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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
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August 12, 2018 10:30 am

CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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August 12, 2018 10:30 am

Robotic exoskeletons - Helping paraplegics walk again; Goat Yoga; The lobbyist; Petula Clark; Ben Stein says Trump needs sleep.

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Our CBS Sunday morning podcast is sponsored by Edward Jones. College tours with your oldest daughter. Updating the kitchen to the appropriate decade.

Retiring on the coast. Life is full of moments that matter, and Edward Jones helps you make the most of them. That's why every Edward Jones financial advisor works with you to build personalized strategies for now and down the road. So when your next moment arrives, big or small, you're ready for it. Life is for living. Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. Most of us take our ability to stand on our own two feet and walk around utterly for granted.

We can barely imagine how we could live our lives any other way. Now, thanks to new, albeit expensive, technology, at least some of those who've lost their mobility can regain it, step by step. Lee Cowan will report our cover story.

Sounds good. Okay. When Ashley Barnes was told she'd spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, she was defiant. I said, no, this isn't it. This isn't it. There's got to be something else. There has to be, right?

There was. Hey, Braden, you want to go outside and play basketball and walk around? Ahead this Sunday morning, a stroll into the future with a device that is very present day.

I made it. First shot. A summer song this morning from Patula Clark, a singer whose biggest hits span the decades. She's talking with Michelle Miller. To hear the song Downtown is to be instantly transported back to the 60s. And half a century later, Patula Clark is still belting it out. Do you amaze yourself at this age? Sometimes. From child star to superstar.

The amazing life of Patula Clark, later on Sunday morning. We kid you not, the latest trend in yoga poses a unique sort of challenge, as Luke Burbank will demonstrate. You could chalk up the popularity of goat yoga to a certain herd mentality. Like this? And maybe kiss your goat. But you just try to do a downward dog while staring at an adorable, pint-sized, four-legged ruminant chewing its cud. There's always time to pet the goats. It's harder than it looks. Goat yoga, later on Sunday morning. We'll have those stories and more when Sunday morning continues. Step by step, a handful of people are learning to walk again, thanks to a technologically advanced device. Technologically advanced, expensive, and life-changing.

Our cover story is reported by Lee Cowan. So first, arms up overhead. It was a medical checkup that only took a few minutes, and Derek Demun was anxious to get on with it. The one-time high school surf champion and big-time snowboarder fell off a roof nearly a decade ago and broke his back, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

Not too bad, huh? But he's about to do something that only a few years ago would have been old but impossible. All right, let's get you up. I'm walking. You heard right, walking. A moment later, we watched a paraplegic put one foot in front of the other. He's using what's called a robotic exoskeleton. Derek activates it by shifting his weight. Sensors and small motors move his legs, mimicking a natural gait.

While his upper body catches up with the help of crutches. It's really heartbreaking to see some of these people out there without the ability to better their lives. Everybody should be able to live their lives the best they should. And this device gives people that option anyway. It definitely does, definitely does. The device, made by a Massachusetts company called ReWalk, was the first exoskeleton to gain FDA approval in 2015.

Since then, a handful of other brands have gotten the government's go-ahead. But that doesn't mean getting one is easy. There's been a lot of things with spinal cord injury that have been hype, but I don't want to believe that with this one. Dr. Anne Vasily has been working with paralyzed patients like Derek in Long Beach, California, for some 25 years. There's been moments that have been very hard on him to not have that life that he had before.

And his mom said to me, Derek can't stop smiling. As you might imagine, they're not cheap. ReWalk's newest model costs around $100,000. The onus is on us in the healthcare field to prove why this will benefit the patient medically and ultimately save money. Those who are paralyzed suffer from a host of dangerous side effects that come from the medical system. And that's why it's important to be in a wheelchair. One of the most common are pressure sores, where the skin can become infected because of the constant squeeze on the same area. It's the very condition that contributed to the death of Superman actor Christopher Reeve. Getting up and moving, Dr. Vasily says, is the best prescription to fight them. If it were my child, I'd rather buy this than buy a car.

And if I keep somebody out of a hospital because they haven't developed a urinary tract infection and sepsis or a pressure sore, I bet I save that amount of money pretty quickly. But for some insurers, exoskeletons are still largely viewed as experimental. It is not walking for me.

