The Happy Pod: Creating 'Christina's Corner'

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This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

Hello, it's Alan Smith here, and welcome to half an hour or so of uplifting stories from around the world.

In this edition, we hear about Christina's Corner.

When they treat people like my daughter, I mean they see them as a human.

Now there's a special place for them in heaven, you know.

A special place in a convenience store in a small town in Idaho.

There's the millions of people tuning in to watch the moose migration in northern Sweden.

I like everything about it.

The sounds, the pictures,

the tranquility.

You just

be there.

Plus, I just thought, what a wonderful little snapshot.

Of course, we've got recordings of famous people or royalty or politicians from that era, but very rarely people who are just on their holiday.

A 70-year-old voicemail witch has been reunited with the woman who recorded it.

And when we are starting the program, the first sessions, they don't know each other.

They are not confident with the group, and also they are not really sure

they are going to feel comfortable.

How rowing is

For Christina, picking out a film was an integral part of her day, and Dave was determined for her to carry this on, despite his store closing.

The Happy Pods Harry Bly has been speaking to Dave and Christina's mother, Tony.

My name is Tony Cavanaugh, and my daughter is Christina.

She is almost 36.

For more than 20 years, Tony and her daughter, Christina, have visited their local video rental store almost every day at 3:30 in the afternoon to pick up two of Christina's favourite movies.

It's part of just you know the fabric of her life.

It's woven in.

Christina has Down syndrome and is mostly non-verbal.

Tony says going to the video store is an important part of her daily routine.

I mean, I have a cabinet full of videos,

but and they are those videos, the same movies that she goes and rents.

So it's going to rent the movies that she loves.

Nowadays, for many, video rental stores are are a distant but fond memory.

Since the mid-2000s, as streaming services became mainstream, most stores have closed.

And last year, Christina's favorite video store began to struggle.

Dave Croening is the store owner.

Yard costs were going up, but the revenue was going down.

And it just kind of got to a point where I just felt that just maintaining the video store wasn't feasible.

The people that worked there were warning me that eventually, you know, they didn't know when, but things were just not looking good because I can't explain it to her.

And Dave knew that too.

And that was

his

concern.

Dave kept the store going as long as he could.

Well, he let it go on, you know, the loss of revenue because of her.

So then, you know, it happened.

The hammer came down and it was like, oh

But when it came time to close the video store, Dave came up with a solution to create Christina's corner in the neighboring convenience store, which he also owns.

So I thought, well, I could build just this version of this corner of the store that looks like the video store, put her favorite movies in there, and then just

kind of create a snapshot, I guess, of what

our video store was at the time we uh locked her up i explained it at one point it was like having a prison sentence lifted and the way he's got it set up now

i think she'll be able to do it as long as he's the owner

truthfully when i i did this you know i was just doing something nice for just a customer that's been

loyal just for decades.

You know, I was just doing it to help a mother out or her daughter that was, you know, wasn't born, you know, with the same faculties as you and me.

And, you know, I thought, you know, you know, what if the shoes were on the other foot?

And I thought, you know, I can help this one person out and make their life a little bit a little bit easier.

I went to thank him and

no words came.

I just burst into tears.

So about a week or two later, I saw him and I said, promise not to cry.

And I, you know, I thanked him then with words.

You know, it just

when they treat people like my daughter, I mean, they see them as a human

and

they're willing to go the extra mile, you know.

So many times,

yeah, there are a lot of good people kind people,

but they don't understand disabilities.

They're afraid when they see people with disabilities.

So

when somebody steps out like that, it's

now there's a special place for them in heaven, you know?

You know, people are always saying, it's everything

to me.

So I didn't want to use that phrase, but really, it is.

It's everything.

After Tony and I spoke, it approached 3.30 and was time for them to head over to Dave's store.

Tony says she hopes their story will promote more love and kindness across the world.

Tony Kavanaugh and Dave Craney were speaking to Harry Bly.

And this story got us thinking, has somebody you know gone out of their way to change someone's life for the better?

If so, we'd love to hear about it.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

Now on the happy pod, let's slow down.

These sounds are from last year's moose migration in northern Sweden.

It was broadcast by a team who've set up 30 cameras around the woods to capture the natural phenomenon of the animal, also known as the elk, moving across rivers and lakes to find greener pastures ready for summer.

Well, now the team's rolling the cameras for another year.

