ReportWire

Tag: Julian Sands

  • Wounded Warriors To Get New Mountain Cabins At Veteran Retreat Center

    Wounded Warriors To Get New Mountain Cabins At Veteran Retreat Center

    [ad_1]

    Former Hells Angel Tim Wayne Medvitz has had some big ideas in the past decade and a half. One is to use his mountaineering skills to take seriously injured military veterans on climbs up the world’s highest peaks. The Heroes Project charity he created after a motorcycle accident shattered his body and life has been doing this since 2009, even summiting Everest.

    One of THP’s principal training grounds, the strikingly beautiful Mt. Baldy in Southern California, inspired the group’s latest effort, creating a veteran retreat center. This complex of cabins and recreational buildings will be built on United States Forest Service property in Icehouse Canyon, two miles from Mt. Baldy Village (and driving distance from Los Angeles).

    Barring any unforeseen crises, the project will break ground in early 2024 and hopefully open in Fall 2025, Medvitz predicted, adding in an email, “It’s been a four year journey just to get the USFS to approve this project.”

    Challenging Site

    The group founder is undaunted by the property’s history of flooding and fire, or the namesake trail’s killer reputation. (The Los Angeles Times described it this way in a February 2, 2023 article: “That familiarity and easy access from a huge urban area have combined to give the mountain one of the worst records for death and injury in the U.S.. Since 2020, there have been more than 100 searches for missing hikers on Mt. Baldy, with six confirmed deaths, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.” British actor Julian Sands lost his life on that trail hiking solo last winter.

    So far, none of those deaths, injuries or search and rescues have been associated with THP’s veteran training or volunteer fundraising events. (I participated* in the latter once in 2014, and found the Devil’s Backbone section of the trail aptly named; the hikespeak blog dubbed it “spine tingling” in an undated post.)

    Medvitz, whose team has had to address dangerous conditions with THP’s climbs – including an avalanche and earthquake en route to a record-setting Everest summit by a Marine amputee – is not intimidated by Baldy’s physical (or development) challenges. He’s just plainly excited about bringing more vets in to enjoy the strikingly beautiful surroundings, each other’s company and new adventures to be planned there.

    “After 10 years and thousands of hours of dreaming, drafting, designing, and negotiating, THP is proud to announce that effective, June 29th, 2023 the United States Forest Service special use permit is officially signed and in our hands!” his website proclaims. “Every detail of the VRC has been designed so that our veterans can disconnect from life’s everyday stresses and reconnect with the soldier/Marine that has been lost.” Given these new accommodations, the site notes, “We are able to offer temporary housing and a taste of the great outdoors, all part of our transformative experience.”

    Resilience

    “The only way to build a facility like this on USFS land would be to have an existing special use permit grandfathered in on the land,” Medvitz explained in his note. “The Old Icehouse resort had exactly that and needed to be brought back to life; we will do that in partnership with the USFS and with a great cause behind it. As far as floods and fire hazards are concerned, well, any mountain retreat will bring everything that mother nature throws at it,” he mused, then added that all of the Forest Service’s requirements for safety will be met. California’s wildfires have become more frequent and intense in recent years, including in Baldy’s home range, so resilience planning is a necessary precaution.

    Wounded Warrior Housing

    Assisting the relentless adventurer in constructing the new retreat center is Scott Youngren, a general contractor for Homes for Our Troops, another nonprofit organization serving combat veterans. Medvitz shared that the builder has created accessible homes for THP alumni as part of his HFOT work, so this new mini mountain compound will be a kind of homecoming for him – and them!

    San Diego area Marine veteran and double amputee Julian Torres summited Mt. Kilimanjaro with the group and received an adaptive home from HFOT. He lives less than two hours from the new retreat.

    The new center will include three cabins, two accommodating four guests and one accommodating two. There will also be tent camping spaces and a welcoming/programming center.

    Building for this population needs to address a range of injuries, both seen and unseen, which Youngren’s experience with HFOT will help inform. These include limb loss, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. “Mt Baldy and the Baldy community has always delivered on everything needed to pull these vets out of their dark places,” Medvitz noted.

