Quote of the Day: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
Photo by: Rod Long
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?
Look up at the night sky on January 10 to see a rare ‘triple conjunction’ of planets, as Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury form a tight triangle in the sky.
The best time to see this phenomenon will be around 45 minutes after sunset on Sunday, by looking low in the sky toward the southwest horizon.
While you won’t need to borrow star-watching equipment from the Mauna Kea Observatories to see the triple conjunction, a pair of home binoculars will definitely help you to see these planets form a tight bud just 1.6° apart.
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To have something to compare the conjunction to, it’s a good idea to look up in the evenings before and after January 10 too. That way, you’ll be able to track this planetary trio as they move in close together, and then apart.
According to Space, Mercury will appear around 2.5 times dimmer than Jupiter, and four times brighter than Saturn.
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If we’re lucky, most of us remember that one special person from our school days who made us feel that we truly mattered: the English teacher who lifted up every child’s voice to be heard and acknowledged; the math teacher who made sure no student making a real effort failed on his watch; the coach who meted out compassion as well as discipline; the principal who established a food pantry to help alleviate her most vulnerable students’ food insecurities.
Indianapolis preschool director Renee Dixon is a shining example of this breed of exemplary educators. In the months leading up to Christmas, Dixon took it upon herself to make sure that all 50 children who attend Lynhurst Baptist Church Preschool would be assured a visit from Santa.
To make it happen, Dixon took on a weekend job, logging in hour upon hour driving Uber and Lyft passengers to their various destinations. It’s not the first time she’s done it, but this year, she also made sure she was maintaining proper COVID-19 protocol the entire time.
Dixon’s motivation was simple: Having grown up as the child of a single-parent, low-income family, she knew firsthand what it felt like to go without. With many already struggling, she knew that 2020’s pandemic meant many parents would be paying bills rather than purchasing presents.
“So many of our families don’t have money to get Christmas presents this year. Some parents have lost their jobs, others have had their wages cut back,” Dixon told The Washington Post. “A lot of them already come from low-income families and are below the poverty line.”
Eva Cheung, who works with Dixon’s husband, volunteered time and money to help Dixon shop. The two took Target by storm. “…We went down the aisles, throwing gifts in the cart. It was pure joy,” Cheung said. “She was so gracious and thankful, and she told me about what she has been through.
“You read about people like Renee, but when you are finally able to connect with somebody like that and help fulfill their vision, it’s an amazing feeling.”
All told, Dixon not only raised enough money to gift her students with presents, and had enough left over to get something for their siblings and Christmas bonuses for her staff as well.
For Dixon, the spirit of giving has always been its own reward but she did share what she’d been doing with passengers—who recorded their inspirational conversation—and in the way of the modern world, one thing led to another. The local story went national and donations began pouring in.
But when a little bird told Pat Hurst, general manager of the Andy Mohr Nissan dealership in Avon that the one thing on Dixon’s own wish list was a Nissan Armada with enough room to accommodate her kids and grandchildren, he decided turnabout was more than fair play for this hometown Santa.
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“We couldn’t be more happy to provide her with her Christmas gift,” Hurst told KENS-5 News.
Dixon was floored and extremely grateful. “I needed something in my life… So, like everybody else, I needed that little spark that there’s people out there that still care. That lets you know that everything is going to be alright,” said Dixon, who, even after having lost three family members to COVID this year, had managed to stay the course and fulfill her gift-giving mission.
Although no one who knows her was the least bit surprised.
“Everyone always told me I have a big heart,” Dixon told WTHR-13. “I said, ‘No, I love children.’”
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If, in the end, it’s as L. Frank Baum wrote in ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’—“A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others”—for those lucky enough to be blessed by Renee Dixon’s special magic, she will never be found wanting.
(WATCH the KENS 5 video to learn Renee’s story below.)
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Lenny, a one-year-old central bearded dragon, can be seen with tiny pots of soup, miniature biscuits, and dinky cheeses in his debut book ‘Chef Lenny: Cooking for Humans.’
