Hey there! It's Scottie Andrew, filling in for our beloved AJ this week. Let's get into the good!

Some weeks are just hard. And when those weeks happen, and I can't seem to get out of the gelatinous funk I’m in, I eavesdrop a bit. I live in an apartment that overlooks a busy sidewalk, so the sound carries up from the street. And though I can’t make out most of the conversations that happen below, I like to soak up the joy in them. Sometimes I’ll hear a gaggle of kids on bicycles eager to speed away from their harried parents, screaming with surprise as one of them takes their hands off the handlebars for a moment. There’s a rollerblader who often zips by, always wearing comically large headphones and always, always belting out a song like “Party in the USA” or anything from Lady Gaga’s oeuvre. And there are always groups — friends, families, strangers on a bar crawl together — whose full-throated laughs and shouts make for beautiful background noise. I don't know what, exactly, the people I overhear say to each other, but I don't need to. Their joy keeps me company.

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Our favorites this week

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Around the world in 70 years
Meet my new hero, Dr. Sudha Mahalingam. At 70 years old, she’s seen 66 countries on six continents. Our septuagenarian globetrotter has done it all (almost): She’s frolicked with century-old tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, made it through a three-day voyage on a bathroom-free boat for a glimpse of lemurs in Madagascar and trekked for more than three weeks to reach the ancient locale of Mustang in Nepal. Where some tourists might opt for more familiar vacation fare, and fewer still might venture off the beaten path, Mahalingam eschews a path entirely. "Packaged tours are so predictable," she told CNN Travel. "They show you what they want to show, not what you want to see." Grounded by the pandemic, she’s spent the last few months exploring little-seen areas of her native India. Mahalingam can find adventure anywhere, and she’s nowhere near done exploring our planet. Now let’s all stay healthy so our traveling doctor can resume her world tour.

And back to Storm with the weather
If you’re not Canadian, you may be unfamiliar with Storm the Weather Dog (he's the li'l scrapper in the bottom center of this photo). He’s a curious chap who makes occasional appearances on Global News’ weather broadcasts — his father is meteorologist Anthony Farnell — and while he could care less about the weather, he’s a real camera hog who knows his angles. He recently crashed one of Farnell’s weather reports and seemed to relish every second of his airtime. At one point during the broadcast in which Farnell referenced the path an actual storm would take, Storm the dog just stopped, looked up at him and smiled, as if to say, "I'm loving this." Maybe Storm knew he was making a mess of his poor dad’s forecast, but he didn’t care. At another point, Storm took a beat to chill below Toronto’s 7-day forecast. “Yes, Storm is in the building,” Farnell sighed at one point, feigning annoyance at this clearly perfect dog. Can’t you imagine a news anchor handing off to the dog? “Now to Storm with the weather. Storm?” “Thanks Karen; yeah, we’ve got a storm — no relation — coming up from the east that’ll make its way to Toronto this afternoon. Expect heavy rains to subside within a few hours of the storm — again, no relation — and then it’ll be sunny skies again. I plan to spend that time playing fetch and getting tummy rubs. Back to you, Karen.”

A round of applause for ...

Paralympian Anastasia Pagonis! The 17-year-old swimming phenom won a gold medal at her very first Paralympic Games, where she also broke a world record … that she’d earlier set herself. Phew, Anastasia had an eventful summer. Our 400-meter freestyler fully lost her sight at 14 as the result of an autoimmune disease. Anastasia was deeply depressed after losing her vision so young, but she started to swim again as a form of therapy. Quickly, though, Anastasia rediscovered her competitive streak, found a coach who taught himself how to swim blind so he could better instruct her and swam her way into the Paralympics. If that weren’t impressive enough, she’s got more than 2 million followers on TikTok, where she shows viewers how she safely swims, films videos and does her makeup as a blind person. Anastasia aims to recast people’s notions about what it means to be blind, lest they wrongly believe she’s incapable of something. “Jeez, I lost a whole sense and I'm still OK, I'm still here!" she said in one interview. One gold medal down, a lifetime to go!

