Good morning, Gnusies, and welcome to today's Good News Roundup.
I will admit, I have been at something of a loss as to a theme for today's collection of news, other than my usual avoidance of all things politics. Or, at least, most things politics. Then I blindly opened up a bunch of saved meta posts from my social media of choice, Tumblr.
Ah, yes, that delicious $1 billion loss for Verizon, but I digress.
ANYWAYS. I found this post*. This post I will not quote in its entirety, partly because copyright (although I don't know exactly how that would apply to a blog post that has over a half million reblogs and/or likes on it) and partly because I tripped over it too late to contact the original author. Also in part because it has long since reached meme status, so all bets are off.
* Link chosen at random from search results. May not be viewable without being logged into a valid Tumblr account.
inkskinned
dear universe;
hello. i am writing to let you know you did good job on the stars, and also on cats.
yours respectfully,
me
Which is awesome, right? But get this.
In floating around the internet for a while, it had been changed from dogs to cats (as per inkskinned). And inkskinned went on to add, in part:
i kind of think, universe, if we are your children, this is our macaroni art. see, see, see, you gave us a little bit of the stars, and we’ve made our own constellations. we tried to give back to you by making art and music and books and bad poetry and our laughter and our love and our tv dramadies. we took pictures of the night sky and pictures of sunsets and pictures of dew, we fell in love with space and the rivers and the rain. i personally have my desktop background as a picture of one of your nebulas. your hair looked great that day.
i think…. you did a good job, universe, on the stars, and what the stars became, because you put us together and yes, yes, things might be terrible - but good gracious did we make so many things worth loving, worth writing to you about, worth telling you - thank you, i’m taking the spark you put in me and using it to be kind, to be alive, to be wildly fierce about our gardens and gentle about our pets.
so hello. i amend my previous memo. i am writing to let you know you did a good job on the stars, and on my dog and my cats and the lizard i kept illegally in my apartment. and universe, i hope you’re watching, because some of the people you made? they’re great, universe, and they’re full of love, just endlessly capable of loving. and they give me hope.
and through them, universe, that’s you. that’s how the stars sing.
That's. How. The. Stars. Sing.
So have a symphony. A Best of album. A musical library of love, joy, nick-of-time saves, helping hands, celebration.
As Delenn, from Babylon 5, one of my favorite tv shows, once said: We are star stuff.
It's up to us to sing, and to share that song with others and the universe that has given us existence.
So on with the show. Or the good news, whichever the case may be.
From the “The Kids Are All Right” Department:
8-year-old Jack Wietbrock had been heartbroken to see several dead turtles on one particular local street in town. When he and his mother were eventually forced to rescue a baby turtle who had been attempting to cross the street last month, Jack resolved to do something about the situation.
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That very same night, Jack went home and wrote a letter to West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis reading: “Dear Mayor Dennis, There are turtles crossing the road and they need our help. Can you please put up a turtle crossing sign? Thank you.”
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Mayor Dennis wrote a letter to Jack saying that he had been moved by the youngster’s compassion for the local wildlife. Since the city’s parks department has a machine for making custom signs, Dennis said that he had commissioned them to design the city’s first ever “turtle crossing” sign.
I’ve included at least one of these Bee stories in GNR, but there are two in particular I’d like to share (out of the 5). As always, there is more information at the link:
As biologists and conservationists scramble to positively impact the declining pollinator populations, individual gardeners and cities around the world are doing their part to help honeybees in a variety of ingenious ways.
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40-year-old Dan Harris designed the Bee Savior Cards in order to ensure that anyone can save hungry honeybees this summer simply by using the contents of their wallet.
The cards hold three different stashes of sugar solution which can be used as a life-saving snack for pollinators.
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As a means of boosting honeybee populations, Minnesota lawmakers have approved a new program that will compensate homeowners for planting pollinator-friendly greenery on their properties.
I love seeing creative solutions to problems — especially solutions to two problems at once!
