REMINDER: YOUR SUBMISSIONS ARE ENCOURAGED AND WELCOMED | |
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Paris 2024 Paralympics
August 28th, 2024 -– September 8th, 2024
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1. The Paris Paralympics, like most high-level sporting competitions, have been exciting and inspiring to watch. I have some highlights from the last week-and-a-half of competition.
2. The Games come to an end this weekend followed by the closing ceremony on Sunday. Thomas Jolly, the director of both opening ceremonies and the Olympics’ closing ceremony has a massive dance party with more than twenty DJs planned.
3. Next, I have a current medal count to close out this week’s Paralympic coverage.
4. I've featured many volcanoes in the Flock, this week's is truly unique. The Antarctic volcano Mt. Erebus spews out $6,000 in gold dust every day.
5. A one-meter-wide asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere and burned up in a dramatic fireball over the Philippines this week. The asteroid was spotted and tracked before entering the atmosphere by Tucson's own Catalina Sky Survey.
6. Nepal has begun a program that uses drone technology to make the removal of refuse from Mount Everest faster and safer.
7. Icelanders are throwing fledgling puffins (pufflings) off of ocean side cliffs as part of an efforts to save the young birds.
9. It's harvest season. In Wellness I have some information on the benefits of eating farm fresh foods and some resources on where find food direct from the farm in Tucson and the rest of the country too.
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Now, to this week's Flock. | |
1. Paris 2024 Paralympic Highlights | |
Wheelchair Racer Daniel Romanchuk Edges marcel Hug for Men's 5,000m Gold T54 | |
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Six-time Paralympic champion Marcel Hug had to settle for silver as US wheelchair racer Daniel Romanchuk surged before the line to take the men’s 5,000m T54 gold medal in Paris 2024 on Saturday (31 August).
The race reached an exciting finish with the entire field of 10 athletes still in with a shot with two laps to go.
Hug, with his trademark silver helmet, was leading the charge at the front with the rest of the field strung out in single file until Kuwait’s Faisal Alrajehi made a move at the 800m mark.
Alrajehi’s attack resulted in a tussle for the inside line with Hug forced into the fourth lane as they entered the final half lap.
In a sprint for the line, Romanchuk found the edge crossing the line in a time of 10 minutes, 55.28 seconds (10:55.28).
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USA's Daniel Romanchuk wins men's T54 5,000m - New World Record! | |
Paralympic Games Paris 224: USA's Ezra Frech Soars to Double Paralympic Glory in 24 Hours | |
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From a fifth-place finish in Tokyo 2020 to claiming two gold medals at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in just 24 hours, Team USA's Ezra Frech is on a mission to become the greatest Paralympian of all time.
On 2 September, in the men’s T63 100m final, Frech shocked everyone by claiming his first Paralympic title in a dramatic photo finish—a race no one, including Frech, expected him to win.
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Less than 24 hours later, he soared to victory once more, this time in his best event, the T63 high jump, setting a new Paralympic record with a 1.94m jump. His 100-day social media countdown to gold was complete.
From dreaming of gold to manifesting it on the grandest stage, the 19-year-old's meteoric rise to the top of Para athletics has left the world—and himself—in awe.
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Ezra Frech's CLUTCH lean at the line delivers gold by an eyelash at Paris Paralympics | |
The self-described ‘Noah Lyles of Para track and field’ has secured 2 gold medals | |
Jaydin Blackwell has dominated at the 2024 Paralympic Games | |
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Jaydin Blackwell has continued his dominance on the track at the 2024 Paralympic Games, securing two gold medals for Team USA. In the process, he set a new world record and tied his own previous world record.
Comparing himself to Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles in an interview with Team USA, Blackwell expressed his desire to elevate the visibility of the Paralympics.
“I will try my best to get more people acquainted with Para track and field because we deserve everything — more respect and more people talking about us,” he said.
“When people watch me run, I hope I can inspire them,” he added.
Blackwell was born with cerebral palsy, which affects movement, balance and posture. According to Team USA, the condition causes his leg muscles to tighten, making it difficult to run beyond short bursts
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American teammate Ryan Medrano finished second, winning the silver medal with a time of 10.97 seconds. | |
Team USA's Matt Stutzman, 'The Armless Archer,' Wins Gold and sets a new Paralympic Record | |
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Team USA’s Matt Stutzman shot the arrows of his life to win gold in the Para archery men's individual compound open event, setting a new Paralympic record (for the elimination rounds) of 149 points at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
The 5-end final saw Stutzman meet the People’s Republic of China’s Ai Xinliang, the bronze medallist from Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Both archers swapped perfect 30 points ends, with a tied score after the first end.
