I’m only alive today because that fateful Tuesday was my oldest son’s first day of kindergarten.
That morning, instead of going to our offices in the 101st through 105th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, I joined my wife in taking our son to school.
At some point, my phone started ringing but disconnected each time I’d answer.
I only later learned that it was my brother Gary trying to call from the building to say goodbye.
Once I heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, I raced downtown.
I arrived at the base of the building and started grabbing people as they came out the doors, hoping that some of my people were able to escape. None did.
If you think about all the people you work with, I guarantee you don’t appreciate how important they actually are to you.
We all underestimate how central our colleagues are in our lives. Most people spend more time with their co-workers than they do with their families.
People don’t often articulate the love they feel for their colleagues, or even think it’s accurate to call it love. But it is.
When they’re ripped from you in an instant, your heart collapses.
Losing my colleagues — my partners, my friends — showed me the depths of that love.
I cried every single day until Oct. 21, 2004.
When I went to bed that night, I remember telling my wife it was the first day I hadn’t cried.
The grief never completely leaves.
There’s too much to process. Too much death and pain to fully comprehend at once.
So much so that when someone would mention the name of a co-worker who died that day, it was like they were killed then and there.
That pain would flood back all over again because I hadn’t fully processed each of the hundreds of deaths.
Even now, I still get emotional when I speak about 9/11 because it is a wound that never fully heals.
Today, after rebuilding Cantor Fitzgerald from the ground up, I serve as our nation’s 41st secretary of Commerce.
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It’s been eight months, and in that time I have seen America at its core.
What you learn in this job is how profoundly beautiful and extraordinary this country is, but also how desperately our adversaries wish us harm.
Make no mistake: If given the chance, the monsters who orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks, and those like them, would do it again.
And again. And again.
That’s exactly why we cannot be complacent.
The greatness of America lies in how we live, think and act — a bold contrast to our adversaries.
There’s no part of us as Americans that operates in the same realm as those terrorists. We’re compassionate, generous, and honorable.
Through my service to the country, I have fallen ever more deeply in love with America.
I’ve seen the tremendous way our military, our government, our first responders and our people confront challenges and threats.
I’ve seen the courage and clarity with which we defend our values.
And most importantly, I’ve seen how the evil of those who wish to destroy us stands out in stark contrast to the goodness that defines our country.
Twenty-four years after that dark day, I thank God that we have a president in the Oval Office who understands this reality, and who unapologetically has the backs of the American people.
He’s committed to aggressively rooting out evil wherever it rears its head so it can never again inflict the devastation and incomparable pain of 9/11.
On Wednesday, as a deranged gunman murdered my great friend Charlie Kirk for his political views, we were reminded that the battle against evil is never over.
But just as we did after 9/11, we will endure, we will fight on, and we will never, ever surrender.
Charlie will be remembered for his kindness, his loyalty and his devotion to America.
I’m confident his killer will face swift justice, because evil has no place in this country.
Fiercely defending America and our people from threats, both internal and external, doesn’t mean we’ve given up our compassion and moral high ground as a country.
We doggedly fight evil while still operating righteously.
That duality is what makes America extraordinary.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I lost nearly everything.
But I gained unshakeable faith in a nation that rebuilds, endures — and never surrenders to evil.
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The Epstein discharge petition continues to overcome the odds and pressure from Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump.
After new Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) was sworn into office by Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday, one of his first acts was to sign the Epstein files discharge petition.
Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the co-sponsors of the petition along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) posted on X:
We have 217 of the 218 signatures required. We just need one more Congressman to sign the discharge petition in order to force a vote in the House on a bill to release the Epstein files. Victims deserve justice and Americans demand transparency.
There has been an incredible amount of misinformation, especially coming from the left, on social media about Republicans withdrawing their signatures from the petition. However, Rep. Massie and the three other Republicans who have signed the petition, Reps. Greene, Boebert, and Mace.
Massie also posted the link to the discharge petition, where everyone can read the entire list at the Office of the House Clerk.
The staggeringly thin iPhone Air is probably not the iPhone you should buy today, but it is the one that shows where all smartphones are headed.
Reminiscent of how the original iPhone was shown off in glass bell jars, Apple suspended iPhone Air at the launch — image credit: Apple
You will surely change your mind, at least temporarily, once you see an iPhone Air in person. But all reason says that you need to hand it back politely rather than pay out $999 for a phone that just does not seem ready yet.
