Australia has kangaroos, China has pandas, and Scotland is known for its… cows? Shaggy, ginger, pink-tongued, Highland cows to be exact.
They’re charming animals that you’ll see in fields and paddocks across the Hebrides and even along the Scottish Borders.
But if you’re not actually in the UK right now, the pandemic means you probably won’t be visiting these sweet, lumbering animals at least for a little while.
Not to worry, though. The team at Visit Scotland are helping out travelers who are stuck at home with a ‘coo cam’, so everyone can get their fix of Highland farm animal sweetness.
Check out Visit Scotland’s social feeds and you’ll see cows from Kitchen Coos and Ewes in Dumfries and Galloway, and from Edinburgh’s Swanston Farm.
The cows were filmed in November and clips will be released through the year.
“We want people to still be able to enjoy our country and what makes us unique through the virtual experiences you can still enjoy from the comfort of your own home,” says Visit Scotland tourism board, “From using a tree as a scratch post, making their moos heard, and having a good nosey at the camera, the Coo Cam provides an access all areas perspective to life on the farm.”
Take a mooment to chill & enjoy this beautiful scene this #Coosday!☀️🧡 📍 Kettlebridge, #Fife 🎥 IG/lynnslittlecorneroftheworld
Quote of the Day: “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” – Stephen Covey
Photo by: Javier Allegue Barros
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Sometimes when you meet someone for the first time, you feel an instant kinship. That was the case for two Connecticut coworkers who later learned their sisterhood wasn’t just figurative—it was literal.
Julia Tinetti and Cassandra Madison were both born in the Dominican Republic and later adopted. Each woman had a tattoo of that country’s flag. The pair bonded over the coincidences while customers at the New Haven bar where they both worked teased them about looking and acting so much alike they might as well be sisters.
With similar stories, Tinetti and Madison compared notes on their respective adoptions, but according to the paperwork, they weren’t related. While the news was disappointing, it didn’t impact the relationship. Even when Madison moved to Virginia Beach, the friends remained in close contact.
After relocating south, Madison found herself hankering to find out about her origins. Tinetti, knowing not every story has a fairy tale ending, decided not to disturb the status quo. “Finding my biological family just wasn’t a thing for me. I grew up with a great family, so I just kind of left it to what it was,” she told Good Morning America.
In 2018, Madison’s adoptive mom gifted her with a genetic testing kit for Christmas. From there, Madison was able to locate several distant family members as well as a cousin back in Connecticut who was able to hook her up with her birth family in the Dominican Republic.
Sadly, her biological mom had passed away in 2015, but Madison was thrilled to learn that her father and seven siblings were alive and well and eager to meet her.
In 2019, Madison flew down for a reunion. “We bonded immediately,” she told The Washington Post. “It was like I had known them my whole life.”
The next part of the story sounds like something taken directly from the script of a telenovela.
In December of 2020, Tinetti’s childhood friend Molly Sapadin, who was now a friend of Madison’s as well, made a discovery. It seems Sapadin was also adopted from the Dominican Republic—on the same day as Tinetti. When Sapadin saw the surname “Collado” on Madison’s Facebook posts from the visit she’d made with her biological family it rang a bell.
Sapadin’s adoption papers revealed that she and Madison shared the same birth mother—only they didn’t. The adoption agency had, as subsequent DNA tests proved, accidentally switched Sapadin’s birth record with Tinetti’s.
As it turned out, Tinetti was Madison’s sister—and Sapadin was their cousin. (DNA testing also revealed that Sapadin has a twin sibling she’s yet to connect the dots with.)
When Madison spoke with her biological father, Adriano Luna Collado, he confirmed a second daughter had been put up for adoption when the family was facing dire financial hardship due to illness.
“He [told me], ‘It was just a difficult time for your mom and I. So, I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t like to think about it,’” Madison recounted in her interview with GMA.
Now, both sisters are hoping for a reunion when COVID-19 travel restrictions are eased. In the meantime, they’re getting to know their biological family in the Dominican Republic via video chat.
Thanks to a crazy wrinkle in the cosmos, two devoted friends are now two devoted sisters. But Tinetti, for one, believes in destiny. “Now that I look back on it, this had to happen. We were meant to cross paths like this,” she told the Post, adding with a laugh, “I will forever be her annoying little sister.”