They'll stream live for 24 hours a day for about three weeks.

Nine million people tuned in last year and judging by the global reaction after its first day, many millions more will be tuning in this year too.

Ulla Maunglen is a fan of the show and one of its most avid watchers.

I like everything about it.

The sounds, the pictures,

the tranquility.

You just

be there.

I don't have to go out.

I can't go out.

So this is my connection with nature.

I have been watching this for six years now.

I am sickly and homebound, so this is my lifeline.

Johan Erlag is the project manager and executive producer of the show.

He spoke to the BBC's Luke Jones.

I hoped that the Swedish people would love it, but I couldn't imagine that the whole world would be interested in this as well, so it's fantastic.

Just explain what the programme is.

It's just a load of cameras, what, over the Swedish countryside, picking up moose as and when they wander past.

Yeah, exactly.

The moose migrate from their winter places to their summer pastures, and we are actually

having 30 cameras in a small area where they are actually gonna cross and swim over a river.

So it's a very unique and beautiful thing when you actually see these big animals walking down in the river and then suddenly

the head appears with flapping ears and it's

amazing.

And is it constant moose or is it occasionally a view of a bit of stream or a bit of field where a moose is yet to arrive but we're keeping our eyes peeled just in case?

I mean the mooses migrate

obviously this this time of year

every year it's about the same dates every year but the spring is a bit earlier this year so we had to start a week earlier but this is the very

very few weeks of the year where they migrate in big

big queues actually so 20 30 yeah traffic jam in the woods

and you must be very good at it now because you you've done it a few years is that right yeah this is our our seventh season, actually.

And do you recognize the same moose coming back again?

Are there other occurring characters and stars?

Actually, we tried to see if we can recognize the stars, but we can't actually.

Yeah, they look quite similar.

The scientists are helping us, and

there are obviously moose living in the area, but they also migrate for a few kilometers.

Johan Erlag.

Now, here's a question for you.

Have you ever been reunited with something that you thought you might have lost forever?

Well, that's what happened to a British woman called Valerie Stannard.

You see, 70 years ago, she recorded something called a voiceograph whilst she was traveling in New York.

Decades later, she's been reunited with the disc that it was held on.

Justin Dealy has been talking to Valerie to find out more.

In 1955, Valerie from Welling Garden City was in New York and decided to send a message home using a voiceograph machine.

Now, these recording booths were popular in the 40s and 50s, especially in America.

Valerie went into a small booth, had only one minute to speak, and the recording of her voice was pressed onto a vinyl disc.

She then posted the voiceogram back to her family in Hertfordshire.

And 70 years later, record dealer Joel Diath was going through some records and made an intriguing discovery.

I was in a dusty old warehouse and I was going through some records and I saw this voiceogram and I just find them absolutely fascinating because as much as I'm a fan of rare records, this is a complete one-off.

So among it was not just the voiceogram but the envelope it came in and I thought, oh, I have to, I have to not just listen to this, I have to do a bit of digging.

I heard a very well-spoken young lady who was telling her parents about her trip to New York and I've checked the date and it was 1955, so 70 years ago, and I just thought, what a wonderful little snapshot.

Of course, we've got recordings of famous people or royalty or politicians from that era, but very rarely people who are just on their holiday.

I just went onto Facebook and I found a Wellingarden City Facebook group, as there's many, and I just shared some details, shared some photos and said, can anyone help?

I know the street name, I know the surname, and how fortunate for me, some people got in touch.

A neighbour of Valerie's family was able to tell Joel that Valerie had moved to Vancouver in Canada.

She also had a daughter and finding out she was called Zoe, Joel was able to message her on social media.

I thought it was going to be something spammy, but I read it anyway.

And I thought it was having rather a challenging day, and it was just such a little ray of sunshine in the middle of a bit of awfulness.

And so I reached out, and it was really quite something.

By this time, Joel had managed to get the recording digitized.

It's 70 years old and not the clearest, but Valerie can be heard wishing her mum a happy birthday and that America is a wonderful place.

Valerie was 20 years old when she made that recording.

Now aged 90, she was able to listen again to her younger self.

It was a little bit

frightening.

Do you actually remember going in to record that message at 20 years old or not?

Well, I remember the couple of days I was in New York very, very clearly because such outstanding things happened to me.

And Joel, you're the man who's worked very hard to make all of this happen.

