Newspaper – Page 3 – Anna's Alcove

At 5 p.m. on Dec. 3, Colleen Reed, from Orangutan Outreach, will inform students at Edinboro University about the fact that orangutans are facing death, torture, abuse, capture and are being illegally sold as pets at an alarming rate.

“People need to know,” said Katrina Spirko, the orchestrator of the event and a senior at Edinboro, majoring in elementary education and early childhood education, with a minor in environmental studies.

Spirko has always been interested in the great apes and became personally involved when she discovered Orangutan Outreach through her research.

According to their website, some of Orangutan Outreach’s main goals are to protect orangutans in their native habitat, to promote public awareness of conservation strategies, and to fund rescue efforts of orangutans.

Orangutan Outreach is based largely on volunteering and provides the opportunity for people to adopt orangutans and sponsor them as they go through the rehabilitation program, Spirko explained.

Last Christmas, Spirko and her boyfriend adopted Luna, the youngest and smallest of the apes at the Sintang Orangutan Center (SOC) in Indonesia, one of the centers that Orangutan Outreach sponsors.

“With her fluffy hair, her big bright eyes and her Mona Lisa smile, Luna stole everyone’s hearts,” Richard Zimmerman, executive director of Orangutan Outreach, posted on their website.

But, last April, Zimmerman received a devastating phone call. Luna had gone missing.

“I remember the day I heard about it,” Spirko said. “I cried. I love her so much and even though I’ve never met her, I feel like she’s really special [to me].”

According to Zimmerman’s blog, police and army officials were involved with the search as well as a team from Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN) and Center for Orangutan Prevention (COP), which are all based in Indonesia.

“[We’re] working tirelessly to find information about Luna,” Zimmerman said, as they made regular sweeps through local villages and sought out leads on local smugglers and wildlife traffickers.

Spirko receive up-to-date emails and notices from the Outreach center and she said that when Luna first disappeared, they sounded really determined to find her. “She was supposed to be protected,” Spirko said.

Femke den Haas, founding director of JAAN, wrote, “It is simply not believable that a baby orangutan can just ‘disappear’ like that.”

But now, after months of searching and trying to figure out what had happened to her, a memorial has been posted on the Outreach’s website. According to Spirko, it seems like they’re losing hope of ever finding her again.

“She may very well have been captured by wildlife smugglers and sold,” said Zimmerman, “She may even have been smuggled out of Indonesia by now.”

In order to help raise awareness of what is happening to the great apes, Spirko and members of Students of Edinboro for Environmental Defense (SEED) are organizing a presentation.

“I hope the room is packed and that people will be willing to donate,” said Spirko. “I want people to know [Luna’s] story, because if she is dead, I don’t want her to have died in vain. For me personally… it’s a shout-out for Luna.”

More information on Orangutan Outreach can be found at their website, www.redapes.org.

The paranormal has always been one of Chad Calek’s interests.

“Instead of going to spring break, I was going to the Waverly Hills Sanatorium or the Villisca Axe Murder House. I was going to all these haunted places to investigate them,” he said.

More than 200 students, faculty and visitors gathered on Friday to hear Calek speak in the Frank G. Pogue Student Center’s Multipurpose Room. Calek spoke about his purported encouters with ghosts and showed footage he and his team recorded for the television show “Paranormal State.”

In “Good vs. Evil” – Calek’s first episode on the show – Chip Coffey, a psychic, and Ryan Buell, one of the directors, told Calek there was a demon in the basement and suggested he check it out.

While sitting on a chair in the middle of the basement, an ominous growl came out of the darkness.

Calek radioed upstairs and asked if anyone else had heard it. “Yeah, man, [we] heard it,” they replid.

The growl came again and Calek told the team upstairs, “There’s something down here, bro.”

“People ask me how I could just sit there and listen to the growling without moving.”

Calek laughed as he described the situation to the audience.