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With so many streaming services, 24-hour news programs, and podcasts available for online entertainment, one farmer is thanking her lucky stars that someone simply wanted to watch an Internet livestream of a pigsty.
‘Swine cam’ livestream/June Farms
At the moment that Lucy and Ethel—a pair of pregnant pot-bellied pigs—seemed destined to be turned into a roast by a fire in the barn, Laura Palladino, who had tuned-in to the livestream to see if they had given birth, was able to call 911 and alert the farmers of the impending disaster.
Palladino had visited Ethel and Lucy some weeks before at their sty on June Farms in New York state, and took a liking to the animals—so much so that after the farmer had installed a webcam the day before the incident, she decided she would check up her new friends.
CBS news reports that according to Palladino, she was (perhaps unsurprisingly) the sole viewer of the livestream—the only one in the world who knew it was happening.
“I logged on and at first, I thought it was just, like, a wood-burning stove in the background,” Palladino told WKBN. When she realized it was a fire, she jumped into action, despite being 60 miles away, in a different county.
“I just called 911, but I’m in Dutchess County, so the 911 sent me to Dutchess County 911. And the operator, he was like, ‘What? You’re watching a YouTube video?’” she said.
Nevertheless, the call eventually got out to Matt Baumgartner and farmhand Joshua Vics, who rushed to the scene and saved the animals’ bacon. Apparently, clumsy Ethel had knocked over a heat lamp, which lit the straw ablaze.
“My mind immediately went to the worst. My heart dropped into my stomach,” Vics said. “I don’t like to think about how bad it could have been if she (Palladino) didn’t say something.”
(Watch the local TV news coverage below.)
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When photographer Edas Wong takes photos around the streets of Hong Kong, he captures random elements intertwining in images that are joyful, charming, and often surreal.
A stranger passing a large tree, leafy tree—to the playful eyes of Edas—looks like a man with a full and wonderful afro.
Edas Wong
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wong’s awesome mantra is: “Imagination is everything.”
Edas Wong
Check out the photo gallery of Ed’s work below. Then head to his Instagram for even more imagination. More fun.
Mr. Clooney has been looking a little different recently.
Edas Wong
You just know where that phone’s heading…
Edas Wong
What do you think he’s running from?
Edas Wong
One man’s trash is another woman’s (fashion) treasure?
Edas Wong
The past year sometimes has us feeling the same way…
Edas Wong
Oof! Now that’s gotta hurt.
Edas Wong
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When the pandemic turned in-person learning virtual for the students at a Washington, D.C. high school, one chemistry teacher didn’t take long to get creative with his lessons.
Jonte Lee
Jonte Lee’s turned his kitchen into a chemistry lab, and used his own money to buy and deliver supplies for his 35 students—then he got to teaching.
He Became known as The Kitchen Chemist and his videos have since gone viral with schoolchildren across America.
Jonte was even surprised by comedian Kevin Hart who joined one of the Zoom classes to announce the teacher had been named one of Amazon’s “Regular Heroes.”
Hart then bought the school brand new chemistry equipment and provided scholarships to the students.
Although he doesn’t think of himself as a hero, the teacher at Calvin Coolidge High said “I’m just doing me,” and he called the awards “an amazing gift”.
Find him on Instagram and get inspired by his bubbly chemistry and effervescent personality.
(WATCH the local news coverage featuring Jonte and Hart below.)
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In the birdwatching equivalent of discovering the site of the city of Troy, Asia’s longest-missing bird has been found in Indonesia.
For 170 years, the only known specimen of the black-browed babbler, found in Borneo, (thereby making it “Borneo’s black-browed babbler,”) was gathering dust at a Netherlands natural history museum.
Curious of the identity of a very much alive, small grey-brown bird flitting between the trees of South Kalimantan Province, Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan—birdwatchers from a club called BW Galetus—managed to hold and photograph the avian for a closer look.
As the bird soared through the air, it had the appearance of a Horsfield’s babbler, but the tentative identification never sat right with the pair: a hunch that birders among readers will know all too well.
Sending the pictures of the bird to another member of their bird club ended with word of the unusual bird getting around, and some with nose to the floor, thanking God for the good fortune.