It was certainly worth it, wasn't it?

I was just sort of sitting here feeling quite moved by the whole thing because when Vali recorded that 70 years ago, could Valio have imagined that 70 years later would be sitting here talking, meeting new people and because of some sort of voice postcard.

I'm so glad that I reached out.

And Zoe, as we've got Joel here, is there anything you'd like to say to Joel as well?

Oh, thank you so much.

This has just been a lovely thing.

My husband and I are with a pipe band, and in 2026, we're going to be traveling to Glasgow to see the world.

And we're planning to pop down to London and meet Joel in person.

Well, I thoroughly look forward to it.

I don't think I've ever been to a pipe band gig before, but I think this is a better first one to go to.

That report was from Justin Dealey

Coming up in this podcast.

I was home during the day and I was out every night.

And my man worked during the day and he was home every night.

That was the secret.

We'll find out the recipe to 70 years of happy marriage.

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To southern Spain now and a project in the city of Seville, which is using rowing to help refugees feel part of their new community.

Spain has seen an increase in people seeking asylum over the past few years due to conflicts and natural disasters.

And one group, the Seville Sports Marina, is inviting children and adults who've arrived in Spain to join in and be part of the boat crew.

Craig Langren went to find out more.

I arrive to a flurry of activity down by the riverside.

A group of adults and children are dragging a large white rowing boat into the water.

I'm here to meet Jose Vines, founder of a non-profit organization called D'Arcena de Portiva Sevilla, which runs programmes to get people involved in sports.

Jose tells me the project's called Crew Together and offers a six-week rowing course to refugees and asylum seekers.

Lots of people will have to move to our city from different countries like Venezuela and Rocco and we want them to feel part of our society.

And we learned to coordinate their movement and work as a team.

I quickly settle in and become part of the crew.

You want to see next to Alir?

Okay.

Can I talk about us?

Alright, so I'm going to get in as well.

We each grabbed one of the metal oars with a bright orange blade at the end.

It was so tightly packed in that my knees knocked against the person sitting next to me.

I'm just in

the boat.

I'm not sure how helpful I'm being really.

I'm seeking solace in the fact that I'm balancing out the boat at the back.

We head further out into the middle of the Guadalquivir River.

Whilst it's wide, there isn't a strong current, and the calm blue water shimmers in the early evening sun as we make our way down the river, passing parks, office buildings, and cyclists on the footpath.

After about an hour or so of rowing up and down the river singing, the sun begins to set and we make our way back to shore.

Everyone gets out and helps to pull the boat up the slipway and back into the nearby boathouse.

It's a big effort.

It's a big

200 kilos.

Wow, it's a big.

It's a big old thing this boat.

Jose tells me they put on a weekly session for 50 people.

That's 10 each every day from Monday to Friday.

He says that they have a sports coach to teach the students how to row.

And there's also someone called a social educator.

Now their role is to create games and activities to encourage the groups to talk.

An important part of all of this, as Jose explained.

Many refugees don't have friends or family here, so this project helped them feel part of the community.

When we are starting the program, the first sessions they don't know each other.

They are not confident with the group and also they are not really sure

they are gonna feel comfortable growing on the river.

But it's great to see them after two, three sessions when they know each other better and they connect and they join the games and the play that we are proposing and they are laughing and they are getting better.

Some stay in touch after the calls and also we try to connect them with employers.

Jose Vines ending that report by Craig Langren in Seville.

And for more stories like this, listen to People Fixing the World, wherever you get your podcasts.

Now we have a story about a public artwork featuring life-size puppet animals traveling across Africa from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The group, including the puppeteers, will follow a 20,000-kilometer route from the Congo Basin, traveling through Lagos and Dakar later this month, before moving through Morocco and then into Europe through Spain, France, Italy, the UK, Denmark, and Sweden, all the way up to the Arctic Circle.

This is their promotional video.

It's about raising awareness of what they describe as their flight from climate disaster.

The artistic director, Amir Nizar Zouabi, has been speaking to Julian Warwicker.

Yeah, it is an ambitious project, but we're facing a massive problem.

And maybe by doing massive feats, we...

we can try and address this problem that is on everybody's doorstep.

It's everywhere all at once.

It's been, you know, climate crisis is a new, of course, right now with world politics

being what they are.

It's being pushed aside.

So our project has become more acute.

And we want to raise a conversation.

