Amelia Earhart, the lady, the myth and the family secrets

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Before I write the news, and it has been a slow couple of days, did you hear...

I recently exposed, I mean mentioned, my dreadful Putnam family secret regarding the curse of the Salem Witches. It was one of those "on you and all future generations of the Putnam family".

Well one earlier manifestation of the curse may have taken place about 85 years ago when Amelia Earhart, perhaps the greatest female aviator of all time, married one George Palmer Putnam of the New England Putnam family (the same one as the Salem Putnam family).

GP asked her to marry him six times before she finally relented, and they tied the knot February 7, 1931. Six years later, July 2, 1937, she was declared missing trying to fly around the world. So 79 years ago another Putnam succumbed to the Salem curse.

Amelia and George Palmer Putnam

For those of you who haven't a clue who Amelia Earhart might be, the following is from her official website and gives a neat, and short biography. This website has to be the most accurate since it is hers.

Aviator Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. On May 15, 1923, Amelia Earhart became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot's license.

Yet another example of the magic of the Internet. Amelia died 78 years ago and has an official website today. That would be so much like her. Her hunger to shatter barriers and records in planes matched her desire to shatter social and cultural barriers in life.

Now I must admit, when I think about her life and death it is really strange to think she was 40 years old and trying to break the record flying around the world.

It was probably because she spent much of her youth growing up in Iowa, (my home state by coincidence), where clean air and living made the Midwestern families a quite hardly bunch.

One last tidbit. Back in 1937 it took about 25-30 days to fly around the world. When Amelia checked in last time on her trip she had flown over 22,000 miles and had about 7,000 miles left to fly, meaning the entire odyssey would have been just about 30,000 miles.

That is one tough lady.

From her official website: http://www.ameliaearhart.com/about/bio.html

Biography

When 10-year-old Amelia Mary Earhart saw her first plane at a state fair, she was not impressed. "It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and looked not at all interesting," she said. It wasn't until Earhart attended a stunt-flying exhibition, almost a decade later, that she became seriously interested in aviation. A pilot spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dove at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. Earhart, who felt a mixture of fear and pleasure, stood her ground. As the plane swooped by, something inside her awakened. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." On December 28, 1920, pilot Frank Hawks gave her a ride that would forever change her life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly."

Although Earhart's convictions were strong, challenging prejudicial and financial obstacles awaited her. But the former tomboy was no stranger to disapproval or doubt. Defying conventional feminine behavior, the young Earhart climbed trees, "belly-slammed" her sled to start it downhill and hunted rats with a .22 rifle. She also kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering.

After graduating from Hyde Park High School in 1915, Earhart attended Ogontz, a girl's finishing school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She left in the middle of her second year to work as a nurse's aide in a military hospital in Canada during WWI, attended college, and later became a social worker at Denison House, a settlement house in Boston. Earhart took her first flying lesson on January 3, 1921, and in six months managed to save enough money to buy her first plane. The second-hand Kinner Airster was a two-seater biplane painted bright yellow. Earhart named the plane "Canary," and used it to set her first women's record by rising to an altitude of 14,000 feet.

One afternoon in April 1928, a phone call came for Earhart at work. "I'm too busy to answer just now," she said. After hearing that it was important, Earhart relented though at first she thought it was a prank. It wasn't until the caller supplied excellent references that she realized the man was serious. "How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?" he asked, to which Earhart promptly replied, "Yes!" After an interview in New York with the project coordinators, including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam, she was asked to join pilot Wilmer "Bill" Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis E. "Slim" Gordon. The team left Trepassey harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F7 named Friendship on June 17, 1928, and arrived at BurryPort, Wales, approximately 21 hours later. Their landmark flight made headlines worldwide, because three women had died within the year trying to be that first woman. When the crew returned to the United States they were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception held by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.

From then on, Earhart's life revolved around flying. She placed third at the Cleveland Women's Air Derby, later nicknamed the "Powder Puff Derby" by Will Rogers. As fate would have it, her life also began to include George Putnam. The two developed a friendship during preparation for the Atlantic crossing and were married February 7, 1931. Intent on retaining her independence, she referred to the marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control."

Together they worked on secret plans for Earhart to become the first woman and the second person to solo the Atlantic. On May 20, 1932, five years to the day after Lindbergh, she took off from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Paris. Strong north winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems plagued the flight and forced her to land in a pasture near Londonderry, Ireland. "After scaring most of the cows in the neighborhood," she said, "I pulled up in a farmer's back yard." As word of her flight spread, the media surrounded her, both overseas and in the United States. President Herbert Hoover presented Earhart with a gold medal from the National Geographic Society. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross-the first ever given to a woman. At the ceremony, Vice President Charles Curtis praised her courage, saying she displayed "heroic courage and skill as a navigator at the risk of her life." Earhart felt the flight proved that men and women were equal in "jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and willpower."