They went to another BW Galetus member, then on to a professional ornithologist, Dr. Ding Li Yong, conservationist at BirdLife International in Singapore.
“It took me a while to come to grips with this thing,” Dr. Yong told the New York Times. Once he realized the photos were legitimate, he said, “I had a tear in my eye.”
“This is a really big deal for Indonesian ornithology—as shocking as rediscovering the passenger pigeon or Carolina parakeet. But this is closer to home, a bird from the part of the world I live in.”
Everyone involved in the discovery, including BW Galetus, hopes this will increase local interest in nature and wildlife, as well as bring tourist revenue to the region, especially in the form of birdwatchers.
For Suranto and Fauzan, the discovery yielded them new jobs—as professional birding guides. Java-based birding group Birdpacker hopes to launch an expedition to study the bird once COVID-19 restrictions ease, as basically everything about this special bird is still worth exploring.
Quote of the Day: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker
Photo by: Peyton Sickles
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Legendary quarterback Tom Brady might have taken home his seventh Super Bowl ring this past February, but arguably the biggest winner of the night wasn’t even in the game.
The honor goes instead to a small, independent bookstore in Boone, North Carolina, who, with the help of The Late Night Show host Stephen Colbert and some heavyweight Hollywood talent was thrown a hail-Mary pass that might just help keep the struggling shop from having to close its doors.
Buying Super Bowl advertising time is usually a multi-million-dollar proposition, but as Colbert, a vocal proponent for boosting local economies sacked by the COVID-19 pandemic explained in his post-game special: “These big companies aren’t the ones who need our support the most right now. It’s small businesses out there who have been hurt the most in this pandemic.”
After winnowing a field of likely candidates, Colbert’s research staff chose Foggy Pine Books as the number-one draft pick to be the recipient of its “very own, very real high-octane Super Sunday ad.”
Although they already had a GoFundMe campaign up seeking support, as well as regular Instagram updates detailing the shop’s precarious situation, owner Mary Ruthless isn’t sure why or how their business was chosen.
“It was kind of like winning the lottery,” Ruthless told WBTV News. “They wanted to feature a small business that had been hit hard by COVID and do what they could to promote them. I don’t know exactly what it was that caught their eye. I’m sure part of it was our drive-thru (lovingly lampooned in the commercial).
No matter how they’d made the cut, with a mandate to sell 1,350 books a month or face defeat, it was clear without some kind of change-up, the outlook for team Foggy Pine looked pretty bleak.
“I did everything I could try to do to stay in business,” Ruthless told TODAY. “There were several weeks I didn’t take a paycheck, I had to lay people off after our PPE ran out, but we made it through the holidays… I was really pleased with that, but winter is our slowest season and I was really concerned about whether or not we were going to make it through the season.”
With a compelling voiceover from honey-and-gravel-voiced actor Sam Elliott and Oscar-winner Tom Hanks providing a priceless deadpan endorsement as well as a jaunty closing jingle, the action-adventure-paced sky-diving spot may go down as one of the funniest and most charming commercials in television history.
Ruthless reports when the store opened for business the Monday after the Super Bowl ad aired, there were 500 book orders waiting, and business, while it’s settled down a bit after the initial bump, remains brisk.
“Three weeks ago we were wondering how we were going to make it through winter and now I’m having to hire a couple of extra people to process all the extra orders,” a grateful Ruthless told WBTV.
Like Sam Elliott said: “There’s a special breed that hungers for adventure and escape into the unknown. When you’re ready for that next chapter, there’s only one place to go… Foggy Pine Books in Boone, North Carolina.”
A hot, rocky “super Earth,” near one of the oldest stars in the galaxy has taken a team of planet-hunting scientists by surprise.
Rendering, W.M.Keck ObservatoryAdam Makarenko
The planet is about 50 percent larger than Earth but requires less than half a day to orbit its star.
“For every day you’re on Earth, this planet orbits its star twice,” said UC Riverside planetary astrophysicist and team member Stephen Kane.
Part of the reason for the short orbit is the planet’s proximity to its star, which also creates incredible heat. Its estimated average surface temperature is over 2,000 degrees Kelvin—much too toasty to host life as we know it today, though it may once have been possible.