The cookbook was the brainchild of Lenny’s owner Valerie Musser, a chef and lizard lover from Redmond in Washington state.
“It was my quarantine project,” said Valerie, a mom-of-three who ran a small catering business before the pandemic hit.
“I’d been writing a cookbook for about 10 years but never really had the time to sit down and sort through it.”
With quarantine, Valerie suddenly found herself with the surplus of time she’d be looking for. Before long, she’d bought Lenny the lizard a little chef’s hat from Etsy. “He actually loves wearing hats and posing for photos,” she said, “so I started making miniature food for him to show off with.”
All the miniature food in the book is real and the dishes are Valerie’s favorite comfort foods that she serves to her family, with chicken pot pie, blueberry muffins, and home-cooked tacos all featuring.
“Initially I posted a few pictures of Lenny cooking on Instagram and the feedback was so positive, people were writing things like, ‘this made my day’ and ‘this really cheered me up,’” Valerie explained, “so I realized that people actually needed this.”
Valerie said that Lenny has the perfect personality to be a chef. “He is very pretentious,” she joked. “His body language is kind of crazy, he wants what he wants, he’s very demanding and he’s kind of a snob about food, very fussy, so this project fits him very well.”
In fact, Lenny won’t even eat from a dish but prefers to be hand-fed.
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Lizards are very expressive creatures, Valerie explains. They can dream and have nightmares and they use their body language to convey their feelings. They’ll change their coloring if they are angry or cold, “and if the tips of their scales go orange it means they are super happy.”
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The 134-page cookbook is available on Etsy and Amazon with the option of bespoke dietary alterations on request.
Let’s take a look at some of Lenny’s finest creations:
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Ramu Dosapati earns his living as a corporate HR executive, but it’s the selfless spin he’s put on “human resources” in his private life that makes him truly remarkable.
In 2020, hardships brought on by heavy flooding and compounded by the added limitations of the COVID-19 lockdown left many migrant workers in the Hyderabad region of India stranded without means of support. Dosapati, who lives with his family there, has made it his mission to ensure the area’s struggling workers won’t go without food and other essential items.
To ease the migrant workers’ burden, Dosapati has spent ₹50 lakh of his own funds (close to $61,000) to establish and run a ‘Rice ATM’, doling out rice and other necessities 24 hours a day, seven days a week to those in need.
His first step along the road to altruism began simply enough, but he had no way of knowing then just how far his journey would take him, and the amount of good he would do along the way.
Dosapati had gone to the store to pick up the makings for his son’s birthday dinner. While at the shop, he noticed a woman buying an enormous quantity of chicken—close to $2,500 dollars’ worth, in fact.
Intrigued, he couldn’t help but ask her purpose in buying so much poultry. As it turned out, the woman, a security guard who works at a camp for migrant workers, was buying it as a special treat for residents there who’d run out of food.
“When I asked her about her salary, she said it was ₹6,000. That made me think that if a lady with ₹6,000 salary can spend ₹2,000 on the needy, why can’t I do the same?” Dosapati told Business Insider India.
Soon after, Dosapati accompanied the security guard to the camp, where he made a list of close to 200 people in need of assistance. He quickly realized, however, the initial investment he’d allotted would only last a few days.
Undaunted, Dosapati cashed in his retirement fund, and working with a local merchant, opened the Rice ATM cum food pantry. But Dospati wasn’t finished.
While he’d been working toward moving his family into a larger home and had already sold a parcel of ancestral land to secure funding, when Dosapati learned yet another new group of workers had arrived seeking aid, with the blessings of his family, he put those dreams on hold.
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“That’s when my wife supported me and asked me to go ahead and carry on with the initiative,” he said.
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Since the Rice ATM launched this past April, word of Dosapati’s generosity has made the rounds. With support from a number of outside sources now pouring in, the man who has truly put the “human” in human resources says he hopes to keep resources flowing for those in need for a long time to come.
(WATCH the Business Insider India video to learn more about this story.)
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Adidas has announced it’s launching a line of sneakers made from mushroom-based leather.
