|
|||
|
Five good things · Three minutes
|
|||
| |||
|
MEDICINE • Upworthy
A stranger's dog sensed her heart issue mid-flightShe laughed it off on the plane. The dog was right.
A woman named Katie shared on X that a stranger's medical alert dog kept pawing at her and whining during a flight, and the dog turned out to be right. The dog's owner eventually leaned over with an awkward warning. "Okay, this is gonna sound strange, but my dog usually does that when someone has a heart issue. You might wanna get checked out." Katie laughed it off at the time. Months later, at a routine checkup, she mentioned it to her doctor, who ran tests and found a mildly irregular heartbeat. Medical alert dogs work through scent. Craig Angle of Auburn University's Canine Performance Sciences Program told Scientific American that dogs are "natural biosensors," built to detect chemical shifts below the threshold of most medical machines. A 2021 study in PLOS One found such dogs flagged 33 different conditions. Katie's heartbeat is mild and she is managing it. The dog had no idea what a heart is. It just knew something about her smelled off.
| |||
| |||
|
KINDNESS • Upworthy
Four generations played the piano her grandmother boughtOne glance at a baby's hands. Four generations of music.
An Upworthy question on Facebook, asking what people own that they would never sell at any price, drew close to 2,000 replies. Selby C. Hemmans Rich answered with a piano her grandmother bought when Rich was six months old. "When I was born, she took one look at my hands and said, 'Oh, she has long fingers! She's going to play.' I do," Rich wrote. So does her son, a jazz musician, and one of her two daughters, who works internationally as a Christian artist. Rich, mostly a church musician, calls her own reach intermediate, a little Chopin and Beethoven. Her grandmother learned piano too, well enough to play for elementary school graduations. When Rich's daughter was seven or eight, she asked to inherit the piano. Rich said yes. She had it fully restored a few years ago, for more than the price of a new one. "I could see and FEEL her joy," Rich said of her grandmother listening.
| |||
| |||
|
DELIGHT • InspireMore
A 4-year-old dressed as his hero, the maintenance manEvery kid picked a dream job. One picked the janitor.
A 4-year-old at First Baptist Clinton in Mississippi picked his hero for the preschool's annual "Dress As What You Want To Be When You Grow Up Day." He came as Bubba Cable, the facilities manager, right down to the keys, walkie-talkie and cell phone. Cable had no idea until the kids arrived. A video of the two Mr. Bubbas meeting, one grown and one about three feet tall, has since gone viral. Cable is the person the staff text when anything breaks, and he handles it. "He doesn't just take care of us. He takes care of our whole church," preschool director Kim Evrard told Baptist Press. Cable, who has four grandchildren, was unbothered by the flattery. "To me, there's no more honest person than a child," he said. "I just hope that they grow up and follow the Lord and do good things in life." The boy was ready before Cable was.
| |||
| |||
|
DELIGHT • Upworthy
A $580 million cable moved for a house-elf's memorial.He'd never heard of Dobby. Then the phones started ringing.
A $580 million high-voltage cable running about 125 miles under the Irish Sea was rerouted at the Welsh coast to spare the grave of a fictional house-elf. Simon Ludlam, who managed the Greenlink interconnector, had never heard of Dobby. Then a BBC Wales segment aired showing where the cable would surface at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire, and his firm's phones started ringing. "We got hundreds of calls, I mean, hundreds of calls," Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast. The exit point sat right where fans have built a memorial to the character, who dies in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. People fly in from Italy and Australia to leave painted stones and socks. "He's a fictitious character in a fictitious book," Ludlam recalled saying. He was correct and it did not matter. The planners moved the surfacing point. Greenlink began commercial operation in early 2025, moving up to 500 megawatts between the Irish and British grids. The memorial is still on the beach. Read the full story → | |||
| |||
|
DELIGHT • Upworthy
A 94-year-old said his favorite age was last yearYou expect them to say youth. Then a man says last year.
Residents at Carrington Court Assisted Living and Memory Care in Utah were asked one question for a video series shared on Instagram: what was your favorite age of life? The answers rarely landed where you would expect. One woman said 25, laughing as she explained that her father had bought her a convertible. "I just drove it and drove it and drove it," she said. A man barely paused before answering "last year." Asked how old he was then, he admitted he could not recall, until someone reminded him he is 94. His reason: "I had no interest in life until this wonderful woman here brought it back to me." The camera panned to a woman nearby who had answered 63. She chuckled while taking in the compliment. A 2025 study from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich argues happiness declines gradually with age. Nobody at Carrington Court appears to have read it.
| |||
|
|||
|
Someone forward you this? Get it every morning →
|
|||
|
One more thing — I’m putting together a small wall of reader notes for the website. If honeyletter has changed your mornings, hit reply and tell me. Say if I can quote you, first name and state.
|
|||
|
With love, The Editor
|
|||
|
honeyletter
|