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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
Two neighbors climbed through smoke to save a sleeping womanNeighbors in Wigston, Leicestershire pulled an 87-year-old woman from her burning home late Thursday night, minutes before the smoke would have reached her. Phyllis Day was asleep upstairs, unaware of the fire. She has Alzheimer's and had taken out her hearing aids before bed, so the smoke alarms went unheard. Neighbors spotted the flames just before 11:30 p.m. and tried to force their way in. Watching through her mother's doorbell camera, Suzanne Wright used the two-way intercom to guide them inside. Pav Sarpal, 28, went up first through smoke he said felt like being choked, coming back down twice for air. Stephan Smart, 44, reached Day in bed and woke her. "She looked at me like I was going to rob her or something," he said. They carried her down slowly, in time. "My mum would have only had a couple of minutes at most," Wright told the BBC.
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MOTIVATIONAL • Upworthy
At 90, he's climbing Kilimanjaro for his birthdayDr. Art Ulene, the physician who spent 23 years as a medical correspondent on NBC's Today show, plans to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro on his 90th birthday this July 13, aiming to become the oldest person to reach Africa's highest peak. It would be his fourth attempt. He and his wife, Priscilla, made the 19,341-foot climb in 2011 and again in 2017. A 2022 try with his grandson ended at 17,000 feet, where Ulene turned back with concerning symptoms while the grandson went on. The idea for this attempt, he told Upworthy, "started almost in jest" when a friend asked about his next adventure. Ulene, who partnered with CareScout, was not an athlete for much of his life. He took up skiing in his mid-40s and never quit exercising. His training began six months ago at three flights of stairs. He is now up to 50 flights, three times a week. "It's never too early to start. It's also never too late," he said.
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
Free coffee for everyone who chose the cab homeA volunteer group called the Montana Barfairies is tucking $5 coffee gift cards under the windshield wipers of trucks left overnight at Flathead Valley bars, a small reward for anyone who chose a cab over the driver's seat. What began as a local gesture has grown into a nonprofit advocating for stronger DUI laws and supporting families affected by drunk driving. The work requires a certain kind of person, the kind willing to rise at 5 a.m. on a February morning in Montana to give money to strangers. Four volunteers named Jesse, Beverly, Grace and Kate filmed themselves rewarding patrons who took cabs home from the Whitefish Winter Carnival, drawing 142,000 views. In Polson, Tim and Kelly left cards on eight vehicles and hit 2.5 million views. Shannon and Brittainy left 20 in Kalispell, totaling $100 in complimentary coffees for people who cared enough not to risk it.
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KINDNESS • Positive News
She poured candles and paid off her family's travel loanA social enterprise in Olympia, Washington, called Relume pays newly arrived refugees to hand-pour soy candles while they practise English and build a US work history. The idea came from friends Rand Roedell and Karima Bassal\u00e9, who watched refugees in the Pacific Northwest stall out in job applications over language, references and the simple hesitation of employers to hire someone who had just arrived. Candle-making solved that. It can be taught on the job and needs no fluent English. One maker, Maguno, arrived in 2023 after fleeing war in the Congo and spending 30 years in a Tanzanian refugee camp. With her Relume wages she paid off the loan that covered her family's flights to the US. \u201cIt was joyous and emotional when we learned she paid off her travel loan debt,\u201d Bassal\u00e9 said. The company now ships to 40 states. For a candle business, that is a useful kind of light to be making.
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
A boy's 4,000-year-old letter home was about his clothesA clay tablet in the Louvre, pressed with a reed stylus nearly 4,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Larsa, is often called the oldest known complaint from a child to a parent. It was written by a boy named Iddin-Sin, away at a temple school learning cuneiform, and it is mostly about his clothes. In the translation by scholar A. Leo Oppenheim, Iddin-Sin complains that the other young gentlemen's outfits keep improving while his get worse, then delivers the finishing blow to his mother, Zinu: another boy was only adopted, yet "his mother loves him, while you don't love me." Zinu, La Brujula Verde reported, was making his clothes from scratch, a process that took up to a year for anything fine. She apparently did not cave. The writing is clumsy and crammed so tightly it runs off both edges of the tablet, the work of a boy who had that much to say and no room to say it.
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With love, The Editor
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