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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
Strangers on a dirt bike got them to their weddingA crash shut the only road. A stranger had a pit bike.
A fatal crash closed Highway 21 in Lowman, Idaho, on the day Erich Thalacker and Kyla Dickey were due to marry, cutting off the road back to South Fork Lodge with an estimated four-hour wait. The couple, who met in a high school composition class about 12 or 13 years ago, had wanted a wedding in the Sawtooth Mountains. "We wanted to feel wild and adventurous," Thalacker said. Then a man in a three-piece suit approached Garrett Kerr, an Eagle native driving home from a 10-day elk hunt with the elk still in his truck. "He's asking, 'Do you know how long this closure is going to be? I've got to get to my wedding in an hour,'" Kerr recalled. He had a small electric pit bike used to haul the elk out of the woods, and a woman named Jessica with an all-terrain vehicle. The 16-mile detour cost the couple their carefully styled hair, which the guests noticed immediately. They made it to the altar together. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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NATURE • GreaterGood
125 of 163 rescued pigs have found new homesThey had to learn to trust people first. Then came the beds.
A rescue group in North Carolina has found homes for 125 of the 163 pigs pulled from a hoarding case earlier this year, where the animals were found starving and confined in mud and waste. The recovery took more than five months and 137,066 pounds of feed, a number that is still climbing. Blue Ridge Liberation led the case alongside three sanctuary partners, including Ziggy's Refuge Farm Sanctuary, whose caretakers treated open wounds and heavy parasite loads until each pig could trust people again. "For more than five months, we have been burning the candle at both ends fighting for these pigs," Ziggy's said. Olive and Olivia, a bonded pair, were transported together to a new home in Hickory. Thirty-eight pigs are still waiting. They have gained the weight back. Now they just need somewhere to put it. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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PROGRESS • Good News Network
Pay on time, and Pittsburgh erases your water debtPay this month, and last year's debt quietly disappears.
Pittsburgh's water authority is forgiving overdue bills for about 4,300 low-income households, erasing their debt over two years as long as they keep up with current payments. The households, all living below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line, were automatically enrolled in September under an updated version of the Arrearage Forgiveness Program. A family owing $1,000 before September 1st sees one twenty-fourth of that, roughly $41.60, wiped away each month they pay on time. After 24 months, the balance hits zero. Customers can miss up to two payments and stay on track. Miss a third, and they are removed. "There's help out there for people who are struggling," said Julie Mechling, Pittsburgh Water's director of customer service. The authority says the math works because more than 95% of customers carry no debt and miss no payments. It calls the arrangement mutual aid for the few who are struggling.
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DELIGHT • Good News Network
He grew the world's heaviest pumpkin, alone, at 65Fifty years of growing with his brother. This one he did alone.
A pumpkin named Bagheera weighed in at 2,856.8 pounds at the Wargrave Nursery Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off in England last week, the heaviest ever recorded. That is heavier than a white rhino. Guinness World Records was there to watch volunteers hoist it onto the scale. Ian Paton, 65, from Lymington in Hampshire, grew it alone, his first solo attempt after decades of growing giant produce with his brother Stuart. The pair broke the world record together last year. Going it alone, Paton said, was "bloody hard work." He spent six hours a day tending the gourd through a summer heatwave, giving it 130 gallons of water daily as it ballooned toward royalty. He named it after the black panther in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. "If that's not the very definition of awesome, I don't know what is," judge Gerald Short said. Bagheera will spend its retirement as cow feed. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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DELIGHT • Atlas Obscura
A couple spent 17 years turning a train station into a restaurantAbandoned for 16 years. They gave it 17 more.
Palmer Union Station in Palmer, Massachusetts sat abandoned for 16 years before Blake and Robin Lamothe bought it in 1987. When it opened in 1884, the station ranked fifth largest in the United States, built to serve a town that still calls itself the Town of Seven Railroads. Passenger service ended in 1971. The Lamothes spent 17 years restoring the building and reopened it in 2004 as the Steaming Tender Restaurant. The tracks outside are still active, so diners on the patio watch freight trains speed past mid-meal. Dozens of historical artifacts line the walls, turning the place into a small accidental museum. The wait staff dress as train engineers and are referred to as such, which nobody seems to question. It took longer to restore the station than it was out of service. The trains kept coming the whole time. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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THE HONEYMAP
Sweet news is everywhere, if you know where to look.
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With love, The Editor
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