Author: ruhlwrite

In a squeezed-in space the size of an SUV’s backseat, Lou Farina is perched on an ancient chair manning the phone. “It’s the red, white and blue building on the corner,” he tells a customer. “You can’t miss it.” Lou’s the owner of L&M Auto Service. He’s right about that. L&M Auto Service is striped like an American flag; when the breeze blows, you’d swear it’s waving hello. Peeling linoleum, grimy knotty-pine paneling and…

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On the back patio, on the way to the garden, there’s a bowl filled with cat food. Joan Garrison started setting it out for the strays when her own brood, Thelma, Louise and Neeky, got picky. “It was too expensive to throw away,” she says. She never could bring herself to stop feeding the fancy-free felines, and before she knew it, she had “grandkids” padding through her roses. Joan’s family was in the jet-set crowd. She’s done all right by the garden. When…

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It was when Mark Cruz lost everything — his job, his girlfriend, his grandfather, his band and his faith in himself and in his god — that he found himself. Up until 2010 and 2011, when all this life-changing stuff threw Mark a curve ball he couldn’t catch, he was a pretty happy guy. And, when he thinks about it, he says that that was a bad thing. You see, if all these dramatic departures had not happened, Mark wouldn’t be sitting in the offices of his new company, Fling Design. …

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There’s a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen table, and there’s an opera book on an antique music stand in the living room. They have only one thing in common: Renee Heitmann, baker, singer and believer in the goodwill power of small, random gestures like giving out chocolate chip cookies, which she does every week. Renee is a singer and a baker. “I get an extreme sense of joy from the act of baking and sharing that,” says Renee, who details her…

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It was pouring, and I couldn’t find it. I was annoyed because it’s not every day that you pay $50 for an umbrella, especially if you’re me. But this was a mighty fine umbrella. In fact, a greater one has never dripped itself dry in my presence. It was the basic black collapsible model that fits in a handbag or briefcase, the kind that is so ubiquitous that nobody ever notices it. A pair stranded in the street. The fact that it didn’t call attention to itself was the real…

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