It's getting my body moving, keeping my heart rate up. Ashley Barnes was just 35 when doctors told her she would never walk again, the result of a botched medical procedure. Unlucky?

Yes. But she soon realized, looking around her rehab facility, that there were others worse off. Some of these people can't talk. Some of these people can't use their hands. And to just have my legs taken away and my bladder function taken away, it's not a big deal.

It is a big deal, right? But I have my cognitive skills. I have all of that. And I'm grateful. Because she still had use of her hands and arms, she was a clear candidate for a rewalk. But when Ashley put in the request to her insurance, I got a denial. And I said, okay, that's only one no. You can't tell me no. And we get another no. No matter how hard we kept going, how hard I fought the fight, it was no, no, no. She even appealed to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whom himself was paralyzed in an accident.

But his office sent back this letter, saying it really couldn't help. Tyler Densford was paralyzed in 2016 after he fell out of a helicopter during a training exercise while on active duty with the Tennessee Air National Guard. I didn't see any way of leaving a bed. And I thought, you know, why not just die?

Why even be here? The Department of Veterans Affairs offered to cover exoskeletons for eligible veterans. And Tyler tried one at the VA facility in Atlanta. Although the experience was brief, he says he's never forgotten the feeling.

The day of my accident was the last time I ever stood up. And being upright, it's almost like, hey, I'm normal again. For now, the best way to stretch his entire body is in a pool. An exoskeleton would give him a freedom like nothing else. But they require training, something the VA facilities near his home outside Memphis didn't offer. From my end, I feel like I kind of like exhausted all resources.

I'm not really sure who else to go to. Without it, the side effects of his paralysis continue to worsen. The day we were there, Tyler had just returned from yet another expensive stay in a hospital. I'd have a surgery done. And would that have happened if you'd had...

If I'd had a rewalk, I wouldn't have had a pressure sore. Yeah. Since our visit, the Department of Veterans Affairs has updated its policy, expanding the number of places that provide exoskeleton training. It's up to veterans like Tyler, however, to find a facility that meets those guidelines.

And so far, he's still looking. Hello. Ashley Barnes was so sick of waiting, she took out the equivalent of a mortgage and bought one herself. Something her friend Carrie says has been a financial burden, but worth every penny. She's not a sit-down kind of person at all, which is, I guess, sort of ironic that you're in a wheelchair. But she's up and going non-stop. At home, places like her kitchen are no longer as unforgiving as they once were. Being up with you makes me just feel, you know, back in the game.

You got me? And back in the game she is. She's even able to play basketball with her son Brady.

And score! Aside Ashley's mom never thought she'd see. She can stand up and look people in the eye and talk to people and give hugs and that's just very, very important to her. It prolongs my life because if I'm up and I'm moving and I'm active, then that's longer I'm here for my son. As for Tyler Densford, he's tried all kinds of mobility devices, including this off-road wheelchair, but nothing replaces standing upright and walking.

Technology to help those with spinal cord injuries has come a long way. The future is here. For some, it still seems a long way off. If there's something that I can't do, I figure out a way to do it.

Life has just slowed down for me and I just always take it day by day and find another way to to do something the way other people do it. I somehow think that you're going to figure out a way to get one of these things. I think within the next, you know, couple years I'll have one. You'll see me walk around in it.

Before there were podcasts, there was television. Remember, see what's new under the sun every Sunday morning. We kid you not, there's a new brand of yoga that encourages practitioners to exercise their true animal spirits.

Luke Burbank has the proof. It's a typical Sunday at Laughing Frog Yoga Studio in Santa Monica, California. Yoga enthusiasts are lined up, mats in hand, ready to go. Perfect. All right, you guys are good to go. But this particular class can't start until two of its most adorable participants show up. Come on guys, come on. Floyd and Roscoe. You ready?

Want to go do some yoga? They're really funny creatures, they're affectionate, they're social. But the thing that is really neat about goats is that they seem to bring out the best in people.

Michelle Triton is Floyd and Roscoe's mom. People really have a good time with them. They say things like, this is the best day of my life, I can't remember the last time I smiled this big. And so it's like, they make people feel good. The goats have no boundaries, they'll do anything. And she means anything. You've got heat on? Yes, yes, which I believe is very lucky.

