Beverly Webb

Island girl, Love animals and the Beatles

[Samurai Shiba @SamuraiShibaJP]

My wife has taught high school in Tokyo for twenty years.

Every year, a few of her students spend a year living with a family in America. When they come home, she asks each of them one question.

"What do you miss?"

She expects hamburgers.

She almost never gets hamburgers.

And these aren't old stories. Most of these kids came home in the last two years.

"Every time I left the house, my host mom said, 'Text me when you get there.' In Japan, nobody needs to know where I am. In Ohio, somebody always did." (Mina, 17, Ohio)

"If you walk toward a door, an American will hold it open. Even if you are very far away. So you have to run. I ran to so many doors." (Itsuki, 16, Georgia)

"My host brother screamed on the floor of a grocery store. A stranger walked by and said to my host mom, 'You're doing great, Mama.' She almost cried. I didn't know strangers were allowed to say that." (Aoi, 17, Texas)

"We went away for the weekend and left our trash can at the curb. When we got back, it was by the garage. Nobody said who. My host dad said if it had been there one more day, the neighbor would have knocked." (Haruto, 16, Minnesota)

"A car got stuck in the snow in front of our house. Four men came out of four houses. Nobody called them. They pushed, the car drove away, and they went back inside without saying their names." (Ren, 17, Michigan)

"Every American has jumper cables. Maybe half of them know which clip goes where. The other half help anyway." (Shin, 16, Montana)

"In July, my host family put a cooler on the porch. Cold water, snacks, and a sign: 'For our delivery drivers. Thank you!' I asked if they knew the drivers. They said no." (Nanami, 16, Arizona)

"Downtown, there are banners on the lampposts. Photos of soldiers from the town. Some old, some very young. My host grandpa walked me down the street and told me every name." (Yuna, 16, Iowa)

"I got a C-plus on my first test. My host dad said, 'I'm proud of you,' and put it on the fridge. In Japan, nobody is proud of a C-plus." (Takeru, 17, Pennsylvania)

Then the quietest girl in the class raised her hand.

Sora. Seventeen. Missouri.

"Nobody asks me 'home safe?' anymore," she said.

She was wrong.

In September, there was a typhoon warning for Tokyo. At 2 a.m., Sora's phone lit up.

It was her host mom. In Missouri. Watching the weather in a country she had never been to.

"Saw the storm. You home safe?"

Sora told my wife she cried for a long time. Then she typed the answer she had typed a hundred times, from football games and friends' driveways.

"Home safe."

Her host mom wrote back one line.

"Good. That's all I needed."

My wife has asked that question for twenty years. Not one kid has ever said they missed how big America is.

They miss how America says goodbye. And how it checks that you got home.

So, America. You think you've lost something.

You haven't. It's on a porch in Arizona. It's pushing a car in Michigan. It's awake at 2 a.m. in Missouri, watching our weather.

You don't remember doing any of it.

A kid in Tokyo will never forget.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Yes, and if he turns out to have been a child abuser, I will obviously condemn him unreservedly. But unlike the police and the Sussexes, I wasn’t tipped off he might be, eight years ago. Why was nothing done? Why was nothing said? These are big questions that need answers.

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@seanonolennon Lack of sleep will do that to you...and the sound of a crying baby gets you back to your primitive self. ...!

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@LandLover56 Cigarette lighter

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ThatEricAlper Giving birth to a child

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ringostarrmusic Starry sunset

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ThatEricAlper Hula girls

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ThatEricAlper Joe Cocker Prince Mccartney John Bonham

