A Year of Good News 2022
We’ve got good news for you! Who would’t like to hear this, especially at times when it feels as if reasons to be happy were becoming quite rare. Even though it may seem that way, good news have not actually disappeared from the media, you just need to try a bit harder to find them. I tried to save you some trouble, collecting a second helping of 52 good news stories from around the globe. And to reinforce their positive message, I have crafted cheerful pictures out of used textiles to go with the stories. I hope that these real stories will now also appeal to you, inspire you and cheer you up.
As the mood darkened in my country when the pandemic broke out in March 2020, I decided to do something about it. Being an inveterate optimist, I began to actively seek out good news from around the globe, creating cheerful pictures to go with them and sending them to my friends to lift their spirits during lockdown. Out of this grew the book, A Year of Good News, published in November 2021.
  
To my immense surprise readers started to send me more good news stories. At exhibitions of my textile illustrations people filled the visitors’ books with lots of good news and some school classrooms covered their notice boards with stories of good deeds. My collection of good news continued to grow long after the book was published, even after the shocking news of a war in a neighbouring country reached us.

A dog named Patron helped Ukrainian emergency services find 200 unexploded bombs. President Zelenskyy awarded Patron the Order of Courage.

For a while, I felt hopeless once again, but this time I knew how to deal with it. I was convinced that even against the backdrop of an event as horrific as war many good, often inconspicuous things are happening. I started to keep an eye out for them, to cut them out from newspapers and collect them, picking out stories that cheered me up, moved me, or taught me something new. Each week I took a story out of my good news database and created a picture to go with it. Before I knew it, a second Year of Good News started to take shape.

Brazilian skydiver Luigi Cani released 100 million seeds from 28 native trees while leaping from a plane over a deforested area of the Amazon rainforest.

I hope that the pages of this book will reinforce your belief that even in the worst of times people make many good things happen and that even the tiniest, most inconspicuous gestures can make our world a better place.

After forty years, rhinos have been reintroduced to the Zinave National Park in Mozambique.

In 1982, Japanese yachtsman Kenichi Horie was the first person to sail solo across the Pacific. He repeated his voyage sixty years later, becoming the oldest person to make a non-stop crossing from Japan to the United States.

Two-year-old Barrett from Texas ordered 31 cheeseburgers while playing with his mother’s mobile phone. Since the order couldn’t be cancelled, she threw a cheeseburger feast for people in the neighbourhood.

A hiker who was injured while climbing in Croatia’s mountains was saved from freezing to death by his dog. The animal lay on top of him, keeping him warm for 13 hours until they were reached by rescuers.

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