As part of a 2021 sustainability initiative from Europe’s largest sportswear manufacturer, the new Stan Smiths will be entirely vegan, and created using mycelium: that is, the vegetative part of fungi that produces mushrooms.
On December 28, the German multinational announced that “adidas seeks to break new ground: Together with partners, adidas is developing a new material, a purely biological leather alternative made from mycelium, and will use it for the very first time in the creation of footwear.”
This isn’t the company’s first foray into vegan footwear. In 2020, Adidas launched plant-based versions of several classic sneakers, which quickly became bestsellers. Now it’s completely renounced the use of fur in all products, and it’s working with partners on other sustainability projects that include recycling cotton and developing a “particularly climate-friendly running shoe” as part of a drive that will see 60% of all Adidas products in 2021 being made with sustainable materials.
To create their mushroom-leather shoes, Adidas is working with the biotech startup Bolt Threads, which partners with many global brands such as Stella McCartney and Lululemon in the quest to bring its vegan vision to the masses. Celebrities including John Legend Natalie Portman have all invested in the company.
MORE: Adidas Ensuring That All Their Shoes Can Be 100% Recycled into New Ones Without Any Waste
While the new mushroom-based shoes are yet to be released, they’re part of a wider Adidas commitment to the planet that involves an end goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050.
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“Sustainability is an integral part of the adidas business philosophy,” said CEO Kasper Rorsted. “We have continued to invest in sustainability initiatives during the coronavirus pandemic and we will significantly expand our range of sustainable products in 2021.”
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Quote of the Day: “I close my eyes to old ends. And open my heart to new beginnings.” – Nick Frederickson
Photo by: istlona
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?
With all the hardships they endured in 2020, many people found it more difficult than usual to believe in Santa Claus. That’s why Santa went out of his way for some folks in the Canadian city of Edmonton to make sure they knew he still believed in them.
A St. Nick who chooses to remain nameless left envelopes containing an inspirational rhyme along with $250 gift-cards on approximately 400 doorsteps, bringing unexpected cheer to the families within. (For those who don’t know it, Santa’s also a poet.)
The unexpected gift brought tears to eyes of Elisha Tennant, who’d been laid off as a result of the pandemic. “To have something like this, I mean, that’s a month of groceries for us,” Tennant told CBC News. “It was just very heartwarming and touching that someone would do that.”
When Santa blanketed the west end and Alberta Avenue neighborhoods, he also suggested that if someone didn’t truly need the extra bonus, that they pass it along to someone who did:
“Whatever it is that you set out to do, remember to just believe in you. Don’t need this? Please pass the baton,
for that is the way hope carries on.”
Several recipients took him up on that, donating their gift cards to charity.
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The only clue to the selfless Santa’s identity was an email address at the bottom of the notes. CBC News did reach out, but the cagey old elf preferred not reveal his or her identity. The anonymous do-gooder did, however, clarify why 2020 prompted them to take up St. Nick’s mantle:
“I decided to do it because I know that lots of people have had a really tough year and I had the means to help out,” Santa wrote via email. “I hope the gifts gave people a sense that the world is good and there is a brighter future not far ahead.”
As we saw over the year just past, even when things looked their darkest, there’ve been generous people around the globe who stepped up in big ways to fill Santa’s snowy boots time and again. Whether or not you believe in Santa Claus, that spirit of giving has the potential to shine in all of us.
And when it does? Well, that’s what makes Good News.
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The more chaotic things get, the harder it is for people with clinical anxiety or depression to make sound decisions and to learn from their mistakes. On a positive note, overly anxious and depressed people’s judgment can improve if they focus on what they get right, instead of what they get wrong, suggests a new UC Berkeley study.
The findings, published in the journal eLife, are particularly salient in the face of a COVID-19 surge that demands tactical and agile thinking to avoid illness.
UC Berkeley researchers tested the probabilistic decision-making skills of more than 300 adults, including people with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. In probabilistic decision making, people, often without being aware of it, use the positive or negative results of their previous actions to inform their current decisions.