A team of international scientists has found an environmentally friendly way of producing potential sunscreens by using cashew nut shells, instead of discarding them as waste.
The team of “green chemists” from the University of the Witwatersrand—along with colleagues from Universities in Germany, Malawi and Tanzania—have been working on techniques to produce useful compounds from fast growing non-edible plant waste, through a chemical process named xylochemistry (wood chemistry).
By using cashew nut shells, the team has produced new aromatic compounds that show good UVA and UVB absorbance, which may be applied to protect humans, as well as polymers or coatings, from harmful rays from the sun. The research has just been published as the cover article of the European Journal of Organic Chemistry.
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“With the current concerns over the use of fossil resources for chemical synthesis of functional molecules and the effect of current UV absorbers in sunscreens on the ecosystem, we aimed to find a way to produce new UV absorbers from cashew nut shell liquid as a non-edible, bio renewable carbon resource,” says Professor Charles de Koning, of the Wits School of Chemistry and principal author of the paper.
More in the “solves multiple problems with creative solutions” category (despite not being listed in the article, but other problems this kind of thing addresses can be inferred):
The world’s largest rooftop urban farm is set to open in Paris next year—and it’s already projected to feed thousands of people every year.
The garden, which is being constructed in the southwest region of the French capital, will span over 14,000 square meters (150,700 square feet), making it the largest urban farm in Europe.
Managed by a team of 20 gardeners, the organic sanctuary will grow 30 different plant species. Representatives from Agripolis, the urban farming company behind the project, say that the site will likely produce about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of fruit and vegetables every day in high season.
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Agripolis developers say that they are designing the project around a specialized aeroponic “vertical farming” technique so that the garden will use no pesticides and very little water.
I did mention a just in the nick of time chorus:
A team of conservationists and government officials in Chile are being praised for their swift and unprecedented rescue mission of a critically endangered frog species just in the nick of time.
Last month, the researchers managed to save 14 of the Loa water frog, a species that can only be found in a single stream in Chile.
Specialists say that the rescued amphibians could be the last of the entire species—and the critters were rescued just before their habitat had completely dried up, leaving the frogs malnourished and barely hanging on.
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A number of international wildlife organizations—including Amphibian Ark, the IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group, the Amphibian Survival Alliance and Global Wildlife Conservation—are now calling on the government of Chile to continue this great work by protecting and restoring the frogs’ home in the wild.
The kind of refugee news I want to hear:
It has been almost 24 years since a Dutch aid worker gave Mevan Babakar a brand new bicycle to call her own—and thanks to the power of the internet, she was finally able to thank him for the gift that helped to change her life.
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Back in 1991, Babaker and her family had fled northern Iraq in search of sanctuary. They traveled through Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan until they finally came to stay at a refugee camp in the town of Zwolle.
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After she and her family were eventually able to resettle in Bergen aan Zee, Egbert later surprised the refugee family by making the 100-mile trip from the refugee camp to their front door so he could give Babakar a brand new red bicycle for Christmas.
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In a last ditch effort to find Egbert, Babakar tweeted a grainy old photo of the man from the refugee camp and asked her followers for help. She wrote: “Hi internet, this is a longshot, BUT I was a refugee for 5 years in the 90s and this man, who worked at a refugee camp near Zwolle in the Netherlands, out of the kindness of his own heart bought me a bike. My five year old heart exploded with joy. I just want to know his name. Help?”
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“Not only did I find him, but I’ve also had other refugees reach out to me and tell me that him and his wife helped them too!” Babakar later wrote on Twitter. “Their kindness has touched so many lives. One woman said: ‘they weren’t friends to me, they were family.’”
I was going to include a tweet but I couldn’t get less than two to paste here, so hit the article for more information and beautiful photographs.
We’ve followed a lot of corporate do-gooding here on GNR, and yes, we’ve noted that a lot of it’s because it reflects a shift in social acceptance and expectations. But sometimes it’s different.