In addition, Kane said that although the planet has roughly three times the mass of Earth, the team calculated its density to be the same as our planet.
“This is surprising because you’d expect the density to be higher,” Kane said. “This is consistent with the notion that the planet is extremely old.”
The older a planet is, the less dense it’s likely to be because not as many heavy elements were available when it formed, explained Kane. Heavy elements are produced by fusion reactions in stars as they age. Eventually stars explode, dispersing these elements from which new stars and planets will form.
Discovery of planet TOI-561b, and additional observations the team made about its composition, have been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.
“TOI-561b is one of the oldest rocky planets yet discovered,” said University of Hawaii postdoctoral fellow and team lead Lauren Weiss. “Its existence shows that the universe has been forming rocky planets almost since its inception 14 billion years ago.”
Named for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS Object of Interest (TOI) 561 belongs to a rare population of stars called the galactic thick disk. Stars in this region are chemically distinct, with fewer heavy elements such as iron or magnesium that are associated with planet building.
The TESS Mission team used the University of California’s access to the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii—home to some of the most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth—to confirm the presence of planet TOI-561b. The observatory’s equipment also helped the team calculate the planet’s mass, density, and radius.
Astronomers are continually trying to understand the relationship between the mass and radius of the planets they find. This information yields insight about the interior structure of planets that with today’s technology are too far away to visit and sample.
“Information about a planet’s interior gives us a sense of whether the surface of the planet is habitable by life as we know it,” Kane said. “Though this particular planet is unlikely to be inhabited today, it may be a harbinger of a many rocky worlds yet to be discovered around our galaxy’s oldest stars.”
Whether or not you like your peanut butter creamy or crunchy may actually say more about you than you think, according to a new survey.
The poll examined the peanut butter and snacking preferences of 2,000 Americans—evenly split by their preference of crunchy vs. creamy—and found enjoying a crunchy peanut butter may make you have a cheerier outlook on life.
Sixty-three percent of those who prefer crunchy peanut butter describe themselves as optimists, compared to 56% of those who prefer creamy.
Other personality traits for creamy fans included being more of an early bird and more introverted—whereas their crunchy counterparts were more likely to be night owls and extroverts.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Jif, the survey found that a third of all respondents described themselves as “extremely” passionate about their peanut butter preference.
Americans are so passionate, in fact, that rather than asking your date what they do for a living or where they’ll see themselves in five years—you may want to ask about their peanut butter preference. The results showed that nearly half of all respondents said it would be a deal-breaker to find out their date is on the opposite side of the creamy vs. crunchy debate.
Sixty-three percent of all respondents even said they will pass on the peanut butter altogether if it’s not the kind they prefer.
When asked to reflect on their childhoods, the results showed creamy fans were teased more over their peanut butter preference than their crunchy counterparts growing up (47% vs. 28%).
Surprisingly, those who prefer creamy were more likely to be judged for their preference than those who prefer crunchy—at 50% compared to 32%.
And 68% of creamy peanut butter fans said they’ve felt pressure to pick crunchy to fit in—compared to just 50% of crunchy fans.
Both groups do have some common ground, however, through their love of animals. When asked about their preference to dogs or cats—a third of both parties shared that they love both species equally.
Yet, it seems only 159,998 residents heeded the warning. The other two—Naoto Matsumura and Sakae Kato—remained. Their love of animals cracked through their innate sense of self-preservation and they decided to give up everything rather than consigning other beings to starvation.
Living within the 12.5-mile exclusion zone around the damaged reactor, the two men, unrelated to one another, both live alone while taking care of dozens of stray animals that were left behind when the evacuation order was given.
Reports from Reuters and DW state that 57-year-old Kato currently has 41 cats who live with him in his home in the mountains—along with a stray dog he adopted named Pochi. Kato says he will stay with his cats and ensure they are comfortable all through their lives.
Kato’s generosity isn’t restricted to his domesticated animals. He has taken to feeding local wild boars, considered pests by the government.
Naoto Matsumura left the city at first, but returned shortly after to retrieve his own animals. Once he arrived, the now 55-year-old realized that everyone else’s pets and livestock were still there, so he began taking care of a broad community of animals including pigs, cats, dogs, ponies, ostriches, and cows.
