'Service' tagged posts

Swimming Past Disabilities

LightGrams November 19, 2020 Volume 24, Number 42 Eleven years ago Anthony Capuano could have decided to take the path of least resistance. It was then that he was struck by a train, losing a leg in the accident. Fitted with a prosthetic leg, he might have given in to self-pity and settled for a…

More Than A Wishing Well

LightGrams August 13, 2020 Volume 24, Number 28 Visitors to the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores quickly come to a beautiful display: a 30-foot high Smoky Mountain Waterfall. One can stand by the handrail and look down into the chasm below, imagining they are deep in the forests of Appalachia. Officials at the…

Spotting The Beauty

LightGrams May 28, 2020 Volume 24, Number 18 I purchased my first digital camera in 2005. It was a compact Canon model, archaic by today’s standards, but it served me well for a few years. When I combined it with my love for roaming through the woods, it opened my eyes to things I’d never…

Life On The Line

LightGrams March 5, 2020 Volume 24, Number 8 As we focus on the coronavirus, some are reminding us of similar events in the recent past. One such event was the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus that broke out in southern China in 2002. The story of Dr. Joanna Tse emerges from that dark time…

Helping Hands

LightGrams August 1, 2019 Volume 23, Number 27 Four men approached the woman in a wheelchair. One of them looked quite distinctive with his head shaved (except for the tall spikes running down the middle of his scalp). As they surrounded her, others might have wondered, “What are they up to?” They didn’t have to…

Finding The Good Samaritan

LightGrams January 17, 2019 Volume 23, Number 3 “Where’s Waldo” was a popular series of books that debuted in America in 1987. Each book had several pages of drawings in which the reader was challenged to find Waldo. “What an easy challenge!” one might have first thought. Waldo was dressed in a red and white…

“Melting Masterpieces”

LightGrams February 9, 2017 Volume 21, Number 6 When I was young I loved playing in the snow.  Almost every new snowfall would find me rolling balls of snow as I constructed a snowman.  I knew my creation would not last beyond the 32-degree mark.  My best work was doomed from the outset. There’s a…