We want to raise a different way of talking about climate.

We want to...

We want to bring it to where we feel safe, to the doorsteps of our cities, so people can

get inspired again by nature, by the beauty of nature well the artwork is called the herds they're a group of life-size puppet animals which will first emerge onto the banks of the Congo River and then you've got this enormous journey to undertake how practically do you do that

with a lot of patience with flexibility and with knowing that a lot of things will go wrong but Basically, we're working with a lot of local artists and local groups along the route.

So this is in many ways a global project that is rooted in local collaborations in all of the cities that we walk through.

It's not a touring production.

It's a production that is recreated in every city, organically co-created with artists in the city, and is reliant heavily on local knowledge and on on local participation.

The number of the animals,

the size of the herd changes from city to city, but we rely heavily heavily on local participants that come and work with us, and they become the herds in their city.

So

it's a civic act that invites people to take part of a climate action.

And at the end of it, when it finishes, what do you hope you will have achieved?

You know, we are theater makers, first and foremost.

We're not politicians, thank God.

And what I mainly hope to achieve, what we hope to achieve is to

touch the heart.

I think that's people are affected and take action when they're moved by something, when they fall in love with something, when something becomes precious and they care about it.

Obviously the science around climate has been around, we all know it, we all understand it,

except the people in power that deny it.

But we also think there's another aspect of this discussion that we need to engage with, which is an emotional aspect that is very important.

And that's what we hope to achieve.

We're trying to create an immersive visceral experience for people

to reignite something, to crack indifference.

Amir Nizal Zuabi, the artistic director of The Herds.

Now to finish, we have a story to gladden the heart.

Two couples who married in the same venue on the same day seventy years ago have just marked their platinum anniversaries together.

Tommy and Thelma Budge had a joint wedding with Tommy's sister Violet and Leslie Flett the 9th of April 1955 in the Scottish archipelago of Orkney.

David Delday joined the anniversary celebrations.

The beginning of April 70 years ago, a resignation from the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and this song by Tennessee Ernie Ford, top of the charts.

Give me your word,

your love will never

die.

Perhaps those words had been swirling in the heads of Tommy Budge and Leslie Flate.

Thelma and Violet did give them their word, and soon after the four were in the Kirkwill Registrar's office tying the knot.

Thelma explains how the joint wedding came about.

Violet was planning to get married later that year.

Tommy had to go for his national service and he was away, still at the first stages of it.

And he couldn't get home twice.

So, the only time that it would all work out was on that particular day.

And he got home on the Friday night, I think.

We married on Saturday, and he's away on Monday morning.

It's a day they all still remember vividly.

After the ceremony, they headed to Lacely's parents' house, where Violet had a first encounter with a particular kind of drink.

It was a bottle of champagne that Balreed had got, and he gave it to us.

I said it was the first time that I ever tasted champagne and the last time.

Oh, I did not like it.

Wasn't my cup of tea as time.

In what really is a true love story, three of the four had all grown up and gone to school together in the parish of South Ronaldsay.

So the natural place to go was back to brother and sister Tommy and Violet's parents' home.

Up to 30 folk crammed in the house for a homemade meal of chicken and taties.

Work commitments meant that both couples didn't always see as much of each other as they might have liked.

But Violet jokes that might have been part of the secret to their success.

I worked at nights.

I was home during the day and I was out every night.

And my man worked during the day and he was home every night.

That was the secret.

To avoid each other.

Yes, to avoid each other.

Yes, that was the secret.

Now, you may have noticed we've heard quite a lot from Violet and Thelma, and a bit less from Tommy and Leslie.

The designated spokesperson approach, another part of the winning formula.

Both couples are looking forward to spending the day with their Burns Granburns and Great Granburns.

What's a day I thought I'd never ever reach?

It's just beyond anybody's expectations, I think.

Especially if all four of us

still here and able to take part.

It's just unbelievable.

Violet's advice for married life is simple.

Just tack each day as it comes.

That's all I can say.

Just tack each day as it comes.

That report was from David Delday.

And that's all from The Happy Pod for now.

Remember, if you've any stories of kindness, maybe someone you know has gone out of their way to change a person's life for the better, do email us.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

And you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube just search for the happy pod.

This edition was produced by Holly Gibbs and Harry Bly.

It was mixed by Craig Kingham and the editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alan Smith, so until next time, it's goodbye.

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