Daily Living

Six or seven days a week, eight or nine hours a day, Steve Thomas is a home wrecker.

Far from being a destroyer, Thomas, 62, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is part of an important restoration process that he calls “gutting and mucking.”

Thomas is one of hundreds of volunteers helping to tear down thousands of Cedar Rapids homes ravaged by raging floodwaters last year, displacing more than 20,000 people. Volunteers tear down walls and rip up floors so the debris can be hauled off and the homes rebuilt.

A May 13 ruling from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is proving a headache for manufacturers of respiratory equipment and a frustration for commercial air travelers who rely on ventilators, respirators, positive airway pressure devices such as CPAP and BiPAP, or personal oxygen concentrators.

Recent media reports have raised the question of a possible link between an increased risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and living near Lake Mascoma in Western New Hampshire.

The Union Leader in New Hampshire and other news outlets have reported that the risk of developing ALS is 25 times higher than average for people living around Lake Mascoma, located in Enfield and Lebanon, N.H. The source of this statistic was not explained.

Nick Waneka recalls hanging around the fire house in his home town of Lafayette, Colo., from about the time he graduated from diapers. His dad was a volunteer fire fighter; his mom was in the department’s women’s auxiliary.

Now 29, he’s still hanging out at the fire house three days a week, eight hours a day, and he’d spend more time there if he could.

Attention job seekers with disabilities interested in working in the U.S. Department of Justice: This is a good time to apply.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently issued a memo calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hire and promote people with disabilities, with the goal of making DOJ “a model employer with a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities.”

People who know Emily Munson aren’t surprised to learn that the savvy 24-year-old just happily added yet another activity to a plate that’s already brimming full.

Right out of high school, Denise Thomas began volunteering to help people with disabilities find employment. Now, nearly two decades later, she’s more involved with helping than ever, and she’s become a familiar face to Washington-area residents and a force for good in the nation's capital.

Learning that Gregg Kuersteiner snow-skis black diamond (expert) slopes at high speed doesn’t seem unusual until you see the rig he skis on.

Kuersteiner, 47, began skiing at age 2 every weekend of the season in his native upstate New York, under the tutelage of his father, a ski school instructor. He became an expert skier at an early age, and raced on the giant slalom team in high school.