So hopefully now I'm going to win the lottery this week or something good is going to happen since my mat is a little bit wet. If yoga is all about breathing, then goat yoga might be all about laughter. Now, goat yoga just seems like something they would have invented in Southern California. But it actually got its start in 2016, almost a thousand miles to the north. So this is where the magic happens, as they say.

It is. In the central Oregon town of Albany. I had been at a point in my life where it was really a mess. I was going through a divorce, got diagnosed with a disease. And so I would come home every day and spend time with the goats. And it's impossible to be sad and depressed when you have goats around you.

Hi, guys. Lanie Morse started offering this goat therapy to others, hosting goat happy hours, where people could just come and hang out with the goats. That led to a conversation with a friend who, it just so happens, is a yoga instructor. The goats are all around us and she's like, you should really let me have a yoga class out here. I said, okay, but the goats are going to be all over the humans.

You know this, right? And she was like, cool. The idea took off immediately. Thousands of people were lining up to do these classes. And, you know, at the end, I had like 2,400 people on this wait list to do goat yoga. In fact, it proved so popular that Morse eventually quit her marketing job to run goat yoga full time.

I have big and small, old and young people who've never even tried yoga before coming to these classes. There's no denying that more and more people are seeing goats less and less as just livestock. And goats looking cute and making silly sounds seem to be popping up everywhere from the country music awards. Like everybody else in Nashville, we're all caught up in the biggest workout craze this year.

To YouTube. Front and center, thanks in part to Leanne Laracella. She was working as a corporate event planner when she got two baby goats on a whim. That's Ansel over here.

He's kind of the king and this is the queen of the herd. Those are my first two rescues. What surprised me about being a goat owner was how much I liked it. Working outside with goat poop and hay and straw and the more time that I spent cleaning stalls, the less that I wanted to go back to the city and go to work. So I took the plunge and quit my job with zero plans. And on my first day of unemployment, Instagram featured one of my photos on their homepage and I got like 30,000 followers within a few hours.

I took it as a sign that I was on the right track. Today, Laracella's full-time job is caring for the goats of anarchy. Her Instagram famous herd of mostly disabled goats from her home in rural New Jersey. Luckily because of social media, people are finding out there's a crazy goat lady in New Jersey that will take your goat with no legs.

Are you okay with us putting that message out on CBS? Yeah. That there's a crazy goat lady in New Jersey that will take your special needs goat?

Sure. And if there's an especially legendary goat, sort of the Kim Kardashian of ruminants, it would have to be Polly, a blind goat that according to Laracella suffered from anxiety attacks unless it was wearing a duck costume. And yes, Polly's story is now the subject of a kid's book. And it took her a while, but even Laracella has embraced goat yoga at her farm, at least her version of it. We use full-size goats. We don't use baby goats, so this is yoga at your own risk. A risk I was willing to take. So on your breath in, you'll just open through the heart space, lift the tailbone, shift your gaze forward.

In the barn that started it all back in Albany, Oregon. It was fun and actually a little harder than it looks with all the adorable distractions. Just take a goat break. Yeah, you can totally take a goat break. So your breath in will reach the arms up overhead.

The petting break over, we got back to the session before wrapping things up in the customary goat yoga fashion with a chant of bah-mah-stay. The light in me bows to the light in you, Quincy. Washington lobbyists don't enjoy the best of reputations these days. Steve Hartman has met a notable exception. 31-year-old Kayla McEwen may be Washington's most unlikely power broker. As a lobbyist, the first registered lobbyist with Down syndrome, Kayla roams the Capitol advocating for the National Down Syndrome Society.

I'm good. She's an incredible asset to this organization. Sarah Hart-Weir is her boss. She's extremely articulate and she's quick on her feet.

And I'm not gonna take no for an answer. They hired you for your communication skills. That too. And your charm. You're good at this. It takes a schmoozer to know a schmoozer.

Kayla also has a certain sincerity that can turn almost any politician into putty. I need your help. Okay, do you need a sponsor?

