Feel Good Friday

“Eleven years ago, Paul Lundy was dying a slow, workingman’s death under fluorescent light. … One Sunday morning in 2014, he opened The Seattle Times and found a feature story about Bob Montgomery, age 92, known to friends, customers and locals simply as Mr. Montgomery. The article read like an obituary for a vanishing trade — fixing typewriters — suggesting that when Mr. Montgomery went, seven decades of expertise would vanish into the digital ether.
Lundy read it once, then a second time. He had never given old typewriters much thought, but something stirred in him that he could not quite name.” NYT (Gift Article): How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life.

+ The Cousin Walk: “The term is shorthand for the moment when certain younger members of the family quietly grab their coats, glance toward the door and—clutch those pearls—get stoned before rejoining the festivities with altered minds and ravenous hunger.” This Year’s Thanksgiving Surprise: Half of the Guests Are Stoned. (If you have to talk politics with anyone, choose someone from that half.)

+ California Solar Canals Could Save 63 Billion Gallons of Water Annually.

+ Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation. “Teachers show students the power of headbanging at Fire in the Mountains festival.”

+ Two Harvard alums built a robot that can braid hair.

+ In a small town in northern Italy, there’s a barista who has been brewing espressos and serving coffees for more than 80 years. She’s still going strong as she turns 101 this weekend.