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Sunday, August 24, 2025
No-Nonsense Priest Cancels Wedding Mid-Ceremony
An excerpt from Your Tango -
Priest Cancels Wedding Mid-Ceremony After Seeing A Joke Written On The Groom's Shoe During The Blessing
It was a hacky, sexist joke and the priest definitely wasn't laughing.
By John Sundholm
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| Douglas Mendes | Pexels |
It used to be standard procedure for men to constantly tell jokes that were essentially, at their core, about how much they hate their wives. "The ol' ball and chain," "Take my wife ... Please," and all the other dumb, hacky variations on the theme all hinge on the same basic theme cleverly reworded: I dislike the woman I'm married to.
Wedding traditions like smashing cake in your wife's face fall into this category, too. Sometimes it's cute and playful, but we've all seen the videos of grooms crossing the line in an awkward way that makes it clear they took the cake moment as an opportunity to vent a bit of the vitriol clearly simmering under the surface. A lot of this has fallen out of favor in recent years, or is at least frowned upon by many. Count Brazilian priest Father Fábio Marinho among them, who recently called off a wedding over this type of joke.
A priest canceled a wedding over a joke written on the groom's shoe.
Father Fábio Marinho, a Catholic priest in the Uberlândia region of Brazil, was recently conducting a wedding as usual, when he noticed a strange commotion going on during the ceremony, and during one of its most sacred parts no less.
Marinho told the "LendaCast" podcast he was giving the blessing to the marriage, and as the bride and groom knelt before him, he heard laughter coming from the assembled congregation.
The groom had pasted 'help me' to the bottom of his shoe, and the priest was not amused.
"They knelt for me to give the blessing, and the church started laughing," Marinho said. "I thought: something's happened."
After surveying the scene, the priest realized the groom had played a "hilarious" little prank for the wedding. On the bottom of his shoe, he'd pasted a message reading "Help me; get me out of here," so that when they knelt to pray, the congregation would see it.
A relatively harmless prank, of course, but the punchline of it all is hacky, dumb, sexist rhetoric from 50 years ago. "Oh no, don't make me marry this woman" is basically the punchline, which is weird. Nobody's forcing you to be there, my guy! "When I saw what was in the groom's shoe, I took it off and got it," Marinho said. And to say Marinho was not amused is an understatement.
The priest invalidated the marriage on the spot because the groom wasn't taking it seriously.
https://www.yourtango.com/self/priest-cancels-wedding-mid-ceremony-over-grooms-joke
Good Dog!
@elliegoldenlife We had to ban this song 😂 #goldenretrieverlife #dog #smile #bffs ♬ original sound - Golden Retriever Life
Leading Lady: Raye Montague
An excerpt from Shine My Crown -
Raye Montague: The Black Woman From Little Rock Who Revolutionized U.S. Navy Ship Design
by Gee NY
Though rarely mentioned in history books, Raye Montague, a naval engineer from Little Rock, Arkansas, transformed the future of shipbuilding in the United States Navy.
With that feat, she shattered barriers of race, gender, and technology in the process.
Born in 1935 in segregated Little Rock, Montague grew up at a time when Black children were denied equal access to education, and women were rarely encouraged to pursue careers in science or engineering. But that didn’t stop her.
Her interest in engineering began at the age of seven, when her grandfather took her to see a captured German submarine during a World War II exhibition tour. She was captivated.
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Montague moved to Washington, D.C., and began working for the U.S. Navy in 1956 as a clerk typist. However, her position put her close to the engineers and computers she’d long dreamed of working with. Through keen observation and determination, she taught herself how to program the UNIVAC I computer system—one of the earliest commercial computers in use at the time.
Her tenacity paid off. Over the next decade, Montague worked her way up through the Naval Sea Systems Command, eventually becoming a computer systems analyst and then an engineer. But it was in 1971 that she truly made history.
At the time, ship design was an excruciatingly long process. Engineers typically took two years to design a draft of a naval ship using manual calculations and physical drafting tools.
But after being assigned to streamline the process for a new class of frigates—and facing immense pressure to deliver—Montague did what no one else had done: she used computer programming to automate the design process.
In just 18 hours and 26 minutes, Montague produced the first-ever computer-generated draft of a naval ship—the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. It was a feat that stunned her superiors and sent shockwaves through the defense engineering world.
The History of Family Reunions
An excerpt from The Guardian -
‘A radical act’: the rich history behind the centuries-long tradition of Black family reunions
Festivities usually take place in the summer and often include traditional foods, matching T-shirts and the chance to learn about family ancestry
By Adria R Walker
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| The Harper family gathered around a picnic table at a family reunion in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1971. Photograph: Charles "Teenie" Harris/Getty Images |
Following emancipation, Jack Johnson had one major goal: to reunite his family. Johnson had been enslaved in North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, and had 10 children with JoAnna, his first wife, and another 10 with Hettie Brown, his second wife after enslavement.
Though Johnson managed to find nine of the 10 children he had with JoAnna, the family fruitlessly tried to locate the last child, Rufus. Johnson eventually learned that Rufus had been sold with two other enslaved people to a plantation in Texas. But to this day, Johnson’s descendants continue to search for Rufus’s living relatives.
From emancipation to reconstruction, Black families attempted to reconnect after the destruction wrought by slavery. Formerly enslaved people constantly looked for family members who, like Rufus, had been sold away. The tradition of Black family reunions was born out of this search, and continues throughout the US today with hundreds of thousands of families connecting, reconnecting and celebrating together annually, usually throughout the summer.
The tradition of Black family reunions was born out of this search, and continues throughout the US today with hundreds of thousands of families connecting, reconnecting and celebrating together annually, usually throughout the summer.
