Read about Maud Nightingdale, who just died. Every life is so precious and the bravery of those who suffer loss with grace, like this lady, is everyday inspiration. I hope that someone does come forward with some information.
In her life you can read about some of the things I have touched on in my blog: memories of World War II and patriotism, a traditional marriage, large family (10 births!), children that die young, the consequences of drunk driving on the innocent, being widowed, violence and how it tears at a mother's heart, and the joys of a children who had a real homemaking mother.
http://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/Nighta39s-mum-dies-without-seeing.4839989.jp
snip
Nighta's mum dies without seeing killers caught
Published Date: 02 January 2009
By Lisa Nightingale
Crime reporter
ALL she wanted was to see her son's killers brought to justice.
But for Maud Nightingale it is a day she will never see after she lost her fight for life on Christmas Eve.
For 12 years the 85-year-old struggled to come to terms with the brutal murder of her youngest child Kevin. Since he was gunned down in 1996, Mrs Nightingale spent every moment clinging onto the hope that one day his killers would be caught.
The 33-year-old was shot on the doorstep of his home in Drake Close, South Shields. His killers have never been caught. Last year, on the 11th anniversary of his death, Mrs Nightingale broke her silence about her son's death, weeping as she begged the people of South Tyneside to help find the person who pulled the trigger.
Daughter Jen Bullock said: "Since Kevin died her health went downhill. "The only thing that kept her going was the hope there would be a prosecution. "It just breaks our hearts knowing she will never know who killed her son." The family have vowed to continue their fight to bring the father-of-two's killers to justice, not only in his memory, but for their mother. Mrs Nightingale (nee Shaw) was born and grew up in South Shields.
At 17, she left her hometown to play her part in the war effort working in a munitions factory in Birmingham. When she returned to South Shields, she took up singing and dancing in various clubs in the town until she met and married her husband Andrew Nightingale.
The couple went on to have 10 children; Andrew, 63, Thomas, who died when he was just nine months old, Richard, 61, twins Elizabeth and Ethel, 60, John, 58, William, 56, Jen, 53, Diane, 50 and Kevin.
Described by her family as a strong-willed lady who loved playing bingo, she took on the role of both mother and father to her children after her husband was killed by a drink driver as he crossed John Reid Road, aged 49. Her son Richard said: "Dad's death devastated the family, but she kept us all together and made sure we never went without. She did everything to protect us. "They were good parents who did the best they could.
"They were good providers and always made sure there was something on the table for us.
"And what she couldn't make with rhubarb wasn't worth knowing about – she was a fantastic cook and a tremendous mother."
Mrs Nightingale died in her sleep at her home in Bainbridge Avenue, Simonside, after suffering a heart attack. She was with her two daughters Ethel and Diane. A church service will take place for Mrs Nightingale at St Simon's Church, Wenlock Road, on Monday at 10.30am, followed by a service at Harton Cemetery at 11.15am, where she will be buried next to her husband. Mrs Nightingale leaves eight children, 20 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren.
*Anyone with information on the killing of Kevin Nightingale is asked to contact police on 03456 043 043 or crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. All calls will be dealt with in the strictist of confidence.
Showing posts with label Motherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motherhood. Show all posts
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Yemen poorest new/expectant moms to get help
This is a very interesting read, both because of the desperate need, but also to see the alliance of agencies, officials and volunteers involved in making this happen.
http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1164&p=local&a=4
Impoverished Sana’a mothers to receive low-cost medical care
Yemen Times Staff
SANA’A, June 14 — A new project focusing on expectant and new mothers will provide services to more than 40,000 women in the poorest districts of Sana’a.Last week, a $6.23 million grant was approved for the Queen of Sheba Motherhood Project, an initiative introduced and sponsored by the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid, with the World Bank acting as administrator. In this new program, the Global Partnership will subsidize 90 percent of the care costs for each mother, according to a World Bank statement released last week.
Only around a quarter of births in Yemen are facilitated by a skilled birth attendant and one in every 39 women die in childbirth. A number of programs, including initiatives by the German Technical Corporation, known as GTZ, and the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, have increased funding and training for safe motherhood projects in light of the country’s dire needs.
The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, estimates that 84 percent of women throughout Yemen give birth at home. Those women who experience complications during childbirth sometimes refuse to be taken to hospitals due to lack of female staff; consequently, many Yemeni women die needlessly during childbirth. According to the UNFPA, an estimated 75 percent of maternal mortalities in Yemen are preventable. With the help of two private medical companies, the Saudi-Yemen Healthcare Company and Al-Mawarid Company for Educational and Health Services, the project will improve pre- and post-natal maternal care.