The researchers found that the study participants whose symptoms intersect with both anxiety and depression—such as worrying a lot, feeling unmotivated, or not feeling good about themselves or about the future—had the most trouble adjusting to changes when performing a computerized task that simulated a volatile or rapidly changing environment.
Conversely, emotionally resilient study participants, with few, if any, symptoms of anxiety and depression, learned more quickly to adjust to changing conditions based on the actions they had previously taken to achieve the best available outcomes.
“When everything keeps changing rapidly, and you get a bad outcome from a decision you make, you might fixate on what you did wrong, which is often the case with clinically anxious or depressed people,” said study senior author Sonia Bishop, a professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. “Conversely, emotionally resilient people tend to focus on what gave them a good outcome, and in many real-world situations that might be key to learning to make good decisions.”
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That doesn’t mean people with clinical anxiety and depression are doomed to a life of bad decisions, Bishop said. For example, individualized treatments, such as cognitive behavior therapy, could improve both decision-making skills and confidence by focusing on past successes, instead of failures, she noted.
The study expands on Bishop’s 2015 study, which found that people with high levels of anxiety made more mistakes when tasked with making decisions during computerized assignments that simulated both stable and rapidly changing environments. Conversely, non-anxious study participants quickly adjusted to the changing patterns in the task.
For this latest study, Bishop and her team looked at whether people with depression would also struggle to make sound decisions in volatile environments and whether this would hold true when challenged with different versions of the task.
“We wanted to see if this weakness was unique to people with anxiety, or if it also presented in people with depression, which often goes hand in hand with anxiety,” Bishop said. “We also sought to find out if the problem was a general one or specific to learning about potential reward or potential threat.
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The first experiment involved 86 men and women aged between 18 and 50. The group included people diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, people who showed symptoms of anxiety or depression, but no formal diagnoses of these disorders, and people with neither anxiety nor depression.
In a laboratory setting, study participants played a game on a computer screen in which they repeatedly chose between two shapes—a circle and a square. One shape, if selected, would deliver a mild to moderate electrical shock, and another would deliver a monetary prize. The probability of a shape delivering a reward or a shock was predictable at some points in the task, and volatile in others. Participants with high levels of symptoms common to depression and anxiety had trouble keeping pace with these changes.
In the second experiment, 147 U.S. adults, with varying degrees of anxiety and depression were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing marketplace and given the same task remotely. This time, they chose between red and yellow squares on a screen. They still received monetary rewards, but instead of being penalized with electric shocks, they lost money.
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The results echoed those of the in-laboratory outcomes. Overall, having symptoms common to both anxiety and depression predicted who would struggle most with making sound decisions in the face of changing circumstances, regardless of whether they were rewarded or punished for getting things right or wrong, compared to their emotionally resilient counterparts.
READ: If You Feel Like Things Are Falling Apart, They Are Probably Actually Coming Together
“We found that people who are emotionally resilient are good at latching on to the best course of action when the world is changing fast,” Bishop said “People with anxiety and depression, on the other hand, are less able to adapt to these changes. Our results suggest they might benefit from cognitive therapies that redirect their attention to positive, rather than negative, outcomes.”
Source: UC Berkeley
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Back when he was Puffy, Sean Diddy Combs informed the world, “It’s all about the Benjamins”. Last week, however, it was all about the “Ulysseses” as the rap mogul handed out $50-dollar COVID relief “grants” to hundreds of residents in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood.
Observing health and safety protocol, Combs and his kids also distributed supermarket gift cards and gift bags filled with essential hygiene products.
Additionally, Comb’s charitable organization, in tandem with event organizer/philanthropist Michael Gardner and local youth group Teens Exercising Extraordinary Success, pulled together rent assistance for 175 area families suffering pandemic-related financial hardship.
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“I talked to Diddy and he wanted to do something to give back to the community,” Gardner told The Miami Herald. “He didn’t want to have to go through the traditional channels. He really wanted to make sure the people in the community actually received the gift[s].”