A bright idea

When planes were grounded and air travel majorly dipped during the pandemic, Jordan Hazrati, like many in her industry, lost her job as a flight attendant for Virgin Atlantic. But Covid-19 couldn’t keep Hazrati out of the air for long. She chose to pour all of her energy into becoming a pilot, a dream that had been quietly poking at her since she took a flight lesson for her birthday. She’s worked more than seven different jobs throughout the pandemic to finance her training but makes sure to spend at least 15 hours every week in flight. Helming the kinds of aircraft on which she once worked as cabin crew could take years to realize, but Hazrati said she’s willing to work as long as it takes to see it through. "It sets my soul on fire,” Hazrati told CNN of the feeling she gets when she’s airborne. “Flying is the most incredible, unreal, unique feeling, and only a small proportion of people will ever get to feel it — I feel so grateful."

You gotta see this

This week graced us with a glimpse of the contenders from not one, but TWO wildlife photography competitions. One is the prestigious, National History Museum of London-sponsored Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which typically awards photos of sweeping vistas and cinematic scenes, while the Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards honor the accidental hilarity that comes when animals strike a pose or make a face. And while the awards honor the people who took the photos, I’d like to acknowledge the creatures who made these images worth taking. (The photo above, of a snake laughing at us or maybe with us, is competing in the Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards.)

Wanna get away?

Alaska: the Last Frontier. These are the voyages of the tourists Southwest (or Delta, or United, or JetBlue, etc.). Their continuing mission: to explore untouched forests and Instagrammable icy tundras. To seek out new life (like grizzlies and moose and musk oxen) and not-so-new civilizations, like Anchorage. To boldly go where many men have gone before, because it is Alaska, the 49th state, and those who vacation here never forget it.

Alaska is apparently booming with visitors this summer who are anxious to trade in their humdrum work-from-home setups with the glorious vastness of Denali National Park or a secluded glacier. CNN’s Joe Yogerst took the trip himself, and he said everywhere he went was teeming with life — human life, that is, and they were quickly booking up hotels, rental cars and guided wildlife treks. All that’s to say, if you, too, want to get away to Alaska, it’s best to plan ahead.

Who knew?

If you’ve ever happened upon a skunk in the wild, you likely weren’t thinking, “Hmm, what interesting markings this smelly fellow has; I wonder what species he belongs to?” No, you were probably backing away quietly and quickly from said skunk, trying to maintain your composure in case it could smell fear and decided to hose you down with some stink. But maybe you encountered a previously unidentified skunk species! A new study found that there are more species of spotted skunks than previously thought — seven rather than four — a discovery that took some time to make because spotted skunks live a fairly secluded life. Sure, knowing there are a few more kinds of spotted skunks out there doesn’t radically change life for any of us, but I’m always oddly proud of animals when they evade humans for this long. Plus, spotted skunks are basically little gymnasts: They’re known for performing handstands, waving their grand, feathery tail in the air to scare off predators/nervous humans. For their petite size, skunks are really quite brave. I certainly wouldn’t mess with one.

Heroes among us

Before the full extent of the damage wrought by Hurricane Ida came into view, Liz McCartney and her crew were on the ground in affected Louisiana parishes to begin rebuilding. McCartney was CNN’s 2008 Hero of the Year for her work rebuilding homes in the months after Hurricane Katrina struck the state. With her organization SBP, short for the St. Bernard Project, she’s expanded her work to 14 communities across the US and the Bahamas. With the help of 150,000 volunteers, her organization has rebuilt homes for more than 2,800 families. But the work isn’t just reactive — McCartney said she and her volunteers help secure a home’s roof to the property, encourage people to get insurance and help families organize documents they might need in case another emergency strikes. "We want to be an organization that's not just reacting afterward but working with communities beforehand to increase their preparedness and help to mitigate risk," she said. When the next hurricane strikes, McCartney and her team will be ready — and, they're hoping, the people they've helped already will be prepared.

CNN’s Impact Your World has vetted and compiled a list of reputable organizations working on the ground in Louisiana now, if you're interested in donating to Hurricane Ida relief efforts.

Rec of the week

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