Daily Living

Long before a freak blizzard ripped into town and left more than a foot of snow in its wake, the citizens of Crossville, Tenn., and region had been warned to prepare for a freezing onslaught.

Fully a week earlier, local meteorologist Steve Norris had taken a close look at his charts and data and determined, “Whoa! We’re in for a big one.”  A full-time radio broadcaster for Crossville radio station WIHG (“The Hog”), Norris got the word out to most of eastern Tennessee and also to a wider, multi-state area via TV stations and newspapers which routinely check his weather reports.

Thanks to a little help from a tablecloth, a scissor jack and his wife Mary, Curt Sweely is one heck of a fisherman.

Of course, Sweely has been one of the fishing-est fishermen on East Coast lakes for decades, with a boatload of trophies and titles to show for it. The only thing that’s changed is his approach.

Important questions for Americans: What health care issues are important to you? Where do you get most of your health care information? If a loved one were sick with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, where would you go for information?

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) wants to know.

A new NIH program seeks to obtain information from a wide cross-section of America that the agency hopes will help it better develop and distribute medical and scientific information to the public.

Sargon de Jesus has always been a trivia buff and a fan of game shows that test trivia smarts. So when he earned an appearance on the popular TV game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, de Jesus was "totally psyched" and ready to take his shot at some big money.

Busy man

As someone who has cultivated a vast array of interests and talents, de Jesus possesses a broad and varied base of experience upon which to draw.

Steve Smith isn’t a big guy, except where it counts the most: in his heart.

No one knows that better than 12-year-old Jesse, Smith’s Little Brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeastern Wisconsin, which operates in and around De Pere where they live.

The two have been best buddies for more than four years, and Smith obviously is doing something right, because his Big Brothers Big Sister chapter recently named him its Big Brother of the Year.

People with disabilities have an opportunity in 2010 to help develop recommendations that will shape national disability policy and programs for the next decade.

The National Summit on Disability Policy, sponsored by the National Council on Disability (NCD), will be held in Washington, D.C., from July 25-27. It’s a by-invitation-only meeting, and people who hope to participate must submit an application to attend no later than Oct. 15, 2009.

A new forum for easily accessible scientific information on alternative and off-label (not approved by the Food and Drug Administration) treatments for ALS is now being offered by the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) on its WFN ALS Web site. The forum, ALS Untangled (ALSU), uses Twitter for its communications.

Here's how it works:

A conference for families affected by congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) is taking place Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 15-16, 2009, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, under the sponsorship of Cure CMD.

The conference begins at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time and will be available through the Internet.