The Odd Truth, Sept.. 8, 2003

The Odd Truth is a collection of strange but factual news stories from around the world compiled by CBSNews.com's Brian Bernbaum. A new collection of stories is published each weekday. On weekends, you can read a week's worth of The Odd Truth.

A Dog's Life Gets Easier In Beijing

BEIJING — Owning a dog in the Chinese capital is about to get a little less ruff.

The Beijing Municipal People's Congress has approved a new regulation that slashes first-year dog registration fees from — $600 to $120 — a major step toward enabling people to own pets in a city where such activity has been discouraged for years.

According to the official Xinhua News Agency, statistics gathered by Beijing police showed 1.4 million dogs living in Beijing at the end of last year, only one-tenth of which were registered.

The old regulation was instituted in 1995. It required "strict" limiting of dog ownership, Xinhua said late Friday.

But as Chinese become more prosperous, more dogs have been appearing on the streets, attached by leashes to owners. Mindful of that, Xinhua said, the new regulation stresses "management" rather than limitation.

Strong Family Links

SAVANNAH — For three generations and 87 years, the Pletcher family, some 24 branches, scattered from Florida to California, has maintained a chain letter.

The tradition started in 1916 when Erno Pletcher, his four brothers and three sisters began leaving the family dairy farm in Goshen, Indiana, to attend college and start families of their own. The siblings would send letters home to their parents, who bundled them for mailing to each of their grown children in turn.

"They were a close-knit family and they wanted to keep in touch, so they started this letter that had a regular pattern," said 83-year-old Jim Pletcher, of Green Valley, Arizona, one of Erno Pletcher's sons and Doug Pletcher's uncle. "As the families grew, that meant the offspring started to get into the act."

The original eight have all since died. The last of the siblings, their sister Opha Pickett, wrote letters for the chain until 1988, when she died at age 100.

Finder of Lost Souls

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Lynn-Marie Carty has a knack for finding people.

The St. Petersburg, Fla., woman has helped more than a thousand people find long lost family members and loved ones. Often she finds people after many others have tried and failed.

Sometimes she does it for free, when she's particularly touched by someone's story. Mostly, though, it's how she makes her living.

The 46-year-old former model runs ReunitePeople.com out her home, and says there's no real trick to finding people, what with the Internet and various other databases at her disposal. Usually, it's just a matter of sticking with it and following leads beyond the point when others would throw up their hands.

Her fees start at $350 dollars and go up to about $2100, depending on the time and effort required.

Although other companies offer people-search services via the Internet, Carty's personal touches and success rate have gotten the attention of national TV talk shows, as well as a literary agent who is shopping a book chronicling some of her more memorable cases.

No Singing In Public?

MANCHESTER, Md. — The small-town band concert is an American tradition that goes back to before the Civil War.

Officials in the small town of Manchester, Md., however, recently received a $255 bill from one of the two main organizations that collects music licensing fees for songwriters and publishers.

Not for songs illegally downloaded on City Hall computers, but for music performed at the town's free monthly concerts and elsewhere. While the cost is small, the letters have angered officials in Manchester and other small towns.

Councilman Dale Wilder called the letters a "scare tactic."

"One little-bitty action for singing 'Happy Birthday' in the wrong place could wipe out a small town's budget for years," said attorney Michelle M. Ostrander, who represents Manchester and two other Carroll County towns.

"It's a scam, I'll tell you, somebody trying to get something for nothing," said Sam Pierce, the mayor of nearby New Windsor, which sponsored a free bluegrass, barbershop quartet and ballad music concert in its park this summer.

Dial M For Marriage

OSLO, Norway — They met via a cell phone text message, courted and fell in love on the telephone and picked out their wedding rings while talking to each long-distance from jewelry shops in two cities — before they'd ever met in person.

So what could be more natural than Grete Irene Myrslett, 35, and Frode Tangedahl Stroemsoe, 31, getting married in a phone booth?

That's what they did this weekend in a wedding — and honeymoon cruise — sponsored by Norway's state-run telecom, Telenor ASA, to mark the 70th anniversary of its landmark red phone booths that dot the Nordic country of 4.5 million residents.

Last year, Myrslett, of Oslo, and Stroemsoe, who lives on the other side of country, met through SMS Flirt, a mobile telephone messaging service for singles.

Within a month, they'd run up $1,481 in cell phone bills.

Wedding invitations were sent via short messaging service, or SMS, and drew about 100 guests to Saturday's wedding.