1 . It was a cold night in Washington, D.C., and I was heading back to the hotel when a man approached me. He asked if I would give him some money so he could get something to eat. I’d read the signs: “Don’t give money to beggars as most of them are swindlers.” So I shook my head and kept walking.   

I wasn’t prepared for a reply, but with no hesitation, he followed me and said, “I really am homeless and I really am hungry! You can come with me and watch me eat!” But I kept on walking.   

The incident kept bothering me for the rest of the week. I had money in my pocket and it wouldn’t have killed me to hand over a dollar or two even if he hadn’t been a real beggar. On a freezing cold night, no less, I assumed the worst of a fellow human being.

Flying back to Anchorage, I couldn’t help thinking of him. I tried to reason my failure to help by supposing government agencies, churches and charities were there to feed him. Besides, you’re not supposed to give money to beggars.   

Somewhere over Seattle, I started to write my weekly garden column for The Anchorage Daily News. Out of the blue, I came up with an idea. Bean’s Cafe, a local charity service kitchen, feeds hundreds of hungry local people every day. Why not try to get all my readers to plant one row of vegetables or flowers in their gardens for Bean’s?   Plant a row for Bean’s. It’s clean and simple.   

We didn’t keep records back then, but the idea began to take off. Folks would fax me or call when they took something in. It’s food for the spirit and comfort for my conscience.   

In April 1995, the Garden Writers Association of America(GWAA) held their annual meeting in Anchorage and after learning our program, Plant a Row for Bean’s became Plant a Row For The Hungry. The idea then was to have every member write or talk about planting a row for the hungry, which brought the program to national attention.

As more and more people participated, new variations cropped up. Many companies gave free seeds to customers and displayed the logo for the program. Donations poured in. It was then that I could really stop feeling guilty.

2 . Tia Wimbush and Susan Ellis have been co-workers for a decade, and while they didn’t know each other well, they had a lot in common, both working in information technology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and both dealing with the same medical stress at home: their spouses each needed a kidney transplant, and while Wimbush could have given her husband one of hers, she wasn’t an ideal match. Ellis, meanwhile, was no match at all for her husband.

One day, in the fall of 2020, the women saw each other in the office restroom and started chatting, lamenting that patients can wait five or more years for their name to come up on the national kidney cadaver donor waiting list. Both women worried their husbands didn’t have that kind of time.

Wimbush asked Ellis what her husband’s blood type was. He’s type O, Ellis replied.

Wimbush then said that her husband was type AB.

The women paused for a moment and looked at each other.

“I told Susan, ‘Wait a second-what are the odds that we’re both going through this with our husbands at the same time and we could also be in a position to help them?’” Wimbush says. “That’s when we both knew: We had to get tested.”

So they did. Antibody tests revealed that each woman was an excellent match for the other’s spouse. And in March 2021, seven months after that chance conversation, Tia Wimbush donated one of her kidneys to Lance Ellis, and Susan Ellis donated one of hers to Rodney Wimbush.

Christina Klein, a nephrologist and medical director of Piedmont Atlanta Hospital’s kidney transplant program, says it is extremely rare for two people to propose their own paired organ exchange and actually be a match for each other. “I’ve personally never seen this happen,” Dr. Klein says. “When we put pairs into large databases for national paired exchange programs, some pairs wait months or even years for a compatible match.”

The couples first met a few days before the surgeries when they came to the hospital for a final round of testing. Before that, they had chatted on FaceTime a bit. The surgeries lasted about three to four hours each and were a success, with no complications.

“It’s really just a story about simple kindness,” Susan Ellis says. “For us, it started with two people just being good humans. Now we’d like to tell people they can do the same.”

Rodney Wimbush says he will be forever grateful that his wife decided to bring up a conversation about blood types in the office restroom. “Susan and Lance are going to come with us to North Carolina for our son’s first college football game,” his wife adds. “I guess you could say we’ve skipped the friendship. We’re family now.”

4 . When ten-year-old Reese Osterberg lost her Fresno County, California, home to one of the largest wildfires in state history early last fall, she had a very pressing concern: did anyone grab her baseball cards?

