A very tired owl was saved by British soldiers 70 miles out at sea.
Oh, poor baby!
Best baseball story I’ve read all summer!
It’s a sad feel-good story that brought me to tears… 
Sentenced to death at 17, at 68, quilt artist receives solo museum exhibition
Sentenced to death at 17, at 68, quilt artist receives solo museum exhibition : NPR
See some of his quilts here.
Imagine living all of your adult life behind bars for a murder you didn’t commit and being released at 58. You’re also a fabric artist, and the Smithsonian has acquired one of your quilts. That’s the story of Gary Tyler, and now, the artist has his first solo exhibit.
…
… A white 13-year-old had been shot and killed during anti-school-integration violence. Tyler was put in a police car for “mouthing off.” The next thing he knew, local police arrested and charged him with murder. He couldn’t believe the charges would stick.
…
A divorce lawyer incompetently represented him. Four friends testified against him, then recanted their testimony. The judge instructed an all-white jury to assume the 16-year-old meant to kill multiple people. It then convicted and sentenced him to death. Tyler maintained his innocence.
At the time, he was the youngest person on death row. He was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, and placed in a form of solitary confinement. His story isn’t unique, says Wanda Bertram with the Prison Policy Initiative.
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“There are just more and more and more people than ever before in the history of the state who have received life sentences … that have no option to ever come home. They’re convicted to die,” he says.
Tyler was at Angola, watching other men die behind bars. In the late '80s, he and others created a hospice program.
“Men in prison, taking care [of] terminally ill men to, you know, end of life, it had the way of really transforming you, changing you,” Tyler says.
The group raised money for coffins by making and selling quilts. That’s how Tyler learned the craft. One of his quilts was raffled off at the Angola Prison Rodeo, a biannual public event, and raised $30,000 for the hospice program. Seiferth’s museum has one of them, The Tree of Life.
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Tyler never received a pardon. A 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling required states to resentence all people who had been given life without parole as juveniles. As a result, the St. Charles Parish District Attorney proposed resentencing Tyler for manslaughter. Tyler was desperate to get out of Angola, so he agreed and was released soon after. The St. Charles Parish District Attorney declined to comment for this story.
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Now Tyler’s art honors those still locked up. He points to portrait quilts featuring the incarcerated men and women he met behind bars.
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“I think it mostly has to do with dealing with consequences that are beyond imagining and somehow, despite the environment, finding hope…”
That some people are capable of going through something like that and coming out wanting to help people is most definitely a feel good story. Thank you for posting.
Heartwarming and yummy.
CNN: ‘Cake sheds’ are Britain’s new obsession and they’re popping up everywhere
This is a Monty Python bit, right? About Arthur “Cake Sheds” Jackson?
Isn’t ‘cake sheds’ a fancy way to say ‘crumbs’?
Love this idea!
I’ll. Be. Damned!
Both of those are great stories.
And I’d be happy to find a cake shed, too!
Hmmm. Not so fast….
Blank looks all round here (a handful of miles south of London). It turns out that Cake Sheds do exist, but we had to google them in order to establish that. There are (so far as we can tell) four within an approximate ten miles radius of us, which I guess would cover at least a quarter million people.
Thing is, right now, if you don’t do facebook you probably don’t know they exist.
j
I hadn’t heard of them either. However, a couple of months ago, I visited
an aunt in Bexhill-on-sea (also in the south of England) and noticed several
stands by the roadside selling fruit and veg’ which is something you don’t
see in my neck of the woods (a few miles north of London). I expect that
the cake stands are a variation of that.
(Maybe the fruit & veg were also selling cake - we didn’t stop).
Fruit and veggie stands are very common in some rural (but not too rural) parts of the US.
Around here, for instance.
This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason I just remembered it. To be fair to myself, there were distractions at the time.
I had to have a blood draw done, which is never something I enjoy - I have to cover my eyes while it’s happening. The young phlebotomist did her thing, which seemed interminable, with endless pots being filled. And whilst that was happening, this sketch, from the Tony Hancock Show sprang into my mind.
For those who can’t be bothered to watch it: Hancock has volunteered to donate blood; on hearing that a pint is required he exclaims, horrified: “That’s very nearly an armful!”
Blood draw over, I just had to ask the phleb: “If I were to say to you, that’s very nearly an armful - would you know what I was talking about?” “Oh yes”, she said “we get that quite often”.
Now the thing is, that sketch was broadcast in 1966. I did some checking afterwards - I couldn’t find anyone under the age of forty-odd who had heard of That’s very nearly an armful. My phleb was maybe 25, so it’s probable that her parents weren’t born when the sketch was originally broadcast
But the phrase lives on - in the phlebotomist community - how 'bout that? (Thanks to old men having blood draws, if you ask me.)
j
PS: This is in the UK, obviously; but I wonder… Wherever you are in the world, why don’t you try it when you next have blood taken? I would be intrigued to know…
I’ve done the same thing and got the same reply!
Also this may be apocryphal, but it’s definitely feel-good 
An Englishman goes to Turkey and decided to buy a fez.
Once sold, the shopkeeper says “Are you English?”
The man replies “Yes.”
The shopkeeper asks “Why do many Englishman buy a fez, then say ‘Just like that’?”
God bless Tommy Cooper!
Tommy Cooper - Just Like That
I didn’t need to watch the clip, I could quote it almost word for word, but then I am forty-odd[1]…
Supposedly there are a few cake stands nearish, but I’ve never heard of one before reading this thread. I know of stands selling fruit, veg, eggs- lots of eggs- and homemade jam and chutney though, often on the honesty system. There’s a stand on the honesty system nearby that sells firewood, with a card reader and a calculator on a table- the bags are £10+ each, depending on the type of wood, so that’s pretty trusting!
emphasis on the ‘odd’ ↩︎