When he first evacuated, some of his family outside of the exclusion zone told him he couldn’t stay with them due to the risk of contamination. The refugee camps outside the area were quickly filling up, and Matsumura felt like everything out there was too much of a hassle.
GNN reported in 2015 that he went back inside the exclusion zone and realized local dogs had not eaten in several days. After it became clear no-one was coming back to the neighborhood, he went around unchaining dogs from trees, letting cows out of their barns, and feeding anything in need, earning him the moniker the ‘Guardian of Fukushima’s Animals’.
According to scientists from JAXA, the Japanese national space agency, Matsumura is also the “champion” on another list—he is the most irradiated man in the country. However, they have advised him it will likely be 30-40 years before radiation begins to wreck his biology, a timeline that would leave him “likely dead by then,” anyway.
Until that day, he funds the feeding of animals through local donations and had kept people up to date with news on his blog–posted by using solar power—though he lives without steady electricity or running water.
Everything both Kato and Matsumura are doing is technically illegal, and police have ordered them both to leave the area. Yet they seemingly couldn’t be less bothered by the government’s demands, and both plan to stay there with their animals, come what may.
(WATCH a local news report… )
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Herpetologists at the Manchester Museum have successfully bred a critically-endangered harlequin toad for the first time ever.
Brain Gratewick, CC 2.0 license
The scientists successfully recreated the habitat in which harlequin tadpoles grow up following years of meticulous work.
The breeding program will ensure that at least one of these charismatic amphibians—the veragoa stubfoot toad, has a failsafe mechanism for its survival should something happen to it in its rainforest home of Central America.
The genus atelopus, colloquially known as the harlequin toads, almost all range from endangered to critically endangered according to the IUCN Red List, and are found in the rainforests of South and Central America.
The breeding program in Manchester is the only one of its kind, as the toads are rare and difficult to study. Herpetologists studied the conditions in which atelopus varius lay their eggs, which turned out to be turbulent streams filled with boulders and stones, of a certain temperature and moisture level in the air, and bathed in a certain spectrum of light that allows for the growth of a tropical algae which the tadpoles eat when they’re young.
“The university is the only institution outside Panama to house these frogs. It’s a huge responsibility the team do not take lightly,” Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at the Manchester Museum told the Guardian. “So we’re over the moon we’ve achieved the first captive breeding of this remarkable species. Our success heralds the next chapter for more innovative amphibian conservation work.”
The beautiful toad, with its shiny black skin and undulating golden bands, is just one of 68 species under the atelopus genus.
The field work started in 2018 in and around Santa Fe National Park, with collaboration with Panama Wildlife Conservation (PWC) which for its part is trying to save the veragoa stubfoot toad by hosting workshops for school kids in rural areas.
They believe that if the next generation understands the value inherent in the harlequin toads, the better chance they will work for its protection when they grow up and inherit the society.
Manchester Museum is trying to raise money to continue the breeding project through various methods, including the Sponsor a Frog program, (even though it’s a toad) which has some pretty cool perks, including a personal behind-the-scenes tour of the museum’s vivarium where you can see and learn all about how the toads are kept, what they need to survive, and more.
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Quote of the Day: “What is Spring like? It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Photo by: Sergey Shmidt
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
On March 9 and 10, stargazers will get to see an impressive sight in the morning sky, as Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn appear in near-perfect alignment—and a sliver of the moon frames these planets towards the southeast horizon.
With this Quadruple Formation, all four celestial objects will be easy enough to see with the naked eye, but as always when it comes to gazing up at the night sky, binoculars or a telescope will help you spot extra details—such as Jupiter’s largest moons, and maybe even the rings of Saturn.
Rings of Saturn, NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jupiter will appear as the brightest of the three planets, while Mercury will be quite faint.
If Mercury appears as a tiny quarter moon through your telescope? That’s because only a small portion of the planet will appear illuminated to us on Earth. Our moon, right now, is also a waning crescent.
Wishing you the clearest mid-week skies, and that you enjoy the special show.
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What’s more addictive than squishing bubble wrap and hearing that satisfying “pop-pop-pop” sound? For one New York-based painter, the answer is using it to create some truly amazing art.
