Michele Gleeson

Freelance TV producer. Proud Elon College grad. Favorite job is Aunt Shel. Opinions are my own.

[The Baltimore Sun @baltimoresun]

Robert Wallop, an Annapolis dancer with Down syndrome, will perform at a gala in Washington, D.C. The event will fundraise for research and medical care for adults and children with the condition.

Dance is not just Wallop’s passion, it’s also his life. On any given day, the 29-year-old can be found in a studio practicing with his dance team, taking private lessons or teaching dance fitness classes.

"It makes me feel the connection with life," Wallop said.

Read more: https://t.co/avk0NDqto3

🎥: Tanisha Bhat, Capital Gazette

[Michele Gleeson @auntshel]

My sister and I used to circle what we wanted to watch every single week. Also heard plenty of yelling “where’s the TV Guide?” around the house. Those were the days.

[Disco @discoque92]

Remember that old Washington Post TV guide?🤣🔥

[Michele Gleeson @auntshel]

@ESPNMcGee So on brand

[PWHL @thepwhlofficial]

MADE HISTORY AT THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS ARENA

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Christina Koch was a firefighter at the South Pole at -111°F before she ever applied to be an astronaut. That was maybe the fourth most interesting line on her resume. She grew up in North Carolina, got three degrees from NC State, and her first real job was building deep-space instruments at NASA.

Then she left for Antarctica. Spent three and a half years bouncing between the Arctic and Antarctic as a research scientist, including a full winter at the South Pole base. That means going months without sunlight or fresh food, with a crew of about 50 people and no way out until flights resume. While she was down there, she also joined the glacier search-and-rescue team.

After coming back, she went to Johns Hopkins and built instruments for two NASA missions (one of them is still orbiting Jupiter right now). She figured out how to start a tiny vacuum pump that NASA designed for a future Mars rover. Johns Hopkins nominated it for their Invention of the Year in 2009. Then she went back to the field. More time in Antarctica and a stretch up in Greenland. A government research station in northern Alaska, near the top of the world. Then she ran another one in American Samoa, near the equator.

In 2013, NASA selected her from 6,300 applicants. Eight people got in. Her first space mission was supposed to be a normal rotation on the International Space Station, but NASA extended it. She ended up staying 328 straight days and orbiting Earth 5,248 times, covering about 139 million miles (roughly 291 round trips to the Moon). Up there, she ran over 210 experiments, including tests of cancer drugs in zero gravity and 3D printers that can build structures close to human tissue. Six spacewalks, 42 hours floating outside the station. She learned Russian for the training. She flies supersonic jets.

Right now, Koch is on Artemis II, heading for a flyby behind the far side of the Moon. The crew launched on April 1 and is on track to travel about 252,000 miles from Earth, which would break the all-time human distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That record has stood for 56 years, and it was set during a disaster that nearly killed the crew. Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, is 92 now. He told Koch: "I heard you're going to break our record."

Nobody had left Earth's neighborhood since December 1972. Koch and her three crewmates are the first in 53 years, and they are coming home at about 25,000 mph. That is faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever come back through the atmosphere.

[Seattle Torrent @PWHL__Seattle]

Roster Update 🌀

The Seattle Torrent has activated Captain Hilary Knight from LTIR. In a corresponding move, forward Brooke Bryant has been placed on the Reserve Player List. 
📰 https://t.co/9Pofvtjr5E

[Michele Gleeson @auntshel]

4am report from @BWI_Airport - security at D/E was a breeze. Long (not ATL long, but long) lines at airline counters for people checking in/checking bags. Obv subject to change, but if not checking a bag you’re in pretty good shape. If you have to check a bag, give lots of time.

[march maddyness 💥 @phxsunz25]

I was just googling Kymora Johnson and found this article from 2015 about her team being disqualified from the national championship final game because someone complained that there was a girl playing on a boys team?? 😭 The pics are killing me what a BALLER

[Matt Dowell @MattDowellTV]

Dawn Staley has taught Raven Johnson many things. But has Raven taught her anything?

"To stay light on my toes."

