This is a weekly newsletter called Quiet Good Of The Week. It's about small, genuine acts of kindness out in the real world. Each issue has 5 short write-ups of real kindness news stories, plus one “kindness suggestion of the week.” If someone forwarded you this email, sign up here. If you’re already signed up, share it with others.
I spent way too long this week reading about a guy who flew out to a tiny island off the northern coast of Australia carrying nothing but barber kits and a folding chair. Not because it's a big story, but because of what happened after the haircuts were done. I'll get to that one last.
This week's quiet good idea
This one's easy to skip past because it doesn't involve buying anything or doing anything with your hands. Ask someone how they're actually doing, and then don't let them get away with "fine." A few of the stories below are about people who showed up before anyone had to ask them twice. You don't need a house fire on your street to practice the smaller version of that. Just ask someone how they're doing, and actually wait for the answer.
A Fence Nobody Was Going to Notice
On Saturday, a leadership class in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho — the kind of professional-development group that usually spends its time on strategic plans and networking breakfasts — showed up at 8 a.m. to stain a fence. Not their fence. The one around the Davidson Family Hospitality Center, where families stay while someone they love is being treated at Kootenai Health. A staffer mentioned the fence needed some care, and instead of nodding along and moving to the next agenda item, the class just did it.
The People Who Show Up With Sandwiches
When Chris Trzpuc and Kendra Casavant's house burned down on the Fourth of July in Washburn, North Dakota, they lost most of what they owned in one afternoon, with two kids in the house. What happened next is the actual story: neighbors were there within hours helping salvage what they could, and the school where Casavant works as business manager is now organizing a benefit and a silent auction. "They've just showed up, with a bag of sandwiches, to do whatever it is that they can offer," Casavant said. She's usually the one doing the helping. Being on the other end of it, she said, was humbling.
Three Neighbors Who Looked Like the Wrong Kind of Trouble
When Phyllis Day's house caught fire in Wigston, England, her daughter was five miles away watching a doorbell-camera alert, briefly convinced a group of men was breaking in. They weren't. Pav Sarpal and Stephan Smart ran inside, coughing through smoke thick enough to disorient them, to get 87-year-old Phyllis — who has Alzheimer's and hadn't heard the alarm — down the stairs and out the front door. A third neighbor, Dean Archer, came running when he heard something explode inside. None of them had any reason to be there except that they saw smoke and didn't stop to think about it first.
The Guy Who Lends His Delivery Van Every Tuesday
The Loaves & Fishes food pantry in Dalton, Massachusetts feeds about 120 families a week, and that number's been climbing. A high school honor society raised $3,800 for the pantry through its annual fundraiser. A package store owner named John Kelly donated $3,500 from his store's 75th-anniversary party — and also just quietly lends the pantry his delivery van every Tuesday so volunteers have a way to haul the week's food order back from the county food bank. Nobody's asking him to keep doing that after the one big check. He just does.
The Barber Who Got Invited to a Wedding
Jon James is a barber from Queensland who spent six months flying out to remote communities to teach basic haircutting — no fanfare, just kits and a folding chair. On Mornington Island, a community that's weathered real loss, he figured he'd mostly be giving haircuts himself. Instead his students picked it up fast enough that by the end of the workshop they were doing skin fades on their own, which freed him up when a local asked if he'd help groom the wedding party for a wedding happening that same week. He said yes. His new students covered the rest of the guests. He ended up at the reception. "To be part of that emotionally, and be asked to attend after," he said, "it was incredibly humbling."
That's the five for this week. Talk soon,
Matt