There are many famous schools of art: the Impressionists, the Surrealists, and the Cubists, to name a few. But while Bradley Hart’s work most closely mirrors the Pointillists—he’s even re-created George Seurat’s famous painting “A Sunday on the Grande Jatte” using his unique technique—Hart might most appropriately be termed an “Injectionist.”
Hart’s latest creation is an homage to rap legend Notorious B.I.G. “I load thousands of syringes with paint in preparation to begin the injection,” he said in an interview with ABC’s Localish program, “I’ve done portraits of the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain Michael Jackson, David Bowie, John Lennon.”
Invented in 1957, bubble wrap was originally intended to be marketed as textured wallpaper. What turned out to be a hard fail from the decorator point of view turned out to be a boon to the shipping industry—and to Bradley Hart.
“Researching the history of bubble wrap and realizing that it was meant to be wallpaper brought me around to this great idea,” Hart told Art Insider. “What is a painting—short of the cultural significance and historical value it may obtain over time? It’s ostensibly a wall covering.”
To date, Hart has completed just over a hundred injection paintings. The painstaking process involves filling row after row of tiny bubble wrap cells with different hues of acrylic paint to create an image. He estimates it takes four or five days to preload the 1,800 to 2,500 syringes his paintings require from a palette containing 116 colors.
Each project produces two separate paintings—the pixelated picture in front, and an impressionist image rendered by the drippings from the back—and takes between three weeks to a month to complete.
When he started out, Hart was only able to inject a few cells at a time before having to step back to review his progress. He’s since invented a computer algorithm that gives him a working bird’s eye view. While it makes the process faster, it’s still time-consuming.
And time is a precious commodity to Hart. Back in 2003 when he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, at the age of 31, his future seemed less than a pretty picture. Hart admits he felt as if his life was over.
Part of his treatment regimen involved self-injections. Initially, he balked at the idea of sticking himself with needles. He credits his artistic muse with eventually showing him the irony of his reluctance.
“I realized, ‘Oh my God, how perverse is this? You wouldn’t inject yourself for a decade, but you’re sitting here with thousands of syringes in front of you, injecting paint into bubble wrap!’” he told CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan on Sunday Morning.
Hart’s philosophy is simple. “Every drop of everything is potentially art,” he told Localish. “I’ve been very lucky and very thankful for the luck that I’ve been afforded. The art world has kind of enveloped me and help lift me up… It’s been really a big blessing.”
During the COVID-19 crisis, Hart has come to see bubble wrap not just as a medium, but also as a metaphor.
To quote Poet John Donne, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” It can be a difficult sentiment to hold for people trying to cope with pandemic-induced isolation. Not so for Bradley Hart.
“I joke to people that I live in a bubble,” told Sunday Morning. “We choose who we let into our circle. We’ve all been forced now to create micro-bubbles. But guess what? All these little micro-bubbles come together, they make a beautiful painting.”
And that is what we call a paint-by-injection masterpiece.
(WATCH the ABC Localish video about these artworks below.)
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Okere Mom-Kok was destroyed during the Ugandan Civil War in the 1980s, but is now being rebuilt into a sustainable community that’s home to 4,000 people.
Okere City is based around sustainable principles like renewable energy and the sustainable harvesting of natural resources.
The village has a clinic, church, school, a nightclub that doubles as a community center, markets, bars, and a bank. Electricity generated through solar energy is available to everyone, and clean water—thanks to modern borehole methods—keeps the all-too-normal cholera outbreaks in the region at bay.
An expert in international development and graduate of the London School of Economics, Ojok Okello started the project with a $54,000 investment from his own pocket. The village of Okere Mom-Kok was where he had some extended family, and it was during a visit that he decided to put what he learned in university to action.
“I don’t want this project to be at the mercy of some white people,” Okello told The Guardian, explaining how he had seen many NGO-funded projects on the continent fail by not involving the very communities they were helping.
While the Okere City project might conjure images of an equitable utopia, there’s a lot of business and banking knowledge that Mr. Okello utilized to ensure the community could survive and grow.
