This month for the first time, 16- and 17-year olds will help decide Newark’s school board members thanks to a measure passed last year, just the third reform of its kind in the nation.

Article by Lauren Gill

archive.ph Mirror

In 1944, a middle school girl gave her friend a card for her 14th birthday. When the girl’s birthday came around, the friend sent the same card back to her. “Neither one of us can remember who started it,” said Pat DeReamer, one of the two girls, who is now 95. The other teen was Mary Kroger, now 94.

For the past 81 years, DeReamer and Kroger have been sending the same birthday card back and forth to each other on their birthdays, signing their names and the date each time. DeReamer opens it every year on her birthday, April 1, then signs it and mails it to Kroger, so she can open it on her birthday, May 20. Kroger lives in Carmel, Indiana, and DeReamer lives in Louisville

“It’s been a long time,” Kroger said. The timeworn card features a cartoon dog with a large red polka-dot bow tie. It reads: “Here’s wishing you a BIRTHDAY that really is COLOSSAL.” The message continues on the inside of the card: “’Cause it’ll be a long, long time before YOU’RE an old fossil!”

As they’re both nea

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20534437

Thorn forest once blanketed the Rio Grande Valley. Restoring even a little of it could help the region cope with the impacts of climate change

These tortoises can live till 200, and it's not uncommon for them to have children at such an age, even in the wild. Their numbers are growing! :)

Indore in Madhya Pradesh, India, was once dotted with fetid waste dumps but after a huge campaign is now virtually spotless

This is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start sweeping a street and speak solemnly about civic duty while the media take photos. The next day it’s over and things go back to how they were before.

But not in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. From 2017, when it won the prize for being the cleanest city in the country, it kept winning for eight straight years, until last year.

Before 2017, Indore had been ranked 25th of 471 towns and cities in the government’s cleanliness rankings.

In many cities, families will keep their home scrupulously clean, but a few feet from their front door rubbish is left lying around.

“That other area is seen as someone else’s responsibility and no one sees any contradiction in walking past a stinking pile of rubbish to their clean home,” said Arjun Sehg