That it exists at all is a marvel of Apple’s engineering teams, but that marvel was achieved through such compromises that the iPhone Air is close to being just a proof of concept. It’s Apple saying it can do this thing, and now we know it truly can, but its sole real benefit is its startling thin size.
A Stocks and Shares ISA currently has an annual contribution limit of £20,000 per annum. However, it’s not always realistic for an investor to max out the allocation each year, for a variety of reasons. Yet, over time, an ISA portfolio can be built up to help achieve goals, such as generating a second income. Here are some of the numbers I crunched based on a £50,000 portfolio size.
Setting realistic targets
To begin with, a £50,000 ISA can’t be achieved overnight. Even if an investor could afford to invest the full £20,000 each year, it would still take a few years to reach the mark. Yet, this isn’t a big problem. Patience when it comes to investing is a valuable trait to cultivate. Therefore, a steady allocation to stocks each month can be used to build up the passive income.
Another positive from doing it this way is that the person doesn’t have to try and buy dividend shares with very high yields, which can carry high risk. Rather, they can still be active in stock picking to get a higher dividend yield than average. But there’s a sweetspot to be had where risk and reward can be balanced. I believe this is in the 5%-7% yield range.
If we assumed an investor could put £400 a month in dividend shares with an average yield of 6%, the ISA could reach the £50,000 goal just after eight years. From here, the £50,000 could potentially generate £3,000 a year in passive income. Of course, this is with the 6% yield assumption. The actual yield could be higher or lower, meaning that the income received would vary, too.
Please note that tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in future. The content in this article is provided for information purposes only. It is not intended to be, neither does it constitute, any form of tax advice. Readers are responsible for carrying out their own due diligence and for obtaining professional advice before making any investment decisions.
A stock for conversation
Within the ISA, I think it would be a smart move to include dividend shares that are sustainable in nature. After all, it’s a hassle having to reguarly buy and sell stocks if the dividend frequently is getting cut. One idea with a good track record is the MONY Group (LSE:MON). The business has been paying out a constant dividend for almost two decades. The current dividend yield is 5.98%, with the stock up 1% in the last year.
At its core, the company is an online consumer savings and comparison site. It has brands, led by Moneysupermarket.com, including MoneySavingExpert, designed to help people get the best deals on products like insurance. The company makes money by selling advertising space, getting commissions from prodivers, and some membership schemes.
It benefits from having low debt and limited overhead costs. This means that financially, it has good cash flow, a key element when it comes to paying out income over time. Over the years, it has built up a loyal customer base, which means client retention is high. Again, this is a positive for dividend investors, as predictable demand should lead to predictable dividends.
One risk I see is the emergence of AI. Even though it’s trying to integrate it to the customer experience, new AI bots can do a lot of the work from the comparison site, reducing the need for customers to engage with it. This could be an issue in the future.
Despite this, I think it’s a stock to consider for investors looking to pursue this strategy.
Americans are marking 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with solemn ceremonies, volunteer work and other tributes honoring the victims.
Many loved ones of the nearly 3,000 people killed were joining dignitaries and politicians at commemorations Thursday in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
On Thursday morning, Denise Matuza, Jennifer Nilsen and Michelle Pizzo boarded a bus from Staten Island for Lower Manhattan — each wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the names and faces of their husbands, who died in the attack.
“Even 24 years later, it’s heart wrenching,” said Nilsen, whose husband, Troy Nilsen, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center. “It feels the same way every year.”
For Ronald Bucca, who lost his father, the FDNY fire marshal Ronald Paul Bucca, the annual memorial served as an opportunity to “educate people on that day, especially the younger generations, and learn from each other how to be resilient and deal with loss and rebuild.”
Pizzo, whose husband, Jason DeFazio, also worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, hoped more people could just take one minute to reflect on the day.
“Younger kids don’t realize that you have to remember,” she said.
The remembrances are being held during a time of increased political tensions. The 9/11 anniversary, often promoted as a day of national unity, comes a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah.
The reading of names and moments of silence
Kirk’s killing prompted additional security measures around the 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center site in New York.