Diddy held a giveaway in Miami yesterday passing out stacks of cash & gift cards for the holiday season 💚 pic.twitter.com/cfjFO4huyx
— Rap All-Stars 🏆 (@RapAllStars) December 30, 2020
Diddy’s hands-on approach was met with overwhelming enthusiasm. The sentiments of the crowd (estimated to have topped 1,200) was summed up by one thankful woman who said, “It’s a blessing for me and my family to come out here and get a gift card. [It’s] something I appreciate so much.”
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A man turns nature into art with his intricate leaf cuttings featuring anything from ballerinas to flamingos to Harry Potter.
29-year-old Kanat Nurtazin uses a sharp razor to cut his drawings into leaves, and his unique art has even caught the attention of Disney.
He began making leaf cuttings in 2013 as a hobby, and now estimates he has created around 500 of the foliage cut-outs.
Kanat, from Kazakhstan, was looking for a creative outlet at the time, and says: “I started experimenting with different things: writing poems, creating music—I stopped on drawing.”
He had seen cutouts on paper before, but Kanat saw all the fall leaves on the ground, he decided to use them instead of paper.
His leaf art is a part of a project he calls his ‘100 methods of drawing’, which experiments with different techniques.
He currently has almost 70 methods, including some that use fluorescent tape or coffee packets.
Kanat poses each cutout in front of the sky, buildings, flowers, or anything else that fits in with the design on the leaf, and takes a photo of it.
When he began posting his work on Instagram, where they gained popularity, he was even contacted by Nickelodeon and Disney to help create content for them.
However, Kanat said that he still does the art mainly as a hobby, but he will sometimes auction some favorite works off, sending the proceeds to charities he sees are in need.
Overall though, his leaf art is a way for Kanat to express himself. He said, “Art for me is something to transfer yourself to another place, to be alone with your feelings and thoughts.
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“It’s just a place where I can be myself and share my ideas. Some of my works are touching social problems and I try to express myself with the help of art.”
Let’s take a look at some of Kanat’s works.
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It may look like a prime spot for a snowball fight, but on this beach in Finland the fun is only in the viewing.
When an amateur photographer went for a walk on Marjaniemi beach, they witnessed a rare and surreal natural phenomenon.
Risto Mattila and his wife are now considering themselves among the lucky few who have been blessed with the chance to see thousands of “ice balls” covering a stretch of shoreline on Hailuoto Island.
According to weather experts, the balls are formed when pieces of ice are buffeted by wind and rough waters. Mattila says that some of the frozen spheres were the size of soccer balls.
Hailuoto island, which sits between Sweden and Finland, is not the only frigid region to create such a breathtaking phenomenon, but Mattila feels lucky to have witnessed for the first time such a thing.
“That was an amazing view. I have never seen anything like this during 25 years living in the vicinity,” Mattila told BBC. “Since I had a camera with me I decided to preserve this unusual sight for posterity.”
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Quote of the Day: “This year, be structured enough for success and achievement and flexible enough for creativity and fun.” – Taylor Duvall
Photo by: Justin Luebke
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?
Juliana Fetherman’s 22-year-old brother has autism and ADHD and has been very lonely, due to his lack of friends.
Michael doesn’t have the social skills to meet and engage with new people and it’s bothered her for a long time—so she made an app for that.
Called Making Authentic Friendships, the app can connect people over age 13 who have special needs so they can make friends based on age, diagnosis, interest and geographic location, according to KING 5 news.
The app, available for both Android and iOS devices, is now serving communities in all 50 states, as well as 45 countries.
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Juliana, who recently earned an MBA at a Connecticut university, says she is pledging to dedicate her “entire life” to “bettering the lives with those with autism and other special needs.”
WATCH the video below – and learn more on their website, Making Authentic Friendships.
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Joe Hylton, has been driving big rigs for two years and, by his count, this is the seventh time he’s come to the rescue on the scene of an accident—and this time, perhaps, was the most heartwarming.
Driving for Perdue Farms, he was traveling at night down Delaware’s Route 1 recently, when he came across the scene of a bad accident. Both cars were nearly destroyed, and a man was frantically running down the highway.
Hylton pulled over and walked out into the middle of high-speed traffic in the dark to direct drivers away from the two wrecked cars. Then one of the drivers started to scream that he couldn’t find his daughter.
