BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM You brought them home, stuck them in a vase, and two days later they were drooping. Happens to everyone, and it’s frustrating when you paid good money at the farmers’ market. The thing is, sunflowers aren’t that demanding. The difference between four days and ten mostly comes down to what you do in the first thirty minutes. Start with a clean vase Bacteria kill cut flowers, and sunflowers are especially vulnerable. Their thick stems and large leaves break down faster than most, and once the water turns murky, it’s a losing battle. Wash the vase with hot soapy water before filling, or rinse it with diluted bleach if you want to be thorough. A vase that looks clean isn’t always clean. Pick something tall and sturdy too. Sunflower heads are top-heavy, and a wide-mouthed or squat vase won’t hold them properly. Strip the leaves before they hit the water Any leaves below the waterline need to come off before the stems go in. Sunflower leaves are large and decompose fast in water, turning it cloudy and encouraging bacterial growth that shortens vase life. Do this at the sink before you fill it. Cut the stems at a sharp diagonal Trim one to two inches off each stem at a sharp angle. The diagonal cut opens up more surface area and keeps the stem from sitting flat on the bottom of the vase, where it can’t take up water properly. For sunflowers, this matters more than it would for thinner-stemmed flowers. The stems are thick and fibrous, and scissors compress them, which slows absorption. Use bypass pruners if you have them, and cut right before putting them in the water. Feed the water, not just the flower Add flower food to fresh water. The small packets that come with florist bouquets do three things: nutrients, a mild acid that helps with water uptake, and a bactericide. No packet? Mix your own: two tablespoons of lemon juice, one tablespoon of sugar, and a quarter teaspoon of bleach per quart of water. Use bottled lemon juice rather than fresh; the acidity is more consistent. Give them air and a cool spot Sunflowers need room. Their heads are heavy and do better with airflow around them, so don’t pack the arrangement too tightly. A wider vase helps if you have a big bunch. Once they’re in, find them a cool spot out of direct sun. Heat vents, sunny windowsills, and the tops of appliances all shorten their lives. A shaded spot on the counter is what you want. Stay on top of the maintenance These flowers drink a lot. Top up the water every day. Around day two or three, do a proper reset: re-cut the stems, rinse the vase, and start fresh with new water and flower food. Keep trimming every couple of days after that. If a bloom starts to wilt, pull it out right away. A dying flower releases ethylene gas and speeds up the decline of everything around it. Do all of this, and you’re looking at seven to ten days. Skip it, and five is more realistic. It’s not much work. Walking past that vase on Wednesday and finding them still open? Worth it.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Keep cut sunflowers fresh longer with these simple care habits first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Deaths linked to air pollution in London fell an estimated 40 percent between 2019 and 2024, according to a new Imperial College London study. That’s the good news. The more complicated part: the same research revised the original death estimates sharply upward, because it turns out the science had been underestimating how badly pollution was hurting people. Earlier models put roughly 4,000 premature deaths down to air pollution in London in 2019. Stronger evidence linking air quality to heart disease, dementia, and diabetes has pushed that figure to between 6,400 and 8,000. By 2024, it had come down to between 3,800 and 5,100. Progress against a worse starting point than anyone calculated. Two findings, one clear message Dr. David Dajnak of the Imperial Environmental Research Group was direct about what the numbers show: London’s air quality has improved substantially since 2019, and pollution “remains a serious public health risk” despite that. Nitrogen dioxide fell 41 percent across the city over five years. Fine particulate pollution dropped 28 percent. Those numbers don’t happen by accident; they follow a decade of deliberate changes to how vehicles are allowed to operate in the city. How the ULEZ changed the equation The Ultra-Low Emission Zone launched in central London in 2019 and expanded to inner boroughs in 2021. Vehicles that don’t meet emission standards, diesel cars from before 2015 or petrol from before 2004, pay £12.50 (about $16) a day to drive in. About 97 percent of vehicles in the zone are now compliant. In 2023, Mayor Sadiq Khan pushed the ULEZ out to cover all of London, against significant local opposition. A study for the Greater London Authority found roadside nitrogen dioxide was 27 percent lower than it would have been without the scheme. Khan called the Imperial findings “overwhelming and unarguable” evidence that bold policy had “reduced pollution, improved public health and saved lives.” Where the problem persists The boroughs with the highest ratios of pollution-related deaths in 2024 were Bexley, Havering, and Sutton, all in outer London and all newly inside the expanded ULEZ. The city has also put £2.7 million (about $3.4 million) into indoor air filters for 200 primary schools and grown its zero-emission bus fleet from 30 to over 3,000 in the past decade. Professor Stephen Holgate of the Royal College of Physicians said the scale of improvement was “so encouraging,” a reminder that sustained policy can produce “real, measurable benefits.” But Jemima Hartshorn of Mums for Lungs pointed out that more than 100,000 children were still hospitalized for breathing problems in London in 2024. “Other cities and regions are still more polluted,” she said. “Londoners need more action, and so does the rest of the country.”   Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Air pollution deaths in London fall 40 percent over five years first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Nearly a year ago, Burlington announced plans to revamp all existing locations. The retailer hoped to bring customers the same great deals in updated stores to make their shopping experience more enjoyable. “At Burlington, shoppers already know that they can find the very best values on branded apparel, footwear, beauty, accessories and home fashions, but now, our newly reimagined store layout makes their shopping experience easier, more exciting and more enjoyable”, Michael O’Sullivan, CEO of Burlington Stores, shared in a news release. “Feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive – they love finding great deals, and they love shopping our newly redesigned stores. In addition, the brand had plans for new stores across the country. In July 2026, Burlington will open 12 new locations just in time for back-to-school shopping. Kids are excited about new wardrobes, and moms and dads love the idea of saving money. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Burlington (@burlingtondeals) The New Burlington Stores Will Open in Six States Having a Burlington in your neighborhood means more than just a place to shop. The retailer is committed to giving back and becoming an important part of the community. One way the company gives back is through donation drives. “Our annual Burlington Coat Event is hosted in partnership with the national non-profit organization, Delivering Good. During our Coat Event, customers who purchased a coat received an offer redeemable at any Burlington location at a later date. And, in the spirit of giving, Burlington donated 50,000 new coats to help neighbors in need within our store communities,” the website explains. The 12 new Burlington stores will open throughout July. California Montclair Idaho Moscow Oregon Hillsboro Keizer Salem Pennsylvania Quakertown Tennessee Paris Texas Austin Denton Forney Houston Lubbock This story’s featured image is by Deb Cohn-Orbach/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

John Denver’s hit 1971 song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” may very well be the song of the summer. It’s certainly the unofficial anthem of the 2026 World Cup for the United States. The tune has gone viral for U.S. fans belting it out following the team’s World Cup wins against Paraguay and Australia, and even after the loss against Turkey. According to Major League Soccer, Denver’s song was submitted to FIFA by the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) as an option to be played following World Cup wins. Amy Hopfinger, a former executive at U.S. Soccer, ultimately chose the song for the USMNT from a list of other possible hits to be used during warmups, goals and wins. Other potential song choices included “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” USMNT player Chris Richard told Major League Soccer, “All of us know that part of being American is knowing ‘Country Roads,’ so we were all singing it together… It was cool, again, to hear everything from the crowd, and the crowd knows they’ve been our 12th man so far in this tournament. If we need that extra one percent, they’re always there for us. So it’s been amazing.” @nbcla The U.S. men’s national soccer team chose “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver as their postgame song after wins. Here’s how it happened. ♬ original sound – NBC Los Angeles Although the song was made famous by the folk singer’s distinctive voice, he had some help co-writing the lyrics to his massive hit. The backstory of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” Denver’s hit song was co-written by two men named Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, according to the Library of Congress. They were Denver’s friends and fellow musicians, and had intended to sell the song to country legend Johnny Cash. One of the song’s most famous lines is: “West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads.” Although the song is considered a tribute to the state of West Virginia, neither of the three artists had ever visited. “The inspiration to sing about this state came from a set of beautiful postcards a friend had sent to Bill Danoff,” the Library of Congress states. In January 1971, Denver recorded the song in New York City. It was subsequently released as a single on April 12, 1971. It was Denver’s most successful song of his career, and peaked at #2 on the Billboard US Hot 100 singles by August 1971. The legacy of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” Denver told the press in 1971 more about his hit song, sharing, “We wanted it to be melancholic and nostalgic but at the same time happy… ‘Country Roads’ says good things about what people everywhere can relate to.” Denver’s life came to a tragic end on October 12, 1997, after the plane he was piloting crashed in California. He was just 53 years old. However, his legacy lives on through his music—particularly “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” In 1998, Denver was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for the hit song. In 2014, the state of West Virginia made “Take Me Home, Country Roads” one of its official state anthems, and the song was also added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2023. The post The surprising backstory of John Denver’s 1971 American classic ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ appeared first on Upworthy.

