The past few years have drastically changed how we think about our relationship to work, perhaps permanently. However, they haven’t changed the fact that billions of people on this planet spend about half their waking hours exchanging labor for money in order to secure food and shelter. As such, work has remained an inescapable part of one’s identity. “What do you do?” is still a small-talk question not because the answer is usually interesting, but because the answer tells you something about the skills and knowledge that person has amassed. And when the answer is interesting, it’s hard not to feel some measure of admiration for someone whose experience falls so outside your own.
I’ve always been fascinated by those whose daily occupations carry meaning, promise adventure, or are in any way out of the ordinary. Of course, everybody’s dream job is different, but imagine swapping sitting at a computer or working on a production line for clearing landmines, dodging tornadoes, or braving the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Not for everyone, of course—but what astonishing ways to earn a living.
The examples you’ll encounter below range from the inspirational to the unfathomable. Who would want to toil 18-hour days, or climb to dizzying heights with little to no protection? For some, that sort of life holds a deep appeal, and herein lies the hook that draws you into these stories: In attempting to understand the motivations of others, we are by reflex attempting to understand ourselves. Each of these pieces moved me in some way, and I hope that they move you also.
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Original photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
For 35 years, Judy Henderson spent countless hours on a prison phone wishing she could hold her children. After a governor’s pardon set her free, she knew she couldn’t just forget about other moms like her.
Henderson, now 69, was convicted of capital murder for the death of a Springfield, Missouri, jeweler in 1982 and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 50 years, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. She and her boyfriend had planned to rob the jeweler, but the robbery turned deadly when the man refused to give them a ring and other valuables. Henderson’s boyfriend fired a gun several times, killing the jeweler and injuring her, court records show.
Both were charged with murder, but only Henderson was found guilty. At the time, her son, Chip, was 3 and her daughter, Angel, was 12.
She was forced to trade the life she had with her children – driving Angel to tap dancing classes, afternoons baking brownies – for phone calls and visits to the Chillicothe Correctional Center, about 75 miles northeast of Kansas City.
Despite the distance, Henderson remained close to Angel by teaching her from afar how to cook sweet potatoes, supporting her through breakups, and helping her pick careers after college.
Mother’s Day was always particularly tough. Henderson welcomed holiday visits from Angel, who planned different meals each year. Sometimes Angel would bring a homemade meal, other times she’d buy prepared food.
“She would always visit on Mother’s Day,” Henderson said. “And when my mother was alive (they’d) come together along with most of my siblings.”
But Henderson had virtually no contact with Chip. Her ex-husband wouldn’t allow the boy to visit or even talk over the phone with her until he turned 16.
“When I walked into the visiting room, I didn’t even recognize him,” she said. “We both started crying. It was a moment that I would never forget.”
As the years passed and her children grew older, she also got to meet her three grandchildren – albeit from behind bars.
“It was very joyful, and it was heartbreaking that I couldn’t be with my daughter when they were born, and to walk her through the pregnancy in person,” Henderson said.
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Judy Henderson, center, with her daughter Angel McDonald and her son Chip Henderson, celebrated Mother’s Day together last year along with their families.
SARAH E. GOODE (C.1855? – 1905) POSTED ON NOVEMBER 5, 2010 BY CONTRIBUTED BY: AMY ESSINGTON Sarah Elisabeth Goode was one of the first African American women to obtain a patent from the United States government in 1885. She shares the distinction with Judy Reed, who invented a dough-kneading machine that was patented in 1880, and Miriam Benjamin, who […]
How do you waste the most time every day? Playing games on my devices. It’s a colossal waste of time, plus it’s an addiction. The more you play, the more time they give you for free. I think I might need GA (games anonymous). I totally stop all games for 46 days during Lent. I […]
These pancakes are bananas. No, I mean they are literally made from bananas. And eggs. Eggs and bananas, and that’s it. I can see that look you’re giving me right now, but you just have to These two ingredients, whisked together and given a little skillet love, are truly something magical.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at our step-by-step recipe and decide for yourself. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here with the rest of these pancakes, licking my plate clean.
How Do These Only Have Two Ingredients?
These two-ingredient banana pancakes have been floating around the internet for several years now, first on fitness sites (protein! low fat!) and then on parenting sites (toddler-friendly!). Sightings finally reached critical mass, and I had to try them for myself. Needless to say, I’m hooked.
These pancakes are gluten-free and dairy-free — they really are made with just bananas and eggs, no tricks. It seems like you’d just end up with scrambled banana-eggs (yuck), but the final product truly resembles a pancake. Piping hot and golden brown, with crispy edges.
Do They Really Taste Like Pancakes?
These are pancakes in the sense that they’re cooked on a stovetop and are lovely drenched with syrup, but they are definitely not a replacement for your favorite Saturday morning recipe. But don’t be disappointed — they’re something.
