after reporting growth for the latest quarter that fell just short of analysts’ expectations. It was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500, even though CEO Safra Catz said the company saw record demand related to artificial-intelligence technology for its cloud infrastructure business, which trains generative AI models. AI has been a big source of growth that’s helped many companies’ stock prices skyrocket. Oracle’s stock had already leaped more than 80% for the year coming into Tuesday, which raised the bar of expectations for its profit report. In the bond market, Treasury yields ticked higher ahead of Wednesday’s report on the inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling. Economists expect it to show similar increases as the month before. Wednesday’s update and a report on Thursday about inflation at the wholesale level will be the final big pieces of data the Federal Reserve will get before its meeting next week, where many investors expect the year’s third cut to interest rates . The Fed has been easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high since September to take pressure off the slowing jobs market, after bringing inflation nearly down to its 2% target. Lower rates would help give support to the economy, but they could also provide more fuel for inflation. Expectations for a series of cuts through next year have been a big reason the S&P 500 has set so many records this year. Trading in the options market suggests traders aren’t expecting a very big move for U.S. stocks following Wednesday’s report, according to strategists at Barclays. But a reading far off expectations in either direction could quickly change that. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.22% from 4.20% late Monday. Even though the Fed has been cutting its main interest rate, mortgage rates have been more stubborn to stay high and have been volatile since the autumn. That has hampered the housing industry, and homebuilder Toll Brothers’ stock fell 6.9% even though it delivered profit and revenue for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ expectations. CEO Douglas Yearley Jr. said the luxury builder has been seeing strong demand since the start of its fiscal year six weeks ago, an encouraging signal as it approaches the beginning of the spring selling season in mid-January. Elsewhere on Wall Street, Alaska Air Group soared 13.2% after raising its forecast for profit in the current quarter. The airline said demand for flying around the holidays has been stronger than expected. It also approved a plan to buy back up to $1 billion of its stock, along with new service from Seattle to Tokyo and Seoul . Boeing climbed 4.5% after saying it’s resuming production of its bestselling plane , the 737 Max, for the first time since 33,000 workers began a seven-week strike that ended in early November. Vail Resorts rose 2.5% after the ski resort operator reported a smaller first-quarter loss than analysts expected in what is traditionally its worst quarter. All told, the S&P 500 fell 17.94 points to 6,034.91. The Dow dipped 154.10 to 44,247.83, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 49.45 to 19,687.24. In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in China after the world’s second-largest economy said its exports rose by less than expected in November. Stocks rose 0.6% in Shanghai but fell 0.5% in Hong Kong. Indexes fell across much of Europe ahead of a meeting this week by the European Central Bank, where the widespread expectation is for another cut in interest rates. AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
