People Are Occasionally Pretty Neat

Coming to you live from the ancestral homeland of Brewster, MA this weekend, where we're gathered as a clan to celebrate my great-aunt's 100th(!) birthday. Clean living and serving others does a wonder for a body, as it turns out. I may not be so lucky.

Speaking of serving others, I came across this neat little story in the WaPo a few days ago. It starts like this, "Sam McGee picked up the phone in 2022 and dialed the same number he’d called every year for decades. He had the same question he’d been asking for 20 years: Could his family buy back his late grandmother’s Ford Mustang that had been sold in 1973 to pay for her funeral expenses?"

That's a zinger of a lede that turns into a bitter (mostly) sweet tale of family, persistence, and a community-minded individual. Enjoy this award-winning documentary students at Samuel V. Champion High School in Boerne, TX produced about it.

Rock's Coolest Uncle, and Bhangra Beat Mob

A fantastically cool video's been making the rounds of the social web this week, as 1,000 Italians got together to record a cover of the Foo Fighters' 'Learn to Fly' in hopes of enticing Dave Grohl, et al, to come to their town to play.

If you haven't seen it, check it out:



It reminded me, actually, of a similar performance pulled off just over a year ago in Brooklyn. In honor of the annual Make Music New York festival, NPR Music commissioned a piece by Sunny Jain, leader of the awesome bhangra-funk combo Red Baraat. And asked volunteer musicians of all kinds to learn the piece and show up at the Brooklyn Public Library to play the world premiere live.

As with 'Learn to Fly', the results are enough to put a smile on your face and a hop - or in this case, a funky beat - in your step:



People, on occasion, are pretty damn awesome.

(And as an aside, if you don't know Red Baraat, go and listen to some of their stuff. My gift to your ears.)