MOTHER JONES RECHARGE 4SEP19

Stories to get you through the week / September 4, 2019   Christian Moore looked at an 8-year-old classmate crying in a corner. It was the start of the school year in Wichita, Kansas. Christian wanted to help the second grader, Conner Crites, who has autism and occasionally gets overstimulated. “Instead of overlooking him like most kids would have, [Christian] just reached over, grabbed his hand and made my son’s day better,” Conner’s mom, April Crites, 29, told the Washington Post last week. A photo of the moment on August 14, taken by Christian’s mom and shared on Facebook, went viral. “It is an honor to raise such a loving, compassionate child!” Courtney Moore wrote in her post. “He’s a kid with a Big heart, the first day of school started off right.” The students’ nascent friendship has continued through shared lunches and recess play. The two had a long playdate one weekend day, and Conner has asked if Christian can come by for a sleepover. The lesson of Christian’s kindness, Crites said: Everybody has a choice to help or ignore someone in need. “You could,” she said, “say something nice, hand someone a tissue who’s crying and make their day better.” (Washington Post) The wheels on the bus...go round and round more efficiently, thanks to an algorithm. This algorithm allowed the fleet of Boston school buses to eliminate 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each day—and invest $5 million in savings back into the classroom. Two doctoral students designed the formula, which has enabled the system to remove 50 buses from the road. In 2017, the buses drove 1 million fewer miles.  (Popular Mechanics) One kick leads to another. One minute, soccer champ Carli Lloyd was just goofing around at an NFL training camp. Then she nailed a 55-yard kick. Now, people are asking: Could Lloyd, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA Women's World Cup champion, become the first woman to play in the NFL? Within hours, a Baltimore Ravens assistant coach was on the phone, Lloyd said: “The coaches and his GM, they all saw the video. They were like, ‘What is she doing next week?’ I’m laughing about it, but the more I think about it, this has the chance to be sort of a pioneering moment for women.”  (Washington Post) A flight that made a difference. Speech pathologist Rachel Romeo found herself on an eight-hour international flight sitting next to a 10-year-old boy with severe nonverbal autism. His dad told Romeo it would be a rough flight, and the boy started shouting and hitting her before takeoff. Romeo put aside her academic work and started making drawings for him. “I made symbols for the things he was grabbing, for his favorite stuffed penguin, and for his dad.” The 10-year-old “took to it very quickly,” she wrote. “By the end of the flight, he had made several requests, initiated several times, & his behaviors had reduced quite a bit. The father was astounded—clearly no one had ever tried [such an] approach with him. I gave him the paper & showed him how to use it, and he nearly cried.” Communication, the MIT postdoctoral fellow wrote, is a human right, “and I was overjoyed to help someone find it.” Thanks to colleague Steve Katz for the story tip. (Twitter) I’ll leave you with this flowing image from Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, via the Interior Department’s Twitter feed. Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week ahead! Recharge is written by me, David Beard, a veteran writer and editor. If you want to share this edition with someone, here’s a link to these stories and a sign-up form. Have a tip or a story suggestion? Email us at recharge@motherjones.com. Conner Crites (left) and Christian Moore. Courtney Moore/Washington Post; Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Dan Mitler/Department of the Interior Recharge comes to you from Mother Jones, an award-winning, investigative journalism outlet that was founded as a nonprofit magazine in 1976.

A boy held his crying classmate’s hand on the first day of school. A photo of the moment has gone viral.

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Christian Moore, right, holds the hand of Conner Crites, who was crying on the first day of second grade. The classmates in Wichita have been playing together since then. (Courtney Moore)

By Marisa Iati

August 28

It was her son’s first day of second grade, and April Crites worried that he would feel overwhelmed.

Conner, 8, was waiting for the doors to open at his school in Wichita on Aug. 14 when he started to cry. His autism sometimes makes him overstimulated, Crites said, and he had gotten away from his personal aide.

While Conner stood alone in a corner crying, his classmate Christian Moore happened to glance over at him.

“Instead of overlooking him like most kids would have, he (Christian) just reached over, grabbed his hand and made my son’s day better,” Crites, 29, said Tuesday in an interview.

[Why this man has become internationally beloved for his dad jokes on a roadside sign]

Christian’s mom, Courtney, happened to snap a photo of the spontaneous act of kindness. Her son walked Conner inside Minneha Core Knowledge Magnet Elementary School, she wrote in a now-viral Facebook post.

“It is an honor to raise such a loving, compassionate child!” Moore wrote. “He’s a kid with a Big heart, the first day of school started off right.”

When Conner came home that afternoon, Crites said, he told her that he had a great first day. He liked his new friends and his teacher, she said, and he didn’t mention that he had gotten upset at the start of the day. Crites said she didn’t even know about her son’s interaction with Christian until she saw the photo a few days later.

The boys had been in classes together before this year, Crites said, but they didn’t know each other well. Now, she said, they’re inseparable.

[A broken bingo machine left this D.C. veterans’ retirement home mourning. A 16-year-old girl decided to help.]

Conner and Christian sit together at lunch and play together at recess. Christian went to the Crites’ house last weekend, and the pair played for an hour and a half without an argument — a feat that Crites said is unusual for her son. Conner has been asking his mom when Christian can come spend the night.

The Crites family has been touched by the attention the photo has received, Crites said. Conner gets excited when his classmates tell him they saw his picture on TV. Crites said her husband, who rarely cries, shed a few tears when he saw the photo.

The lesson, Crites said, is to remember that everyone is struggling with something that may be invisible to those around them.

“You could choose to see someone who’s having a really bad day and say something horrible to them and make their day even worse,” Crites said. “Or you could choose the opposite and better route and say something nice, hand someone a tissue who’s crying and make their day better.”

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