ken atchity door to door: July 2022

Chris Hemsworth

Stunt doubles surely come in handy when it comes to performing risky scenes, but their work often goes unrecognized. Seeing some of Hollywood's biggest stars and their daredevil impersonators will make you do a double take. Thor's stunt double resembles Hemsworth so much, we can't figure out who is who. It's hard for an average guy to achieve the godly physique of Chris, but for Bobby Holland Hanton, it's supposedly a piece of cake. Or should I say sandwich?

Emilia Clarke

Mother of dragons, breaker of chains, and Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea had a double for a six-week stint when Game Of Thrones was filmed in Spain. The girl to your left is a model named Rosie Mac. Rumor has it, she didn't even audition for the part. She said, "That same day I posted a selfie on Twitter, and I was wearing long, blonde hair. A while later I was asked by one of the agencies I'm signed with to send in my body measurements, but they didn’t tell me what for.” It turned out they wanted her to replace Daenerys.

Jennifer Lopez

While filming the hit NBC show, Shades of Blue, Jennifer Lopez got to spend some quality time with a lady who looks a lot like her, Vanessa Vander Pluym. Vanessa has played as a stunt double for over ten years and has appeared in several popular shows like Charmed and True Blood. The girls previously worked together on Lopez's 2015 thriller, The Boy Next Door, and because of their great relationship, they intend to continue on this path.

Johnny Depp

Pirate of the Carribean or not, it seems Johnny Depp isn't as savage as we thought. We discovered recently that the award-winning actor isn't a fan of doing his own stunts, claiming that he "prefers they pull in for the close-up and leave that jumping about to the professionals.” This might be because of an injury Johnny faced while filming Stranger Tides, which left him wabbling for weeks. Speaking of injuries, one of Depp's most precious stunt doubles also endured a hit on the Pirates of the Carribean set, which reportedly scared the director and crew.

Brad Pitt

Although millions would pay to get even a glimpse of sexy Pitt, Brad's stunt double, Phil Ball, didn't feel the same. In fact, he claimed to be bored on the job. Phil described his experience being the body double for the movie World War Z as "strange and boring." Speaking of strange, we noticed that Phil is oddly attached to his arm hair because he tweeted while filming, “Just when I thought my day job couldn’t get any more bizarre, I’m made to shave my hands."

Two vocal powerhouses, in the duet we wish had happened in real life…

A few years ago, a Freddie Mercury impersonator created an extraordinary duet between two of music history’s greatest tenors.

Singer-songwriter Marc Martel recorded an imagined duet between the Queen vocalist and opera star Luciano Pavarotti, taking on both roles himself in one single take, using two cameras.

Covering the classic ‘Nessun dorma’ from Puccini’s opera Turandot, Martel channels both the singing titans in one amazing video, and even tailors his facial hair accordingly.

Ecllipse the bus riding dog!

This is Eclipse. She is well known in Seattle. Every day she leaves home alone and takes the bus downtown to the dog park where she gets a few hours of exercise and makes friends, and then she takes the bus home again. She even has her own bus pass attached to her collar.

It started when her owner, Jeff Young, was taking too long when the bus came, so she impatiently ran ahead and got on the bus herself. The bus driver recognized her and dropped her off at the dog park, and later Jeff picked her up. After a few more rides on her own, Jeff started letting her ride by herself, and she always comes home a few hours later.

All the bus riders know her and she makes them smile, and many of the regular passengers are happy to see her every day and often sit next to her. Even the police have given their approval, as long as the bus drivers are okay with the arrangement. "She makes everyone happy."

How different animals fight...

The Mud Maiden

The Mud Maid is a living sculpture by Sue Hill at The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall, UK.

Depending on the season, the mud maid’s ‘hair’ and ‘clothes’ change when the seasonal plants and moss grow over the sculpture

Did you know In-N-Out Burgers come with biblical verses?

In-N-Out’s biblical wrapping

In-N-Out Burger As The Company Is Valued At Near $2 Billion — Bloomberg / Getty Images

In-N-Out Burger food containers include Bible verses — since at least 1987, the soda cups, milkshake cups, burger wrappers, and french fry holders all have Bible verses inscribed on the packaging.

