Lydia Likes It

Recycled chopsticks. Really.

Have you ever wondered what 886 recycled bamboo chopsticks, sanitized, trimmed, and squeezed under pressure, might look like? Check out this beautiful cutting board from ChopValue, a company whose mission is to redefine the term waste to resource, one chopstick at a time. I learned about this from the Reasons to Be Cheerful newsletter. With microfactories in Vancouver, where the company was founded, and Bali, Mexico City, Montreal, Singapore, Las Vegas, Liverpool and Toronto, ChopValue opened in Boston earlier this year. Elaine Chow, who runs the Boston operation -- you can follow them on Facebook -- is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management and an experienced executive focused on fostering a people-first culture in the workplace. In addition to being a working mom living with her family in Dorchester, she has served the community for 20 years in workforce and youth development. ChopValue harvests used chopsticks from restaurants, and turns them into servingware, cutting boards, and furniture. The smaller pieces would make wonderful holiday gifts.

Andy Borowitz, political humorist

If I could live for one day in someone else's brain, I'd choose Andy Borowitz as my brain host. It takes a special kind of person to find humor in today's political climate. Borowitz, a writer for The New Yorker, is exactly that special. A Harvard-educated American writer, comedian, satirist and actor, he won the first-ever National Press Club award for humor. His new book, Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, published in 2022, looks at the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump. When Biden won the presidency, I worried that Borowitz would lose his edge after five years of satirizing the other guy. That didn't happen; Borowitz is sharper than ever, and finds plenty of grist for his mill. Sign up to get The Borowitz Report delivered to your inbox every weekday. 

Football or soccer, it's the World Cup

In the past 10 years, I've become quite the football nerd. (Soccer, not American football.) It started with trying to keep up with my husband Ted, who's long been quite the football nerd, but it quickly morphed into a nerdiness all my own. So it's my duty to remind you that the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament begins tomorrow in Qatar, with the host country taking on Ecuador. FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, organizes national teams from Europe, the Americas and Caribbean, Africa and Asia in a months-long elimination contest every four years, culminating in one team winning the prestigious World Cup. Thirty-two teams have qualified for the final rounds in Qatar. In the first stage, teams are divided into eight groups of four and play round-robin style. The top two teams in each group advance to the knock-out stage. As with any competition, it's more fun to watch if you choose a team to follow. The US, England and Canada have made it to the round of 32, as have football powerhouses Germany, Belgium, France, Argentina and Senegal. Matches are broadcast in the US on Peacock, USA, and other networks. For the past few World Cups, I've chosen Brazil as my team -- because several good players from my regular team, Liverpool, will play for Brazil -- and I'm sticking with them this year, too. Who's your team?

41 years on

Old friends Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton, singing Blind Faith's Can't Find My Way Home in 2010, 41 years after they first recorded it. A bit more mellow, perhaps, but as seductive an earworm as the original version. I love the little smiles they share. I'll get stuck on a different earworm any day now, but in the meantime, this one goes out to our friend Dave, up north. 

Little Free Library

Once upon a time, when we still lived in Boston's South End, my husband Ted and I served our community as its only little free librarians. Ted built our library out of scrap wood and pieces of an old Nordic Track, with help from his friend Matt, and painted "make way for readers" ducklings on the roof; our neighbor Ken Clark contributed the duck feet. The library stood on our front stoop and anchored the street. It could hold nearly 50 books, depending on size, and the idea was simple: take a book, leave a book. Thanks to its placement near the intersection of a major walking street, our Little Free Library turned over nearly one quarter of its contents every day, and any children's books we were lucky to get disappeared almost instantly. We ran the library for three years, until we sold our house. Another neighborhood group adopted it, repainted it, and moved it a few blocks away. There are now more than 150,000 Little Free Libraries worldwide, in more than 100 countries. Ours was #24,688. When you're out and about, pull up the map on the website, and search for them on your travels.