With deep Arctic cold across the US Midwest and East Coast, blizzards and snowfall along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana (New Orleans had a record-breaking 10 inches of snow in some parts), the devastating continuing wildfires in California, and the nefandous executive orders by the convicted felon and authoritarian who is now US President, it’s been a challenging week for everyone who cares about the harm and despair people are experiencing.
I’m grateful to everyone sharing positive news and uplifting blog posts.
Here are a few stories, posts, and resources I’ve read and enjoyed over the past month.
Hope you enjoy them, too!
What I Found Interesting
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My friend Virginia shared her review of This Beautiful Fantastic movie, a heartwarming romantic drama about a librarian dreaming of becoming a children’s book author.
Released in 2016, the movie stars Jessica Brown Findlay as the main character Bella Brown. She’s a young woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder who lives in London, England and works in a public library.
Bella has let the garden of her rental house go wild. Her next-door neighbor, Alfie, a grumpy widower who isn’t happy with how Bella neglects her garden reports her to her landlord.
Her landlord threatens her with eviction, unless she improves the garden in one month.
As my friend Virginia says,
It’s heartwarming and full of love, beauty, and wonder. It made me feel good!
Excellent choice in my opinion for a distraction this week. I’m planning on watching it on Roku.
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First I’ve heard the phrase “food forest.” And first time I’ve learned about John Hershey’s Nut Tree Nursery in southeast Pennsylvania, the oldest food forest in North America.
Now, I want to plant American persimmons and mulberries in my yard this year!
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If you’ve been considering an eBike, whether to reduce your reliance on a vehicle, cleaner air, or more exercise, you’ll enjoy learning about the program that subsidized residents who wanted to buy an eBike in Denver, Colorado.
Over the two years the voucher program—pioneering in scale and scope—has been in effect, more than 9,000 people have bought subsidized e-bikes.
Of those, more than one-third were “income qualified” (making less than $86,900 a year) and thus eligible for a more generous subsidy.
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Good choice.
Over 6,000 children aged six years to 14 years old were asked by Oxford University Press to select the word that best described 2024.
Their choice, by over 60% of the children: kindness was chosen as the 2024 Word of the Year.
Made me smile.
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Whee! The chequered skipper butterfly, considered extinct in England for almost 50 years, has been successfully reintroduced.
According to the BBC story about the chequered skipper butterfly, the last one died in England in 1976, likely due to changes in woodland management.
A donor population of 128 chequered skipper butterflies from Belgium was brought to Northamptonshire in 2018 to re-establish the butterfly. Breeding began in 2019.
And now over 350 individual chequered butterflies have been counted in Northamptonshire.