Found on Reddit

The $64,000 question they thought a woman couldn’t answer…

Joyce Diane was a “pop psychologist,” TV personality, advice columnist and writer with a PhD from Columbia who became famous for being the first woman to win a 1955 TV game show called The $64,000 Question.

T

o escape what Brothers called the “slum-like conditions” of her New York City walkup, she was driven to enter as a contestant on the game show The $64,000 Question. To become a contestant, Brothers had to write a letter describing herself and her hobbies, why she would make a great contestant, and what she would do if she were to carry forth with the winnings. Eventually, the letter landed her an interview with Mert Koplin, the show’s producer. While in her letter she discussed her qualifications in the field of psychology and home economics, she was not allowed to use her expert knowledge for the show, as The $64,000 Question did not allow participants to be quizzed on topics of their expertise or profession. As such, Brothers had to come up with a new topic area for her to be quizzed on for the show.

Koplin thought he could draw in the most viewership by juxtaposing Brothers’ perceived frailty as a woman with the idea that she knew a great deal about a more masculine field. He is credited with saying Brothers should be given a topic on “something that [she] shouldn’t know about… [something like] if it were football or if it were horse racing or boxing….” She chose boxing, and studied rigorously for the weeks leading up to the show. Despite the show’s producers’ efforts to stump her at the $16,000 mark by asking questions involving referees rather than the boxers themselves, she exceeded expectations and won the top prize.

She is often credited as the first to normalise psychological concepts to the American mainstream.

Found on Reddit

The Island Run By Women

The woman who sold time

Elizabeth Ruth Naomi Belville (1854 –1943), also known as the Greenwich Time Lady, was a businesswoman from London. She, her mother Maria Elizabeth, and her father John Henry, sold people the time.

Found on Wikipedia.

The Pioneering Sculptor from Kentucky that studied with Rodin

Enid Yandell was one of a group of women sculptors known as the White Rabbits, who were organized by sculptor Lorado Taft to complete the numerous statues and other architectural embellishments for the Horticultural Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In 1894, Yandell went to Paris, where she studied with Frederick William MacMonnies and other instructors at the Académie Vitti in Montparnasse. Yandell also worked with Auguste Rodin. She returned to Paris frequently, maintaining a studio there and exhibiting at the Paris Salon.

Setting the shapes of the nations to music

Dragon of Bethesda

A large oak branch had fallen from a tree in Tregarth, near Bethesda. When I say branch it doesn’t sound that big, but this was a branch around 30 inches in diameter!

The location was perfect, in view of the A5, so plenty of people would see it, and a challenging landscape to create it in!

The branch was resting on a pile of rocks, and the branches of the stem rested on the ground and curled up in the air which made it a great shape and position to form the dragon with its front feet resting on the rock, and hind legs on the ground!

The distance the thick part of the stem reached out over the rocky precipice gave the dragon a great lean forward with its wings folded behind (once I made the wings that is!).

I had two choices of the type of dragon with this project. One type was a dragon with four legs and separate wings – Welsh dragon style, the other being more bat-like with the fore-legs being the wings themselves – Game of Thrones style.

I decided to go for four legs and two separate wings, as it was closer to the Welsh dragon!

I slogged it out from the Monday morning to the Saturday afternoon, and finished up exhausted, covered in sawdust, and very happy with the result!

As you can see from the pictures, this monster log was a daunting sight, but my cohort of STIHL chainsaws made short work of it.

The most surprising result of this project was the overwhelming response on social media. In less than 24 hours of posting, the album on Facebook had over 2000 shares and as many likes! The dragon quickly became a great attraction causing people to travel from a great distance to see it, and even a troupe of firebreathers came to do a photoshoot!

See more at Simon O'Rourke

Affection [via Nina Reznick]

THE GIANT HAND OF VYRNWY

The tallest tree in Wales got damaged by a storm and was supposed to be cut down, instead chainsaw artist Simon O'Rourke found a better solution to symbolize the tree’s last attempt to reach the sky.