As a father of three, Hylton recalled, “I see a frantic father running around. He’s looking in the back of his truck and saying ‘I can’t find my daughter, I can’t find my daughter.’ I looked in and I saw an empty car seat in the back of the truck.”
Joe immediately went into “dad” mode and began to search through the marshy area along the road using his flashlight.
He finally came across a small gray bundle. At first he was afraid to look, knowing the type of injuries the two-year old could have sustained after being ejected from the car, but to his astonishment the little girl reached up to him without a single scratch.
The tearful dad thanked Joe, who got back in his truck and went on his way.
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However, a New Jersey Fire Department Battalion Chief, who happened to arrive on the scene, was able to track down Joe to recognize him for his heroism.
The Delaware State Police is now awarding Joe its Good Samaritan honor, and he was praised by his employer also.
“There is so much craziness going on in the world, I don’t believe in receiving accolades for helping somebody out,” responded the ‘super humble’ trucker. “That’s what we’re all supposed to do.”
“When I saw the look on his face, I said, ‘Man, I have to do something.’ To look at the empty car seat, your heart just drops.”
“As I got closer to her, it was like the Lord picked her up. She sat herself up and crossed her legs Indian style and stuck her hands up for me to pick her up.”
“I grabbed her and called for the dad, the dad came running over, and we had a hug. We didn’t know each other, I never met him before in my life. But I’ll tell you we knew each other in that moment.”
“Everyone is so angry and upset, it seems like the world is on a level ten right now. A little bit of good will go a long way. It gives me hope that things are on the mend, that things are changing.”
“Most of the time it pays to be calm in those situations. That is the most helpful. Even if you don’t know first aid, if you can just identify where the people are and how to get help to them, that will save a life.”
CHECK OUT: Trucker Posts Hilarious Pics While ‘Babysitting’ His Daughter’s Doll for the Day
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A young teen in Texas became the secret Santa for 61 homeless children, showering them with Christmas presents this year.
Jaxson Turner raised $5,900 through GoFundMe and social media to supply all the kids at The Samaritan Inn with new sneakers, coats, socks, toys and a hot meal for the holidays.
“I think we need to help them because so many families during this pandemic are losing their jobs or their houses and moms are already worrying about being homeless,” Jaxson said.
“Why should they worry about Christmas for their children too?”
This was the 13-year-old’s third year holding the Christmas event for the shelter in McKinney, Texas, under his nonprofit called Never Too Young To Care (N2Y2C).
After Jaxson began collecting donations October 1, he held his big giveaway party in December, catering a dinner for all the families where he served Chick-fil-A, Pizza Hut, macaroni, chicken nuggets, and cookies.
“Some people were crying tears,” Jaxson said about the families that night.
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“One of the families with four kids and a mother let me know that their children had never gotten brand new shoes before.”
Jaxson founded N2Y2C three years ago on his birthday.
“My mom kept asking over and over what I wanted to do for my birthday and that’s when I decided I wanted to feed the homeless,” he said.
“I would always see homeless families on the street asking for food and I thought no family should go without an Easter dinner meal.”
In addition to the yearly Easter and Christmas events, N2Y2C also holds a yearly domestic violence awareness event, donating toilet paper, socks, laundry detergent and monetary assistance to a domestic violence organization.
WATCH: Tennessee Teen Raises Thousands of Dollars For Food Banks By Making and Selling His Own Vanilla
They also hold a back to school event, raising money for backpacks, school supplies and haircuts for children.
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After a difficult few months, a preschool teacher hit a stroke of good luck when he decided to buy two lottery tickets, instead of one.
Joe Camp was laid off in September after 20 years teaching preschool in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“A month after that, my dad passed away,” said Camp. “And it put me in a dark place.”
But he had a lot of friends and family who told him to “keep sticking in there, keep believing in myself.”
After finding a job at a car dealership sales center, Camp struck ‘gold’.
In December, he was buying his weekly Gold Rush lottery scratch-off ticket—and this time he bought two.
