Sunday News Carousel

Great-Grandmother Gives Birth at 62

Feb. 20, 2006 — Janise Wulf is 62-years-old and the mother of 10, grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of three. But she decided that she wanted to have more children, and on Friday gave birth to a new baby boy through in vitro fertilization.

Adam Charles Wulf weighed six pounds, nine ounces and was born via c-section.

Adam already has a three-year-old brother, Ian, also conceived via in vitro fertilization. His oldest half sibling is 40-years-old. Wulf lost two other children, one at birth and another in his 30s.

Wulf’s baby grandson, Quinten Myers, is just months older than Adam. She said that to cut down on confusion, all the children in the family will simply call each other cousins.

Wulf, of Redding, Calif., wanted to raise a family with her second husband, Scott Wulf, who was not able to have children during his previous marriage.

“I am no longer working; I have a lot of time to devote,” said Janise Wolf. “I had raised all my together children and remarried.

“My husband is retired from the service, and he was there to help me,” added Wulf, who is blind. “I have always loved children, obviously.”

On Satellite Radio, Bob Edwards’s Orbit Keeps Expanding

His audience is no longer measured in the millions, but even if only some mysterious number of thousands listen to “The Bob Edwards Show” these days, the gentle baritone of morning radio is taking them into some unusual territory.

In 2004, after National Public Radio clumsily pushed Edwards out of his post as host of “Morning Edition,” he moved to XM Satellite Radio, which gave him an hour-long weekday interview program and built a public radio-style channel around him.

NPR executives said they forced Edwards off the morning show after a quarter-century run because he wasn’t comfortable doing the quick interviews and updates that the network wanted in a program increasingly oriented to breaking news.

But in the 17 months since he jumped to pay radio, Edwards has displayed more range and reportorial chops than some at NPR had given him credit for. As Howard Stern is learning from his new home at Sirius Satellite Radio, speaking to a much smaller audience takes some adjusting. But it’s also liberating: On XM, Edwards has produced full-hour documentaries, long-form profiles and lyrical tributes to musicians and other artists, along with the newsier interviews that were his coin on “Morning Edition.”

Mardi Gras Crowds Small but Celebratory

NEW ORLEANS Feb 18, 2006 (AP)– The first of the major Mardi Gras parades with marching bands, brightly decorated floats and flying plastic beads rolled down New Orleans’ streets Saturday, greeted by small but celebratory crowds.

Despite the widespread destruction from Hurricane Katrina, officials decided to allow a scaled-back Mardi Gras celebration this year. New Orleans parades, put on by private groups, were restricted to one corridor to help cut the cost of police protection and trash pickup.

Five parades rolled back-to-back in New Orleans on Saturday under cloudy damp skies through neighborhoods left mostly unscathed by the Aug. 29 storm. More were scheduled for Sunday and next weekend, leading up to Fat Tuesday on Feb. 28.

Capt. Juan Quinton, a police spokesman, said no major problems were reported along the route and that crowds, though small, were having fun.

Many of the residents attending the parades said Mardi Gras is an important part of the city’s heritage. Children and families often gather on the same street corners year after year.

New Orleans Locals Think Katrina’s Toll Is Still Rising
Surge in Deaths Blamed On Storm-Related Stress

NEW ORLEANS — The official death toll of Hurricane Katrina is more than 1,300. The unofficial toll of the storm may take that a lot higher.

Though not quantifiable in the orthodox fashion, because so many area health agencies are still in disarray, a belief exists among many here that the natural mortality rate of New Orleanians — whether still in the city or relocated — has increased dramatically since, and perhaps because of, Katrina.

The daily newspaper has seen a rise in reported deaths. Local funeral homes are burying just as many people as they did last year, though the population has decreased. Families say that their kin who had been in good health are dying, and attribute that to the stress brought on by the hurricane, flooding and relocations.

It is too early for state officials to have statistics for last year, said Bob Johannessen of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. And epidemiologists are reluctant to draw conclusions based on anecdotal information.

Still, stress here is palpable, and it is overwhelming people of all ages, said psychiatrist James Barbee, director of an anxiety clinic at Louisiana State University. “People are struggling terribly.”

Concern Over Soil Content As Levee Repairs Continue

BAYOU BIENVENUE, La. — It will take a staggering four million cubic yards of soil to repair the levee system around New Orleans, and nearly half of it will go here, a battered 12-mile stretch along the navigational canal, east of the city, known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

Yet critics of the Army Corps of Engineers say the new construction is likely to fail again. The sandy local dirt being used for levee construction is too weak, they say, and not enough thick clay is being imported by barge from Mississippi to strengthen it.