You know the feeling. You’re boarding a plane, your toddler is already squirming in your arms, and somewhere in your bag is the tablet you swore you wouldn’t use until you absolutely had to. The seatbelt sign dings. The cabin door thuds shut. And the math starts running in your head: two hours, one tiny human, and zero escape routes. The stress starts to climb. Suddenly, you’re hyperaware of everything around you. If things go completely off the rails and my kid starts wailing, how will the person next to me react? Will they judge me for pulling out the iPad?  A little girl seated in front of an iPad. Photo credit: Canva Screens, in their many forms, are an inevitable part of modern life, even for young children. Everywhere you go—restaurants, malls, airports—you’ll see kids eagerly reaching for phones and tablets, their faces lit by tech’s blue-light glow. No matter how you feel about this trend, the decision of whether to give your child access to a smart device should always feel like a choice, not obligatory. But what other options are there, really? So, up in the air, trapped on a two-hour flight with a toddler, one mom decided to find out what would happen if she didn’t reach for the screen. One flight, timed by the minute TikTok creator Hala (@hala.khalifeh) posted a video titled “everything my toddler did on a 2-hour flight and how long each thing occupied her for (screen-free),” and it’s exactly as delightful as it sounds. No vague advice here. Instead, she gave us the play-by-play, timed down to the minute, listing each activity and how many minutes it bought her. No rounding up, no pretending. Just an honest stopwatch running on her toddler’s attention. @hala.khalifeh i’m gonna take a 5 hour nap now #flightwithbaby #babytraveltips #babytravel #toddlertravel #diaperbagpacking ♬ C.B.Rhumba by Sage Guyton and Jeremy Wakefield – SpongeRadio Some were surprise winners. A toy giraffe with bendy stretchy arms that stuck to the window? Eighteen minutes, and Hala’s daughter kept reaching back for it long after. “I didn’t think she would care for these, but she loved stretching the arms out and sticking them to the window,” she writes. A family photo album, which prompted pointing and little stories about each person, kept her daughter entertained for twelve minutes. An Arabic picture book with real photographs—not illustrations—held her for fourteen. And of course, there were also flops. Finger puppets lasted, in Hala’s words, “.9 seconds.” Why? Her daughter wasn’t a fan. “Hated this,” she continues. “Tough crowd.”  Fidget squares earned a whopping two minutes, followed by frustration. A rainbow fidget toy fell flat until the parents started playing with it themselves. Suddenly, it was interesting after all. Screenshot of @Hala.khalifeh’s video. That mix of wins and losses is exactly why the Internet fell for the video. “Using ‘tough crowd’ when a baby is unimpressed is the funniest thing ever,” one commenter wrote. Another offered a tip from the trenches: a toddler once sat beside them on the plane and happily played with tape—normal Scotch tape—for 90 minutes, writing “she was happy, and her parents were eternally grateful.”  It’s the rare parenting post that feels like a friend texting you, not an influencer selling you something. The biggest hits weren’t toys  Look closely at Hala’s video, and a pattern jumps right out: her daughter’s longest, happiest stretches weren’t because of toys at all. Watching her parents open and close their fists together? Eleven minutes of pure elation. Looking at Dad’s phone background—a photo of Mom—achieved twelve minutes of “MAMA!” and laughing. Pointing out the window at the mountains during landing, giggling at the turbulence, held her for another eleven. Even the ceiling lights and air vents got a delighted, “Light! Light!” for three minutes.  Screenshot of @Hala.khalifeh’s video. Notice the through-line. The fidget toy only worked once the parents pretended to care about it first. The second time, they hung it up so it swayed in the air, and it became a 16-minute winner, because now it was moving and invited her in. The activities that lasted longest were the ones where a grown-up joined in on the fun. The active ingredient wasn’t the giraffe or the fidget square. It was a parent engaging with their child. The toys were just the excuse for connection, props in a two-hour conversation between a kid and the people she loves most. Why a little boredom is magic  So why do the homemade, low-tech objects so often beat the high-tech gadgets? For very young kids, “nothing to do” is exactly where the magic happens. A screen hands a toddler a finished experience—bright, fast, and complete. There’s nothing left for them to build. An empty moment does the opposite and hands them a job. “Figure out how to fill it,” it says.  