I definitely need you. Am I surprised that she's in Washington DC calling on senators and congressmen? Yeah. Her parents, Mark and Patty, say although their daughter continues to surprise, Kayla never really let Down syndrome slow her down. They say even at two, Kayla had already decided she would drive a car someday. To pass the permit test, we said you have to be able to read. So that gave her encouragement to knuckle down and start reading. And right now, she still reads a book a week. And she got her driver's license too. That's Kayla celebrating after passing the road test. She's now one of just a handful of people with Down syndrome to have a license. What about that parallel parking?

You don't want to know. Really? That's challenging. Fortunately, today she does more flying than driving.

A couple times a month, she leaves her home in Syracuse for her office in DC, where Kayla is focused on passing a law that would make it illegal to pay people with disabilities anything less than minimum wage. I think that's what she says. If it passes, it would be a monumental achievement, but a thrill regardless, just to be part of the process. I just love the feeling of, wow, I'm here. I'm making history.

Hard to believe. Oh, yeah. Kayla McEwen, Lily in the swamp.

I'll support the bill. It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Jane Pauley. All these years later, the song Downtown still unmistakably evokes a certain era. But it's not the only time. It's the only time. All the more so when the star who first put it on the charts is still more than ready to sing it.

Michelle Miller brings us up to date. If any pop song instantly brings back the 60s, it's... Downtown, everything's waiting for you. Downtown took Petula Clark to the top of the charts. And half a century later, she was Downtown again, singing to a sold-out crowd in Annapolis, Maryland. When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown. You're still an amazing performer, and you're 85 years old. You're 85 years old.

Yes, at the age of 85, Petula Clark is still belting out all of her hits, still going on tour, and still releasing new albums. Home sweet home on the bus. But what gets her really excited? When she gets to have her own twist.

When she gets to have her own tour bus. It's actually very comfortable. You know, I've never done anything like this before, so it's kind of fun for me. Where's your bunk? There. This is you? That's mine. I tell you what, I sleep very well there. And everyone else sleeps up here with you?

Yes, you could put it that way. Don't sleep in the subway door. Don't stand in the pouring rain. Petula Clark has been in the public eye since she was nine years old and growing up outside London. It was 1942, during the Nazi Blitz, when she went to a live BBC radio broadcast at the Criterion Theatre. And in the middle of the rehearsal, there was a huge air raid, and the place was absolutely shaking. The producer said, well, would somebody like to come up and say a piece of poetry or sing a song just to calm things down? Nobody else volunteered, so I said, I'll sing a song.

And there it is. What did you sing? Mighty Like a Rose.

And how does that go? You don't want me to sing it now, do you? I was curious.

I don't know the song. Sweetest little fellow, everybody knows. Don't know what to call him, but he's mighty like a rose.

She continued singing on the radio, becoming an inspiration to the British troops. With eyes so shiny blue. They called you our pet. Yes, that's true. You were Britain's Shirley Temple. Kind of, yes.

Petula was so popular, she was featured in newsreels. I have a little surprise for you. Do you remember that?

Yes, kind of. When the postman brought little Petula Clark a pile of letters after her first broadcast, she was surprised. It's a long time ago, you know. But when she's at school, she forgets all about being a star. It's very weird watching yourself at that age.

Sometimes she has to rub it out and do it again. I wasn't a bad little singer, actually. You know, there's high notes I can't get now, of course.

You can. But she wanted to be an actress. Are you Joan Webster? Yes. Appearing in more than a dozen movies while still a teenager.

He's rich, isn't he? I made some good movies and quite a lot of bad ones. The film company didn't want me to grow up. They wanted me to stay the little girl, our little pet.

And so they would, you know, bind in my bosom and put me in an ankle sock. But to grow up, she did, pursuing a singing career all over Europe. And then marrying a French PR representative for a record company. They had two daughters.

And then their young family was hit by the phenomenon that was downtown. Suddenly America was calling, you've got to get here. You know, she's got to get here. Is that your American accent? Thank you, yes. And my husband was saying, who is this Ed Sullivan?

What did he want, you know? A Tula Clark, so let's have a very fine welcome. They started playing my music.

And of course, as soon as they heard it, the audience just went crazy. The lights are much brighter there. You can forget all your troubles.

Forget all you care to know. Downtown. Downtown became an international hit. The French prefer to hear a singer sing in French, of course. How would downtown, how do you say that in French?

