New Sun Newsbriefs


Walden Pond Play Performed By Thousands Worldwide

Walden: The Ballad of Thoreau, is a play and CD written and produced by Michael Johnathon. It examines the final two days Henry David Thoreau spent in his cabin before leaving Walden Pond, and educates audiences on the environment.

Throughout last year, the play was performed in over 4,000 schools, colleges and community theaters worldwide including South Korea, Egypt, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Australia, Ireland, Argentina, Syria, England, Germany, Israel, Canada and the United States.

Again this year, Johnathon, acclaimed singer/songwriter/radio host, offers his work free of charge to educators and theater groups as an Earth Day event or at any time (every day is Earth Day).

Writer/philosopher Henry David Thoreau laid the foundation for our environmental movement. He was a gentle naturalist, earth lover, author, and ironically, a pencil maker. Arguably the most quoted American writer in history; when he passed, he was better known for having helped market the pencil than for a single word he wrote with it.

For more information: http://waldenplay.com/walden-description.php.

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DVD Saves Fire Chief From Stray Bullet

Barry McRoy is one lucky guy. The fire chief says a DVD in his jacket pocket stopped a bullet from entering his stomach during a shooting Saturday at a restaurant in Walterboro, S.C.

McRoy, director of Colleton County's fire department, says two men were fighting when the gun went off in the foyer of the local Waffle House.

At first, he didn't realize that he had been hit. "Well, my stomach was hurting, but I just figured with the percussion going off in that little space that's what it was and then the shock of what had happened, it was, wow, you know, a gun just went off," he tells WCSC-TV. "I stuck my hand in my pocket, and I had a CD case in there with a DVD and it was shattered and blown apart, and I fished around and pulled the bullet out."

Police say the bullet was ricocheting when it hit McRoy.

What was on the DVD? A television program on fire extinguishers.

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Complaint-Free Living Gains in Popularity

Rev. Will Bowen has created a program to help people stop complaining. It involves wearing a purple rubber bracelet around your wrist. So far, he's distributed nearly five million of these purple bracelets from the basement of his Kansas City church. It's all part of his campaign to create a complaint-free world.

For more information on a complaint free world: www.acomplaintfreeworld.org

For bracelets/merchandise:www.complaintfreeworld.biz

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Virtual Snow World Helps Patients Feel No Pain

For Loyola University Hospital burn victim patients, the new SnowWorld virtual reality video game can serve as the most effective pain medication around.

While in SnowWorld, burn victim patients can play a variety of games, including snowball wars against a group of snowmen. While their wounds are treated, the game helps them escape from the agonizing sensations they'd otherwise experience.

"The theory is solid. Think of a toothache," Dr. Richard Gamelli, chief of Loyola's Burn Center, said in a statement. "During the day it's less painful because you have more demands on your attention. However, when night comes and things quiet down, your pain can flair up because you have far less to focus on."

""Young people frequently anticipate the pain of therapy and cry and yell even before they're touched," said Melissa Drews, an occupational therapist at Loyola. "Since this system blocks all outside sights and sounds, it takes them completely out of what is to them an anxiety-inducing setting and transports to a fun place with fun things to do."

The ultra-cool game has also proved as a successful alternative to pain medication in physical therapy, dentistry, and urological procedures.

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