Expectant mothers will receive checkups and birthing assistance at satellite clinics, while the two companies' affiliated hospitals will provide critical care for those patients who need it. The program also aims to provide Sana’a mothers skilled birthing attendants, something the country desperately lacks.
Both the Saudi-Yemeni Healthcare Company and Al-Mawarid Company for Educational Services will have to pay for the services out of pocket and will only be reimbursed by the Global Partnership after having provided the promised care.A local non-governmental organization, SOUL for the Development of Women and Children, will help get the word out to Sana’a’s poorer neighborhoods that mothers there are eligible to receive these prenatal and post-natal benefits.
The Queen of Sheba Safe Motherhood Project is a four-year community-based outreach program, according to the International Monetary Fund, a division of the World Bank.
http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1164&p=local&a=4
Impoverished Sana’a mothers to receive low-cost medical care
Yemen Times Staff
SANA’A, June 14 — A new project focusing on expectant and new mothers will provide services to more than 40,000 women in the poorest districts of Sana’a.Last week, a $6.23 million grant was approved for the Queen of Sheba Motherhood Project, an initiative introduced and sponsored by the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid, with the World Bank acting as administrator. In this new program, the Global Partnership will subsidize 90 percent of the care costs for each mother, according to a World Bank statement released last week.
Only around a quarter of births in Yemen are facilitated by a skilled birth attendant and one in every 39 women die in childbirth. A number of programs, including initiatives by the German Technical Corporation, known as GTZ, and the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, have increased funding and training for safe motherhood projects in light of the country’s dire needs.
The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, estimates that 84 percent of women throughout Yemen give birth at home. Those women who experience complications during childbirth sometimes refuse to be taken to hospitals due to lack of female staff; consequently, many Yemeni women die needlessly during childbirth. According to the UNFPA, an estimated 75 percent of maternal mortalities in Yemen are preventable. With the help of two private medical companies, the Saudi-Yemen Healthcare Company and Al-Mawarid Company for Educational and Health Services, the project will improve pre- and post-natal maternal care.
Expectant mothers will receive checkups and birthing assistance at satellite clinics, while the two companies' affiliated hospitals will provide critical care for those patients who need it. The program also aims to provide Sana’a mothers skilled birthing attendants, something the country desperately lacks.
Both the Saudi-Yemeni Healthcare Company and Al-Mawarid Company for Educational Services will have to pay for the services out of pocket and will only be reimbursed by the Global Partnership after having provided the promised care.A local non-governmental organization, SOUL for the Development of Women and Children, will help get the word out to Sana’a’s poorer neighborhoods that mothers there are eligible to receive these prenatal and post-natal benefits.
The Queen of Sheba Safe Motherhood Project is a four-year community-based outreach program, according to the International Monetary Fund, a division of the World Bank.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
The Opossum's Story
Opossums are a very common animal wherever I've lived in the US. They are nocturnal so they are often seen as roadside kill along the side of the road, and not often seen live, but there are a lot of them around. They are found throughout North and South America and are known as "marsupials" because they are mammals who carry their young in a pouch. They are also known as "omnivores" because they can eat a wide range of foods, both "meat" (insects, snails, lizards, bird eggs or fledglings, carrion or the discards of human's meals in garbage) and fruits and vegetables (such as roots.) They are a humble and almost considered like a trashy animal by some nowadays (though their meat and fur were much valued by early settlers in this country) and much fun is made of their "playing dead" when faced with a threat. When an opossum faces extreme danger, it literally goes into a deathlike state of "coma," probably evolved so that it causes the opossum's attacker to leave it for dead. There's a picture and some good info under its listing in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposum.
Now, why am I writing about the Opossum? There's a marvelous evolutionary story about them that I'd like to share to provoke some thought. This story is not unique to the opossum, but I selected the opossum to talk about because of its extraordinarily humble qualities plus one other reason: they are incredibly fertile, with a female opossum bearing as many as twenty tiny young per litter, once or twice a year, and is able to nurse about a dozen!
Opossums first evolved 100 million years ago, and are among the first of the mammals. Think about it, this very species that I've often seen in my back yard is the same species and form as it was 100 million years ago. They have been, during that time, some of the easiest prey imaginable - they don't fight predators, they fall into that "coma" state when highly threatened... so they have been some of the easiest pickings as food by fierce predators, reaching back a hundred million years. How is it that they survived? Because of their fertility and the female's single minded focus on raising the young until they are independent. If you see a picture of an opossum with young, you can often see multiple young clinging on her back as she provides for them. She is constantly with them because they are constantly with her... she does not check them into opossum day care, or abandon them before they can fend for themselves and feed. She does not think that "two children are the ideal number to have" so that she can "self actualize." As a result the humblest of species, the opossum, has lived UNCHANGED for 100 million years.