In the years that followed, Earhart continued to break records. She set an altitude record for autogyros of 18,415 feet that stood for years. On January 11, 1935, she became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Chilled during the 2,408-mile flight, she unpacked a thermos of hot chocolate. "Indeed," she said, "that was the most interesting cup of chocolate I have ever had, sitting up eight thousand feet over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, quite alone." Later that year she was the first to solo from Mexico City to Newark. A large crowd "overflowed the field," and rushed Earhart's plane. "I was rescued from my plane by husky policemen," she said, "one of whom in the ensuing melee took possession of my right arm and another of my left leg." The officers headed for a police car, but chose different routes. "The arm-holder started to go one way, while he who clasped my leg set out in the opposite direction. The result provided the victim with a fleeting taste of the tortures of the rack. But, at that," she said good-naturedly, "It was fine to be home again."

In 1937, as Earhart neared her 40th birthday, she was ready for a monumental, and final, challenge. She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world. Despite a botched attempt in March that severely damaged her plane, a determined Earhart had the twin engine Lockheed Electra rebuilt. "I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it," she said. On June 1st, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan departed from Miamiand began the 29,000-mile journey. By June 29, when they landed in Lae, New Guinea, all but 7,000 miles had been completed. Frequently inaccurate maps had made navigation difficult for Noonan, and their next hop--to Howland Island--was by far the most challenging. Located 2,556 miles from Lae in the mid-Pacific, Howland Island is a mile and a half long and a half mile wide. Every unessential item was removed from the plane to make room for additional fuel, which gave Earhart approximately 274 extra miles. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, their radio contact, was stationed just offshore of Howland Island. Two other U.S. ships, ordered to burn every light on board, were positioned along the flight route as markers. "Howland is such a small spot in the Pacific that every aid to locating it must be available," Earhart said.

At 10am local time, zero Greenwich time on July 2, the pair took off. Despite favorable weather reports, they flew into overcast skies and intermittent rain showers. This made Noonan's premier method of tracking, celestial navigation, difficult. As dawn neared, Earhart called the ITASCA, reporting "cloudy, weather cloudy." In later transmissions earhart asked the ITASCAto take bearings on her. The ITASCA sent her a steady stream of transmissions but she could not hear them. Her radio transmissions, irregular through most of the flight, were faint or interrupted with static. At 7:42 A.M. the Itasca picked up the message, "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." The ship tried to reply, but the plane seemed not to hear. At 8:45 Earhart reported, "We are running north and south." Nothing further was heard from Earhart.

A rescue attempt commenced immediately and became the most extensive air and sea search in naval history thus far. On July 19, after spending $4 million and scouring 250,000 square miles of ocean, the United States government reluctantly called off the operation. In 1938, a lighthouse was constructed on Howland Island in her memory. Across the United States there are streets, schools, and airports named after her.

Her birthplace,  Atchison, Kansas, has been turned into a virtual shrine to her memory. Amelia Earhart awards and scholarships are given out every year.

Today, though many theories exist, there is no proof of her fate. There is no doubt, however, that the world will always remember Amelia Earhart for her courage, vision, and groundbreaking achievements, both in aviation and for women. In a letter to her husband, written in case a dangerous flight proved to be her last, this brave spirit was evident. "Please know I am quite aware of the hazards," she said. "I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others."

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Multidrug Resistant Cells - the Achilles Heel of Modern Medicine

Destroy the multidrug resistant disease before it destroys us.

Today, after all our years of medical advancement and our treatment with pharmaceutical wonder drugs, disease after disease attacks us because of multidrug resistant cells forming in our bodies.

Ironically, the cause of this evolution of drug resistant cells was our excessive use of various prescription drugs given to us by our own health providers.  Of course, the drugs received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, who knew better and did nothing for years.

Multidrug resistant cells evolved from our greed to pump more and more medicine into the patients.  The next trend was to create prescription medication needed for life by the patient, thus guaranteeing more cash flow for the doctor, dentist, hospital, clinic, health diagnostic centers, drug companies, and insurance companies.

When humans started dying from overdoses and then from multidrug resistant diseases, the moneychangers shifted tactics and started prescribing the same antibiotics for animals when kept in confined quarters.  Well that included cows, chickens, and pigs.

