Good News Posts

 

I have a file named, Good News, which contains many links to good news stories. This particular post is for good news stories that I come across which I will be adding to as I come across more of them. I decided to post the actual stories since link rot takes a large percentage of linked items away over time. May these stories be inspiring to read. I will start with one I enjoyed today:

"I’m seventy-two. My name’s Harris. I used to be a high school history teacher in Ohio. Now I hide backpacks.

Not in schools. Not in libraries. Not in food banks with lines around the block.
I leave them where kids disappear.

Behind the bleachers at the football field no one uses anymore.
Beside the boarded-up convenience store that still smells like spilled beer.
Under the bridge where spray-paint tags scream louder than adults ever do.

People ask why. Because that’s where I used to find my students.

When my wife died, the classroom was the only place that kept me standing. Then the district closed my school. Budget cuts, they said. Fewer kids “worth saving.”
I drove around those first months like a ghost, parking in old lots, remembering faces. The boy who used to doodle in the margins. The girl who never took her hood off. The one kid who sat through three funerals in a semester and still turned in his essays.

I started noticing where kids hid when they had nowhere else to go.

And one night, I remembered something: the way my students’ backpacks told the whole story. Worn zippers, missing straps, heavy with secrets no curriculum could carry.

So I bought a few used packs from Goodwill. Filled them with small, stubborn things.

A peanut butter sandwich wrapped tight.
A notebook and a Sharpie, with my scrawl inside: “Write it down. It matters.”
A pair of headphones and an old MP3 player loaded with free audiobooks and a playlist I called “Stay.” A bag of trail mix. A bottle of water. A cheap phone card.

I didn’t put in Bibles or pamphlets. Didn’t tape motivational quotes to the straps.
Just pieces of normal life. Things that say: you still belong in this world.

The first time I left one, under the bleachers, my hands shook like I was committing a crime. Next week, it was gone. In its place? A folded piece of paper: “Thanks. I ate the sandwich. I’m still here.”

That was enough.

Week by week, I left more. And the backpacks started talking back.
A hair tie, left for the “next girl who forgets hers.”
A library card, taped to a thank-you note: “They reopened. Go check it out.”
A Polaroid of a dog with “He’s waiting at home. So am I.”

Last winter, a backpack showed up on my porch.

Inside: a sandwich. A notebook. A pair of socks.
And a letter.

It was from a boy who used to linger behind the gas station. He’d planned to join a gang that night. Said the backpack stopped him. Not because of the food, but because of one scribble in the notebook:

“You deserve to see another season.”

He wrote, “I chose life. I got a dishwashing job. Now I’m leaving backpacks too. With your list.”

I sat on the porch until my coffee went cold, holding that letter like it was oxygen.

Now my neighbors help. A retired nurse slips in first-aid kits. A baker leaves muffins with a note: “Still good. Still loved.” Kids from the neighborhood ride their bikes over and toss packs into the trunk of my car. Nobody signs their names. Nobody takes credit.

It isn’t politics. It isn’t charity drives or photo ops. It’s just one quiet thing in a loud, divided country.

The world talks about walls, borders, crime rates, and statistics.
But when you stand under a bridge at dusk, you don’t see numbers.
You see a kid trying not to cry where nobody’s watching.

That’s who the backpacks are for.

My grandson asked me once, “Grandpa, why don’t you just hand them out?”
I told him, “Because shame is loud. Kindness has to whisper. Sometimes people can only pick up help when no one’s looking.”

I don’t know how many backpacks I’ve left. I don’t keep count.
But I know this: in a world that makes so many feel disposable, something as small as trail mix and a Sharpie can turn a night around.

You don’t have to save the country.
You don’t have to fix politics.
You don’t even have to change a life.

Just leave something soft where a broken soul might land.
Sometimes all it takes is a backpack—forgotten by the world, but found by the one person who needed it most.

And that, I’ve learned, is still teaching."

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"When the power grid collapsed in the middle of winter, I learned America’s strength wasn’t in politics or money—it was in kindness.

I’m seventy-three years old, and I’ve lived long enough to see this country change in ways I never imagined. Some nights I sit on my porch and wonder if we’ve forgotten what matters. Everyone’s angry at everyone else—red versus blue, left versus right. The news screams at us, neighbors stop waving, and people don’t even make eye contact at the grocery store anymore.

Then came the storm.

It was February in Ohio, and the sky turned black by noon. Ice piled up on the power lines until they snapped. By nightfall, half the county was in darkness. No heat. No lights. No internet. Just the sound of branches cracking under the weight of ice and the echo of sirens far away.