Ai led by one point after the second end, but Stutzman came back with a flawless performance in the third end to even out the score as Ai dropped one point. The fourth end saw Ai falter with Stutzman putting up another perfect score.
Stutzman entered the fifth and final end in the lead one point up on Ai. As the final three arrows were shot, Stutzman kept his lead and improved it to finish with a new Paralympic record score of 149 over Ai at 147 to win gold, with Ai taking silver and teamate He Zihao taking the bronze.
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Para archer Jodie Grinham becomes 1st athlete to win Paralympics medal while pregnant | |
Jodie Grinham became the first openly pregnant Paralympic athlete to medal. | |
From: Today.com, By: Associated Press and Francesca Gariano, September 1, 2024 | |
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Great Britain’s Jodie Grinham has become the first pregnant Paralympic athlete to win a medal.
Grinham’s history making win was announced on the official Instagram account for the Paralympics on Aug. 31 after she took home bronze in women’s individual compound while seven months pregnant at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.
On her journey to bronze, Grinham defeated her teammate Phoebe Paterson Pine, who won the gold medal in Tokyo.
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Brazil’s Gabriel Araujo accomplishes goal of bringing home 3 gold medals from Paris | |
In the Tokyo Olympics, he won 2 golds and 1 silver, but this time he wanted to claim all 3 | |
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Since the last Paralympic Games, Brazilian swimmer Gabriel Geraldo dos Santos Araujo has been on a mission to claim three gold medals in Paris.
Araujo accomplished his goal in dominant fashion at the 2024 Paralympic Games.
Competing in the S2 classification, Araujo, who has no arms or hands and atrophied legs, powers through the water with incredible speed, earning him the nickname “The Rocket Man” from fellow competitor Vladimir Danilenko.
“I feel like I am ‘The Rocket Man,’” Araujo said in response, per World Para Swimming. “Rockets don’t go back; they always go straight and forwards.”
In Tokyo, Araujo won gold in the men’s 50-meter backstroke and 200-meter freestyle but fell short in the 100-meter backstroke, taking silver behind Chile’s Alberto Abarza by 2.07 seconds, according to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
But this summer, Araujo dominated the 100-meter backstroke, winning gold with a time of 1:53.67, more than seven seconds ahead of the second place competitor.
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MUST SEE: Brazilian torpedo Gabriel Araujo claims backstroke gold at Paralympics | |
2. Paris 2024 Paralympics Closing Ceremony | |
The director of the Paralympic closing ceremony wants to turn the Stade de France into a dance floor | |
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The final act of the Paralympics in Paris will be a giant dance party.
That’s a promise from Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies for this year’s Olympics and Paralympics.
Jolly says 24 DJs will perform thumping techno and dance music at the Stade de France on Sunday as the curtain falls on the 2024 Paralympics.
“We want to turn the Stade de France into the biggest dance floor to celebrate the end of the Paralympics,” Jolly told The Associated Press in an interview.
Much like during the Paralympic opening ceremony, which featured artists with disabilities and dancers using crutches or wheelchairs, the dance floor will be open for all.
“There will be choreographic sequences that will showcase the body,” Jolly said.
The closing ceremony marks the end of Paris’ Olympic and Paralympic journey. For Jolly, a 42-year-old theater director, it’s the final chapter of a busy summer.
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3. Medal Count (Updated Sep 7, 2024 - 11:30 a.m. ET) | |
4. Volcanoes: Mt Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica | |
One of Earth's most active volcanoes spews $6,000 in gold dust every day | |
Located in Antarctica, Mount Erebus releases tiny pieces of crystallized gold among the gas, steam and rock it spews into the air daily. Some gold specks have been discovered more than 600 miles away from the volcano. | |
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It sounds like a dream, but it's true in Antarctica, gold rains from the sky. Tucked in among the glaciers, fiery Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth, providing a bit of heat amid the frozen landscape.
The frozen continent features 138 volcanoes, according to a 2017 study, with around nine of them reported as active. With a summit elevation of 12,448 feet (3,794 meters), Mount Erebus is the most well-known.
...The volcano regularly pumps out plumes of gas and steam and has been known to eject boulders of partially molten rock known as "volcanic bombs."