Here's a mental exercise to put the time of the opossum into context with the time of "civilized humans." It's only 5000 years ago that the first few of the great civilizations of humankind emerged. For example, you can think back to the time of the Pharaohs, since I know a lot of people are really kind of goofy about their arcane knowledge and times, thinking that Egyptian magicians had all sorts of answers about the nature of the universe, the Book of the Dead, and so forth. If you consider that 5000 years as the great time span of human's "civilization" then to equal the time span that opossum "society" and "family" has existed, you would have to live the time back to the Pharaohs twenty thousand times. That's right... opossums in their current form have lived in their existing form twenty thousand times longer than humans have lived in their "civilized" form. The opossum even recovered from a long period of local extinction (they were missing for about 30 million years in North America but thrived in South America) with the South American opossums eventually repopulating the missing population of opossums in North America.
I think that it is a powerful, science based lesson that can remind humans today why a life based culture is essential to survival. Smarts, sophistication, and deadly weapons were not keys to opossum survival, and neither were the disappearing and devaluing of motherhood, and the aborting of inconveniently large litters. This humble animal serves as a reminder about why being fruitful is such a pervading theme and imperative throughout the Bible. I'm not talking just about the physical survivability of the species either. I'm talking about the constancy of it. You would recognize a 100 million year old opossum if you saw one alive today. Sometimes becoming more sophisticated and aggressive only serves to lose what one has. That's the lesson of the Garden of Eden, with the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Now, humans are not even recognizable from generation to generation. I can tell you that human behavior has changed so radically in the fifty years that I have observed it close up that I wonder what folks are thinking is going to happen to them, what they have wrought, and done to themselves and their children. So think about that humble opossum and like me, wonder if "civilized" humans will exist even two spans of that time back to the Pharaohs, say nothing of the twenty thousand times the opossum has thrived in its form and family.
Now, why am I writing about the Opossum? There's a marvelous evolutionary story about them that I'd like to share to provoke some thought. This story is not unique to the opossum, but I selected the opossum to talk about because of its extraordinarily humble qualities plus one other reason: they are incredibly fertile, with a female opossum bearing as many as twenty tiny young per litter, once or twice a year, and is able to nurse about a dozen!
Opossums first evolved 100 million years ago, and are among the first of the mammals. Think about it, this very species that I've often seen in my back yard is the same species and form as it was 100 million years ago. They have been, during that time, some of the easiest prey imaginable - they don't fight predators, they fall into that "coma" state when highly threatened... so they have been some of the easiest pickings as food by fierce predators, reaching back a hundred million years. How is it that they survived? Because of their fertility and the female's single minded focus on raising the young until they are independent. If you see a picture of an opossum with young, you can often see multiple young clinging on her back as she provides for them. She is constantly with them because they are constantly with her... she does not check them into opossum day care, or abandon them before they can fend for themselves and feed. She does not think that "two children are the ideal number to have" so that she can "self actualize." As a result the humblest of species, the opossum, has lived UNCHANGED for 100 million years.
Here's a mental exercise to put the time of the opossum into context with the time of "civilized humans." It's only 5000 years ago that the first few of the great civilizations of humankind emerged. For example, you can think back to the time of the Pharaohs, since I know a lot of people are really kind of goofy about their arcane knowledge and times, thinking that Egyptian magicians had all sorts of answers about the nature of the universe, the Book of the Dead, and so forth. If you consider that 5000 years as the great time span of human's "civilization" then to equal the time span that opossum "society" and "family" has existed, you would have to live the time back to the Pharaohs twenty thousand times. That's right... opossums in their current form have lived in their existing form twenty thousand times longer than humans have lived in their "civilized" form. The opossum even recovered from a long period of local extinction (they were missing for about 30 million years in North America but thrived in South America) with the South American opossums eventually repopulating the missing population of opossums in North America.
I think that it is a powerful, science based lesson that can remind humans today why a life based culture is essential to survival. Smarts, sophistication, and deadly weapons were not keys to opossum survival, and neither were the disappearing and devaluing of motherhood, and the aborting of inconveniently large litters. This humble animal serves as a reminder about why being fruitful is such a pervading theme and imperative throughout the Bible. I'm not talking just about the physical survivability of the species either. I'm talking about the constancy of it. You would recognize a 100 million year old opossum if you saw one alive today. Sometimes becoming more sophisticated and aggressive only serves to lose what one has. That's the lesson of the Garden of Eden, with the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Now, humans are not even recognizable from generation to generation. I can tell you that human behavior has changed so radically in the fifty years that I have observed it close up that I wonder what folks are thinking is going to happen to them, what they have wrought, and done to themselves and their children. So think about that humble opossum and like me, wonder if "civilized" humans will exist even two spans of that time back to the Pharaohs, say nothing of the twenty thousand times the opossum has thrived in its form and family.
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