    The mountain setting can be a boon to those suffering from PTS in particular, but potentially a challenge to those with mobility issues. “We will be ADA compliant,” Medvitz commented. TBI is considered a signature issue of the Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans, which have formed the core of his mountain climbers. “We do focus on primarily post 9/11 combat wounded vets, but we will broaden our veteran outreach in other categories once we’re up and running.”

    Author’s Note

    This article is part of a series I dedicate to military-related accommodations every Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. You can read past stories in my November and May archives going back to 2020.

    I noted* above that I participated in a fundraiser for The Heroes Project, which merits disclosure. I made two donations of $500 apiece, one in 2014 as part of its Climb for Heroes fundraiser and one the next year for a related documentary (as yet unreleased) about the Everest summit. I do not serve (and never have) in any official capacity with the group.

    [ad_2]

    Jamie Gold, Contributor

    Source link

  • Actor Julian Sands confirmed dead after remains found on Calif. mountain – National | Globalnews.ca

    Actor Julian Sands confirmed dead after remains found on Calif. mountain – National | Globalnews.ca

    [ad_1]

    Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and 90s including A Room With a View and Leaving Las Vegas, was found dead on a Southern California mountain five months after he disappeared while hiking, authorities said Tuesday.

    An investigation confirmed that it was Sands whose remains hikers found Sunday in wilderness near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. The 65-year-old actor was a longtime avid hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing Jan. 13 after setting out on the peak that rises more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) east of the city. Crews aided by drones and helicopters had searched for him several times, but, severely hampered by wintry conditions that lasted through spring, no sign of him was found until the hikers came upon him.

    It has not yet been determined how he died, authorities said.

    Story continues below advertisement

    Sands, who was born, raised and began acting in England, worked constantly in film and television, amassing more than 150 credits in a 40-year career. During a 10-year span from 1985 to 1995, he played major roles in a series of acclaimed films.

    After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Sands embarked on a career in stage and film, playing small parts in films including Oxford Blues and The Killing Fields. He landed the starring role of George Emerson, who falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch while on holiday in Tuscany, in the 1985 British romance, A Room With a View.

    The film from director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for best film, and was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.

    Story continues below advertisement

    In the wake of its success, Sands moved to the United States to pursue a career in Hollywood.

    He played the title role in the 1989 horror fantasy “Warlock” and its sequel. In the 1990 horror comedy Arachnophobia, with Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, Sands played an entomologist specializing in spiders.

    The following year he appeared in director David Cronenberg’s surreal adaptation of the William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch in 1991.


    FILE – Actor Julian Sands poses for photographers at the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Sept. 3, 2019.

    Arthur Mola / Invision / AP

    In 1993, Sands starred in the thriller Boxing Helena, a movie that drew major media attention during production when Madonna and Kim Basinger each accepted the title role before backing out. The part would go to Twin Peaks actor Sherilyn Fenn. The film flopped.


    Click to play video: 'Montreal makeup artist nominated for second Oscar for work in ‘The Whale’'


    Montreal makeup artist nominated for second Oscar for work in ‘The Whale’




    Story continues below advertisement

    Author Anne Rice championed Sands to play the titular Lestat in the much-hyped 1994 Hollywood adaptation of her novel Interview With the Vampire, but the role would go to Tom Cruise.

    Trending Now

    In 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas, Sands played an abusive Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue. The film was nominated for four Oscars, with Cage winning best actor.

    Sands touted his love of the outdoors in a 2020 interview with the Guardian, saying he was happiest when “close to a mountain summit on a glorious cold morning” and that his biggest dream was scaling “a remote peak in the high Himalayas, such as Makalu.”

    The actor said in the interview that in the early 1990s, he was caught in an “atrocious” storm in the Andes and was lucky to survive when three others near his party didn’t.

    After Leaving Las Vegas, the quality of the films Sands was cast in, and the size of his roles, began declining. He worked steadily, appearing in director Wim Wenders’ The Million Dollar Hotel and director Dario Argento’s The Phantom of the Opera.

    He also appeared as a guest star or in recurring roles on TV series including 24, Medici, Smallville, Dexter, Gotham and Elementary. His final film was 2022’s The Ghosts of Monday.

    Sands was born in Yorkshire, the middle child of five brothers raised by a single mother. He had three children of his own.

    Story continues below advertisement

    He had been married since 1990 to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, with whom he had two adult daughters, Imogen Morley Sands and Natalya Morley Sands. His eldest child was son Henry Sands, whom he had with his first wife, journalist Sarah Harvey.

    A few days before he was found, Sands’ family issued a statement saying, “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.”

    &copy 2023 The Canadian Press

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Today in History WED JAN 04

    Today in History WED JAN 04

    [ad_1]

    Today in History

    Today is Wednesday, Jan. 4, the fourth day of 2023. There are 361 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Jan. 4, 2007, Nancy Pelosi was elected the first female speaker of the House as Democrats took control of Congress.

    On this date:

    In 1821, the first native-born American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, died in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

    In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, called for legislation to provide assistance for the jobless, elderly, impoverished children and the disabled.

    In 1948, Burma (now called Myanmar) became independent of British rule.

    In 1964, Pope Paul VI began a visit to the Holy Land, the first papal pilgrimage of its kind

    In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address in which he outlined the goals of his “Great Society.”

    In 1974, President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

    In 1987, 16 people were killed when an Amtrak train bound from Washington, D.C., to Boston collided with Conrail locomotives that had crossed into its path from a side track in Chase, Maryland.

    In 1990, Charles Stuart, who’d claimed that he’d been wounded and his pregnant wife fatally shot by a robber, leapt to his death off a Boston bridge after he himself became a suspect.

    In 1999, Europe’s new currency, the euro, got off to a strong start on its first trading day, rising against the dollar on world currency markets. Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura took the oath of office as Minnesota’s governor.

    In 2002, Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, was killed by small-arms fire during an ambush in eastern Afghanistan; he was the first American military death from enemy fire in the war against terrorism.

    In 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a significant stroke; his official powers were transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert (EH’-hood OHL’-murt). (Sharon remained in a coma until his death in January 2014.)

    In 2015, Pope Francis named 156 new cardinals, selecting them from 14 countries, including far-flung corners of the world, to reflect the diversity of the Roman Catholic church and its growth in places like Asia and Africa.

    Ten years ago: The new Congress passed a $9.7 billion bill to help pay flood insurance claims to homeowners, renters and businesses damaged by Superstorm Sandy. No. 10 Texas A&M beat No. 12 Oklahoma, 41-13, in the Cotton Bowl.

    Five years ago: The Trump administration moved to vastly expand offshore drilling from the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans with a five-year plan that would open up federal waters off of California for the first time in decades and possibly open new areas of oil and gas exploration along the East Coast. A massive winter storm roared into the East Coast, dumping as much as 17 inches of snow in some areas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average burst through the 25,000 mark, closing at 25,075.13 just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Ray Thomas, a founding member of the British rock group the Moody Blues, died at his home south of London at the age of 76, months before the band would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

    One year ago: Nearly a year after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only about 4 in 10 Republicans recalled the attack by supporters of Donald Trump as violent or extremely violent; just 22% of Republicans said Trump bore significant responsibility for the riot. The government reported that a record 4.5 million Americans had quit their jobs in November, more evidence that the U.S. job market was bouncing back strongly from the coronavirus recession.

    Today’s Birthdays: Actor Barbara Rush is 96. Opera singer Grace Bumbry is 86. Actor Dyan Cannon is 84. Author-historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is 80. Country singer Kathy Forester (The Forester Sisters) is 69. Actor Ann Magnuson is 68. Rock musician Bernard Sumner (New Order, Joy Division) is 68. Country singer Patty Loveless is 66. Actor Julian Sands is 65. Rock singer Michael Stipe is 63. Actor Patrick Cassidy is 61. Actor Dave Foley is 60. Actor Dot Jones is 59. Actor Rick Hearst is 58. Singer-musician Cait O’Riordan is 58. Actor Julia Ormond is 58. Former tennis player Guy Forget (ghee fohr-ZHAY’) is 58. Country singer Deana Carter is 57. Rock musician Benjamin Darvill (Crash Test Dummies) is 56. Actor Josh Stamberg is 53. Actor Damon Gupton is 50. Actor-singer Jill Marie Jones is 48. Actor D’Arcy Carden is 43. Christian rock singer Spencer Chamberlain (Underoath) is 40. Actor Lenora Crichlow is 38. Comedian-actor Charlyne Yi is 37. MLB All-Star Kris Bryant is 30. Actor-singer Coco Jones is 25.

    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxToday in History

    Today is Wednesday, Jan. 4, the fourth day of 2023. There are 361 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Jan. 4, 2007, Nancy Pelosi was elected the first female speaker of the House as Democrats took control of Congress.

    On this date:

    In 1821, the first native-born American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, died in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

    In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, called for legislation to provide assistance for the jobless, elderly, impoverished children and the disabled.

    In 1948, Burma (now called Myanmar) became independent of British rule.

    In 1964, Pope Paul VI began a visit to the Holy Land, the first papal pilgrimage of its kind

    In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his State of the Union address in which he outlined the goals of his “Great Society.”

    In 1974, President Richard Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

    In 1987, 16 people were killed when an Amtrak train bound from Washington, D.C., to Boston collided with Conrail locomotives that had crossed into its path from a side track in Chase, Maryland.

    In 1990, Charles Stuart, who’d claimed that he’d been wounded and his pregnant wife fatally shot by a robber, leapt to his death off a Boston bridge after he himself became a suspect.

    In 1999, Europe’s new currency, the euro, got off to a strong start on its first trading day, rising against the dollar on world currency markets. Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura took the oath of office as Minnesota’s governor.

    In 2002, Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, was killed by small-arms fire during an ambush in eastern Afghanistan; he was the first American military death from enemy fire in the war against terrorism.

    In 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a significant stroke; his official powers were transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert (EH’-hood OHL’-murt). (Sharon remained in a coma until his death in January 2014.)

    In 2015, Pope Francis named 156 new cardinals, selecting them from 14 countries, including far-flung corners of the world, to reflect the diversity of the Roman Catholic church and its growth in places like Asia and Africa.

    Ten years ago: The government reported that the nation’s jobless rate hit 5 percent in December 2007, a two-year high, fanning recession fears. Britney Spears lost custody of her two sons to ex-husband Kevin Federline a day after police and paramedics were called to her home.

    Five years ago: The new Congress passed a $9.7 billion bill to help pay flood insurance claims to homeowners, renters and businesses damaged by Superstorm Sandy. No. 10 Texas A&M beat No. 12 Oklahoma, 41-13, in the Cotton Bowl.

    One year ago: Nearly a year after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only about 4 in 10 Republicans recalled the attack by supporters of Donald Trump as violent or extremely violent; just 22% of Republicans said Trump bore significant responsibility for the riot. The government reported that a record 4.5 million Americans had quit their jobs in November, more evidence that the U.S. job market was bouncing back strongly from the coronavirus recession.

    Today’s Birthdays: Actor Barbara Rush is 96. Opera singer Grace Bumbry is 86. Actor Dyan Cannon is 84. Author-historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is 80. Country singer Kathy Forester (The Forester Sisters) is 68. Actor Ann Magnuson is 67. Rock musician Bernard Sumner (New Order, Joy Division) is 67. Country singer Patty Loveless is 66. Actor Julian Sands is 65. Rock singer Michael Stipe is 63. Actor Patrick Cassidy is 61. Actor Dave Foley is 60. Actor Dot Jones is 59. Actor Rick Hearst is 58. Singer-musician Cait O’Riordan is 58. Actor Julia Ormond is 58. Former tennis player Guy Forget (ghee fohr-ZHAY’) is 58. Country singer Deana Carter is 57. Rock musician Benjamin Darvill (Crash Test Dummies) is 56. Actor Josh Stamberg is 53. Actor Damon Gupton is 50. Actor-singer Jill Marie Jones is 48. Actor D’Arcy Carden is 43. Christian rock singer Spencer Chamberlain (Underoath) is 40. Actor Lenora Crichlow is 38. Comedian-actor Charlyne Yi is 37. MLB All-Star Kris Bryant is 31. Actor-singer Coco Jones is 25.

    [ad_2]

    Source link