No one had. With a houseful of kids and dogs and a farm’s worth of horses to evacuate, the family forgot the cards during the stress. Naturally, the diehard (顽固的) San Francisco Giants and Little League lefty with a swing as smooth as butter was upset. When she watched the Giants on TV, she would lay out each player’s card on the floor in his corresponding field position. “I like baseball cards because they are pictures of people doing happy stuff — doing what they love, and what I love.” said Reese.

Reese’s loss touched the hearts of the Fresno County fire department, which posted her story on its Facebook page with a request to help Reese restore her baseball card collection. That, in turn, touched the heart of Kevin Ashford.

Ashford knew exactly where Reese could find replacement cards: in his garage. He had more than 25,000 in his collection, with an exact value of 35,000 to 50,000. Ashford had been thinking about selling them when he saw the fire department’s post. “I wasn’t really doing anything with them,” said Ashford,“I thought I could take care of this problem rather quickly.”

First volunteers transported the cards from Ashford’s garage to theirs and then surprised Reese during a tour of the firehouse. Towers of Ashford’s cards were piled in front of the fire engine. After thanking Ashford, Reese was quick to share the thousands of baseball cards she received from Ashford and donors around the country with other kids affected by California’s Creek Fire.

She’s gotten so many, in fact, that she started Cards From Reese, an organization that collects cards and donates them to those in need. Reese is especially happy to part with Los Angeles Dodgers cards. As she explains it: “Go Giants!”

6 . I’ve worked in the factories surrounding my hometown every summer since I graduated from high school, but making the transition between school and full-time blue-collar work during the break never gets any easier. For a student like me who considers any class before noon to be uncivilized, getting to a factory by 6 o'clock each morning is torture. My friends never seem to understand why I’m so relieved to be back at school or that my summer vacation has been anything but a vacation.

There’re few people as self-confident as a college student who had never been out in the real world. People my age always seem to overestimate the value of their time and knowledge. In fact, all the classes did not prepare me for my battles with the machine I ran in the plant, which would jam whenever I absent-mindedly put in a part backward or upside down.

The most stressful thing about blue-collar life is knowing your job could disappear overnight. Issues like downsizing and overseas relocation had always seemed distant to me until my co-workers told me that the unit I was working in would shut down within six months and move to Mexico, where people would work for 60 cents an hour.

After working 12-hour shifts in a factory, the other opinions have become only too clear. When I’m back at the university, skipping classes and turning in lazy rewrites seems too irresponsible after seeing what I would be doing without school. All the advice and public-service announcements about the value of an education that used to sound stale now ring true.

These lessons I’m learning, however valuable, are always tinged with a sense of guilt. Many people pass their lives in the places I briefly work, spending 30 years where I spend only two months at a time. “This job pays well, but it’s hell on the body,” said one co-worker. “Study hard and keep reading,” she added.

My experiences in the factories has inspired me to make the most of my college years before I enter the real world for good.

7 . For 38-year-old Justin Herald, the journey to wealth began one Sunday morning at a church in Sydney's northwest, when he was involved in a quarrel with a member of the church choir. "You have an attitude problem," she told him.

The accusation sparked something in him, and he borrowed $50 from his brother to have four T-shirts printed with the slogan: "I don't have an attitude problem; you have a perception problem."

"It was the best $50 I ever spent," laughs Herald. By the end of the morning, he had sold three of the four T-shirts. With the money he made, he had another six printed, then 12, then 24. "That first year the earning were $98,000," he says.

His business, Attitude Inc., is now a multi-million-dollar company with a wide range of products selling in 3,500 stores across Australia. His business was due to not just clever marketing - the public loved the slogan - but also he has to admit that in those days there was very little competition in his sector of the clothing industry, and he was in the right place at the right time.

The media spotlight also helped, with people paying attention to Herald's likeable personality and infections passion for his business: the night of one TV appearance, 187 stores rang to get his products into their stores.

Herald sold the business three years ago, by which time it was turning over $30 million a year, and now spends his time as a motivational speaker. His message: anyone can be financially successful if they set their mind to it. "You have to have a lot of stickability, because not everything is going to work the way you plan it."