This 50ft sculpture may look like your typical tree at ground level, but as you follow the tree upward, you will notice the bark slowly start to melt away, revealing the enormous, detailed work of art. “I wanted to show the hand stretching and straining; fighting to reach its full height,” Simon O’Rourke explains, “That’s why I highlighted veins and creases, and why there is visible tension and power in the hand. It reflects a battle against not only the elements but also the damage humans have done.” For 124 years, this Douglas Fir stretched forever toward the sky, and now, through through O’Rourke’s artistic vision, the sculpture will continue to reach upward so for many, many years to come. Matter of fact, it just celebrated its 11th birthday in 2022.

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Yoga Gives Back

Written by Kayoko Mitsumatsu

From Posture To Power: Microcredit Changes Lives On Both Sides of the Ocean

We can talk about making change. But affecting real change in the world comes from impacting the lives of individuals. It comes from empowering people to be independent and able to make a living on their own while at the same time being fully integrated in our interdependent global community. Sometimes it takes something that seems to be radical to make this change, but these shifts can be deceptively small. They can be even as small (or as large) as the cost of a Los Angeles Yoga class.

How could this be? In the practice of microcredit, lending seemingly small amounts of money to small-scale entrepreneurs allows them to succeed and change their circumstances. This is the fundamental basis of microcredit’s transformative power; it’s a revolutionary concept in finance. This practice shifts the emphasis from financial transactions being focused only about large loans and large scale businesses, which are out of reach of many one-person operations, institutions and organizations – to lending practices that actually make a positive difference in a person’s life. Microcredit practices based on social justice and empowerment operate through a combination of small-scale loans based on trust and community support, with structured repayment plans and programs that encourage savings. In these situations, people actually have the opportunity to solidify long-term change in their lives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Yoga Gives Back Team: Joel Bender, Leslie Hendry, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Kayoko Mitsumatsu (left-right)

In 2006, economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This award was in recognition of their revolutionary efforts to create this micro-credit model, support sustainable economic practices, and provide an alternative to what were exploitive norms. When a person is caught in a cycle of poverty, they may become trapped in the system, particularly since large banking institutions have historically ignored people without assets or credit histories, who are just starting out and who may not have already proven themselves. Most banks prefer to lend large sums of money that represent a greater profit margin and are set up only for large loans in order to make a profit themselves. And even making it more challenging, people at the bottom of the economic scale worldwide have had to rely on moneylenders charging usurious terms and interest rates to obtain funds to plant the next crop, buy inventory of new equipment, or upgrade a business in any way. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank and their affiliates are offering another approach. It’s one that has significantly impacted millions of people.

As Dr. Yunus described in an exclusive interview with Yoga Gives Back in May, 2009, “We started in 1976, and today within Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, eight million people borrow micro loans, ninety-seven percent of them women.” This represents an enormous potential for change and empowerment that just did not exist on a large scale in this form prior to 1976.

There is a social cycle in economics, and Dr. Yunus explained this: “Poverty is not inside the person. Poverty is forced from outside. Poor people are as capable [a] human being as anybody else. They have the same power and energy, same potential. But they are denied such facilities. They cannot express themselves. Money is one of the most important items missing in their lives. You need a dollar to catch a dollar. You cannot catch a dollar with an empty hand. So, that first dollar, nobody has given to her. So she remains dependent on someone else. She has to be hired, to slave; she has to work to make food available on the table. What we have done, we have put that first dollar into her hands as a banking proposition. Conventional banks never come to the poor people. They go to rich people to make more money. The person who does not have a dollar – she cannot get it. So we did it. We did it in a way that is affordable to her. Because we do not insist on collateral. There is no collateral.”

While that may seem like a radical concept, the Grameen Bank has proven that their success is much more than ideological. Dr Yunus cited statistics for us, “The repayment rate is almost 100%, without collateral or anything. This is the strength of microcredit which is now spread all over the world. There are by now at least 150 million borrowers in the world today. Bu it is still very small comparing to the need. We need more microcredit organizations in the world so that more people can be reached.”

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization begun in LA, with the goal to provide a way for Western Yoga practitioners to give back to India, the birthplace of Yoga, which has given us so much. We’re heeding Dr. Yunus’ call to reach more people through expanded opportunities for and awareness of microcredit and have targeted India and Indian families, women, and would-be entrepreneurs, who would be otherwise stuck in the cycle of poverty that Dr. Yunus described. Yoga Gives Back supports microfinancing operations in India, through the Grameen Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC. Donations go directly to Grameen Koota, Bangalore, South India and our YGB awareness campaign focuses on the real stories of how poor women are changing their lives with small loans from Grameen Koota.

