Top of the weekend to you all.
If, for whatever reason, you find yourself thinking humanity is cooked, here’s a 105-year-old woman dancing to drum’n’bass on her birthday. Plenty to admire also in this week’s selection, as well as one big, heart-breaking mystery. Read on.
1. The sober decade Grace Slick regrets
Jefferson Airplane’s signature song is White Rabbit, but it’s a track from a later era of the 60s psychedelic rock outfit that still rules the airwaves. Grace Slick is the voice behind the aforementioned and We Built This City, released in 1985 when the group had rebranded as Starship. “I’d been this wild, crazy-ass drunk,” she says of why she agreed to sing a song she hated. “So to make up for it, I was sober all through the 80s … which was a mistake.”
It’s just one example of a good line from Slick, who is incredibly forthright about her life as a “spoiled” rock’n’roll brat and getting “friendly” with the apparently quite well-proportioned Doors frontman Jim Morrison.
Recollections of her night with the Lizard King: “Like making love to a floating art form with eyes.”
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
2. One man’s battle to save the last phone box in his village
Here’s a storyline fit for a film: a plucky outsider standing up to the relentless march of progress – in this case, the perceived obsolescence of public telephones now we have all that and much more in a small device in our pockets.
Fewer than 10 phone calls were made last year from the K6 phone box in the English village of Sharrington, where Derek Harris lives. That makes it a prime candidate for decommissioning. Harris, 90, and a small band of villagers have other ideas.
Heritage value: The K6 was designed to mark the silver jubilee of George V in 1935.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
3. ‘I think we brought the wrong one home’
Joan had always had a nagging suspicion that William, her son, was not hers. The doubts began at the hospital in 1951 when a group of four babies was brought into her ward, and the one that was accidentally dropped on her bed was handed to her. As the years passed and William developed much differently from their other children, Joan’s husband was convinced: “I think we brought the wrong one home.”
A DNA test in early 2019 proved their fears correct. Now Joan and her son and daughter are racing to find her lost biological son before it’s too late.
***
“When he said: ‘You’re not my mother,’ it went through me.” – Joan on her last contact with William, who had done a DNA test of his own.
How long will it take to read: Ten minutes.
4. Australia’s first female combat troops
Until 1985, women in the Australian Army worked as nurses or filled support roles. That all changed when 49 mostly teenage girls marched into the mess hall of the Blamey barracks at Kapooka in New South Wales to stunned silence from the thousand male recruits eating dinner.
The recruits were there to undertake the same combat training as their male counterparts. Says Sonya Wheelahan of her platoon as members prepare to mark its 40th anniversary: “We proved a lot of people wrong.”
First step on a long journey: Despite the trailblazing work of 31 Platoon, Delta Company, Kapooka, it would be 30 years before Australian women fought on the frontline.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
5. Six days trapped in a ravine
Matthew Reum was on a road trip when his pickup truck barrelled into a ravine in the dead of night. For six days he heard cars crossing the bridge above him, none of their occupants spotting the silver vehicle below that looked like it belonged on a scrapheap.
Reum was trapped inside the wreckage. So he waited, keeping a journal to document his mental health as he battled to keep hallucinations at bay. He awoke on day six to an unlikely pair of rescuers, who he wasn’t convinced weren’t hallucinations as well.
Celebrating small victories: Reum whiled away the time by dismantling the insides of his car with a toolkit, piece by piece, to give himself more room. The sense of accomplishment helped keep his spirits up until salvation arrived.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
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