[The Human Santapede]

Feel like we need a dose of happier news after this week.

Dancing Wheelchair’ Helps Paralyzed Teen Feel ‘Cool’ Being a Different Sort of Dancer

With a little ingenuity, and some modifications to an old piece of tech, 11-year-old Desa Kaiser is back where she belongs: on the dance floor.

Being paralyzed from the waist down is no impediment to the girl from Pennsylvania, who suffered the debilitating injury in a crash that saw her spend Thanksgiving of 2022 at the hospital.

She can spin around—just like she did in ballet, jazz, and funk dance classes before her injury. She can lean all the way back and touch the ground in this flexible “dancing wheelchair.”

Speaking with CBS News 3 Philadelphia, Kaiser said it’s cool to be different.

“It’s cool to be different from other people and more unique in different ways. It’s an amazing chair that’s different from others, because you can be more free in it and you can express a lot more in it.”

Following the car collision, Kaiser was treated at Shriners Children’s Hospital, where she still undergoes physical therapy for her trunk and arms. It takes a lot of puff to spin that chair around to the beat of the music, and physical therapist Maggie Reilly is helping her build up the strength for it.

“We wanted to bring her a chair that would allow her to dance and do what she loves,” Reilly said. “One thing that we strive most to do here at Shriners is letting children achieve their goals in whatever way that may be possible.”

Kaiser’s parents said that unlike 3 years ago, this Thanksgiving they had a lot to be thankful for.

Youtube video

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/danc...-dancer-watch/

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[The Human Santapede]

Baker Delivers Free Birthday Cakes to Homeless People: ‘They’re Our Neighbors’

Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo’s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been giving out cakes to his homeless neighbors for more than 12 years.



Manolo Betancur believes everyone deserves a birthday cake.

“I arrived to America 25 years ago, and I didn’t speak any English, and I didn’t have any money in my pocket,” Betancur, owner of Manolo’s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina, tells TODAY.com.

He left his birth country of Colombia to attend college in Tennessee. Years after going to school, he got married, moved to North Carolina and, in 2005, bought his bakery.

“We are the oldest immigrant Latino bakery in the Carolinas,” he says.

Through his bakery, Betancur has sold tres leches, tartaleta and cheesecakes to his customers, while simultaneously giving back to his community. For 12 years, he’s been donating cakes to celebrate the birthdays of those experiencing homelessness in his city.

“We don’t call them ‘homeless,’” he says. “They’re our neighbors.”

Betancur says it all started when he approached Raise You Up Ministries, a nonprofit focused on the needs of chronically homeless people in the greater Charlotte area, to ask them where they were getting cake for people’s birthdays, and offered to donate from his bakery.

Now, he serves vanilla sheet cakes — some with caramel, some with peaches inside — whenever a birthday comes up.

“To me, that was the coolest idea ever, because nobody thinks about their birthdays,” Betancur says.

This year, Betancur and his employees delivered their 300th cake, marking a hard-fought milestone. He thinks back to one experience that makes it all worth it.

“Somebody from the nonprofit approached me one day and said, ‘Manolo, are you the cake guy?’” he says. When he nodded, the employee told him that the last person he delivered a cake to cried and said it was the first time he had a birthday cake in his life.

Betancur says, “That (was) the most important cake in this bakery.”

https://www.today.com/food/people/ba...ple-rcna235965