Category: heartwarmers

Two Italian girls who played quarantine tennis meet and play with their idol, Roger Federer

August 9, 2020 • 1:15 pm

When I posted this video on Twitter, showing two Italian girls who were huge fans of Roger Federer, and also played “quarantine tennis” between rooftops before they met him, I got pushback that it was a fake video: a commercial proposition for advertising Barilla pasta (Federer does promote the company). But I still think this is genuine: the girls have no idea that they’re going to meet Federer. I doubt that the company would have made the whole thing up as a bit of acting.  And even if it’s semi-commercial, it’s still heartwarming.

Here’s the YouTube description:

During the lockdown, Carola and Vittoria, two teenagers from Finale Ligure, in Italy, found a creative way to play a ‘socially distanced’ tennis match: each standing on her own roof. Roger Federer and Barilla saw their video and decided to surprise the girls right in their home in Finale Ligure. Here, Roger Federer, Carola and Vittoria played a spectacular and unusual match, and even ended up sharing a memorable day under the sunny Italian sky! Pasta and sport do indeed bring people together.

Here’s a “behind the scenes” video showing how the one above was made:

h/t: Jon

103-year-old woman celebrates recovering from the coronavirus with a cold brewski

June 2, 2020 • 1:30 pm

“Brewski” is appropriate here because this lovely story involves a Polish lady. It also involves a 103-year-old who recovered from coronavirus and celebrated with a Bud Light. (My only beef here is that she didn’t choose a decent beer.  I would have at least asked for a Sam Adams Boston Ale.  Click on screenshot to read.

She’s chugging that thing!

Part of the story from the Boston Globe:

Jennie Stejna made the ultimate comeback.

The 103-year-old became seriously ill from the coronavirus but managed to make a full recovery. To celebrate, she enjoyed an ice cold bottle of Bud Light.

Stejna lives at Life Care Center of Wilbraham, according to Adam Gunn, her grandson-in-law, who said the family learned of her COVID-19 diagnosis on April 25.

As her health deteriorated, the staff at the nursing home became increasingly concerned that she wasn’t going to survive and her family called to say goodbye to their beloved Babci (a Polish name for grandmother).

Gunn and his wife, Shelley, spoke to her, as did their 4-year-old daughter.

“I asked her if she was ready for heaven, and she said, ‘hell yeah,’’’ said Gunn, who lives in Easton. “She’s a feisty Polish woman who says how she feels.’’

But her condition improved, and on May 13 she received negative test results.

To mark the occasion she was treated with the beer.

“She beat it,’’ said Gunn. “She’s doing great.’’

After she received the results and enjoyed the Bud Light, Gunn said, “She told the staff to ‘get the hell out of my room, I’m not sick anymore.’ ’’

Gunn said Stejna was always an avid sports fan and used to enjoy listening to sports broadcasts on a hand-held radio. “Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics . . . but she didn’t care much for football,’’ he said. “Red Sox games are what she really liked.’’

h/t: Tim

Another duck lover

April 22, 2020 • 1:30 pm

After Mary Schmich wrote her column about the pandemic and Honey the Duck at Botany pond, she received a lot of email, with some readers wanting to contact me. She forwards me those emails so I’m free to respond if I wish. I always do, but here’s one that came about a week ago, via Mary, that I found particularly touching. A kindred spirit and fellow mallard-phile!

I quote the letter, and the writer’s name, with his permission.  The last line is very touching!

Mary, first of all, I always read your column.  You are great (I still read the paper newspaper and just an aside in college during the summer I worked overnights in the Tribune’s pressroom). After reading today’s article about the professor feeding the ducks I had to tell you–and hope you can forward my email to Professor Coyne.

I am a retired (now 72) high school counselor who loved his job and always had an office filled with wonderful adolescents.  My office faced a large totally enclosed courtyard. About 10 years before I retired one spring day in late April what should appear outside my window but a mother duck and about 10-12 baby ducks.  I think mother duck thought the enclosed courtyard would be safe from predators, which in a way it did.  However, there was no access to water.

First I had to put signs on all the doors to the courtyard warning students NOT to chase or try to pick up the baby ducks.  The babies were so small so I bought a bunch of pie tins and filled them with water and they would swim in them. I also bought duck food.  As the ducks got a little bigger I bought aluminum baking pans that they swam in.  Next, as they continued to grow I bought a child-size plastic pool with a board to be used as a ramp.

Well, by the time the 10-12 ducks got pretty big I had to buy more pools (a total of 5) as they needed their own space.  Finally sometime in July they would fly away.  Even though I wasn’t working in the summer I would still come back and scrub out the pools and feed them daily.  One year the water was turned off in the courtyard so I had to connect 3 or 4 hoses and run them from the janitor’s closet down the hall through the administrative and counseling office in order to reach the courtyard so I could refill the pools. I am certain the same mother came back for a number of years.  This went on until 2 years before I retired when they didn’t return.  I was glad in a way because I would have worried if I wasn’t there for them.

I loved those ducks.

Rick Watson Ph.D.
Retired counselor
I asked Dr. Watson if he could tell if it was the same duck year after year (about eight years all told). He said he couldn’t be sure, but suspected so because she was always very friendly to him and reproduced in the same place.
From YouTube

Finn befriends wild otter

April 18, 2020 • 12:30 pm

And some heartwarming: a lovely video sent by Merilee, who saw it on PawsMyGosh. The YouTube notes say this:

An elderly man has struck up an adorable friendship with an otter. Seppo Laamanen, 65, and Iivari the otter became inseparable after he appeared at Seppo’s doorstep in 2011. Small and malnourished, Seppo fed him and worms and fish. And the adorable otter repaid his kindness by always visiting Seppo at his home in Punkaharju in eastern Finland.