All businesses in the town pay for themselves—for example, the school allows pupils to pay up to half their tuition in sugar, beans, firewood, or other commodities, while the clinic has flexible installment-billing policies. An Okere City investment club runs a sort of credit union by taking members’ dues and offering them as loans to those in the community who need them—often to develop local resources.
“I looked at [the shea tree] and realized that we have this important natural resource and we were not harnessing it,” Okello told The Guardian. “And I thought about [Marvel Cinema’s] Wakanda and Black Panther, they had vibranium, this shea tree could be our vibranium.”
Max Kane was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease after years of eating the standard American diet high in salt, fat, and sugar. While it’s not clear whether his poor diet brought about this autoimmune disease, what is clear was things changed when he began working with his dietitian.
Kane’s health flourished, he gained 50 lbs. of lean-muscle mass, and the catalyst was a new eating program consisting solely of foods grown and made on farms in his area.
Along with his diet and health, Kane’s attitude changed as well, and he took up the torch as a proud member of the farm-to-table, small farm movement by creating FarmMatch.com—the simplest tool desirable for those looking to support small farmers in their area, and to increase the quality of the contents of their fridge.
FarmMatch.com couldn’t be simpler to use. Just enter your zip code, choose from the list of farms, fill up your basket with their products, and then choose whether you want to pick it up, or receive it at your door.
Best of all, because many of these small farms provide foot to restaurants and other city locations, those living in the hearts of large cities can get farm-fresh produce and meat without needing drive an hour outside of town for the produce.
“There’s just tens of thousands of small farms that are making deliveries into the city already, and they have these drop locations, or pickup location food distribution models where they go to all these different neighborhoods around the city and you meet them at the pickup location and get your food,” explains Kane in a podcast interview.
While FarmMatch is as simple a tool as you like, Kaane hopes to build an application where locals buying from the platform can upload their orders to a community database. If there are people in low-income areas that maybe don’t have means of getting to a pickup location, neighbors driving there will have the opportunity to lend a hand.
This, Kane says, not only builds community relationships—it keeps the cost of products low, since the small farmers don’t have to expedite each and every home delivery.
“In a effective, tangible way it [FarmMatch] really addresses the fragileness of our food system,” says Kane, noting the bare supermarket shelves that typified the early months of COVID-19 lockdowns.
For those who just read a four-page feature article somewhere on “adaptive multi-paddock rotational grazing strategies” for livestock, or on permaculture and agroforestry, but then realized they had no access to any of this superior quality food, there may be a farm waiting for you, and your dollar, closer than you expect.
More than 40,000 small farmers are already coordinating with Kane to make their product available to people in their area, which as of December 2020 had facilitated 600,000 orders.
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After the most destructive cyclone in Fijian history smashed into the island four years ago, it was feared the rich coral reefs surrounding the island would never recover.
Reefs across the Namena Reserve and Vatu-i-Ra Conservation Park were devastated by Cyclone Winston in 2016—which hurtled over ocean and land with 170 mph (280 kph) winds—but a recent dive expedition by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) revealed there’s nothing to fear, and the corals are reproducing at an exceptional rate.
WCS Fiji-chapter expedition leader Dr. Sangeeta Mangubhai said in a statement: “We saw large areas of reef covered by branching corals all roughly the same size and likely to be around four years in age. These new corals are covering surfaces and are providing new habitat for fish.”
Along with brightly colored corals, the area was teeming with tropical fish and other sea life. This is crucial to parts of the Fijian population which depend on the bounty of the sea and the reefs for income and food security.
WCS Melanesia Director, Dr. Stacy Jupiter, said: “At a period in history where every day we are seeing bad news in the papers and on television, this is a good news story. Our Fiji reefs are showing that they are stronger than Winston.”
Together, Namena and Vatu-i-Ra protected areas cover around 120 square miles, (200 square kilometers) spread across varied marine habitats such as small islets, shallow sands, deep water passages, and more.
It is the largest area to be managed by local communities in the country, who have established rotational catch strategies in their traditional fisheries called “Tabu,” where citizens who require seafood to sell and eat do so in a regenerative way that keeps their traditions alive.
The total ecosystem expands past 27,000 square kilometers, and the reefs are a vital part of ensuring marine visitors to the islands—like the humpback whale—will have a warm welcome when they come in the spring to calve.
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