Then tells a hilarious story about how Raven came over to her during longer commercial breaks yesterday and just said "Aflac!" and walked away 😂

@GamecockWBB

[Ryan Deto @RyanDeto]

NEW: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is coming to YouTube, getting its own page. It’s the first time the show will be on-demand for free. Fred Rogers Productions tells me the page is coming this summer. https://t.co/2Xc26oWSIA

[PWHL @thepwhlofficial]

The math behind the madness 🧐

Professor Puck is BACK to break down how the PWHL standings come together!

[Alexa Philippou @alexaphilippou]

And we have a deal:

"This deal is going to be transformational. It's going to build and help create a system where everybody is getting exactly what they deserve and more. ... just excited that we can tell our fans that we're going to be back."

https://t.co/bQis3juS5R

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

I worked at Epic Games for two years. This is real, and the strategy behind it is smarter than most people realize.

Tim Sweeney has spent nearly two decades buying North Carolina forest land. 50,000+ acres across 15 counties. He’s now one of the largest private landowners in the state. The purchases started in 2008, right after the real estate collapse wiped out developers who had been planning golf resorts and luxury communities on biodiverse wilderness.

Sweeney paid $15 million for Box Creek Wilderness, a 7,000-acre stretch in the Blue Ridge foothills containing 130+ rare and threatened species. Developers had owned 5,000 of those acres before the crash. He bought them for conservation prices when nobody else was bidding.

He runs the acquisitions through an LLC called “130 of Chatham.” He buys the land, holds it for years, then either donates it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, sells it at a discount to state parks, or hands it to land trusts. In 2021, he donated 7,500 acres in the Roan Highlands to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. Largest private land donation in North Carolina history.

The part people miss: he told the News & Observer that since 2021, land got too expensive to keep buying. So he shifted focus to converting his existing 50,000 acres into permanent conservation status. He’s locking the land into legal structures that make development impossible regardless of who owns it in the future.

A billionaire worth roughly $6 billion is spending tens of millions acquiring wilderness specifically during economic downturns, then giving it away or placing it under permanent legal protection. The land will outlast him, Epic Games, and Fortnite.

That’s the part that separates Sweeney from billionaires who write checks to get their name on a building. The building depreciates. The forest compounds.

[PWHL @thepwhlofficial]

Grab the remote, we’re making history 🗣️

For the first time ever, the Professional Women’s Hockey League will be broadcast on national television in the U.S., appearing on ION (@IONGameDay) in partnership with @Ally and @ScrippsSports!

Don’t miss the New York Sirens face off against the Montréal Victoire in Detroit on March 28 1pm ET.
📰 https://t.co/bHe6Nvitsr

[PWHL @thepwhlofficial]

24 hours? Not this year. 🤷‍♀️

International Women’s Day comes up one hour short this year. So today, PWHL players who wear 24 are wearing 23 — a reminder that when women get less, the answer is to give women’s sports more. This International Women’s Day, donate $23 to help girls get in, and stay in, the game.

CA ➡️ https://t.co/iy5yEippLG
U.S. ➡️ https://t.co/lC1WTLlIaW
#23HourPlay

[Christina Garnett @ThatChristinaG]

Losing an hour of time/sleep on International Women's Day feels like the most on brand thing this world has to offer.

[Mistress Dividend @mistressdivy]

losing an hour on international women’s day feeling very 75 cents on the dollar

[Melissa Burgess @_MelissaBurgess]

During today's #PWHL games, players who usually wear #24 – Natalie Spooner (TOR), Vanessa Upson (MIN), & Anne Cherkowski (NY) – will wear #23 as a symbolic call to action that equality means girls and women should never fall short in access to funding, resources, and opportunity.

[Michele Gleeson @auntshel]

@TJOshie77 Have you all been to a @PWHL_Minnesota game yet?

[ESPN Insights @ESPNInsights]

Elon softball pitcher Anna Dew threw a perfect game while Elon baseball pitchers Aidan Stieglitz, Mike Staiano and RJ Latkowski combined for a no-hitter ON THE SAME DAY 👏

This is the first time in at least the last 3 seasons that a D-I school recorded a no-hitter in baseball and softball on the same day 😤

(📸 @ElonSoftball, @ElonBaseball)