Reader's Digest

AS I HOPE you will not be surprised to learn, Reader’s Digest is put together by a bunch of very nice folks. It’s something of a job requirement, in fact. The magazine’s founder, DeWitt Wallace, used to roam the halls of the headquarters on summer Friday afternoons and tell everyone to quit working and go enjoy the day. Oh, and the headquarters were located in the nicest-sounding place you could conjure: Pleasantville, New York. So it’s absolutely fitting that one of our biggest projects of the year is our Nicest Places in America contest. For eight years now, we have asked all of you nice folks to tell us about the nice places where you live, work, play, volunteer, or hail from. This year we selected six, with Provo, Utah, and…

TEN YEARS AGO, when college students in Ottawa, Canada, tied scarves to fences and around the necks of statues, with notes to homeless people to help themselves, they had no idea they were launching a movement. But today, “scarf bombing” is definitely a thing. Knitters across the United States are turning wool and fleece into scarves, hats and gloves, then leaving them in places where the needy congregate, like bus shelters. In Jacksonville, Florida, a note reads: “I am not lost! If you’re stuck in the cold, take this gift to keep warm.” The scarves warm body and soul, Suzanne Volpe, a bomber from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told the Washington Post. The gifts, she says, tell homeless people that “somebody cares.”…

ANOTHER STICKY LATE-JULY Thursday in Philadelphia, and 52-year-old Christine Dawn King was hurrying to her job as a caregiver to the elderly. Or trying to. The traffic on Interstate 95 was thick—no surprise for this stretch of highway. She pulled into the exit lane, which was moving at a crawl. That’s when she spotted a man and woman standing beside a stopped vehicle and engaged in some kind of altercation. King watched as the woman repeatedly attempted to block the man as he headed toward the guardrail, which overlooked a 40-foot drop onto a concrete parking lot. The man kept pushing the woman aside and shifting some object from his right arm to his left. Having reached the guardrail, he dangled the object out over the precipice. Oh my God, King…

Mail Bonding In the post office in Grand Prairie, Texas, Alvin Gauthier discovered some letters dated 1942 to 1945 and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lamb in Jacksonville, Arkansas. A stamp read: “U.S. Army Postal Service.” A Marine vet who’d served in Iraq, Gauthier knew the importance of mail to soldiers and their families. He was determined to see the lost letters delivered. With help from KARK-TV in Little Rock, he tracked down the last surviving member of the Lamb family, JoAnn Smith, whose older brother Marion wrote the letters while serving in World War II. On his day off, Gauthier drove five hours to Jacksonville to hand the letters to a tearful Smith. “It’s a connection to my family,” she told KARK. “Sometimes,” Gauthier said, “you just go the…

JAMESTOWN, PA Herd any good animal stories? See terms and submit yours at rd.com/petpals. I DOUBT YOU HAVE next-door neighbors as fun as mine. Alpacas Alfie and Fred regularly join us on the patio when we go outside for dinner and to lounge in the evening. They are the remaining two from a herd of 40—our neighbors couldn’t bear to let them go when it was time to sell. Come summer heat or winter chill, the quirky duo always wants to know what we’re up to. Usually, they just want to socialize and munch grass and leaves, but once in a while they’ll start roughhousing, and that’s always a show. They wrap their necks around one another like giraffes and make sounds straight from a Jurassic Park film until they wear themselves out. Fred is…

It was my turn to work the indoor concession stand at the ice rink while our son’s youth hockey team played outdoors. When a player from another team came inside to buy a snack, I asked what the score was. “Four to three,” he said. “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Who’s ahead?” As he exited, he shouted back, “Four!” —DAVID FLEMMING Hermantown, MN The doctor was reviewing some results from a routine blood test during my checkup, then he took my blood pressure. “Were you in a hurry this morning?” he asked. Autocorrect turned “Think of others for a change” into “Think of otters for a change,” and I agree that’s a better solution. —X@RYGDANCE Contemplating the worst, I replied, “No, as a matter of fact, I sat quietly in the waiting room, very relaxed and reading. Why?…