He didn’t win on the first one, so scratched off the second one, and found he’d won $250,000.
“I fell to my knees at the gas pump.”
His plans include a new home for his daughter and himself, and saving for her education.
“I want to get a home because I want to set it up for my family, my grandkids,” he said. “I want to have something for us.
“I never had anything, no one passed anything down, and that’s what I want to do.”
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Quote of the Day: “New year: a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.” – Alex Morritt
Photo by: Aziz Acharki
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?
Grandparents who hadn’t hugged their grandsons since March shared a loving embrace, thanks to a bright idea to use inflatable polar bear costumes.
Barbara and Clive Walshaw said the heartwarming hug was the “best six minutes” they had all year.
They got to hold their three grandkids Quinn, six, Morgan, eight, and Mackenzie, 14, for the first time since March 1, after surprising them with the costumes.
The couple had been self-isolating and Barbara said it was heartbreaking for the children when they were told they couldn’t nip round to see them for Christmas.
They had originally planned to spend Christmas “together” on a Zoom call with a laptop at the end of the dinner table.
But the ingenious grandmother stumbled upon the inflatable polar bears while Christmas shopping online and realized she had found a way to hug her beloved grandchildren safely, on December 25.
She said it was the “best £15 she’d ever spent” as it brought so much joy and a “pure Christmas spirit”.
The couple, who are in their 70s, snuck up to their grandchildren’s home in Kirkstall, Leeds, and hugged it out while protected by the 6-foot costumes.
“It was really hard on all of the boys,” says Barbara. “We normally spend Christmas day with them and we wondered what we were going to do with all that’s been going on.”
The tight-knit family normally spend two to three days every week together, with a spare room for the boys to stay overnight.
“The costumes worked really well. Totally enclosed. It was the best idea I’ve ever had I think.”
“The younger boy was a bit overawed by these massive polar bears, but when he realized it was us it was so lovely. So many cuddles. It was amazing.”
“Everyone was so happy in those six minutes. And we laughed and cried. I loved it.”
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At around noon on Christmas Day, Neil Walshaw, 45, and his wife Hazel, told their three boys that they’d heard a rumor that there were polar bear sightings in Kirkstall.
When they walked out they spotted their grandparents bouncing over hysterically in the massive costumes.
His youngest son Quinn was so shocked when he saw nana and grandpa walk up to their home that he sprinted back into the house and out again “to make sure it was real”.
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Neil, said it was the best hug his boys ever had, and a memory they would “never forget”.
“They are the best grandparents in Leeds. They’re simply fantastic.”
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We’ve partnered with our friend Rob Brezsny to provide his weekly wisdom which can enlighten your thinking and motivate your mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week beginning December 31, 2020
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
The odds of winning a mega lottery can be compared to this scenario: You know that a certain hedgehog will sneeze just one time in the next six years, and you place a big bet that this sneeze will take place at exactly the 36th second of 12:05 pm next January 20. In other words, your chances of winning that lottery are very small. But while this analysis is true in general, it may not be completely applicable to you in 2021. The likelihood of you choosing the precise moment for the hedgehog’s sneeze will be higher than usual. More realistically and importantly, your chances for generating positive financial luck through hard work and foresight will be much higher than usual.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Author Anais Nin was supremely adaptable, eager to keep growing, and receptive when life nudged her to leave the past behind and expand her understanding. At the same time, she was clear about what she wanted and determined to get what she wanted. Her complex attitude is summed up in the following quote: “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.” I hope you will heed her counsel throughout 2021. (Here’s another quote from Nin: “Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
In 2013, workers at a clothing manufacturing plant in Gazipur, Bangladesh staged a mass protest. Did they demand a pay raise or better health benefits? Were they lobbying for air conditioning or longer lunch breaks? None of the above. In fact, they had just one urgent stipulation: to dispel the ghost that was haunting the factory. I’ve got a similar entreaty for you in 2021, Pisces. I request that you exorcise any and all ghosts that have been preventing you from fully welcoming in and embracing the future. These ghosts may be purely metaphorical in nature, but you still need to be forceful in banishing them.