Transatlantic Enchilada Lite

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veggieveggielove: -inspired: Man Lives on cliff and talks down suicide jumpers for last 50 years Meet the Australian Who’s Saved 160 People from SuicideDon Ritchie lives across the street from the most famous suicide spot in Australia: A cliff known as “The Gap.” Most people would move, but Ritchie’s stayed for almost 50 years—saving an estimated 160 people from suicide. So what’s his big secret? Ritchie wakes up every morning and looks out the window for “anyone standing alone too close to the precipice.” If he sees someone who looks like they might be contemplating a jump, he walks over and… strikes up a conversation.He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they’d like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him. “I’m offering them an alternative, really,” Ritchie says. “I always act in a friendly manner. I smile.” Ritchie’s house might be the worst real estate ever. One person a week commits suicide at the “the Gap,” the cliff he lives across from. It’s protected only by a small, one-meter fence, despite its legendary reputation as a suicide spot dating back to the 1800s. But the former life insurance salesman says he doesn’t feel “burdened” by the fact that people are always contemplating jumping to their deaths outside his house. In fact, he and his wife Moya see it as a blessing: “I think, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we live here and we can help people?’” Ritchie, who basically sounds like the nicest guy in the entire world, is 84, and has spent much of the last year battling cancer. But, as you might expect for a dude who’s managed to live across from a fucked-up, tragic place, and not become a casualty himself, he’s optimistic: “I imagine somebody else will come along and do what I’ve been doing.” I hope so. This is unbelievable. This man is such a hero. I don’t know if I’d move. I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I don’t know.

veggieveggielove:

-inspired:

Man Lives on cliff and talks down suicide jumpers for last 50 years

Meet the Australian Who’s Saved 160 People from Suicide

Don Ritchie lives across the street from the most famous suicide spot in Australia: A cliff known as “The Gap.” Most people would move, but Ritchie’s stayed for almost 50 years—saving an estimated 160 people from suicide.

So what’s his big secret? Ritchie wakes up every morning and looks out the window for “anyone standing alone too close to the precipice.” If he sees someone who looks like they might be contemplating a jump, he walks over and… strikes up a conversation.
He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they’d like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.

“I’m offering them an alternative, really,” Ritchie says. “I always act in a friendly manner. I smile.”

Ritchie’s house might be the worst real estate ever. One person a week commits suicide at the “the Gap,” the cliff he lives across from. It’s protected only by a small, one-meter fence, despite its legendary reputation as a suicide spot dating back to the 1800s.

But the former life insurance salesman says he doesn’t feel “burdened” by the fact that people are always contemplating jumping to their deaths outside his house. In fact, he and his wife Moya see it as a blessing: “I think, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we live here and we can help people?’”

Ritchie, who basically sounds like the nicest guy in the entire world, is 84, and has spent much of the last year battling cancer. But, as you might expect for a dude who’s managed to live across from a fucked-up, tragic place, and not become a casualty himself, he’s optimistic: “I imagine somebody else will come along and do what I’ve been doing.” I hope so.

This is unbelievable. This man is such a hero.

I don’t know if I’d move. I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I don’t know.

(via untitled-mag)

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Not for the faint of heart, or the easily queasy. Or maybe that’s exactly who it’s for, I’m still working that out. But there is a beauty to Stan Brakhage’s silent film, “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes,” filmed in an Philadelphia morgue in 1971.

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Nostalgia

Walking the Greenbelt today, and rather than green it was rust and brown and at least three shades of ochre. The trees seemed bleached white to gray, and all I could think about were those old horse books I used to read. In them were fox hunts that surely must have looked like this. The flattened grasses and cold wet sting in the air could have been heathered moor or northern taiga. It was just a walk, but at the point of a bend before 5 gray trees, I was overcome with remembering, being sick in bed maybe, some winter, and reading the exact scene I’d just stepped into.

101 notes

I don’t know why USA.gov is blogging about hummingbirds. But there you go. usagov: Image description: This composite image shows a single male hummingbird diving to a female. His tail feathers are spread to make a loud sound at the bottom. This courtship display is unusual because it features sound created with feathers instead of chirps or other vocalizations. The image is part of research on feathers and sound taking place at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Image courtesy of NSF.

I don’t know why USA.gov is blogging about hummingbirds. But there you go.

usagov:

Image description: This composite image shows a single male hummingbird diving to a female. His tail feathers are spread to make a loud sound at the bottom. This courtship display is unusual because it features sound created with feathers instead of chirps or other vocalizations.

The image is part of research on feathers and sound taking place at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

Image courtesy of NSF.

(via untitled-mag)