I wrapped myself in three blankets, lit an old kerosene lamp, and waited. My house felt like a tomb. The furnace was silent, the refrigerator dead. I thought about the insulin in the fridge. Thought about how long I could last without it.

The second night was worse. The cold crawled into my bones. I sat on the floor with my back to the oven, wishing it could work without power. That’s when I saw it—a glow outside my window. A flashlight beam cutting through the frozen dark.

A knock at the door.

It was Tyler, the kid from two houses down. Seventeen years old, always blasting music in his truck, always wearing a cap backward. We never talked much. He stood there holding a pot. Steam rose into the frozen air.

“Mom made soup,” he said. “Figured you could use some.”

I didn’t know what to say. My hands shook as I took the pot. The smell—chicken, carrots, thyme—hit me harder than any sermon I’d ever heard.

The next morning, I found a small box on my porch. Inside were batteries, candles, and a note: Hang in there, neighbor. No name. Just that.

By the fourth day, half the town was out of food. The gas stations were closed, the stores emptied. But then something happened. People started showing up at the church parking lot with whatever they had left. A woman brought loaves of bread she’d baked before the power went out. An older man dragged a cooler full of venison from his freezer before it spoiled. Teenagers carried water jugs door to door.

No one asked who you voted for. No one cared what flag you flew on your lawn. We just cared that nobody froze to death.

I remember standing there, holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee a stranger had pressed into my hands, and feeling tears sting my eyes. Not from the cold, but from the sudden, overwhelming truth of it all.

We keep thinking America’s strength is in the White House, or Wall Street, or Silicon Valley. But in that frozen week, I saw where it really lived. It was in the hands that knocked on my door with soup. It was in the neighbors who cleared driveways together, in the kids who went house to house checking on old folks like me.

When the power finally came back, the streetlights flickered on, refrigerators hummed, furnaces roared back to life. But I swear to you, something else had turned on inside me too.

I realized my grandmother was right. She used to say, “Life doesn’t need to be grand to be good. It just needs to be honest.”

The honest truth is this: America is not saved by politicians. Not by billionaires. Not by slogans. It’s saved by ordinary people doing ordinary kindness in extraordinary times.

When I die, I won’t remember the headlines or the speeches. I’ll remember the taste of soup in the dark, the glow of a flashlight on my porch, and the sound of a kid’s voice saying, “Figured you could use some.”

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I never planned on becoming the “old man with the bench,” but sometimes the smallest sign can change an entire neighborhood’s heartbeat.

My name’s Howard. Seventy-two. Retired city bus driver. Most days, I sat on the same wooden bench in the park, watching traffic lights change. Cars moved. People hurried. Nobody stopped.

That silence started eating at me. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of being invisible. My kids live states away. My wife passed ten years ago. You can live in a city of half a million people and still feel like you don’t exist.

So one afternoon, I grabbed a scrap of cardboard and wrote, in thick black marker:

“If you don’t have anyone to ask how you’re doing today… sit down. I’ll listen.”

I tied it to the back of the bench with twine. That was it.

The first two days, people just stared. A couple of teenagers laughed and took pictures. A jogger frowned like I was crazy. Still, I showed up every morning with a thermos of coffee and waited.

Then, on the third day, a young man in a hoodie stopped. His hands trembled. He sat down slowly, like the bench might break under the weight of whatever he was carrying.

“I haven’t told anyone this,” he said, voice cracking. “But I lost my job last month. My girlfriend left. I can’t… I can’t keep pretending I’m fine.”

I didn’t offer advice. Didn’t preach. I just listened. Two hours later, he left with shoulders lighter, eyes clearer. He shook my hand like it meant something.

That night, he posted a picture of me and the cardboard sign online. I didn’t know until the next morning when three college kids showed up, asking if they could sit.

From then on, the bench was rarely empty. A single mom told me about choosing between rent and groceries. A veteran whispered about nightmares that kept him awake. A boy, no older than ten, admitted he was scared to go to school because of bullies.

I just listened. That’s all. And somehow, listening was enough.

Weeks passed. People started calling me “Bench Man.” I didn’t care about the name. What mattered was that strangers who once walked past each other now nodded, waved, even sat together. I’d watch them trade numbers, make plans, offer each other rides home. My little cardboard sign had become a bridge.

Then winter came.

One morning, I didn’t make it to the bench. My heater broke overnight, and the apartment froze. I collapsed with the flu before I could even call anyone. Lying on the floor, shaking under a thin blanket, I thought: So this is it. This is how people disappear.