While volcanic bombs are exciting, it's the bursts of gas spraying tiny crystals of metallic gold that surprise scientists, who estimate the volcano spews around 80 grams of gold a day -- that's worth around $6,000.
The gold has been found hundreds of miles away from Mount Erebus. Antarctic researchers have detected traces of the gold dust in ambient air up to 621 miles away from the volcano.
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5. The Heavens: Asteroid burns up over the Philippines
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An asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere creating in the early Thursday morning an created a large green fireball over the Philippines. The asteroid was first detected mere hours before entering the atmosphere by the Catalina Sky Survey, located here in Tucson, AZ. After its discovery, it was determined that risk of the asteroid causing damage was very low and the event became an astronomical spectacle for residents to gather together and witness, rather than a cause for alarm. | |
Small asteroid hit Earth’s atmosphere
Thursday, Sep 5 | |
From: EarthSky, By: Kelly Kizer Whitt, September 5, 2024 | |
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A small asteroid – approximately 3 feet (1 meter) wide – struck Earth’s atmosphere at around 12:39 a.m. PHST Thursday, September 5, 2024 (16:39 UTC on September 4, 2024) over Lal-lo, Cayagan, in the Philippines.
The International Astronomical Union designated the object 2024 RW1. NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office reported the strike via X.com.
An alert was issued by the European Space Agency well before the object arrived. The asteroid, as expected, burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. And it created a dazzling green fireball as it fell. But there’s a possibility some meteorites may have made it to the ground.
Videos of the event are spectacular
Hundreds of Filipinos – alerted to the asteroid’s impending arrival – waited and watched the skies. And many captured the streaming fireball as it passed overhead … then exploded!
Finding small asteroids before they hit is rare
This is only the 9th time we’ve spotted an asteroid before it struck us. And it was Jacqueline Fazekas at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona who discovered this asteroid just about eight hours before impact. The asteroid had the provisional designation CAQTDL2. It has since been renamed 2024 RW1.
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Asteroid creates a bright flash in the sky above the Philippines | |
The Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) is a NASA funded project supported by the Near Earth Object Observation Program (NEOO) under the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). We are based at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Lab in Tucson, Arizona. Our mission at CSS is fully dedicated to discover and track near-Earth objects (NEOs) in an effort to meet the congressional mandate to catalogue at least 90 percent of the estimated population of NEOs larger than 140 meters, some of which classify as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) which pose an impact threat to Earth. Longstanding success of the project is attributable to our comprehensive sky coverage, continued development and application of innovative software and our NEO detection pipeline, and the inclusion of near real-time human attention to the NEO discovery and follow-up process. | |
6. Reaching High: Everest Cleanup
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I've talked about how much waste has accumulated on Mount Everest before and how dangerous and labor intensive it is to remove it. Nepal has begun a new program using technology to help make Everest cleanup safer and faster. | |
Giant Drones to Carry Trash off Mount Everest | |
The drones can carry up to 500 pounds per load down the mountain, which reduces the need to put climbers into dangerous positions on the Khumbu Icefall | |
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Despite major efforts over the past few years to clean up Mount Everest, there are still tons of trash piled up so high that it looks like a landfill. Visitors to the world’s highest mountain have left around 50 metric tons of waste behind over the years.
To help solve the garbage problem, Nepal will be using unmanned “heavy lifter” drones that will sound like a “swarm of bees” according to a story in The Kathmandu Post. The drones are manufactured by Chinese drone maker Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), which also makes consumer drones in the U.S.A.
The first DJI drone, which was tested at Everest in April, carried 500 pounds of trash from one camp to another in only an hour, a feat that would take over a dozen climbers around six hours. The Khumbu Icefall is getting more dangerous each year due to warming temperatures. “Going up there one part of the day and coming down the next day could look very different, and the probability of that getting worse with a warmer climate increases,” said Paul Mayewski, a researcher at the University of Maine.
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7. Birds: Puffling Season in Iceland
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Why it's perfectly normal to see baby puffins thrown off cliffs in Iceland each year | |
From: NPR, By: Halisia Hubbard, September 26, 2022 | |
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Watching thousands of baby puffins being tossed off a cliff is perfectly normal for the people of Iceland's Westman Islands.
This yearly tradition is what's known as "puffling season" and the practice is a crucial, life-saving endeavor.
The chicks of Atlantic puffins, or pufflings, hatch in burrows on high sea cliffs. When they're ready to fledge, they fly from their colony and spend several years at sea until they return to land to breed, according to Audubon Project Puffin.