Today more antibiotics sell for animal feed than to treat humans.  However, the saturation of animals with antibiotics has now made animals a greater source of the dangerous antibiotics entering the human body, than treatment from our doctors.

These are recent headlines.

Multidrug-resistant Shigellosis Spreading in the United States

Indian Woman Being Treated in U.S. for Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

Outbreak of drug-resistant infection could kill 80,000 in UK, report warns

Understanding CRE, the 'nightmare' superbug that contributed to 2 deaths in L.A.

Nations Failing to Combat 'Global Threat' of Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs: WHO

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security. "All types of microbes—including many viruses and parasites—are becoming resistant to medicines. Of particularly urgent concern is the development of bacteria that are progressively less treatable by available antibiotics. This is happening in all parts of the world, so all countries must do their part to tackle this global threat."

These are some of the multidrug resistant diseases now in circulation.

The Original Superbug: Staphylococcus Aureus - MRSA

Almost everyone's heard of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, yet few people understand just how pervasive the original superbug has become.

Roughly one in 50 people carries a strain of staph resistant to common antibiotics, according to the National Institutes of Health. If the bug invades a wound, it can cause an infection that is minor and localized, as in a pimple, or serious and widespread, involving the heart, lungs, blood and bones.

"MRSA continues to be the biggest threat because it could become more widespread," said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of prevention at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

MRSA infections usually strike elderly hospital inpatients or nursing home residents. But the number of MRSA cases out in the community is on the rise, according to the NIH.  The disease spreads between people working out at the gym through contaminated towels or equipment, and passed between children at day care facilities.

Most forms of cancer

Ebola

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes HIV infection and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)

Flu (Influenza)

Malaria

Meningitis

Pneumonia

Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Women (STDs)

Gonorrhea and Chlamydia

Tuberculosis (TB)

Diarrhea

The Food Borne Bugs: Escherichia Coli and Salmonella

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Micrograph of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

(MRSA, brown) surrounded by cellular debris

Antimicrobial resistance: A growing health issue

The emergence of drug-resistant microbes is not new or unexpected. Both natural causes and societal pressures drive bacteria, viruses, parasites, and other microbes to continually change in an effort to evade the drugs developed to kill them.

Natural causes

Like all organisms, microbes undergo random genetic mutations, and these changes can enhance drug resistance. Resistance to a drug arising by chance in just a few organisms can quickly spread through rapid reproduction to entire populations of a microbe.

Societal pressures

Antimicrobial resistance is fostered by the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs in people as well as animals; a lack of diagnostic tests to rapidly identify infectious agents; and poor hand hygiene and infection control in healthcare and community settings.

Together, these forces contribute to the problem of drug-resistant infections that are increasingly difficult and costly to treat. 

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria, increasingly seen not only in hospitals and healthcare settings (hospital acquired or HA-MRSA) but also in the wider community, especially among people in close contact such as athletes (community associated or CA-MRSA).

Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) bacteria are resistant to vancomycin, an antibiotic regarded as a drug of last resort.

Microbes increasingly resistant to drugs

SOURCE: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. Antimicrobial (Drug) Resistance.

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So why am I trying to upset you about the dangers in your life?  Two reasons drive me.  First, you need to be aware of how your respected institutions have poisoned you, maybe not intentionally, but the result is just as fatal.

Second, there are innovative projects underway across the nation to address the dangerous multi-drug resistant cells using a natural herb, stefania de cantis, first used by the Chinese thousands of years ago.

Just as important, researchers at a health clinic in Texas and at the Massachusetts General Hospital have recently announced results using a Chinese herbal compound to stop Ebola, and experiments are underway in other labs as well.  American patients and the medical world need to know the compound is in capsule form and seems to have been effective in treating many multi-drug resistant diseases.

If, in fact, the runaway multi-drug resistant diseases have become the Super Diseases of the 21st century, we must arm our medical community with the most effective tools possible to save lives in spite of the mutation capability of the disease.

America Lost a National Treasure a year ago and I Lost a Hero and Friend - Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra, Yankee legend and American icon, died at age 90 a year ago on September 22, exactly 69 years to the day he played his first game in the major leagues for the Yankees in 1946.  Over the course of the next 19 years, he would become the best catcher in the history of baseball as he led the Yankees to an astonishing 10 World Series championships in 19 years, and fourteen appearances in the World Series during those years.

In 1949, early in Berra’s Yankee career, his manager assessed him this way in an interview in The Sporting News: “Mr. Berra,” Casey Stengel said, “is a very strange fellow of very remarkable abilities.”