The festivities are a time where family members can meet for the first time, catch up over the time passed since they last saw each other and remember relatives who have passed away. They often include teaching and learning family ancestry and history, and cooking and sharing meals with traditional foods.
Nearly two centuries after Johnson began gathering his family, his descendants met in New Orleans, Louisiana, for a family reunion. Continuing Johnson’s legacy is central to the reunion’s theme. The family has a website, started by Elaine Perryman, dedicated to consolidating and spreading family history.
Ashanté Reese, an associate professor of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin, has been researching Black gatherings for the last two and a half years, attending multiple family reunions across the country.
“This is a thing that makes reunion so special, the tradition that it comes from,” said Reese. “Reading those advertisements, seeing that hope on paper, just made me even more committed to this tradition. These are people who were using the last little bit of money or the last bit of social capital they have. We have all this stuff at our fingertips to be able to stay connected. It feels important to me to honor the longing of people who were recently emancipated by being invested in this tradition.”
!3-Year-Old Basketball Phenom
From Fadeaway World -
6’11” 13-Year-Old Mohamed Dabone Already Drawing NBA Superstar Comparisons
Mohamed Dabone’s rise challenges basketball norms with age and talent.
By Vishwesha Kumar
So young, so talented🔋
— EuroLeague (@EuroLeague) June 13, 2025
Just 13 years old and Mohamed Dabone already dominated in #NextGenEuroLeague this season with @FCBbasket 👀#adidasbasketball pic.twitter.com/O9JYhusemU
https://x.com/EuroLeague/status/1933456907278160336
Mohamed Dabone is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about young basketball prospects in the world, and for good reason. Born in Burkina Faso and now playing in Europe, Dabone stands at a staggering 6’11” with a wingspan reportedly exceeding 7’4”, all at just 13 years old.
Even more astonishing, reports suggest he was already 6’9” at the age of 12, meaning his growth and physical development have been off the charts.
His combination of size, athleticism, and skill has drawn comparisons to both Victor Wembanyama and Giannis Antetokounmpo, two of the most unique superstars in NBA history. That’s an extraordinary statement for someone who, under normal circumstances, would just be entering high school.
Dude, Don't Do It!
An excerpt from The Guardian -
‘Being short is a curse’: the men paying thousands to get their legs broken – and lengthened
By Ruth Michaelson
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| At a leg lengthening clinic in Istanbul, iodine is applied to a patient’s legs in preparation for surgery to remove the metal rods that have stretched his femurs. : Bradley Secker/The Guardian |
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specialises in leg lengthening surgery – and made a booking.
“I had a lot of second thoughts – at the end of the day, someone’s going to break your legs,” he says, propped up on a hotel bed in Istanbul, his legs splayed in front of him, bracketed by a brace on each thigh. His wife, Emilia, tends to him, fetching painkillers and ice packs for the wound sites where the braces puncture his legs. For the first two weeks after surgery, Frank needed her help to get on and off the toilet, but now, six weeks later, it’s largely only to get off the bed.
The bleep of an alarm interrupts our conversation: time to insert a key into the metal bracket on the side of Frank’s thigh and turn it, forcing apart the rods that have been inserted into his femurs. New bone grows into the gap in his thigh bones, one agonising millimetre at time. Each turn of the key dictates how much the patient can grow, and Frank is aiming for five turns each day rather than the four recommended by his doctors, to gain a precious extra quarter of a centimetre. It means more suffering, but Frank is all about putting in the work to get what he wants. “Time to grow!” Emilia says, with a little laugh, as the alarm sounds.
At 5ft 6in (1.7m) tall, slightly under the average male height worldwide, Frank, 38, feels he has lived life “as a short man”. But speak with any patient at the Wanna Be Taller clinic in Istanbul, where Frank chose to undergo leg lengthening, and it becomes clear that shortness is relative. Men over 6ft have had the procedure. One tells me he needed surgery to “correct” his bow legs and decided to add some height at the same time. A slim blond woman – a rare example of a female patient here – who was 5ft 3in before surgery, looks me square in the eyes as she deadpans that shortness “is the last acceptable prejudice in society” to explain why she underwent the procedure to gain two inches. (The clinic also offers leg shortening surgery, though this is far less common; only nine patients have so far had it done, mainly women.)
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If having your leg bones cut in half sounds painful enough, the true agony comes afterwards. Ensconced on the periphery of Istanbul, in a hotel built from what looks like plasterboard and fake gold leaf, about 20 leg lengthening patients spend their days obsessing over their muscles and tendons, making sure they stretch to accommodate their new bones. This means daily physiotherapy to learn how to walk again, blood thinners, massages and a lot of painkillers. While there are few global statistics on the number of people opting to have this done each year, one Indian market research firm estimated the global limb lengthening industry will balloon by 2030 to be worth $8.6bn (£6.4bn).
“I always tell them, 1cm is not more important than your health,” says Serkan Aksoy from Wanna Be Taller, who supervises Frank’s physio. Most of their patients are men, and Aksoy has to dissuade many clients from trying to gain too much height. From the clinic’s perspective, the risks come from patients not adhering to a strict aftercare routine, but problems and even deaths do occur. Blood clots, joint issues, failure to grow new bone tissue, blood vessel injuries, scarring and chronic pain are all potential complications, as well as “ballerina syndrome”, where the achilles tendons fail to stretch adequately, forcing the feet into an exaggerated arch and preventing the patient from walking. Last year, a patient who had flown in from Saudi Arabia died from a blood clot 16 days after undergoing leg lengthening surgery. When I ask Wanna Be Taller about this, they say an investigation by the Saudi authorities found no fault with their surgeon.
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| Yuto from Japan has surgery to remove his femur stretchers. Photograph: Bradley Secker/The Guardian |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/17/being-short-is-a-curse-the-men-paying-thousands-to-get-their-legs-broken-and-lengthened
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