In y a plus dans cette villa la joie, Qui lui avait avant d'entendre. The sign of the times that you call me up Whenever you feel lonely As a child star who became an international pop sensation, it's a little jaw-dropping when Patula Clark starts name-dropping. She sang for Winston Churchill.

I don't think he came to see me. It was one of those big shows for charity. Was Besties with Julie Andrews. Julie had the same sort of career as me when she was a child, and we used to travel on the troop trains together. So you were buddies. Yes, we were buddies, yes. Danced with Fred Astaire. And he takes me in his arms, and it was the easiest thing in the world. We just took off, and it was wonderful. Because he was that good.

He was that good. What are you going to do with me? Do with you?

Matter you, of course. What do you think? Acted with Alec Guinness. I gave Alec Guinness his first movie kiss.

The earth didn't move for either of us. But there were sparks when she met Elvis. Is it true that Elvis propositioned you? He flirted. It happened when Clark went to see Elvis perform in Las Vegas with her friend, singer Karen Carpenter. Actually, he was flirting with both of us. He said, oh, wow. The two biggest pop stars in the world in my dressing room. That's pretty good.

The all-American, beautiful voice Karen Carpenter, all British pop star. He had the best of both worlds. Well, he didn't have us, exactly. But he had a darn good try. So I'm not going to talk about that anymore.

Why should men be forced to kill? What she is proud to talk about is her duet with Harry Belafonte on her TV special in 1968. While I was singing this song, I just put my hand on his arm. What's wrong with that? Well, the sponsor didn't like it, and he went crazy. He said, no way is my star, that's me, going to touch a black man's arm. He insisted that we did another version of it, which none of us liked. We wanted it to go out the way it was supposed to be, with the emotion in it. In the end, isn't that the way it went out? In the end, it went out that way because we had the other takes erased.

You did? Oh, yeah, yes. There was no way that we were going to be bullied by the sponsor. I'm sorry about that. That's the way it was supposed to be, and that's the way it was. And that's how it's been for Petula Clark. Tomorrow never comes anyway, so I'm living for today.

Now in her eighth decade in show business, she's doing exactly what she wants to do. Do you amaze yourself at this age? Sometimes. Sometimes you think, now, wait a minute. What am I doing here? Shouldn't I be growing radishes somewhere? But frankly, this is much more fun.

Coming soon, Mobituaries, a podcast on matters of death and life from Mo Rocca. Time for some advice for our nation's commander in chief, Ben Stein. Here with a simple suggestion about our charming president, Donald Trump. I think everyone, including the most devout Republicans, has noticed that the big guy has done some wacky things, especially lately. Maybe the problem is his ideology.

Maybe it's because he's new to the civil service. Or maybe it's something much more basic, jet lag. Jet lag hits travelers when they travel long distances across time zones rapidly. The brain gets squished up inside the skull, and no matter how luxuriously the flyer flies, he or she winds up with fatigue, confusion, and symptoms similar to when a patient awakens in a hospital after having just been put under with a general anesthetic. Mr. Trump winds up negotiating crucial deals at a time when he would normally be sleeping, or what passes her sleep in his world.

And he looks exhausted, and he must be exhausted. I used to work at the State Department, and they had a rule that if U.S. negotiators were traveling overseas, they had to arrive 48 hours before the event and adjust to the change of time zone. It made a lot of sense. But since then, we've had leaders who like to pretend that they're Rambo and can just get off their plane after a long trip and start changing the world. I think it started with my former boss, Richard M. Nixon, who liked to fly to China, walk down the stairs, and stick out his hand at Zhou Enlai without any adjustment to the time zone at all, ever since all the presidents do it as if they were robots and machines and not humans. Let's put a stop to that. Let's suggest to Mr. Trump that when his plane gets to wherever he's going, he parks it at the end of the runway and sleeps for a day or two to get himself acclimated. It makes total sense to those of us who travel frequently. Might it make sense to Mr. Trump?

Maybe he could just give it a try and see if he starts acting more sensibly. Okay, never mind. Forget it. I'm Jane Pauley.

Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation, is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-26 17:53:30 / 2023-01-26 18:05:24 / 12

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