Happy Father’s Day weekend! Bring on the dad jokes — no seriously. We all need a little levity, and that wholesome, knee-slapping kind of humor really hits the spot. My friend David Allan, editorial director of CNN Travel, Style, Science and Wellness, says he keeps a Google doc of them just in case some ice needs breaking or teenage kids need annoying. One favorite from his lengthy list: "Where does George Washington keep his armies? In his sleevies." (My grandfather, a Navy chief, had another good one aboard ship: "Will the crab on duty please run through the soup!")

See, you want to groan, but you can't! They're too cute. Thanks, dads, for all you do; for your guidance, your love, and yes, your elite sense of humor.

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Our favorites this week

Get going with some of our most popular good news stories of the week

A beautiful mission
The hair! The makeup! The outfit! CNN Hero Shirley Raines knows the power of looking good, and she's helping people from the homeless community on Los Angeles' Skid Row look and feel better about themselves too. For the past six years, Raines and her organization, Beauty 2 the Streetz, have provided food, essentials, and hair and makeup services to thousands of people. Rain or shine, she sets up "shop" weekly at the corner of 5th and Townes to serve those she calls "Kings" and "Queens." She's also been a big ally for the area's trans community, offering women's clothes, wigs, eyelashes and other girly essentials to trans women. Raines says it's not just the services and goods that make the work so meaningful. It's also about creating other positive moments that people living in difficult situations need: physical touch, friendship, self-esteem, and a little "me" time.

Messages from the past
A pilot assigned to "wake up" a Delta plane that had been in storage since the early days of the pandemic came across a moving little note from the pilot who had been the last to fly it, all the way back on March 23, 2020. After musing about the strange reality of the pandemic, Capt. Chris Dennis offered this hopeful sentiment: "If you are here to pick it up then the light must be at the end of the tunnel. Amazing how fast it changed. Have a safe flight bringing it out of storage!"

Meanwhile, a very different kind of time-traveling moment happened in Boston when the New England Aquarium honored an admission ticket — from 1983! Rachel Carle, an area student, received the ticket as a fun little gift from her great-aunt, and of course, wondered if the aquarium would actually honor it. The staff was charmed. "Well, it says come back any time!" they pointed out. Carle's great-aunt has another one of the tickets that Carle is going to have framed as a memento.

Weaving connections
How do you rebuild a 500-year-old bridge? Carefully — and completely by hand. Members of the Huinchiri community in the Cusco region of Peru are using traditional weaving techniques to re-string the Q'eswachaka bridge, an old Incan hanging bridge hanging far above the Apurimac River. Teams of workers started from both sides of the ravine and worked toward the center, balancing on giant ropes and putting in smaller ropes as barriers as they went. The structure fell into disrepair during the pandemic, but the efforts to rebuild it have strengthened these historical connections. "Now it is like an answer to the pandemic itself," said Cusco Regional Gov. Jean Paul Benavente. "From the depths of the Peruvian Andean identity, this bridge is strung up across the Apurimac basin and we can tell the world that we are coming out ... little by little."

Raise a glass to...

Thai Van Nguyen, a Vietnamese conservationist who was just awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work protecting the pangolin, often called the "world’s most-trafficked mammal." These little animals, like a cross between an armadillo and an anteater, are native to Africa and Asia, and are often trafficked for their scales. In 2014, Nguyen founded Save Vietnam's Wildlife, and has since established two pangolin rehabilitation centers and an anti-poaching unit. Nguyen says Save Vietnam's Wildlife has liberated almost 2,000 pangolins in total, and has fought to protect the animals on a government level.

A bright idea

A new medical device collaboration is giving surgeons "X-ray vision" by fusing digitally enhanced images directly into the microscope of a surgical device. So yes, it's like augmented reality. Surgeons typically need to look up at screens to access patient data or enhanced visuals, but this technology, called SyncAR, could put all of that information in one convenient, very visible place. The technology allows 3D images to be layered on top of a body part, say, from the patient’s previous scans. They can also be completed with color markings and precise 3D visuals of arteries, vessels, nerves and more.

Hear, hear!

Never shelter children from the world. The 'content' of any children's book is of no importance other than that it enthrals the child — and thus it teaches or seduces him or her to 'like' books and to become a fit reader — which is vital if that child is going to amount to anything in later life

- Legendary children's author Roald Dahl, who mused about his writing and attitudes toward children's literature in a response to a note a university student sent to him on a whim in 1989.

Impact your world

June 20 is Sickle Cell Awareness Day. People with this disease have red blood cells are "sickle" shaped and can clump together to impede blood flow to the rest of the body. That can cause major problems like heart attacks and strokes, and in general, it can be a very isolating and scary condition to have, as blood transfusions, surgeries and flare-ups are often a way of life. Lakiea Bailey, an advocate, scientist and government adviser on sickle cell disease, is searching for a cure for the condition that has affected her life and the lives of thousands of other people. In 2014, she founded the Sickle Cell Consortium, a non-profit that advocates for patients and their families. She dreams of creating a type of "United Nations" through the consortium, where people from different countries can share their data and experiences with the condition.