Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected].

Healing nature

Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is a 100-acre preserve of tropical forest on the island of Oahu. It’s a peaceful place, as the New York Times reports in a story shared by RTBC Contributing Editor Michaela Haas, but it’s also much more than that: Patients at a nearby medical clinic come here to help restore the land while working on their own healing. The land, which the state leases to the clinic, includes fruit trees, an organic garden and a small apothecary.

Michaela says:

If I had to go to a clinic, I’d want to go to this one.

YIMBY

Like many wealthy suburbs across the U.S., Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been facing a housing crisis. The city’s solution? It just passed a major zoning reform allowing developers and property owners across Cambridge to build between four and six stories, according to a Bloomberg story shared by Executive Editor Will Doig, including in neighborhoods previously restricted to single-family homes.

Will says:

Cambridge has implemented a pretty drastic citywide rezoning that effectively allows anyone to build up to six stories. One council member called it “the most comprehensive citywide rezoning” in the entire U.S.

What else we’re reading

🏫 How do girls’ secret schools operate in Afghanistan? – Zan Times — shared by Contributing Editor Geetanjali Krishna from Zan Times

🐢 To Save the Tiniest Turtle in North America, Scientists Are Rebuilding Bogs From Scratch — shared by Editorial Director Rebecca Worby from the Sierra Club

🎭 Opera Has a Sustainability Problem. One Company Wants to Fix It. — shared by Michaela Haas from the New York Times

From our readers…

In a recent Viewpoint story, Contributing Editor Michaela Haas wrote about the many simple ways to prevent the building collisions that kill countless birds every year. She also mentioned another easy way to keep birds safe: keeping cats indoors. 

A reader wrote to Michaela with a novel way to keep cats from catching birds, and this one has the added perk of making the cats look extremely silly: deck them out in rainbow-colored, ruff-like BirdsBeSafe collars.