I have to say that I can appreciate the man’s special bond with the otter, and the fact that it shies away from other people. This is to some extent the case with my mallards, and I sort of like the fact that I’ve won their trust.

But can’t he thaw the fish?

101-year old man, having reportedly survived the Holocaust, World War II, and the Spanish flu epidemic, now survives COVID-19

March 31, 2020 • 11:30 am

Talk about a survivor: this is unbelievable! The story (h/t Malgorzata) comes from the Jewish Journal (first headline) and Forbes (second) and you can see it by clicking on the screenshots. But I’ll reproduce the whole short report from JJ below.

The report:

A 101-year-old man, identified as ‘Mr. P’ has been released from isolation after recovering from COVID-19 in the Italian city of Rimini. Mr. P., a WWII and Spanish Flu survivor was admitted last week to a hospital in northeast Italy after he was tested positive for the Coronavirus.

According to Gloria Lisi, Vice-Mayor of Rimini, as the patient began to recover it became “the story everyone talked about” in the hospital.

“Everyone saw hope for the future of all of us in the recovery of a person more than 100 years old,” Lisi said in a televised interview.

“Every day we see the sad stories from these weeks that mechanically tell about a virus that rages and is especially aggressive on the elderly. But he survived. Mr. P. survived.”

According to an article in Forbes, this is the second pandemic the man has survived. Mr. P was born in 1919, in the middle of the Spanish flu, estimated by the Centers for Disease Control to have infected 500 million people, about a third of the world’s population.

It doesn’t really say in what sense he was a Holocaust survivor, whether he was Jewish, whether he was in the camps, and so on. It could be that he simply lived through the time of the Holocaust, but you could say that about anyone who lived in Europe during those years. And did he really get the Spanish flu, or was simply alive but ininfected while it raged? Still, he did beat the COVID-19 at 101!

And the Forbes story is below, which doesn’t say anything about the Holocaust survival.

Key bits:

Crucial quote: “Mr. P made it. The family brought him home yesterday evening,” Lisi said. “[It teaches] us that even at 101 years, the future is not written.” His “truly extraordinary” recovery gave “hope for the future,” she added.

Key background: Mr. P’s survival is remarkable, especially considering the high fatality rates for older Italians who become infected with the virus. According to a report from Italy’s National Institute of Health, nearly 86% of deaths in the country were patients older than 70 years old. And while China, the U.S., and Italy all had confirmed coronavirus numbers hovering around 80,000 Thursday, Italy saw substantially more deaths, 8,165 compared to 1,000 in the U.S. and  3,287 in China. The age distribution of Italy’s population may be a factor— the country has the second-oldest population globally, with 23% of Italians clocking in at over age 65.

Tangent: Mr. P has joined the ranks of other centenarians to survive coronavirus, including 103-year-old Zhang Guangfen, a woman living in Wuhan, China, where the virus is believed to have originated. Guangfen was admitted to hospital in early March and was discharged a week later. On Thursday, South Korea saw its oldest survivor leave hospital after a 97-year-old female coronavirus patient made a full recovery. She is reported to be from Cheongdo, a city not far from Daegu, which has seen the worst of South Korea’s coronavirus outbreak.

To paraphrase the old doo-wop song, “Who was that man? I’d like to shake his hand.” On second thought, maybe we’d just bump elbows.

End of the week heartwarmers: Rescuers save baby elephant trapped in ditch, sugar glider pretends to fly

February 7, 2020 • 2:30 pm

If you watch the national news, you’ll have noticed that they end every broadcast with a piece of feel-good news, as if to palliate the horrors of what’s reported before. Well, I can do that too: this afternoon we’ll have two feel-good pieces to end a dreary week (actually, the sun has come out in Chicago this afternoon).

Here’s a video in which a group of nice people in India use their wits to rescue an Asian elephant calf who fell into a ditch. They use a backhoe to raise the level of the dirt underneath the youngster, eventually allowing him to scramble out. Listen to the herd as they greet him with loud trumpeting! The note below indicates that the elephants are “saluting” the rescuers with thanks, and we can debate the gratitude bit, but clearly they’re happy to get the baby back again.

YouTube notes:

Wildlife Officials rescue baby elephant from a ditch. Elephant herd salutes the men before leaving In Kerala, India, a baby elephant falls into a ditch (or an abandoned well) and gets trapped there. As the family of wild elephants watches and waits on the other side of the river, local people and forest officials use an earthmover to help the baby get out. Watch when they come running and welcoming the baby, checking whether it is fine. The incredible moment then occurs when the elephant family head turns and salutes the humans, thanking them for saving their little one.. There has been some confusion on whether the elephants were actually acknowledging the rescuers or not. Numerous scientific experiments have shown that elephants are emotional beings. Elephants are known to comfort other elephants in distress and stand beside them touching with trunks and making soft sounds.

And a gif showing sugar glider responding to a fan. This is lovely:

An interrupted romance

August 23, 2019 • 1:00 pm

Here’s a lovely story from the New York Times (yes, it has some nice stuff, especially if it’s not editorialized news). It’s about a man and woman who had a romance, but then agreed to part and meet five years later on the steps of New York’s Public Library, next to the “uptown lion”. Time passed, there were other relationships and obstacles, but the meeting finally took place. I’ll let you read about it yourself, but it’s a heartwarmer, and very well written.

Have a good weekend.