Many people know Yogi more for his off-the-field quotes than his baseball stats but his stats only enhance the legend.  His career spanned the careers of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, a host of Hall of Famers, and in spite of the hitting reputations of his famous teammates, Yogi drove in more runs during those years than his marquee teammates.

Yogi and Mickey Mantle

Born to Italian immigrants in St. Louis, Yogi dropped out of school after 8th grade to devote his life to baseball.  He served in the Navy in World War II before making his major league debut in 1946.

Yogi and Don Larsen - only perfect game in World Series history

I was born the year he turned pro and during my formative years the kid from St. Louis, about 90 miles down the road from where I lived in Iowa, was a major league super star at catcher, three times MVP, fifteen straight years on the all stars, played in fourteen World series and won ten World championships.

Yogi contesting Jackie Robinson score in World Series

Since I was catcher while winning state championships in Little League and Babe Ruth, the same position as Yogi, he was the role model and reason I was a lifelong Yankees fan, a rare thing in the Midwest.

When I graduated from high school in 1964 I left immediately to visit the Yale campus.  The sports editor who covered my high school career, Al Hoskins of the Ottumwa Courier, joined us in NYC and arranged to get media passes in NYC resulting in dugout and on-field access at the Yankees and Mets stadiums where I got to meet Yogi and the other stars.

Little did I know that twenty years later I would be working for the governor of New Jersey and got to know Yogi and his old teammate Phil Rizzuto up close and personal.  Yogi loved New Jersey and never hesitated to offer his assistance for anything the governor wanted.  He went so far as to host parties at his home in Montclair, NJ where other Hall of Fame players would tell endless stories of the Yogi legend.

No one ever played the game of baseball harder and his career was full of memorable accomplishments.  Yogi the linguist is a legend in his own right and Yogi the person who cared for everyone, especially kids, will never be forgotten.

Yogi has now joined his fellow Hall of Famers among the spirits in the sky and our world will sorely miss what he gave, and never forget his incredible legacy.

                 

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CPT Spirits in the Sky - Harry Chapin, One of the greatest of great storytellers!

In recognition of those artists now departed whose contributions to music and life made them giants among people,  we created the CPT Spirits in the Sky and Harry Chapin was the first of the series.  This greatest of all storytellers quietly left a mark on society that stands alone.  Twice I got to see Harry in concert and it was an honor to experience the joy and love he gave to the audience and the world.  Following is a video of his last recorded performance in Canada over 30 years ago that took place just 11 months before his fatal car crash in NYC.

I wanna learn a love song.



Harry Chapin (December 7, 1942 – July 16, 1981) was an American singer-songwriter best known in particular for his folk rock songs including "Taxi", "W*O*L*D", and the number-one hit "Cat's in the Cradle"; as well as his folk musical based on the biblical book of John, "Cotton Patch Gospel". Chapin was also a dedicated humanitarian who fought to end world hunger, his work a key player in the creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger in 1977. In 1987, Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian work.

Chapin was resolved to leave his imprint on Long Island. He envisioned a Long Island where the arts flourished and universities expanded and humane discourse was the norm. "He thought Long Island represented a remarkable opportunity," said Chapin's widow, Sandy.

All my life's a circle!



Chapin served on the boards of the Eglevsky Ballet, the Long Island Philharmonic, Hofstra University. He energized the now-defunct Performing Arts Foundation (PAF) of Huntington.

In the mid-1970s, Chapin focused on his social activism, including raising money to combat hunger in the United States. His daughter Jen said: "He saw hunger and poverty as an insult to America". He co-founded the organization World Hunger Year with legendary radio DJ Bill Ayres, before returning to music with On the Road to Kingdom Come.

He also released a book of poetry, Looking...Seeing, in 1977. Many of Chapin's concerts were benefit performances (for example, a concert to help save the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York), and sales of his concert merchandise were used to support World Hunger Year.

Chapin's social causes at times caused friction among his band members and then-manager Fred Kewley. Chapin donated an estimated third of his paid concerts to charitable causes, often performing alone with his guitar to reduce costs. Mike Rendine played Bass during the years of 1979.

One report quotes his widow saying soon after his death — "only with slight exaggeration" — that "Harry was supporting 17 relatives, 14 associations, seven foundations and 82 charities. Harry wasn't interested in saving money. He always said, 'Money is for people,' so he gave it away." Despite his success as a musician, he left little money and it was difficult to maintain the causes for which he raised more than $3 million in the last six years of his life. The Harry Chapin Foundation was the result.
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