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

He told his students to go to the windows.
Get out. Jump if you have to.
Then Liviu Librescu walked to the classroom door and pressed his body against it.
He was 76 years old. He weighed 140 lbs
The gunman was in the hallway.
It was April 16, 2007. A Monday morning. Solid mechanics class at Virginia Tech, Room 204. Twenty-two students, most of them 19 or 20 years old.
At 9:45 AM, gunshots echoed through Norris Hall. Room by room, the shooter was working his way down the corridor.
Liviu heard it. He understood immediately.
He had survived the Holocaust. He had survived a labor camp. He had spent decades living under Communist oppression. He knew exactly what evil sounded like.
He told his students to escape through the windows. Second floor — it was a drop, but they'd survive. Then he walked to the door and held it shut with his body.
The shooter tried to force it open. It wouldn't move.
He fired through the door. Wood splintered. Bullets came through.
Liviu stayed.
Behind him, students were climbing out the windows. Dropping to the ground. Running. One by one, all twenty-two of them got out.
The shooter kept firing through the door.
Liviu held it shut until every student was safe.
Then the bullets killed him.
When police arrived, they found his body at the door.
All 22 of his students survived. Not one was injured.
Liviu Librescu was born on August 18, 1930, in Ploiești, Romania.
He was Jewish. In 1941, when he was eleven years old, Romanian authorities sent him and his family to a labor camp. His father died there. Liviu survived. When the war ended, he was fifteen.
He went back to school. Studied engineering. Earned a doctorate from the University of Bucharest.
But Communist Romania had no interest in allowing a Jewish intellectual to succeed. He was blocked from academic positions. Passed over for jobs he deserved. He applied to emigrate. The government kept refusing.
Finally, in 1978 when Liviu was 48 years old — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened. Romania let him go.
He had spent most of his adult life trapped in a country that didn't want him.
In Israel, he taught at Tel Aviv University. Published over 300 papers. Became an international expert in aeroelasticity — the science of how air flows over aircraft wings.
In 1985, Virginia Tech offered him a position. He moved to Blacksburg, Virginia. He taught there for 22 years. His students loved him — demanding but kind, high standards, genuine care.
He was still teaching full-time at 76. Still publishing research. Still showing up every Monday morning for solid mechanics.
April 16 was the first day of Passover — the Jewish holiday celebrating liberation from slavery and oppression.
Liviu Librescu died on the day his tradition sets aside to celebrate freedom.
He spent his entire life escaping death and oppression by luck, by persistence, by the intervention of others. And on his last morning, he chose to stand at a door so that twenty-two young people could have the future he had fought so hard to reach.
He could have run. He could have hidden. He could have climbed out a window with his students.
He chose to stay.
The Virginia Tech shooting killed 32 people that day — the deadliest school shooting in American history at the time.
Room 204 had zero casualties.
Because a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor held a door with his body until every student behind him was gone.
His funeral was held in Israel. Students from Virginia Tech flew across the ocean to honor him. The Israeli government awarded him the Star of David Medal posthumously. Virginia Tech named a scholarship in his memory.
His son said his father died the way he lived — protecting others.
A man who survived everything evil threw at him for 76 years.
On his last day, he made sure 22 kids survived too.
Professor Liviu Librescu. August 18, 1930 — April 16, 2007.
Holocaust survivor. Labor camp survivor.
302 published papers. 22 years at Virginia Tech.
22 students out the window.
He held the door.

[Chidera @SonLis_ten]

Mick Jagger reveals he was never credited for his iconic backing vocals on Carly Simon’s "You're So Vain" because he just did it as a favor for a friend.

David Marchese: "When did you realize that some people thought the song was about you?"

Mick Jagger: "Why would it be about me when I'm singing on it? It doesn't make sense! But people think that's what it was. I just thought it was a song. It sounds like a good title! It was just a song, I'm just the backing vocalist."

David Marchese: "Because she would never reveal who it was about."

Mick Jagger: "I never thought to ask. I knew the producer, Richard Perry, and he was in London. He just phoned me up and said, 'Can you do the backing vocals?' And I love doing those sort of things. So, I just went along and did it. I thought it was a great song. And it was a big hit for her. And I was never credited with a feature. These days it'd be Carly Simon featuring Mick Jagger."

Mick Jagger: "But you never said to her, 'Hey, who's this song about?'"

David Marchese: "Never said! Never asked. I'm louder than her on some of it."

Mick Jagger: "I know, in the chorus, yeah."

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ringostarrmusic Aloha nui loa!

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ThatEricAlper Forest Gump

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@ThatEricAlper Abbey Road

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@RockNRoLL_85 No

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@TheExtremeMusi1 Beatles

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@benonwine No

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@seanonolennon Yup now all the new hotels are sealed shut. I always try to find accomodations with a balcony or pry the windows up a little.

[Beverly Webb @ainahaina59]

@Hania16836 B

[💖 🌼Simple Symphony @Hoainguyen888]

This could be released today and work as well as any song created by any of today's artists.🎸🎸🎸👍👍👍

[🎸 Rock History 🎸 @historyrock_]

Paul McCartney composing "Get Back" from nothing in front of John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr