Latest news with #Catrina
Irish Independent
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
See photos as history is made in Kerry village at inaugural Cuimsiú competition
Kerry Comhaltas was proud to introduce Cuimsiú – the Irish word for 'inclusion' – a new competition designed specifically for performers with a disability or additional needs. The concept of an inclusive Fleadh competition was first proposed by Runaí Catrina Uí Ifearnáin, who recognised the need to expand participation in Irish traditional arts across all communities. The idea was enthusiastically received and unanimously supported by the County Board delegates before being formally ratified in January. Following the event in Causeway on Saturday, Catrina spoke to The Kerryman about it went and she revealed that it was an absolutely amazing event, as well as a little bit emotional. "It was electric. It was just phenomenal. For me too, it was a powerful and emotional experience and it actually was much bigger than a competition that showcases talent. It was really about creating a space where everyone, regardless of their ability could express themselves through music and song. It really was just an amazing day,' she said. Going on, Catrina explained how the Cuimsiú committee set up a quiet room for the competitors to use before the competitions if they wished. A support person was also present was with the competitor though out the day. Some competitions requested an audience while others requested no audience. The success of this year's Cuimsiú competition Catrina added, would not have been possible without the support and co-operation between Kerry Comhaltas and DSI an organisation committed to supporting children and young people with disabilities and additional needs. As this was the inaugural Cuimsiú competition, Catrina said that was a learning opportunity for all and while this first Cuimsiú competition was confined to the county, she said that she Kerry Comhaltas hope to build on its success and it is hoped that this innovative idea will be taken to provincial and nationwide level, in the near future. She also took the time to praise the team of volunteers it took make the Cuimsiú competition a reality. Without the competitors there would be no competition so a huge thanks to all the competitors who took part to make this Cuimsiú competition a reality. Each competitor has since been invited to perform at the upcoming International Symposium of Adapted Physical Activity Symposium which is on in Munster Technological University in June. Following this they will attend the 2025 GRADAM inclusion awards ceremony on Monday 4 August 2pm in Wexford County Council Offices where they will perform together at the All Ireland Fleadh.
Times
16-05-2025
- Times
Big Mother is watching you: Inside New York ‘nanny-shaming'
As Catrina scrolled through Facebook — bleary-eyed after spending the evening wrestling a toddler having a tantrum into bed — she saw a post that stopped her in her tracks. 'If you recognise this blonde girl with pigtails I saw yesterday afternoon around 78th and 2nd, please DM [direct message] me,' it read. 'I think you will want to know what your nanny did.' Although the accompanying photograph showed only the back of the child's head, Catrina recognised her daughter instantly. 'A mother knows every inch of her kid, every hair. It was her,' she said. The post felt callous — cruel, even — in its withholding of details, thought Catrina, who asked that her real name not be published. She was unable to sleep
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Loco for Cinco Fest highlights art and culture with live mural painting
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Many Wichitans filled the streets of downtown at the Loco For Cinco festival to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and local art and culture. The annual event not only brings Wichitans in but also people from Dallas-Fort Worth. Artists Juan Velazquez and Armando Aguirre were selected as this year's artists for the Loco for Cinco mural project, and the two painted their murals live during the event. Aguirre painted a Catrina, which is usually a female figure dressed as a skeleton or skull-faced. It's an iconic symbol of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead). 'I was happy they chose this design because it was one that had been rejected for other clients, other opportunities. I kept holding on to it because I'm like, I know one day I'll be able to paint it,' Aguirre said. Aguirre's art has taken him not only across Texas but also California and Tennessee. In his first visit to Wichita Falls, he said seeing the culture and art come alive shows the city's identity. 'I feel like this is the perfect piece to do for today for Cinco de Mayo. Something that is celebrating our culture and our heritage,' Aguirre said. 'It makes me feel good because one of the things that I've been wanting to do is go out and paint in other places, travel, and paint. I'm doing that today, and it makes me feel really good.' To check out Aguirre's work, click here for his Instagram. You can find Velazquez's work by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hamilton Spectator
25-04-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
I paid for a hotel that didn't exist. Here's how to avoid getting scammed the same way
It was supposed to be the perfect start to our Mexican getaway: A four-minute walk from the Huatulco airport, we expected to find our accommodation, Casa Nodisponible, and then dive into the pool that had beckoned us invitingly from the ad. That's what the third-party hotel-booking website had promised. That's what we had paid for. That is not what happened. Instead, we found ourselves dragging our suitcases down a desolate dirt road, flanked by stray dogs, abandoned buildings and overgrown lots, littered with garbage. With each step, our 'four-minute' walk felt less like a stroll and more like an audition for Survivor: Scam Edition. Asking for directions proved fruitless. The locals' blank stares were not reassuring. After circling the block, we asked a taxi driver for help. Suddenly, we were surrounded by the entire fleet of Huatulco's cabbies, poring over our GPS co-ordinates, the map and the phone number on our booking confirmation. They called. No answer. They called again. Still nothing. They exchanged glances that clearly said, 'These poor gringos.' By nightfall, my overactive imagination, fuelled by too many brutal TV shows, started whispering about cartels and kidnappings. Then, our knight in shining armour (well, a driver in a slightly dented taxi) offered to take us to another posada in a nearby town. The lodging looked like a relic from One Hundred Years of Solitude, abandoned to nature, vines creeping over the bricks. When our driver knocked, I braced myself for a skeletal Catrina to swing open the door and cackle, 'Bienvenidos!' We begged him to take us back to our original destination. He did. This time we found the location: It was an empty lot. Our hotel, like our trust in online booking platforms, had vanished into thin air. Mercifully, our helpful driver found us a proper hotel in Huatulco's tourist area. Our vacation was back on track, but our battle with the booking site had just begun. In bed that night, I bolted upright, awakened by a sneaking suspicion that we had not only been swindled but also made fools of by our impish scammer. I fumbled for my Google Translate app. 'Casa Nodisponible' means 'home not available.' The booking site is advertising and taking money for a property that isn't available! After my trip, I spent almost two months trying to persuade the platform that they had facilitated a scam. Each attempt went something like this: Bot: Your booking has been completed. If you have an issue, please call the property. Me: It doesn't exist. Bot: We're sorry for your inconvenience. Please call the property directly. Me: IT DOESN'T EXIST. Bot: Were you satisfied with your experience? Me: WORST EXPERIENCE. I WAS SCAMMED. YOU PUT ME IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION. Eventually, I managed to speak to a human, who returned with the grand solution: He needed to check the details with the property and would get back to me in five days. IT. DOESN'T. EXIST. I asked for a supervisor. 'Mark,' I was told, would call me back in 30 minutes. Of course, Mark has yet to ring. Meanwhile, the listing for Casa Nodisponible remains active. And as it turns out, I'm not the only victim. There's another 'Nodisponible' listing in the same area, with this review: 'Without a hotel, I slept on the street.' To avoid being scammed on a third-party hotel-booking site as we were, here's what I now recommend to fellow travellers: Read the reviews. Trust your gut. If something feels weird — in my case, the hotel's name — it probably is. Phone the number on your booking confirmation to ensure it exists. Put the address into Google Maps and see what shows up. If in doubt, the safer bet is to book directly on a hotel's official website. If you do end up getting scammed and need to dispute the charge, collect evidence (such as photos of the empty site where the advertised property should be), as well as contact details for any locals who can support your claims. As for my own experience, the online booking site initially insisted they had fulfilled their commitment, and accused my husband and me of being 'no-shows.' In the end, I disputed the charge through my credit card, and my money was reimbursed that way. So, dear readers, let my misadventure be a warning. Sometimes, the biggest scam on your trip isn't the overpriced airport margarita; sometimes, it's the very platform you trusted to get you there. Safe travels. And maybe pack a tent.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Six long-lost sisters found each other. Now they seek their brother.
A week before Christmas, six sisters flew into a snowstorm to reunite in a Buffalo, New York, basement. There they stood, oldest to youngest, taking turns reciting from a script. 'If your name is Giovanni … and you were born in Tampa General Hospital … on Feb. 14, 2009 … and you're 15 years old … and your parents are the doctors who delivered you … we're your sisters," they said in a bubbly cadence. They leaned in, beaming identical smiles. 'And we want to meet you!' It was the oldest sister's plan. It's always her plan, the second- youngest sister said. 'She'll get these ideas, like, we're all running off to Europe together,' Monica Juliana, 18, said of Catrina Palmer, 25. 'So we did the video to humor her, and I was thinking, 'Nobody is going to see this.'' Many, many people viewed the 14-second clip, which amassed 62 million views on TikTok and millions more on Instagram. Tens of thousands of commenters begged for updates, claimed to have leads, or questioned whether Giovanni ever would — or should — see the video. Going by 'the Juliana sisters' after the biological parents they share, the young women are Catrina and Gigi Palmer, 23, of Tampa; Alexia Bowerman, 20, of Ohio; Anna Bowerman, 19, and Bella Bowerman, 13, of Buffalo; and Monica, who lives in West Virginia. A handful of leads seemed promising, and they were hopeful that by Christmas they'd find the brother they believed had been adopted by Tampa doctors. But what if Giovanni didn't know he was adopted, some commenters questioned. What if his family did not want to be found? 'We don't want to mess up his life,' Catrina said weeks after their video went viral. 'We just want him to know that we exist and we love him, and we're here if he ever wants us.' The sisters, of course, already knew from experience the valid reasons why families keep adoptions closed and private. They also knew that pushing through the emotional complications had, in their case, proven worth it. What the millions who had watched their plea didn't know was how luck and teenage precociousness had led them to one another despite being raised in foster systems and closed adoptions 1,000 miles apart. The sisters' biological parents, Devin and Tiffany Juliana, struggled with addiction, their lives beginning to unravel before most of their seven children were born. Catrina arrived when her mother, who had been abandoned by her own family, was 16. Her father, seven years older, was a small-time drug dealer. Things weren't stable, but Catrina didn't doubt their love. By the time she and Gigi were toddlers, their parents were bouncing between courtrooms and arrests, trying to keep the family together. They fled warrants from Tampa to Buffalo and back. Their father finally went to prison. Their mother violated a Florida court order by leaving the girls with their grandmother when she surrendered to police, too. When the cops arrived at their grandma's place, the sisters were supposed to hide. Catrina remembered being told that the police weren't always bad, so she walked out. Catrina recalls the Hillsborough County home where they were placed as the kind that foster kids whisper about. 'Everything was super rationed out,' she said. 'We could have cereal but no milk. We had to be outside all day. Clearly, it was just meant to bring in money.' At a supervised visit at a Tampa McDonald's, their father promised they would be together again. When the social worker rolled the car window up to drive the girls away, Catrina's father playfully fogged the glass with his breath, but she noticed his tears. Nearly two years into foster care, a surgical tech who worked with the girls' foster father at a hospital saw their photo. She and her husband had lost a teen daughter to leukemia. Cathy and Bill Palmer decided to foster the girls and hope to adopt. Coincidentally, the very week the girls moved into their new home in Wesley Chapel, the court terminated their birth parents' parental rights. They had missed court in Florida because it had overlapped with another custody hearing for another daughter in New York. In a closed adoption, names, birth certificates and Social Security numbers are changed. At ages 6 and 4, Catrina and Gigi became different people on paper. Aiming to avoid false hope, their adopted father broke it bluntly: The would never see their birth parents again. But he promised, the girls cried on the couch. Catrina understands now that their adoptive parents weren't cruel, but protective. Life stabilized, then settled into a deep familial love, with big Christmases and Disney trips, karate lessons, guitar and violin. 'At the same time, they almost wanted it to seem like my biological parents didn't exist,' Catrina said. But the girls remembered so much — including learning during those supervised visits that they now had two younger sisters. Their adoptive father told Catrina and Gigi that, when they turned 18, he would help them find those sisters. It was the only aspect of their pre-adoption life ever spoken of at home. As the girls grew, they'd sneak into the room where a thin case file was kept in the bottom of a box. They would steal peeks at their own baby photos, lingering over images of their biological parents and a baby sister. By 16, Catrina was outspoken in her pride about being adopted, the way her mom said, 'We chose you.' She advocated passionately for adoption, once correcting a teacher who called it prohibitively expensive. One day a friend asked if she had a photo of her biological dad. No, but she could Google a mug shot. Scrolling through the results on a school computer, she was stunned to see her and Gigi's full birth names. Their biological aunt had posted on an adoption registry site: 'We just want to know they're OK.' Catrina felt unsure. She always had been told some version of, 'Your biological family doesn't care about you,' she said. Now someone was looking for them? In their room, she asked Gigi, then 14, if they should reach out. Gigi surprised her with an emphatic yes. 'My name is Gigi and my sister Catrina found this article about two little girls online. They sound exactly like my sister and I,' Gigi wrote sheepishly by email from Wesley Chapel. 'If u have no idea who I am then I'm sorry for the inconvenience.' In New York, their 9-year-old sister Monica saw their aunt running around the house screaming and crying. She'd gotten the message. Catrina covertly planned the first call with their aunt and grandma during a study hall period at school, so her adoptive parents wouldn't know. Catrina asked the questions as Gigi leaned over her shoulder, both thrilled as their aunt gave detail to vaguely sketched memories. The topics ranged from trivial to shattering. They had come from a line of serious Buffalo Bills fanatics. Their slip into foster care had, contrary to what they had always thought, left a deep family scar. Their parents were in jail, the aunt told them. The biggest surprise: Beyond those two sisters they had wondered about, the girls had three more siblings. Anna and Alexia had been adopted years earlier by a nearby family in Buffalo, allowing contact with their biological family. Monica and Bella still lived with their biological grandmother, though they too would eventually land in the foster system after a series of family tragedies. Bella would be adopted by the same family as Anna and Alexia. Monica, who had grown up the longest with their biological parents, bounced between homes and struggled to find the right fit. Eventually, she was adopted by a West Virginia teacher named Susan. Susan is awesome, Monica said, but to her, Tiffany will always be 'my mom.' She calls Susan, 'my Susan.' Giovanni, born between Monica and Bella, was the last mystery. Knowing the state would take Giovanni if he was born drug-positive in Tampa, their biological parents had planned to flee to Thailand for his birth. But Giovanni came early, with complications. His closed adoption left no trace. Monica remembers her mother, inconsolable. 'She grieved for all of the kids she lost,' Monica said. 'When birthdays would come around … my mom would just sit and stare at the wall.' Catrina, Gigi, Monica and Bella finally met by phone. In Florida, Catrina and Gigi found a quiet spot in a hallway at school. In New York, their tearful grandmother sat down Monica and Bella. 'Remember the sisters you heard about?' she said. 'I felt like I was talking to my mini-me,' Catrina said of that first call with Monica. 'It was like God copied and pasted our personalities.' Both were serious and self-reliant. Both wanted to be lawyers. 'This stranger,' said Monica, understood me in a way no one else could.' Bella was only 5, but her vibrance clearly reflected Gigi's sunshiney demeanor. Both are natural performers, a dancer and a gymnast. The sisters reached Alexia and Anna's adoptive mother, who connected them, too. On video calls, it felt like they were all staring into their own dark eyes. Eventually, Catrina and Gigi even started calling their biological parents. For two years, they kept all contact with their biological family secret. When Catrina finally confessed to her adoptive parents, they took it hard. 'They felt betrayed,' she said. 'It was tough. I get it. I don't think they had a great understanding of addiction as a disease or how someone could do that to their kids.' In those early calls with Catrina and Gigi, Devin and Tiffany disarmed their biological daughters with openness. Any question was fair game. The sisters appreciated that they acknowledged they weren't entitled to a relationship with them — but seemed grateful for a chance. The first time the girls were all together, they went to Universal Studios, held hands, skipped through the park in matching Harry Potter robes. 'Life-changing,' Monica said. Back at the hotel, they spent hours cuddled up on a bed, describing themselves and discovering their similarities —creativity, ambition, an independent streak — and differences. Three are photographers, two are dancers. Years later, they call Catrina 'the matriarch,' a role she takes seriously. She tattooed her sisters' names on her fingers, to remind her to call. Their constantly active group text is titled Sister Cult. They've had disagreements, especially when coordinating visits. 'One sister will say, 'You're not making enough time for me,' and another will say, 'You just want me to drive you around,'' Catrina said. That, she now knows, is life with sisters. Catrina worries that they lost their carefree years together since they're now dealing with college and relationships and careers, but mostly she's just grateful. Not long after she had first stumbled onto it, she tried to revisit their aunt's adoption registry post. It had vanished. When they reunited in Buffalo to film their viral TikTok, it had been a couple of years since they were all together. They surprised their youngest sister, Bella, who had no idea they were coming. The older girls found a sports bar, empty due to the snowstorm, and played Chappell Roan's 'Pink Pony Club' as they danced on the bar. The bartender brought out sparklers to celebrate their reunion. An epic night, though, for a moment, Catrina wondered, What if Giovanni was here? Catrina is a legal recruiter finishing a psychology degree at the University of South Florida, and Gigi is a talented choreographer who teaches dance at All That Dance studio in Tampa. Anna is enrolled in an accelerated doctor of physical therapy program, and Alexia is a server and car-show photographer with a gift for social media management. Monica, who missed so much school she had to teach herself to read, is valedictorian and has interviewed for admission to Princeton. Bella is a talented gymnast who the sisters believe was born to entertain. They sometimes call Catrina the 'curse breaker.' She says they're all the curse breakers, ending a cycle of addiction going back generations. Devin and Tiffany finally got clean. They own a home. They have dogs. They own their mistakes. They visited Gigi and Catrina for the first time at Catrina's freshman college apartment near USF. There were teary eyes, hugs and a weird familiarity. 'You know how you just feel it when you're with family?' Catrina said. When Devin and Tiffany come to Florida now, they all eat at the Columbia in Ybor City. Forgiving them was an act of grace toward their birth parents, but also toward themselves. Love, Catrina said, is infinite, which is to say that loving more people doesn't mean there's less for other family. 'I can choose,' she said, 'to have that joy in my life.' Time softened their adoptive parents' stance. Today, they have embraced Catrina and Gigi's other sisters and even met their biological mother at Gigi's graduation. There's still some awkwardness, but it's working. Sometimes, Catrina pictures her wedding day. Bill, the man who raised her, walks her down the aisle. But Devin is there. That would be perfect. As weeks passed, it became clearer that finding Giovanni could take more than a video. The most promising leads fizzled. Privacy laws have stifled helpful sleuths. It's likely Giovanni's name was changed. The clue that doctors adopted him — something the siblings' biological father remembers hearing — might be inaccurate. Catrina and her sisters don't resent anyone for entering into a closed adoption. But they hope their story shows what can happen when adopted children can maintain connections with their biological family. The video was a long shot, but so was their aunt's online post. They hope Giovanni is curious, like they were. Someday, maybe, he'll go looking, and they'll be waiting for him.