When a toddler isn’t being entertained, they start doing the inventing themselves: pointing, narrating, turning a closed fist into a guessing game, deciding a stretchy giraffe arm belongs on the window. @interiorniche Most kids aren’t behind, they’re just overstimulated. My toddlers have never watched a movie… and here’s what changed. Boredom stopped being a problem and started becoming the place their creativity came back. No constant screens. No constant noise. Just kids learning how to be kids again. ♬ original sound – Krystine | Interior Niche That invention is the brain developing. Researchers who study early childhood have linked unstructured, child-led play with stronger creativity, problem-solving, patience, and self-regulation—the very skills a screen tends to replace.  “The brain is at its most rapidly developing state during the first five years,” explains Dr. John Hutton of Cincinnati’s Children Hospital. “This is when the brain is highly adaptable…screen time may be too passive for optimal brain development.” Boredom itself is a feature, not a bug. Some researchers argue that a child’s inability to sit with boredom—not toys—is what predicts trouble down the road, including weaker creativity and more difficulty focusing. The psychologist Peter Gray has made the case that the time he had as a child “to be bored and figure out how to overcome boredom” taught him more than school. In other words, that squirmy, restless stretch before your toddler invents a new game isn’t the problem. The issue lies with tech’s new escape route.  Letting boredom do its job Hala’s video is enchanting the Internet because of this notion: we can find new, creative ways to entertain our kids without screens. In the 21st century, that looks like fidget toys and personalized objects—not leaving them to stare off into space, necessarily. Those eleven minutes of opening and closing fists weren’t trivial. That’s boredom doing its job, as a toddler and her parents invented fun out of thin air.  Screenshot of @Hala.khalifeh’s video. The major health groups back the instinct to go easy on screens early. The World Health Organization suggests no screen time for babies under 1, and no more than an hour a day for ages 2 to 4. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises skipping screen media—beyond a video chat with Grandma—before 18 months, and urges parents to think about what screens crowd out: sleep, play, and back-and-forth interaction. But the more interesting takeaway isn’t what to avoid. It’s what you gain. The thing that fills the space, it turns out, is you. And here’s the best part: this isn’t just a flight trick. The same thing that buys you eleven quiet minutes at 30,000 feet works in a doctor’s waiting room, a long car ride, or a restaurant where the food is taking forever. Boredom is portable, and so is the fix. Steal these screen-free tips  A young boy plays with his toys. Photo credit: Canva If Hala’s video has inspired you to travel without screens, here are a few ideas that consistently work with toddlers.  Pack novelty, not volume. A few new-to-them objects beat a giant pile of familiar toys. Rotate them every 15–20 minutes, so each one feels like a small event. Bring real-photo books. Hala noticed that picture books with real images held her daughter far longer than cartoons or illustrations. Real faces and animals invite real conversation. Use the plane itself. Window shades, ceiling lights, air vents, and the view outside are free and endlessly fascinating to a child seeing them for the first time. Let snacks be an activity. Slow, fiddly snacks buy time and double as a calm-down tool. Hala’s daughter had a “death grip” on her pancakes for five minutes. “We left early, so this was her breakfast. Snacks are always a win,” she wrote.  Try painter’s tape. Cheap, mess-free, leaves no residue, and toddler-approved, per that grateful seatmate’s comment.  Narrate everything. Half the magic is your voice. Name the mountains, count the seats, point at the clouds. Your attention is the toy they never get tired of. Next time you’re airborne…  So if you’re dreading an upcoming flight with a young child, remember Hala’s giraffe: sometimes the thing that buys you eighteen minutes is the one you almost left at home. A screen-free flight with a toddler isn’t about being a perfect parent. It’s about being present and discovering that your kid would rather have you than the screen anyway. The post Science says boredom is magic for toddler brains. One couple put it to the test at 30,000 feet. appeared first on Upworthy.