But I wasn’t invisible anymore.

By noon, there was a knock on my door. Then another. My neighbors, people I’d barely spoken to in years, had noticed I wasn’t on the bench. They called the landlord, the paramedics, anyone they could. Within an hour, my living room was full—one woman brought soup, a man fixed the heater, another held my hand and said, “We couldn’t just let you vanish.”

For the first time in years, I felt seen. Not for being useful. Not for driving a bus route. Just for being me.

When I got better, I went back to the bench. But the sign wasn’t mine anymore. Someone had replaced my cardboard with a sturdier wooden plaque:

“We’re still listening. Sit down.”

Now, I don’t always have to be there. Sometimes I pass by and see two strangers talking, shoulders leaned close, the kind of talk that makes the world a little softer. That’s all I ever wanted.

We live in a country where loneliness spreads faster than any virus. Where people post “I’m fine” while falling apart. Where neighbors don’t always know each other’s names.

But one cardboard sign, one act of listening, changed my street.

So here’s my advice:

You don’t need money. You don’t need power. You don’t even need answers.

You just need to notice.

Because sometimes, noticing someone is enough to keep them alive.

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She wasn’t just a horse. She was family to a neighborhood. For fourteen years, Jenny — a white mare from Frankfurt — walked the streets alone every morning. Her elderly owner could no longer ride her, but Jenny didn’t need a guide. She knew every turn by heart.

Locals welcomed her like a neighbor. Children waved, shopkeepers paused, and even police officers smiled as she passed by. Around her neck hung a simple sign:

“My name is Jenny. I’m just taking a walk. Thank you."

Jenny became more than just a familiar face — she became a symbol of trust, freedom, and the quiet bond between animals and people.

This week, Jenny passed away at the age of 26 after battling cancer.

But what she left behind is more than footprints on the sidewalk. She left a feeling. A reminder that even one animal, walking quietly through a city, can bring people together, soften hearts, and become a legend.

Rest in peace, sweet Jenny — Frankfurt’s most extraordinary walker.

***********************************************************************************************

I never thought I’d cry over a pharmacy receipt—but when strangers paid for the insulin I couldn’t afford, it changed everything I believed about America.

I’m Harold. Seventy-two years old. Widower. Former steel mill worker. My body gave up on me years ago, but my pride—well, that’s stubborn. I live in a little town in Ohio where half the factories are boarded up, and the only thing that seems to grow anymore are weeds and liquor stores.

I’ve got type 2 diabetes. Nothing glamorous about it. Just needles, numbers, and a slow shrinking of what used to be a strong man’s body. Insulin isn’t optional, but it feels optional when the price tag laughs in your face. $300 a vial. My pension barely covers rent and food. Medicare covers some, but not enough. So I did what men like me do: I stretched it. Half doses. Skipping days. Pretending I felt fine.

Truth is, I was tired. Tired of choosing between groceries and medicine. Tired of seeing those campaign ads on TV—politicians promising they’d “fix health care.” They never fixed me.

One Tuesday, I went to the free clinic for a blood pressure check. Young nurse named Lila looked at my chart, then at me. “Mr. Harris, you’re rationing your insulin, aren’t you?”

I laughed it off, said something about forgetting. But she knew. Nurses always know. She pressed her lips together, didn’t push. Just patted my hand like she was apologizing for the whole damn system.

I figured that was the end of it. But it wasn’t.

A week later, I went to the pharmacy. The cashier slid a bag across the counter. My insulin, three vials. I froze. “There’s a mistake,” I muttered.

She shook her head. “Balance covered. By a friend.”

My throat burned. Who? How? I stepped outside, sat in my old Buick, and stared at the receipt until it blurred.

I thought maybe it was a glitch. But the next month, same thing. Balance covered. And the next.

Turns out, it wasn’t a glitch. It was people.

Carlos, the mailman, dropped a hint once when he delivered a package. Said, “Town looks out for its own.” Didn’t explain. Didn’t need to.

Later I found out the whole story. Lila had mentioned me at her church group—just my first name, nothing else. Word spread. Quietly.

Marty, who runs the hardware store, chipped in twenty bucks. A kid named Jamal set up a GoFundMe with his allowance money. The barber donated his tips. Even a guy I hadn’t spoken to since the mill closed slipped an envelope into my mailbox, no return address.

I’d lived in this town for decades, watching it rust and rot, thinking no one cared anymore. And here they were—patching me together with scraps of kindness.

