The Furniture Queen
How many of us have given new life to someone else’s no longer needed furniture? I recently picked up a beautiful 1960’s Steelcase desk chair when a neighbor moved out, better in my apartment than a landfill. Yet plenty of usable furniture ends up dumped everyday, while so many people could really use some of it to make their home a real home and a place of comfort. In 2024, Regina Carter saw this with her elderly neighbor who needed a sofa as hers had been ruined by a leak, but was not able to get another, so Regina located a used one and with help brought it to her neighbor.
From this small start more people joined in the collecting and sharing, and Repurposed Life was born. Often when offices, college dorms, and hotels renovate or people move out, the old furniture gets trashed. Now Repurposed Life takes it in and gives it back out in pop-ups located in NYCHA parking lots and basketball courts where anyone who wants can get furniture for free.
They have teamed up with Eagle Transfer, a moving company that has donated the use of a truck and the services of the movers too, to make it even easier for this furniture to continue its life with a new home.
The video above was from 2025, I’m guessing they are now able to get that cargo van because after two years of saving furniture and home furnishings and giving it to those in need, Regina was recognized on September 15, 2026, with The David Prize, receiving $200,000 to help fund her non-profit.
(Thank you to Wonker Cress for this story.)
Staying with the theme of recycling and reusing, what can be done about all the lithium-ion batteries that are piling up and creating environmental hazards? They contain valuable metals but how to get those metals out of it is a challenge. Cobalt, lithium, nickel, and manganese can be reused to make new batteries. The current recycling process crushes the batteries then soaks them in acid and hydrogen peroxide to get to the good stuff. But that process creates its own pollution.
In 2020, team leader Zhuoran Wu, joined by Dalton Tay, and Madhavi Srinivasan of Nanyang Technological University, turned citrus peels into powder, added in citric acid, and used that mixture to get to the good stuff. It worked. They were taking waste from one source and using it to recycle another; the challenge would be scaling it up to meet demand. NTU was joined by battery recycler Se-cure Waste Management, building a plant in Singapore handling 18 tons of batteries daily. This is just a fraction of what needs to be done, but the future holds hope that new thinking and creative ideas can solve this growing problem.
(This story was shared by a Wonker, sorry I missed your name.)
For the funny commercial lets go with a classic from 2010 with the amazing Betty White and Abe Vigoda.
From our own Sadly Practical,
I am helping organize an awesome Concert for Democracy on October 11 to raise money for a local community group that works with immigrants, Partners for Our Communities, and to promote music as a way to combat authoritarianism. I’ll be there singing with Singing Resistance and the other bands and speakers are top-notch.
I got volunteered onto the planning committee by a friend which is proof that elderly people can talk me into anything. I recommend being easily swayed to help out as a way to build community wherever possible.
I’m proud of all the work done so far by other committee members to convince bands to take a day off from their tours to celebrate activism, combat authoritarianism, and to benefit a local charity in the Chicago area.
At the concert Congresswoman Delia Ramirez will be speaking, she has been very critical of ICE and DHS, with her bill to abolish ICE.
A favorite YouTube follow is OzzyMan Reviews, which he describes as
Reviewing wildlife, sport, WTF viral vids, conducting celeb interviews, and analysing the odd tv show or movie (it all started with GoT in 2014). Bloody tellin’ it straight. No bullshit.
OzzyMan can go from ripping on viral video clips to a fascinating interview with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Wonkers’ Nice Times
From Garnet: “Visited the Obama Presidential Center with a friend last month. It is wonderful and very much worth the time; you will have to wait for tickets. People were just so obviously happy to be there and so pleased to be sharing the experience.”
Photos by Garnet. From just james: “Last year my wife had a knee replacement. When she started physical therapy, I got into the habit of taking my dog to the nearby dog park until I needed to drive us back home. Frequently when we were at the park we would be visited by a pair of nice girls from the local high school’s cross country team. They really loved up Sierra (I think skipping out on some of the roadwork was secondary). About 6 months ago my wife was done with PT, so I stopped going to the dog park there and returned to my usual local spot. About 2 weeks ago I got a text saying, ‘I don’t know if you would remember us, we used to visit Sierra at the dog park. We got your number by magnifying one of our pictures of her until we could read the number on her tag. Can you bring her back for a visit?’ So of course we set up a rendezvous and went to see them. When they arrived one of them handed me a present — she had done a drawing of Sierra. Absolutely melted my heart.”
Random Recommends!
1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, arguably one of the greatest traditional vampire films ever made. A remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror masterwork Nosferatu AND a retelling of Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic Dracula, this was the brainchild of writer/producer/director Werner Herzog, one of Germany’s greatest living filmmakers. Beautifully shot, drenched in shadow, atmospheric as Hell, and buoyed by a trio of fantastic performances from Bruno Ganz as Harker, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy, and the infamous Klaus Kinski as Dracula. Currently available for free with ads on Prime Video, Tubi, Roku, PLEX and Pluto TV; available for rental for $3.99 everywhere else.
The song today’s Nice Times title was taken from is The Times They Are A Changin’ by Bob Dylan.
We finish with two excellent tunes that have a certain spirit to them. When That Man Is Dead And Gone performed by Lizzy & The Triggermen. Followed by It Ain’t Gonna Go Away by Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer.
Please send Nice Times suggestions, personal nice times and original art to ziggywiggynicetimes@gmail.com. It can be all levels of Nice Times! As you can see Nice Times is a community project, keep sending your suggestions, also be sure to include your screen name so I can give you credit! Thank you.
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I am off to the park to feed my goose.
Beautiful weather today, 69 and sunny, nice day for a Xena Warrior Scooter ride.
Gimothy the Goose is looking good. Flocks have been stopping at the fishing pond and then moving on. Gimothy and his crew (3 other geese and the ducks) are always there, I believe they will not be migrating. Yesterday there were 3 other flocks, in separate areas, but the day before that it was just Gimmy and the crew. Easier to feed Gimmy when the asshole geese aren’t there. I stick around and be the big goose to make sure Gimothy can get their share.
https://substack.com/profile/155618292-ziggywiggy/note/c-347153585?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
I'll share a good times:
A few years ago one of my patients was an African gentleman. Very hard of hearing, not much English, Muslim, very nice guy. Dying of cancer. He lived with his granddaughter and brand-new great-granddaughter. Super sweet family, very poor, living a rather marginal existence. At one point I took a photo of all three of them together, my patient holding the baby in his lap.
They disappeared abruptly (it's ok, this was before Trump II), I believe they moved out of the area to be with extended family. And that was pretty much the end of it for me.
Until:
The other day I got a text at random on my work phone. It was my patient's granddaughter. She was wondering if I still had that photo of the three of them. It was the only photo in existence of her grandfather and her daughter. I checked my phone, and I still had it. Sent it to her. He had died a couple years previously. She was very grateful.