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, had planned to attend the event in Manhattan but instead are set to visit with Kirk’s family on Thursday in Salt Lake City, according to a person familiar with Vance’s plans, but not authorized to speak about them publicly.
Many in the crowd at Thursday’s ceremony at ground zero held up photos of lost loved ones as a moment of silence marked the exact time when the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center’s iconic twin towers. Family members then began reading aloud the names of the victims.
At the Pentagon in Virginia, the 184 service members and civilians killed when hijackers steered a jetliner into the headquarters of the U.S. military were being honored in a ceremony attended by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. The president was then expected to head to the Bronx for a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers Thursday evening.
And in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a similar ceremony marked by moments of silence, the reading of names and the laying of wreaths, will honor the victims of Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit. That service will be attended by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.
People across the country are also marking the 9/11 anniversary with service projects and charity works as part of a national day of service. Volunteers will be taking part in food and clothing drives, park and neighborhood cleanups, blood banks and other community events.
Reverberations from attacks persist
In all, the attacks by al-Qaida militants killed 2,977 people, including many financial workers at the World Trade Center and firefighters and police officers who had rushed to the burning buildings trying to save lives.
The attacks reverberated globally and altered the course of U.S. policy, both domestically and overseas. It led to the “ Global War on Terrorism ” and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and related conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.
While the hijackers died in the attacks, the U.S. government has struggled to conclude its long-running legal case against the man accused of masterminding the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The former al-Qaida leader was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later taken to a U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but has never received a trial.
The anniversary ceremony in New York was taking place at the National Sept. 11 memorial and Museum, where two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets inscribed with the names of the dead mark the spots where the twin towers once stood.
The Trump administration has been contemplating ways that the federal government might take control of the memorial plaza and its underground museum, which are now run by a public charity currently chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic. Trump has spoken of possibly making the site a national monument.
In the years since the attacks, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars providing health care and compensation to tens of thousands of people who were exposed to the toxic dust that billowed over parts of Manhattan when the twin towers collapsed. More than 140,000 people are still enrolled in monitoring programs intended to identify those with health conditions that could potentially be linked to hazardous materials in the soot.
___
Associated Press reporters Jake Offenhartz and Liseberth Guillaume in New York City, Michael Hill in Albany, New York, and Michelle L. Price and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this story.
Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.
Usain Bolt claims he would have beaten his long-standing 100m world record if he could have run in the carbon-plated “super spikes” worn by today’s sprinters.
The Jamaican sprinting icon, who won eight Olympic gold medals before he retired in 2017, is the fastest man to ever run the 100m after finishing in 9.58 seconds at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.
The record has stood for 16 years, with the closest efforts coming from American sprinter Tyson Gay and Jamaican runner Yohan Blake, who both completed the distance in 9.69 seconds in 2009 and 2012, respectively.
Now, research by sportswear company Puma has claimed Bolt, 39, would have ran the 100m in 9.42 seconds if he was wearing the kind of footwear available to athletes today.
Asked about the findings at a Puma event ahead of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Bolt said on Thursday: “I fully agree.”
He continued: “Someone who continued after I retired was Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and I saw what she did – she got faster with the spikes.
“I probably would have run way faster if I’d continued and if I knew that spikes would have got to that level maybe I would have, because it would have been great to compete at that level and running that fast.”
Bolt’s compatriot Kishane Thompson ran 100m in 9.75 seconds at the Jamaican championships in June – the fastest time by anyone for 10 years.
However, Bolt said he is not worried about anyone breaking his record anytime soon.
He said: “I think the talent is there and those who are coming up will do well but, at this present moment, I don’t think they will be able to break the world record.”
Tokyo will be the first global athletics event Bolt has attended since his farewell at the World Athletics Championships in London in 2017.
Image: Bolt at the news conference in Tokyo. Pic: AP
How does carbon fibre cause a spike in performance?
Carbon fibre first began to feature in running shoes when Nike introduced the Vaporfly in 2017, according to the online store TrackSpikes.
Shoes with carbon-plated spikes, often referred to as “super spikes”, also have a carbon-fibre plate embedded in the midsole, which is usually placed between two layers of foam.
This makes them more comfortable than the traditional shoes worn by sprinters for decades, which typically have a rubber or plastic outsole and metal spikes.