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Author Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) carried on a long love affair with books. He read thousands of them, wrote more than 20 of them, and further postulated the existence of numerous imaginary books that were never actually written. Of all the writers who roused his adoration, a certain Russian novelist was among the most beloved. Borges wrote, “Like the discovery of love, like the discovery of the sea, the discovery of Fyodor Dostoevsky marks an important date in one’s life.” I’m wondering if you will experience one of these pivotal discoveries in 2021. I strongly suspect so. It may not be the work of Dostoevsky, but I bet it will have an impact close to those of your original discoveries of love and the sea.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has won numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize. Here are his views about the nature of accomplishment: “We don’t succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what we have to do. We fail because others understand this better than we do.” I bring these thoughts to your attention, Taurus, because I think that in 2021 you will have an extraordinary potential to enhance your understanding of how the world works and what you must do to take advantage of that. This could be the year you become both smarter and wiser.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Modern civilization has not spread to every corner of the planet. There are at least 100 tribes that inhabit their own private realms, isolated from the invasive sprawl of our manic, frantic influence. Among these enclaves, many are in the Amazon rain forests, West Papua, and the Andaman Islands. I have a theory that many of us civilized people would love to nurture inner qualities akin to those expressed by indigenous people: hidden away from the mad world; content to be free of the noise and frenzy; and living in attunement with natural rhythms. In 2021, I hope you will give special care and attention to cultivating this part of you.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Hurricane Maria struck the Caribbean island of Dominica in 2016. Scientists studied two local species of anole lizards both before and after the natural disaster. They were amazed to find that the lizards after the hurricane had super-strong grips compared to their predecessors. The creatures were better able to hold on to rocks and perches so as to avoid being swept away by high winds. The researchers’ conclusion? It’s an example of one of the most rapid rates of evolutionary change ever recorded. I bring this to your attention, Cancerian, because I suspect that you, too, will have the power to evolve and transform at an expedited pace in 2021—in response to positive events as much as to challenging events.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
I hope that in 2021 you will spend a lot of time meditating on your strongest longings. Are they in harmony with your highest ideals, or not? Do they energize you or drain you? Are they healthy and holy, or are they unhealthy or unholy—or somewhere in between those two extremes? You’ll be wise to re-evaluate all your burning, churning yearnings, Leo—and decide which ones are in most righteous service to your life goals. And as for those that are in fact noble and liberating and invigorating: Nurture them with all your tender ingenuity!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
“You can’t move mountains by whispering at them,” says singer-songwriter Pink. Strictly speaking, you can’t move mountains by shouting at them, either. But in a metaphorical sense, Pink is exactly right. Mild-mannered, low-key requests are not likely to precipitate movement in obstacles that resemble solid rock. And that’s my oracle for you in the coming months, Virgo. As you carry out the project of relocating or crumbling a certain mountain, be robust and spirited—and, if necessary, very loud.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
In his masterpiece the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci applied 30 layers of paint that were no thicker than a single human hair. Can you imagine the patience and concentration that required? I’m going to propose that you be inspired by his approach as you carry out your big projects in the coming year. I think you will have the potential to create at least one labor of love that’s monumentally subtle and soulful.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
In the central Mexico hills near Ejido La Mesa, the weather is getting too hot for the fir trees that shelter millions of monarch butterflies every fall. In response, local people have joined with scientists to physically move the fir forest to a higher, cooler elevation. What might be your personal equivalent, Scorpio: an ambitious plan to carry out an idealistic yet practical project? According to my analysis of your astrological potentials, you’ll have a lot of energy to work on such a scheme in 2021.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Author Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855) made the following observation: “I do not ask of God that he should change anything in events themselves, but that he should change me in regard to things, so that I might have the power to create my own universe, to govern my dreams, instead of enduring them.” If you have a relationship with the Divine Wow, that will be a perfect prayer for you to say on a regular basis in 2021. If you don’t have a connection to the Supreme Intelligence, I suggest you address the same prayer to your Higher Self or Future Beauty or whatever source of sublime inspiration you hold most dear.
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com –CC license)
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