When I realized what they’d done, I wanted to crawl into a hole. I didn’t want charity. Didn’t want pity. I drove to the post office, found Carlos. “I didn’t ask for this,” I said, my voice shaking.

He just smiled. “You didn’t get it, Harold. We gave it to each other.”

I didn’t understand at first. But weeks later, it clicked.

I was standing in line at Walmart when I saw a young mom digging for food stamps, kids tugging at her coat. She looked like I used to look—tired, ashamed, cornered. I remembered that pharmacy receipt in my glove box. And I thought: maybe that’s what Carlos meant.

So I started small. Bought an extra gift card, slipped it under a pack of diapers in someone’s cart. Left twenty bucks in the donation jar at the diner. Anonymous. No strings.

The best one? At Christmas, I left a prepaid phone card in an envelope at the senior center. “So you can see your grandkids’ faces.” The old lady who got it cried like she’d been given the world.

That’s when I realized something: I couldn’t fix health care. Couldn’t lower drug prices or rewrite laws. But I could pass kindness along like bread at a dinner table—break it, share it, watch it multiply.

And here’s the thing: it never runs out.

America’s system may be broken. The politics may fail us. But kindness—quiet, ordinary kindness—is the health care this country can’t bill you for. And once it begins, it never stops.

***********************************************************************************************

My name’s Emily. I’m twenty-five. A brand-new nurse in a small nursing home outside Dayton, Ohio. I thought I signed up to give pills and check charts, but I learned the strongest medicine is just four words.

When I first started, I thought my job would be about vitals, prescriptions, and following doctor’s orders. Check blood pressure. Administer meds. Keep charts neat.

But there was someone else here who taught me more than any nursing school textbook ever could.

Her name was Mary.

She wasn’t a nurse. She wasn’t a doctor. She wasn’t even clinical staff. Mary was the cleaning lady. Sixty-eight years old. Always wore the same faded green sweater, even in summer. Moved slow, pushing her cart down the hall with its squeaky wheels and half-broken mop bucket.

But Mary had a habit. A quiet one.

Every morning after she finished scrubbing a room, she’d sit for a few minutes by a patient’s bed. She’d pull out a little spiral notebook from her pocket. Tear out a piece of lined paper. Write something down. Fold it. Leave it on the nightstand.

At first I thought she was just leaving reminders. Maybe “drink more water” or “don’t forget therapy.” But one day I peeked.

It wasn’t instructions. It was words.

“You are not forgotten.”

“Your story matters.”

“Someone cares.”

Simple. Small. But when the patients found them, I saw something shift. The stiff frown lines softened. A tear appeared. A hand held that scrap of paper like it was gold.

I didn’t understand why she did it until Mr. Johnson had one of his bad days.

He’s eighty-two. Used to be a factory worker. Alzheimer’s. Most days he just stares out the window. But that afternoon, his daughter visited. She held his hand, whispered, “It’s me, Dad, it’s Lisa.”

He looked confused. Then scared. Then angry.

“Who are you? Where’s my wife? Don’t leave me!” His voice cracked, raw, like a child’s cry.

Lisa broke. She ran out sobbing. I froze in the doorway, heart pounding, useless with my clipboard in hand.

But Mary… she was already there. Finished with her shift, coat on, purse slung over her arm. Yet she walked right into his room. Sat beside him. Reached for her notebook.

She tore out a page. Wrote something slowly, carefully. Folded it. Slipped it into his hand.

He opened it. His eyes traced the words.

“Your Mary loves you still.”

For a moment, the shaking stopped. His breathing calmed. His lips trembled. Then he whispered: “Mary… my Mary.”

His wife’s name. Gone ten years.

He pressed the note against his chest and closed his eyes. The storm inside him passed.

I stood there crying like a child, my mask damp, because I knew what I was seeing wasn’t in any nursing protocol. It wasn’t medicine. It wasn’t therapy. It was love disguised as handwriting.

Later, I asked her, “Why do you do that, Mary? Why the notes?”

She looked down, twisting her fingers, then finally said:

“My mother lived here. In this very wing. Alzheimer’s too. At the end, she couldn’t remember me. Couldn’t speak. I thought she was gone. But one day, I found a note on her nightstand. It said, ‘You are loved.’ Nobody ever admitted writing it. I never found out who did. But it was the last thing I had of her. The last proof she still felt seen. I’ve carried that memory my whole life. So now… I just try to pass it on.”

I never forgot that conversation.

