It wasn’t all bad
■■ A Wisconsin man has broken a record by completing 1.5 million pushups over the span of a year. Nate Carroll averaged 4,100 push-ups a day, sometimes pushing his limit to 7,000 a day, while balancing life as a dad and a social worker. Carroll used the challenge to raise money for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which provides homes for injured veterans and first responders—and to set an example for his own children. Winning a small endurance battle each day, Carroll said, “builds strength and shapes one’s perspective of what is possible.”
■■ A recent college graduate paid tribute to her roots with a cap-and-gown photo shoot at the farmer’s field where her Mexican-immigrant parents worked. Jennifer Rocha, who graduated from University of California, San Diego, worked in the fields alongside her parents in high school, at times until 2 or 3 a.m. That pushed her to want a better life as she studied at the university full-time and picked up late-night shifts in the school’s police department to pay for tuition. “I wanted to go back to the field because that’s what molded me as a person,” she said. Rocha plans to pursue a career in law enforcement
■■ A bakery in small-town Texas has received an outpouring of love after getting backlash for supporting the gay community. Earlier this month, Confections posted a Facebook photo of its rainbow cookies with the caption, “More LOVE. Less hate.” The bakery lost social media followers; one customer canceled an order for five dozen cookies. But after co-owner Dawn Cooley expressed her sadness on Facebook, hundreds of customers came, forming a line that stretched for blocks. “That line brought me to tears,” Cooley said. “We just wanted to be inclusive, and it was so heartwarming to see how many people felt the same.”