Entries Posted in May, 2009

May 25th, 2009

A Tribute to My Oma: Hilda Goldschmidt

Oma left this world at 7:40 am on a cold and snowy morning in March.
But that’s where the story ends.
Even though it begins earlier than 1938, her story really starts, for me, on the cold and rainy day Oma left Germany from the harbor in Hamburg, Germany.
Oma likely stood in the same spot before leaving Germany in 1938, as I stood at 63 years later (in 2001) when I lived in Germany as an exchange student.
She landed in New York on April 1, 1938.
Oma said that some of her earliest memories in Germany including playing with her cousins, Charlie and Lillian, picking fruit in her grandmother’s garden in Twistringen, Running around with her brothers Walter and Hans and visiting the Westfalia Kaufhaus, a department store which her Dad and Uncle owned, and were forced to sell at a loss to a member of the Nazi party.

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Posted by strive4impact on May 25, 2009 09:09 AM
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May 23rd, 2009

Harmonica Heals?

This story was just so inspirational that we wanted to share it here.
Every time 70-year-old Andy Mackie draws a breath, it’s music to his ears – whether there’s a harmonica there or not. As CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports, Mackie’s just glad to be alive.
Mackie jokes, “I guess they don’t need a harmonica player in heaven yet.”
Mackie, a Scottish-born retired horse trainer, lives in a camper in northwest Washington state – he lives there, even though technically — medically — he should have died long ago.
After his ninth heart surgery, Mackie’s doctors had him on 15 different medicines. But the side effects made life miserable. So one day he quit taking all 15 and decided to spend his final days doing something he always wanted to do.
He used the money he would have spent on the prescriptions to give away 300 harmonicas, with lessons included. “I really thought it was the last thing I could ever do,” he says.
And when he didn’t die the next month, he bought a few hundred more.
Harmonicas in hand, he explains, “I just started going from school to school.”
It’s now 11 years and 13,000 harmonicas later.
“I’ll see a pregnant lady on the sidewalk and I’ll give her a harmonica for the baby,” he says as an example.
Today there’s nary a kid in the county who hasn’t gotten a free harmonica from Mackie, or played one of his strum sticks.
To keep the kids interested in music as they get older, Mackie now spends the bulk of his Social Security check making them beginner string instruments. He also buys store-made instruments for kids that show a special interest. He provides free lessons to everyone by getting the older kids to teach the younger kids.
Mackie says, “I tell them music is a gift, you give it away – you give it away and you get to keep it forever.”
The end result is something truly unique to his corner of Washington. It seems everywhere you look, everyplace you go, every kid you meet has the same genuine passion for fiddle music.
“I can’t explain the joy, Mackie says. “I don’t think Bill Gates feels any richer inside than I do. He believes he’s still living today because of the kids and the music.
And he doesn’t expect any harmonica openings in heaven any time soon.
“I don’t think the lord wants me yet, I still got something to do here — lots more kids out there.”