The carbon-fibre plates also provide a spring-like effect with each stride – helping sprinters to run faster, according to TrackSpikes.
Grocery prices jumped 0.6% in August, fueling a sharper-than-expected jump in inflation last month.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP
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Frederic J. Brown/AFP
Inflation inched higher last month as Americans closed out the summer paying more for both groceries and gasoline.
Consumer prices in August were up 2.9% from a year ago, according to a report Thursday from the Labor Department. That’s a sharper annual increase than the previous month, when inflation was clocked at 2.7%.
Prices rose 0.4% between July and August, compared to a 0.2% increase the previous month. Prices for groceries jumped 0.6% while gasoline prices rose 1.9%.
Consumers also saw higher prices for new and used cars, clothing and airfares in August. Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, “core” inflation was 3.1% for the last 12 months.
The Federal Reserve faces a challenge
The continued rise in prices poses a challenge for the Federal Reserve as it weighs what to do about interest rates. Policymakers are widely expected to lower their benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point next week to prop up the sagging job market. But Fed officials may be wary about additional rate cuts in the face of stubborn inflation.
The August cost of living figures cover a month when President Trump raised tariffs on goods from many U.S. trading partners. The tariffs may have contributed to higher prices for imported goods such as coffee (up 3.6% last month), bananas (up 2.1%) and apparel (up 0.5%).
A federal appeals court ruled late last month that many of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, but they remain in effect pending a review by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court has scheduled oral arguments for early November.
Hallmark star Jonathan Bennett gives fans a few glimpses of the more private moments of shooting on the island of Santorini in Greece for “The Groomsmen: Second Chances.” Blissful views are in the backdrop to some fun moments that will be shared with the romantic wedding trilogy set. That one viewing really puts across how magical the location is and the kind of contagious energy that is exuded by the whole production.
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Unable to curb his smile, Bennett waves at the camera from one of those gorgeous Santorini balconies, witnessed by the Mediterranean wearing just that exact shade of blue—really a shade you pretty much see only in travel catalogs. “Greece is one of the most beautiful places in the world,” he announces with barely restrained excitement. “And we are very, very lucky to be here making this movie for you guys.”
This behind-the-scenes video feels like a postcard from your by-far-happiest-among-friends. Bennett bemoans the fact that he had to wake “in the evening”; the views had been so lovely that they messed with his sense of time. He gestures to the scenery in unfeigned disbelief. “Look! It’s so gorgeous here.” Honestly, he ain’t wrong.
It’s not just the view. The video also captures the genuine goodwill on the cast’s part. During all the downtime, they constantly interrupt each other and have fun, much like old friends at a destination wedding. Bennett is heard jokingly about improvising lines, grinning, “Go look at it!” until everyone exploded into laughter.
The trilogy seems to be an excellent match for the loyal audience of Hallmark. The “Groomsmen” series set comprises three interlinked love stories and three weddings linked together by the same group of friends. Basically, it’s going to be a triple shot of romance with some Greek island views on the side.
Hardly anyone can stop counting until the next day. “I can’t wait till Saturday for part 2,” wrote a commenter, echoing most people’s anticipation. This is why Santorini becomes a character in itself: excitement.
Quite a few viewers commented on their plans to visit Greece, with one user stating they’ll be going “in about 3 weeks” and asking for suggestions. Another responded, “Just visited Santorini, and it was magical,” confirming that those movie scenes look even better in real life.
The location utterly moves many at some level on a deeper plane: “We spent two weeks in Greece on our Honeymoon,” said one fan. “Santorini is one of my favoritest places on Earth.” This connecting thread makes any BTS footage especially meaningful to viewers who have personally experienced the magic of the place.
Even those never going to Greece are getting bitten by the travel bug. “Makes me want to go to Greece,” admitted one commenter, while another just yelled, “I’ll find Love in Santorini”—apparently, this destination’s romancing transcends through the screen.
That runway party vibe makes it through the screen. “Love the behind the scenes almost as much as the actual movie,” one viewer said. “They’re just hilarious love all these guys.” The candidness is part of the essence of those Hallmark gems: The joy is effortless and genuine and contagious.