“Well, the truth is, the growling came from between me and the stairway out… If that thing had come from behind me, I would’ve been flying through that door like a pissed off Sasquatch!”

Calek has been investigating such phenomena since the age of 12, when his family was torn apart by paranormal attacks.

His parents and siblings had told him they had been experiencing things, but Calek had seen and felt nothing.

Calek said he would shout into the air to provoke the ghosts to show themselves when the family wasn’t there; he wanted to be a believer and not think that his family was crazy.

EDINBORO UNIVERSITY – In honor of Women’s History Month, four students participated in a “Women in Literature Student Panel” on March 31 in the Frank G. Pogue Student Center’s Multipurpose Room A.

Discussion focused upon women authors and characters don’t receiving the recognition that they each deserve.

“Recognizing the importance of women in literature… is an important step in a journey to developing a more dynamic view of the role of women in society,” said Morgan Larchuk, vice president of Sigma Tau Delta at Edinboro University.

Corey Saxton, a sophomore English Literature major, analyzed the characters in Virginia Woolf’s book To the Lighthouse and how they display the concept of the ideal woman.

Saxton said that Woolf’s perception of the “perfect woman is… so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the mind and wishes of others.”

Yet, this could create a problem for women writers who want to publish their own work. According to Saxton, Woolf states: “this perception of women… stands in the way of any female author wishing to express her true thoughts on morals, sexuality and human relations.”

Next, Edward Jackson, a junior secondary education and English major, introduced and spoke about Judy Blume and how her writing impacted literature.

QUEENS COUNTY, NY – Harry Houdini has done it again.

A small crowd of people quickly gathered as the 137-year-old escape artist slowly dug himself out of his grave in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens County, N.Y. on March 24.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a hand coming up through the grass at his grave,” said Magdaline Mallas, an astounded student from New York State College, who had been walking by the cemetery with a group of her friends when it happened. “But then a couple of the guys I was with ran up and started digging and soon helped him out of the hole.”

Toby Bayside, one of the young men who helped in digging Houdini out, said he just stood in one spot for several minutes after Houdini had emerged.

“I thought it was one of those Halloween hands that people use for decorations,” he said. “But after I grabbed it, it was very obvious that there was someone attached to that hand.”

Questions buzzed through the air as hundreds of onlookers saw Houdini standing before them, a little pale and weak, but very much alive.

“It went according to plan,” chuckled Houdini as he dusted himself off and took several deep breaths.

Houdini said that he planned this mind-blowing escape for years before his supposed death on October 31, 1926.

“Now, I don’t want to give away all the details,” Houdini said with a smile when asked about how he had planned this escape. He did say that he had a bronze casket made for a new death-defying act that he was going to perform sometime in 1927.

Houdini was going to be placed in a strait jacket, sealed in the casket and then buried in a tank full of sand. But he said that he was unable to perform this act because, in 1967, Houdini supposedly died of peritonitis, a result of a ruptured appendix.

This death-defying escape act was very similar to his first “buried alive” stunt, noted Longfellow Hana, a Houdini expert from New York City.

In Santa Ana, Calif., in 1917, Houdini was buried six feet underground, without a casket, and nearly died from the effort of digging himself out, Hana said.

But, Houdini said that it was his second “buried alive” stunt that helped him the most.

On August 5, 1926, Houdini was placed in a sealed casket under water in a swimming pool for an hour and a half. Just by controlling his breathing he was able to endure and complete that feat.

“It has everything to do with controlled breathing,” Houdini explained. Refusing to discuss anymore details about how he pulled off this feat, the magician smiled, “This is what I’ve been looking forward to all these years: the expressions on people’s faces when I rise again out of my grave,” he said.

(Pictures from YellowMagpie.com)

—April Fools 🙂

Anna's Alcove

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Category: Newspaper (page 3 of 3)

‘Boro Reaches Out – Students Aim to Provide Orangutan Care

“Let Us Bring You Into Our World…”

Women in Literature Panel

Houdini Rises From the Dead

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