Pufflings have historically found the ocean by following the light of the moon, digital creator Kyana Sue Powers told NPR over a video call from Iceland. Now, city lights lead the birds astray.
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Why People Are Throwing Baby Puffins Off Cliffs in Iceland | |
Now that summer is almost over, it's harvest season and a great time to visit your local farmers market, farm stand, or u-pick orchard to get the best fresh, healthy, and nutritious fruits and vegetables. They'll also have a better shelf life when you get them home because they haven't been warehoused or shipped across the country before getting to you. | |
Health Benefits of Farmers Markets | |
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If you are lucky enough to have a local farmers market, you have access to an enticing array of produce, fresh and in season ― and a lot more ― from local farmers, bakers, artisans and vendors.
Melinda Cater, a dietitian at Johns Hopkins, helped start a farmers market in her own neighborhood in 2011. She has some delicious ideas about how shopping at your local farmers market can add nutrition to your meal planning and health to your family and community.
Are there nutritional benefits to shopping at farmers markets?
Definitely, says Cater. “Produce from local farmers has spent more time on the vine, on the tree or in the ground, so you get better taste and more nutrients,” she says. “When it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables, the shorter the time and distance from farm to sale, the higher the levels of vitamins and minerals.”
What are the best things to buy at a farmers market?
For the best taste and nutrition, experts agree that you can’t go wrong with fruits and vegetables in season.
If you don’t know what grows when, there are plenty of ways to find out. Cater says some vendors and even the markets themselves have email threads you can sign up for and social media sites you can consult before you visit the market to find out what foods are likely at their peak. “For instance, our local market has a produce calendar by month saying what’s likely to be available,” she notes.
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Here in Tucson we are lucky to have the Tucson Village Farm, a community based urban farm supported by the Pima county Cooperative Extension and the University of Arizona. The farm's Midweek Market offers fresh produce grown on he farm, as well as soups and baked goods and more. is open on Wednesdays between 4-6 PM from September through November. | |
Tucson Village Farm Midweek Market | |
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Our Midweek Market happens every week from 4-6pm. The market is outside on our back patio behind the Angel Charity for Children Culinary Education Center.
Check our Instagram @tucsonvillagefarm (or subscribe to our newsletter) to see what is available week to week. We will post what wehave that day by 12pm each week.
We sell TVF grown produce, farm-fresh soup, focaccia bread, chocolate chip cookies, and MORE.
Cash, cards, and SNAP accepted. Prices will be posted at the farm.
Our retail space will be open as well. We have items like TVF cookbooks, handmade soaps, chapsticks, screen printed shirts, and more!
Every purchase supports us in our mission to provide health and agriculture education to Arizona youth.We sell TVF grown produce, farm-fresh soup, focaccia bread, chocolate chip cookies, and MORE.
Cash, cards, and SNAP accepted. Prices will be posted at the farm.
Our retail space will be open as well. We have items like TVF cookbooks, handmade soaps, chapsticks, screen printed shirts, and more!
Every purchase supports us in our mission to provide health and agriculture education to Arizona youth.
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If you're not sure where you can find farm fresh food near you, or if you just want to find out if you have more options than you knew about, the USDA hosts a Local Food Directories search engine where you can search for Farmers Markets, On-Farm markets, Food Hubs, Community Supported Agriculture, and Agrotourism across the country. | |
USDA Local Food Directories:
National Farmers Market Directory | |
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The Farmers Market Directory lists markets that feature two or more farm vendors selling agricultural products directly to customers at a common, recurrent physical location. Maintained by the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Directory is designed to provide customers with convenient access to information about farmers market listings to include: market locations, directions, operating times, product offerings, accepted forms of payment, and more.
USDA AMS’s new and improved Local Food Directories are up and running!
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These Flock regulars are always here for you: | |
In coming weeks: we'll be sharing more investigative articles from our roving reporter William George, original writing from Flock favorite Dino DeConcini. | |
Don't Be Shy: Share Your Stories! | |
I'm looking forward to sharing more of your personal stories - oral, written, or otherwise, as we enter our third year. I'd so love to present them to The Flock, hit a mailbox below to share your story. | |
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Your fan and friend,
Beth
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The information and materials contained or referenced in this newsletter are for informational purposes only and not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a physician or other qualified medical professional with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before beginning a new health care regimen. Do not disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking medical advice or care based on anything contained in this newsletter. | | | | |
