|
|
|
✻ Inside today
|
| 01 |
MOTIVATIONAL |
He knocked asking for food. She helped him graduate high school. |
|
| 02 |
KINDNESS |
Seven kidneys, seven recipients, one stranger who started it all |
|
| 03 |
KINDNESS |
A 90-year-old cyclist found her way back onto a bike |
|
| 04 |
DELIGHT |
America voted Mister Rogers back onto its envelopes |
|
| 05 |
NATURE |
Kai arrived at one pound. He leaves at 220. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
MOTIVATIONAL • Upworthy
He knocked asking for food. She helped him graduate high school.
Eric Schultz, 18, graduated from Waianae High School in Oahu this spring after nearly three years of homelessness, including a stretch of almost a year living out of his car while still showing up to class. "I was so grateful to just walk to the stage and grab my diploma," Schultz told WBRC News. "I was gonna cry, but I just held it in, and I just walked the stage."
He is one of 802 homeless minors on Oahu, according to WBRC. His parents were battling addiction when things first unraveled at age 15. Eventually he knocked on the door of a neighbor, Desiree Adams, looking for food. She became what Hawaiians call a hanai auntie, a kind of chosen family, and let him live with her for over a year, curfew included. "He said, 'Will you help me? Will you help me go back to school?'" Adams recalled. She refuses any credit. Schultz now lives at a transitional shelter and plans to attend trade school for plumbing.
|
I was gonna cry, but I just held it in, and I just walked the stage.
— Eric Schultz, Waianae High School graduate
|
Read the full story →
|
|
|
|
KINDNESS • Good Good Good
Seven kidneys, seven recipients, one stranger who started it all
Viewers of the Prime Video series 'Off Campus' noticed two small scars on lead actor Belmont Cameli. They date to 2018, when his childhood friend Brendan Flaherty went into kidney failure. Cameli offered him a kidney but wasn't a match. Instead of stopping there, he joined a paired-donor exchange and gave his kidney to a stranger, one link in a 14-person chain that saved seven lives. His friend got his too. The story resurfaced this spring as Cameli's show took off.
|
Soon my pain will disappear, and my scars will fade.
— Belmont Cameli, 2018
|
Read the full story →
|
|
|
|
KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
A 90-year-old cyclist found her way back onto a bike
At Table Rock Senior Living in southeast Boise, executive director Joel Freston spends part of his workday pedaling residents along the Boise River Greenbelt on a three-wheeled passenger bike called The Blessing Bike. The bike is designed for people who can no longer ride on their own, and Freston often parks it in the lobby. Residents notice. "They'll come and ask me, 'Are we ready? Can we do it today?'" he told KTVB 7.
One of them is 90-year-old Carol Montgomery, an avid cyclist in her younger years who moved in with her husband a few months ago. She lit up the first time she saw the bike. "I love riding a bike," she said.
The Blessing Bike program arrived in Idaho in 2018, started by Boise couple Wade and Jill Houser so they could keep taking Jill's 92-year-old mother, Rosemary, out into the community. It is now a nonprofit. When it gets cold, Freston does laps around the building.
|
They'll come and ask me, 'Are we ready? Can we do it today?'
— Joel Freston, executive director of Table Rock Senior Living
|
Read the full story →
|
|
|
|
DELIGHT • Good Good Good
America voted Mister Rogers back onto its envelopes
The U.S. Postal Service is reissuing its Mister Rogers stamps after a public vote, returning Fred Rogers and his red cardigan to envelopes nationwide. The Forever stamps, first released in 2018, show Rogers smiling beside King Friday XIII from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. They were brought back through a USPS program that lets the public weigh in on which retired designs deserve another run. Rogers, who hosted Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on PBS for more than 30 years until 2001, was not a man built for the attention economy. He spoke slowly. He fed his fish on camera. He told children they were liked just the way they were, and meant it. The stamp's reissue means a generation that grew up watching him can now mail a phone bill with his face on it. The cardigan, for the record, is still red.
|
He told children they were liked just the way they were, and meant it.
|
Read the full story →
|
|
|
|
NATURE • Good Good Good
Kai arrived at one pound. He leaves at 220.
Kai, a loggerhead sea turtle rescued as a hatchling weighing just over a pound, is heading back to the ocean six years later at 220 pounds. The turtle was taken in after washing up sick and underweight, and has spent the years since in rehabilitation, slowly growing into the size loggerheads are supposed to be. Caretakers named him early, which is not standard practice for animals meant to be released, but six years is a long time to refer to something as the patient in tank three. Loggerheads can live 70 to 80 years in the wild and travel thousands of miles across open ocean. Kai will be tagged before release so researchers can track where he goes next. He arrived at one pound. He leaves at 220.
|
He arrived at one pound. He leaves at 220.
|
Read the full story →
|
|
Did today's letter lift you? Pass it to someone who'd want the same.
|
|
With love, The Editor
|
|
honeyletter
|
|