Ms. Vinatha M Reddy

Grameen Koota was started by visionary teacher and philanthropist, Ms. Vinatha M Reddy (pictured, above) in 1999, who learned about Nobel Peace Recipient Dr Muhammad Yunus’ microfinancing and immediately began exploring ways of replicating his work in her hometown. In 2000, she started providing small microcredit loans, averaging $25.00 a month, to fifty local women. Today, Grameen Koota’s work is reaching out to over 280,000 women in Bangalore, Mysore and many areas of Karnataka state, in South India, making real impact on these women’s lives as well as on the local economy.

Yoga Gives Back

The Los Angeles-based Yoga Gives Back has a worldwide reach and began out of the inspiration and dedication of my Yoga mentor Joel Bender and me. Our group has suddenly started growing almost daily and our mission is shared by a quickly expanding and loving Yoga community.

When I was growing up in Japan, which is a very middle-class society, I had never experienced or seen any real poverty, especially growing up in Tokyo in 1960s and 1970s, when Japan's post-war economic miracle was taking place. Then, I had a chance to live in Brazil in the late 1970s for two years, where as a teenager, I saw the divide between poverty and wealth, the reality of the real slums, kids on the streets begging every time you stopped the car at the traffic light, all very much like India. Social injustice hit me hard.

Once I started Yoga practice and feeling my life being so enriched by it , I felt a need to use my resources to help others. I was producing a documentary on Social Entrepreneurship and learned about microfinancing. I shared this information with Joel [featured in the teacher profile in this month’s issue of LA YOGA] who had been looking for the way he could give back to India since his first visit there – so we teamed up.

When I think about the growth of Yoga Gives Back thus far, I give a lot of credit to the entrepreneurship and volunteer spirit of Americans, willing to embrace and support a new grass roots campaign like ours.

Kayoko Mitsumatsu, co-founder of Yoga Gives Back, is a documentary filmmaker whose films deal with social justice issues, including First They Killed My Father a memoir of a Cambodia’s Killing Fields’ survivor.

A Life Changing Story of Microcredit: Jayashree

Jayashree

Jayashree lives in the suburbs of Bangalore and is married and the mother of two children. We visited her at her humble dirt floor one room home for the first time in 2007. We were touched by her warm smile and most generous hospitality, serving us hot tea and cookies.

Jayashree was born into a very poor family in Bangalore. When she was a child, her family’s financial situation became so severe that she had to drop out of school and work at a garment factory. She toiled throughout her childhood and after she got married at fifteen, her meager earnings had to support her ailing in-laws. She had two children. Her husband’s rickshaw business was not enough to pay her sons’ education or secure food for the family.

In 2007, Jayashree learned from her neighbors about Grameen Koota’s microcredit program and applied for her first loan. She was granted a first loan of 7,000 rupees ($175), and immediately bought her husband’s auto rickshaw. Owning their own rickshaw business increased their income significantly.

Jayashree was able to pay back her entire loan in one year and became eligible for her second loan in 2008. Having proven her diligence, her second loan amount doubled to 15,000 rupees ($375). This time, she bought a sewing machine and started stitching bags. The family’s earnings have now tripled and she is earning 150 rupees ($3.75) a day. In addition, she opened a small shop next to her house to sell her products which is earning her an additional 100 rupees ($2.50) a day.

She is sending her elder son to a medical school. Her son dreams of becoming a doctor and thanks his mother’s business for providing his education, their own home and daily food.

To participate in a Yoga practice where the proceeds support Yoga Gives Back and directly impact the transformation of not only your own life, but that of someone in India, start your Thanksgiving week at Yogaglo, Sunday, November 22, 10:00 A.M. - 12 noon. Some of the teachers include John Sahakian, Felicia Tomasko, Alexandra Aiken and Ally Hamilton; more to be announced. Yogaglo.com; yogagivesback.com.

For more information on Yoga Gives Back or to host a Yoga Gives Back class at your own studio or location, visit: yogagivesback.org or contact yogagivesback@earthlink.net.

#LOL

Seeing Double!