Sara Wells of Our Best Bites describes them as being like “the middle of a piece of French toast,” and I will second that description. They are very custard-like with a soft, yielding texture and a creamy melt-in-your-mouth quality. I would also describe them as being like thick crêpes.
Whether in cinemas or on streaming, movies have give us a lot to thrill and think over in 2023.
Menace has been found in mothers, shadows, and a pretty little doll called M3GAN. Adventure has been charted around the globe in speeding cars, across the multi-verse by feuding Spider-Folk, and into a rousing world of knights and shapeshifters. Romance has blossomed in colorful settings and nightmarish sex scenes. And coming-of-age stories have taken us back in time, into butt-kicking fantasies, and under the sea.
Whether you’re seeking to laugh, cry, marvel, or lose your mind, we’ve got a movie that’s sure to please.
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Credit: Composite: Mashable / Image: Sony Pictures / Focus Features / Universal Pictures / Focus Features / Searchlight Pictures
ALICE H. PARKER (1895-?) POSTED ON APRIL 1, 2018, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: ERIKA WEBER Alice H. Parker was an African American inventor famous for her patented system of central heating using natural gas. In the 1920s using natural gas to power a heating furnace was a revolutionary idea that conserved energy and paved the way for the central heating […]
From the Louvre museum to the sculpted façade of Notre Dame to the quintessential six-story apartment buildings with their grey-beige blush, Paris is built of local limestone, extracted from quarries that thread beneath the capital like the holes of a Swiss cheese. But these tunnels have a culinary legacy, too. Within these catacombs, in dark, cavernous chambers, farmers once cultivated a button mushroom variety that bears the name of the French capital: the Paris mushroom.
The stone upon (and from) which Paris is built is known as Lutetian limestone, after the Roman name for Paris: Lutetia. While locals have used these natural resources since Gallo-Roman times, it wasn’t until the massive medieval churches (such as Notre Dame) were built that Parisians quarried underground—a tradition that continued for centuries as they expanded and beautified the city. Over time, they created another, cavernous city below the streets.
Parisians found uses for the quarries long after miners winched the last block of stone up through the deep wells. In the late 1700s, after several cave-ins at the Holy Innocents Cemetery, city officials disinterred what was left of the remains and transferred the bones to these underground tunnels. This set the stage for the ossuaries of the Catacombs of Paris, which now hold the remains of more than six million people, including prominent French revolutionaries. Two centuries later, the French Resistance used the abandoned quarries to organize the Liberation of Paris far from Nazi eyes. One lesser-known use? The cultivation of a unique species of mushroom.
Since the 17th century, gardeners grew what would become known as Paris mushrooms in the gardens at Versailles. King Louis XIV is said to have been a particular fan of what was then known as the “rosé des près” or “pink of the fields.” The name came from the mushroom’s color, which is oddly similar to that of Lutetian limestone. But in the 19th century, this culture moved underground.
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Parisians built apartment with limestone from quarries below and around the city. Photo from Daxis/CC BY-ND 2.0.
Christopher Benjamin was imprisoned in Ancient Egypt, alone, barefoot, and cold. The stone wall he leaned against felt frigid and bone dry. Through a small cutout in the high ceiling of his cell, a single beam of sunlight taunted him. Gazing up at the peephole, he sensed that the world on the opposite side was far warmer — but certainly not more welcoming.
“I felt like I had really screwed up because I told these people in charge what they were doing wrong,” Benjamin says. “I kind of shot my mouth off. … They did not like what I told them, and so they put me in this dungeon.”
Not a single soul was around to save him. “I’m screwed,” Benjamin thought to himself. “There’s no way out.”
Fortunately, in a version of reality more adherent to its traditional definition, there was an exit: his therapist’s office door.
The unsettling visions and sensations Benjamin experienced while imprisoned thousands of years ago were part of what he thinks may have been a past life. His mind traveled to that time and place during a session of past-life regression, a practice in which a person, under hypnosis or in a meditative state, experiences a memory that they believe is from a time when their soul inhabited another body.
Some who engage in past-life regression do so simply out of curiosity about their former selves, perhaps discovering they were a knight in shining armor — or the town wench who waited on one. But others hope to treat a range of mental health issues, including phobias, addictions, anxiety, and depression, which they believe could have sprung from a past-life trauma. By reliving their trauma’s origin story, they hope to better understand, and possibly ameliorate, the emotional damage lingering in their current life.
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Could past-life regressing be far less time-consuming and costly than traditional forms of psychotherapy? Illustrations by Micky Walls
On June 18th 1865 Union Brigadier General Gordon Granger and approximately 2,000 federal troops landed on the beach at Galveston, Texas, to take control of the last unoccupied Confederate state. Although many enslaved people had already learned that they were freed, on June 19th Granger made the news of freedom official. He stepped onto the balcony of Ashton Villa, the […]
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Original photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