Sometimes when I walk into Mr. Johnson’s room, I see that folded paper on his nightstand. Creased, worn, edges soft as cloth. Nurses change shifts. Charts pile up. Time moves. But that note stays.

And I think about how fragile we all are. About how in a world of machines and monitors and endless rushing, what saves us might not be the medicine at all.

It might just be one human reminding another: You still matter.

We think heroes wear scrubs and stethoscopes. But sometimes they carry mops and spiral notebooks. Sometimes the most powerful cure isn’t found in a pill bottle, but in a few handwritten words that whisper: You are not forgotten.

***********************************************************************************************

The morning after my dad vanished into the opioid fog, I found something hidden above the fridge that changed everything I thought I’d lost.

I was thirteen when it happened. Old enough to know better, too young to carry the kind of weight that landed on me overnight.

Dad didn’t leave a note. No goodbye, no warning. Just his jacket still hanging on the chair, the TV still buzzing with static, and an emptiness that swallowed our little house whole.

Mom worked nights at Walmart, dragging herself home when the sun was already up. She tried to smile, but her eyes were always rimmed red, her hands trembling when she poured coffee into a chipped mug.

That first week, I burned Pop-Tarts. The second, I learned how to fry eggs without setting off the smoke alarm. By the third, I was packing Mom’s lunch in brown paper bags with crooked little hearts drawn in Sharpie.

One morning, while reaching for a dusty cereal box on top of the fridge, I saw something wedged behind it. A shoebox. Old, taped shut. My stomach flipped.

I pulled it down and set it on the table.

Inside was a spiral notebook. The cover bent, pages stained with grease. My dad’s handwriting scrawled across every line.

It wasn’t a diary. It was recipes.

Cheap meals. Pancakes made with water instead of milk. Chili stretched with beans and ramen noodles. Notes in the margins like: *“Good when broke.”* Or: *“Feeds three, costs under five.”*

And then, near the back:

*“E, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I couldn’t fight my way out. But you can. Take care of Mom. Start with breakfast.”*

I sat there for a long time, the notebook trembling in my hands. I hated him. I missed him. And somehow, I still wanted to make him proud.

That night, I cooked one of the recipes. Mac and cheese with hot dogs. Mom stared at the bowl like it was a gift from God. She didn’t ask where I learned it. She just ate, and for the first time in weeks, she smiled without forcing it.

After that, I cooked almost every day. Burned a lot. Cursed under my breath like Dad used to. But slowly, I got better.

Cooking became my way of holding us together. I’d watch YouTube tutorials, scribble my own notes in the margins of Dad’s book. Sunday pancakes. Tuesday chili. Friday grilled cheese, always cut diagonally like he used to make it.

One evening, Mom came home dead-tired, her name tag still pinned to her shirt. She saw me at the stove, flour smudged on my cheek, and she broke down. Fell into a chair and cried like she hadn’t since the night he left.

Between sobs, she whispered, “I thought we’d lost everything.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I slid a plate in front of her.

“Not everything,” I said.

Months passed. The ache dulled, but it never disappeared. Every so often, I’d climb up and flip through the notebook again, like Dad was still teaching me. The pages smelled faintly of smoke and coffee, and sometimes I swore I could hear his voice correcting my measurements.

Then one afternoon, a postcard arrived. No return address. Just five words scrawled across the back:

“I’m trying. For you.”

Mom stared at it for a long time before tucking it under a magnet on the fridge. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. But when she turned away, I saw the corners of her mouth lift, just barely.

Life didn’t suddenly fix itself. Bills still piled up. Mom still worked too many hours. I still caught myself wishing Dad would walk back through the door.

But the kitchen changed us. Dinner became the one time of day we sat together, not as broken pieces but as something whole, if only for twenty minutes.

Now I’m fifteen. I bake muffins for the coffee shop down the street, using Dad’s old recipes with my own twists. Mom brags about me to her coworkers. The shoebox still sits on top of the fridge, stuffed with scraps of paper, recipes in two handwritings now—his and mine.

I don’t know if Dad will ever come back for real. I don’t know if forgiveness is even possible. But I do know this:

Life isn’t about the things that shatter us. It’s about the small ways we stitch ourselves back together.

Sometimes it’s a handwritten note in a shoebox. Sometimes it’s a plate of pancakes for a tired mom. Sometimes it’s just the courage to keep cooking, even when you’re still learning how not to burn the eggs.

Because in the end, survival isn’t one big victory. It’s a thousand little wins. And sometimes, that’s enough.

When everything feels broken, healing doesn’t come in grand gestures—it comes in the little wins.

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