Patagonia sets the bar for me, in terms of corporate responsibility and beneficial contributions to society. I was still gobsmacked at this:
A Patagonia employee breastfed her baby in a meeting.
Her male VP's response is a masterclass in workplace values.
Holly Morissette on LinkedIn: "While nursing my baby during a morning meeting the other day after a recent return from maternity leave, our VP (Dean Carter) turned to me and said..."There is no way to measure the ROI on that. But I know it's huge."
There’s more in the article. But that pretty much says everything I need to hear about the culture of a company I have seen as the benchmark.
Speaking of that corporate do-gooding, we heard from Gillette a while back with their ad combating toxic masculinity. Now they’re back with a new razor — for caregivers.
Hygiene and grooming are a big part of a caregiver's job, and anything that makes those tasks easier is a good thing. That's why Gillette's new TREO razor, specifically designed for shaving other people, caught our eye.
According to Gillette, 4000 razors have been designed for shaving yourself. But up until now, zero razors have been designed for people who are unable to do that.
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"Our team noticed a conversation happening on social media about the daily challenges faced when caring for a loved one, which includes shaving," said Peter Ries, R&D Group Head at Gillette. "At Gillette we believe everyone has the right to look and feel their best. With our TREO razor, we are able to make the task of shaving less daunting for caregivers by enabling them to provide their loved ones with the dignity of a fresh shave."
The design team at Gillette pulled apart the razor as we know it and rebuilt it from the bottom up. The TREO includes a unique blade with a safety comb and grooves that prevent clogging, an ergonomic handle for better control, and built-in special shave gel that eliminates the need for water so caregivers can shave their loved ones without having to transport them to a sink.
I’d like to give a hat-tip to sweetthesound for this news in the comments yesterday!
TAMPA (CBSMiami) — Scientific history is being made at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa as endangered Atlantic pillar coral have spawned for the first time ever, in a lab setting.
The scientific breakthrough occurred this week in a research laboratory at The Florida Aquarium’s Center for Conservation in Apollo Beach as part of Project Coral. Scientists believe the historic breakthrough could ultimately help save corals in the Florida Reef Tract from extinction.
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The team started working on the research in 2014 with the Staghorn coral, but then the focus shifted to pillar coral because of a disease that has been devastating to the Florida Reef Tract. Pillar coral are now classified as almost extinct since the remaining male and female clusters are too far apart to reproduce.
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According to the aquarium, the coral greenhouses use advanced LED technology and computer-control systems to mimic the natural environment of the coral to subtly signal the corals to reproduce. They spent months mimicking the natural environment of corals using advanced technology to reproduce the timing of sunrises, sunsets, moonrises and moonsets to trigger the animals to spawn.
The spawning now shows that genetic diversity and resilience are possible, and it will help keep the ecosystems, as well as Florida’s tourist economy, intact.
Where’s the music, you ask? Since we are singing, after all.
Glad you asked! I have for you a cover of the Beatles’ Blackbird, sung by Emma Stevens. The catch:
It’s in Mi’kmaq. Read the full piece and listen to the interview here.
“Those lyrics kind of make me feel more hopeful, more inspired to, like, learn my language more than I already know, and to show non-Mi'kmaq people the beauty of the song in our language,” Emma Stevens, 16, of Eskasoni, N.S., told As It Happens host Carol Off.
The cover was produced by the school’s music teacher Carter Chiasson using translated lyrics from Mi'kmaq language teacher Katani Julian and her father.
There was plenty there to sink her teeth into, she said, noting that lyrics like “Take these broken wings and learn to fly” really resonate with Indigenous experiences in Canada.
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“We have something in common with the civil rights movement because, to some extent, our people have been oppressed in this country, you know, by the Indian Act and, you know, by the federal government and, you know, the whole residential school thing and attempts at assimilation,” Julian said.