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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
He learned 3D printing on YouTube. Then built her a wheelchair.He could have spent the summer like any 13-year-old. He didn't.
Zac Waters, 13, spent close to 300 hours of his summer building a custom wheelchair for a 21-month-old girl, using a 3D printer he first picked up after watching a YouTube channel about the technology. Waters, from Lehi, Utah, found MakeGood, a nonprofit that creates 3D-printed assistive devices for people with disabilities, and volunteered his skills. The chair has pink accents, because pink is the girl's favorite color. It also has a removable cupholder and tray table, plus storage on the back for heavier medical equipment. The footrest and headrest adjust as she grows, and the straps are made from soft material. Waters said the appeal was straightforward. "It combines my two favorite things in life: 3D printing and helping people in need. It just makes sense!" His grandmother, Charlotte Waters, hopes the lesson sticks. "His age does not define his ability to make a difference. His character does," she said. He wants to do "something techie" when he grows up.
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KINDNESS • Google News Human Interest
Strangers jumped into the pond and pulled the boy outNo lifeguards nearby. Just people close enough to jump.
A group of strangers pulled a nonverbal autistic child from a retention pond in Florida after the child wandered in and began to drown. Bystanders who happened to be nearby jumped into the water without hesitating and brought the child to safety. Nonverbal autistic children are drawn to water at high rates, which makes a quiet backyard pond one of the most dangerous places for a family to lose track of a kid for even a minute. This time the minute did not end the way it usually does. The people who acted were not lifeguards or first responders. They were simply close enough to see what was happening and decided the water was worth getting into. The child survived, wet and frightened and alive, handed back to the people who love him.
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KINDNESS • Good Good Good
40 cats were rescued from a drifting sailboat, one by oneThe boat had no crew. It had forty passengers.
A drifting sailboat off the coast turned out to hold 40 cats, and officers who boarded it quickly shifted from investigating an abandoned vessel to running an animal rescue. The boat had no crew aboard, only cats settled in across the deck and cabin. Rescuers organized to remove each animal and find them homes, one at a time. Forty cats on one boat is a number that sounds like a math error until you are the person carrying the carriers. The operation was slow work, the kind that involves a lot of quiet coaxing and a lot of patience. Each cat was checked and moved toward re-homing. The vessel, once found eerie and empty of people, was anything but empty.
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NATURE • GreaterGood
A blind cat named Burrito changed how she adoptsA volunteer searching for a runaway shelter dog at 2 a.m. instead found an orange cat sitting under a streetlight, matted from head to tail and waiting for owners who were not coming back. The cat's ears curled downward, both eyes were infected, and one was clouded over completely. She ran into the bushes at first. When the volunteer returned with a crate and food, the cat was sitting in exactly the same spot. A blanket and a careful scoop got her into the crate and to a 24-hour clinic, where the team ruled out euthanasia. Because the cat had to be wrapped in a towel for her medicine, she got a name: Burrito. One eye stayed blind. The other cleared. That Christmas, the volunteer's husband handed over adoption papers. They had two years before an inoperable abdominal mass ended things. Nine years later, the volunteer only adopts senior and unwanted cats. Burrito set the policy. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Good Good Good
The country's first library for the outdoors just openedThe books are still there. So is a rack of snowshoes.
Anythink Nature Library opened in Adams County, Colorado, this year as the first library in the country built to lend gear for the outdoors rather than gear for the couch. Cardholders can check out snowshoes, binoculars, bird-watching kits, and fishing rods, all borrowed the same way you would borrow a novel. The library sits on 22 acres near a wildlife refuge, with trails running out the back door. Staff run guided hikes and stargazing nights for people who want to try the equipment before hauling it home. The idea is simple. Not everyone owns a pair of snowshoes, and buying them to find out you dislike snowshoeing is an expensive way to learn something about yourself. Late fees still apply, which raises the interesting question of what happens when you return a fishing rod three days overdue. The nearby refuge, for the record, was there first.
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With love, The Editor
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