Still living in Castle Hill with his wife and two children, Herald believes too many successful people become caught up in the trappings of wealth. "I have lived here since I left school at 16," he says. "In this area, you don't forget where you came from."

9 . One August afternoon. Richard Allen dropped off his last passenger, Mrs. Carey. Lifting two grocery bags, he followed her across the yard and stood on the step of her house. Glancing up, he saw a large wasp(黄蜂) nest under the roof. Allen had heard that wasps can become more likely to sting in summer. He mentioned this to Mrs. Carey, who had opened the door.

“Oh, they don’t bother me,” she said lightly, “I go in and out all the time.”

Anxiously, Allen looked at the nest again-to see the wasps flying straight at him. “Hurry!” he shouted to Mrs. Carey. “Get in!”

She stepped quickly inside, Allen ran for his mini-bus. Too late: they were upon him. Just as he jumped aboard, half a dozen red spots showed on his arm, and he felt more on his back and shoulders.

As he was driving down the road, Allen felt as if something was burning at the back of his neck, and the “fire” was spreading forward toward his face. An immediate anxiety took hold of him. Allen knew that stings could cause some persons to die. But he had been stung the previous summer and the after-effects soon passed. However, what he didn’t know was that the first sting had turned his body into a time bomb waiting for the next to set off an explosion.

Miles from the nearest medical assistance, Allen began to feel his tongue thick and heavy and his heartbeat louder. Most frightening, he felt his breathing more and more difficult. He reached for the radio mike(话筒), trying to call the mini-bus center, but his words were hardly understandable. Signals were also poor that far out. He knew a rescue team was on 24-hour duty at the Amherst Fire Department’s north station. So his best chance was to make a run for it.

Rushing down the mountain, Allen tried not to panic, focusing his mind on each sharp turn. He was almost through the last of them when he felt sure he was going into shock(休克). Just then he reached for the radio mike again.

“Call fire station.” He shouted, concentrating to form the words. “Emergency. Bee sting. Emergency. There in ten minutes.”

“Five-ten,” the center replied.

Hold on, Allen thought: Keep your eyes open. Breathe. Keep awake.

At last he reached the station. Two firemen ran out, Allen felt their hands grasp him before he hit the ground. “You made it,” he thought.

10 . To Be a Deaf DJ

I was born in England with perfect hearing. In 1990, when I was five, my family moved to the United States. I started getting ear infections every three months or so. We didn’t have health insurance at the time, and when I got a third infection, my parents couldn’t afford the treatment. I went deaf in my right ear and was left with 50 percent hearing in my left. Over time, my remaining hearing dropped to 20 percent, where it is today. My doctors predicted that I would be thoroughly deaf by now, and I think I’m doing pretty well.

There was always music on in my house in my childhood. I loved listening to Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson. My dad was a DJ, so he played disco, folk, rock, and music from other countries. For my 18^th birthday, my dad asked me to deejay at the restaurant. After doing that for a few weeks, I was interested in it. I desired to learn more. I e-mailed DJ Shiftee, a distinguished New York City DJ, “I know you like a challenge. How about teaching a deaf person to deejay?” He wrote back the next day, “Challenge accepted.” He tutored me twice a week for two years, helping me develop correct technique. I practiced four hours a day.

Now when I’m performing, muscle memory takes over. When I started, I wouldn’t tell the club managers that I was deaf. I would just show up, introduce myself, and start playing music. At the end of the night, someone would say, “Oh, here’s the check.” And I’d say, “What? Oh, I can’t hear.” They were always so astonished. Sometimes I would bring doctor’s notes because they wouldn’t believe me. It was reassurance that they were giving me opportunities to perform because I was brilliant, not out of sympathy. Eventually people started calling me “that deaf DJ,” and the name stuck.

What fascinates me about deejaying is the creativity. I use software that turns the music into lines of color on a computer screen. I’m visually hearing the music. The next time you go dancing, cover your ears, and you’ll start seeing that you’re able to hear the music in a different way. Music is not all about hearing. I pay all sorts of get-togethers now, from college parties to corporate events. I also go to elementary schools for the deaf and talk to the students about motivation and believing in themselves. I tell the parents, “My advice to you is let your kids chase their dreams. I’m a deaf DJ, so why not?”