The secret to finding happiness

A teacher once brought balloons to school and told her pupils to blow them up and write their name on one. After the children tossed their balloons into the hall, the teacher moved through the hall mixing them all up. Then the kids were given five minutes to find their own balloon. They all looked hard, but nobody found their own balloon.

Then the teacher told them to take the balloon closest to them and give it to the person whose name was on it. In less than two minutes, everyone was holding their own balloon. The teacher told the children, "These balloons are like happiness. We won't find it when we're only searching for our own, but if we care about someone else's happiness, this will help us find our own."

Who does not like homemade lasagna?

After Michelle Brenner, 45, was furloughed from her job at a menswear store in Gig Harbor, Washington, she made herself a huge pan of lasagna using her grandmother's recipe. Then she got on her community Facebook page and wrote, "If any of you want some fresh homemade, no calorie counting lasagna, please let me know and I'll gladly prepare it for you.

She set aside her $1,200 stimulus check from Uncle Sam to buy the ingredients. Soon she had a few requests, and before long so many people started showing up, including strangers, that she lost track. Nearly three months at 1,200 pans later, she is still boiling noodles, cooking ground beef, mixing up tomato sauce and layering mozzarella, ricotta and Parmesan. She cooks about eight hours a day, seven days a week, helping feed people from hospital workers and first responders to single parents struggling without paychecks.

Grandson runs 218 miles to see Nana

Corey Cappelloni is an endurance athlete. He lives in Washington, D.C. His grandmother, Ruth Andres, 98, lives in a nursing home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She was sick with COVID-19 but is recovering. Instead of driving to Scranton to see her, he decided to run and raise money for the nursing home where she lives.

The run took him seven days. When he arrived he could only see Nana through a window, but called her on a cellphone. The call was broadcast on public speakers so everyone could hear it. He told her, "Nana, you're a strong person. You're going on 99, and you still have many more miles." She put a sign in her window that said, "I love you, Corey." By the end of the run, he had exceeded his goal of raising $22,000 for the nursing home.

Bill does not care about birds at all

Bill Larkin was a young man in the 1960s. Today he lives alone in a geodesic dome near Loogotee, Indiana. Outside the dome, he yard is filled with thousands of brightly painted birdhouses and stones.  Why? For years before retiring, he was locked in a room with no window writing computer programs. " I don't care about birds," he said. I just wanted to see color.

When drought killed the colorful flowers he planted, he switched to painting rocks, and birdhouses which he builds and gives away. A sign by his driveway encourages visitors to laugh and have fun. The attraction is free, and Bill won't accept any tips, but he gives every visitor a free Bill-painted birdhouse to take home. " In 2019, he gave away almost 5,000 colorful homemade birdhouses, which he builds inside his dome-home.

Sixth-grader donates art to at-risk children

Clelsea Phaire of Danbury, Connecticut, started a charity in August, 2019, to doante art kits to children at risk. She started it on her birthday, asking for art supplies instead of gifts. She continued to obtain supplies through her charity's Amazon wishlist.

She has donated art kits to homeless shelters, women's shelters, and schools impacted by gun violence in 12 U.S. states. Since the current pandemic began, she has managed to give away 1,500 art kits. "I feel good inside knowing how happy kids are when they get their art kits," she said. "I have definitely grown as a person because of this."

The highest form of knowledge

Plants need not wear masks

As an intriguing statement on the relationship between man and nature, a Spanish opera hall will conduct a performance of Puccini's flowery concerto Chrisantemi -- or Chrysanthemums in English -- to a packed house of 2,292 potted plants.

While government-mandated shelter-in-place rules forced society to stay at home, nature crept silently into many vacated spaces. Concert organizers at Barcelona's Liceu opera house decided that as the nation begins to reopen, it should be plants that receive the honor of the first performance within the grand Catalan concert hall.