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In almost-a-bigger-way-than-ever promise by Jonathan Bennett to put the mood into another series of warm-hug movies, set against the tantalizing backdrops of Greece and the magically natural cast chemistry, “The Groomsmen: Second Chances” is sure to offer the very thing all eyes crave: escapism, good love, and lots of gorgeous moments to witness. The wedding vibes are off the charts with this one, and the viewers have RSVP’d “yay” down the cinematic Greek escape.
Bikini-clad girls sat sipping canned cocktails by the shallow end of a swimming pool. Their sunscreen glistened in the summer heat, leaving a coconut aroma in the air.
But these sunbathers weren’t here to tan. They were here for a junk journaling party.
Junk journaling, yet another marker of younger generations’ continued reversion to physical media, is a catch-all term for a craft practice that incorporates scrapbooking, collaging and journaling. While its charm lies in its refusal of precise definition, junk journaling generally consists of compiling scrap items and keepsakes into curated notebooks, which can also contain personal musings, ornamental stickers and other embellishments.
Nicolette Smith, left, and Elizabeth Nelson fill their journals at the Aug. 23 Junk Journal Club party in Glendale.
(Kayla Otero)
Junk journals read like the rowdy daughters of the 2000s-era scrapbooks. While sharing their memory-keeping mothers’ pasted pages and nostalgic ethos, these journals have broken family tradition with their messy aesthetic and preference for oft-discarded objects. Tags, receipts, ticket stubs, candy wrappers, even junk mail — they’re all gold for a junk journal.
“People say somebody’s trash is somebody’s treasure,” said Olivia Jones, 36, an Irvine resident and owner of small stationery business Pink Coast Studio. “That’s No. 1 for us junk journalers.”
In the last year, junk journaling has skyrocketed in popularity as influencers within the hobby‘s community have recruited new crafters on social media, especially from TikTok. At the same time, in-person junk journaling clubs have cropped up across the country, turning the traditionally solo pastime into a social scene.
L.A.’s Junk Journal Club, tagged “the original junk journal club,” served as a blueprint for many of those organizations. In late August, more than 50 crafters celebrated the club’s first birthday at a Glendale pool party. (More would have come, but the rented venue capped attendance.)
They sprawled around the rim of the backyard swimming pool and across the adjacent lawn, their animal-print blankets and beach towels crowded with paper scraps and glue sticks. Veteran journalers refilled matching Fujifilm photo printers, while newbies leafed through fresh sticker books. Once unpacked from their toolboxes and Tupperware, the supplies lay like a potluck spread, free for the taking.
“Whenever I buy stickers for myself, it’s kind of excessive,” said attendee Sophia Huang, 26, who drove from Anaheim to attend the meetup. “But I brought them to share as well.”
Huang’s journal pages, filled with receipts, photos and food packaging, chronicle her travels and daily adventures. Sometimes, she sits her friends down and presents the spreads, show-and-tell style, she said.
“It’s like real-life Instagram,” she said, laughing.
A spread from Sophia Huang’s junk journal, featuring mementos from a visit to the Orange County Museum of Art.
(Sophia Huang)
It was nearly 100 degrees outside in Glendale, but Huang and her fellow party attendees stayed at the Junk Journal Club soiree for hours anyway — blissfully ignoring the sweat melting the makeup off their smiling faces.
Club founder Nandi Owolo, 30, watched the revelry from a secluded lounge chair, sitting for the first time all day, and marveled at what her little club had become.
Owolo, an Echo Park resident, started Junk Journal Club just a few months after she herself got into the hobby last year. She began dabbling after a foot injury left her homebound, and she was thrilled to finally find a craft that felt accessible to her.
“I tried so many crafts. I can’t paint, can’t draw. I tried doing the embroidery hoops and the crocheting of little animals,” Owolo said. “I tried it all, failed at it every time.
“Junk journaling was the first time where it was like, I can be a part of that club,” she said, and it felt natural to her to extend that invitation to others.
Nandi Owolo founded Junk Journal Club in August 2024.
(Kayla Otero / Junk Journal Club)
Early on, Owolo envisioned her junk journaling club would consist of a dozen or so people gathering each month to journal together, and that was enough for her. But word got out, the demand was there, and before she knew it, Junk Journal Club was a full-blown business.
“I don’t think I ever saw it becoming what it is today,” Owolo said.
These days, the former entertainment executive collaborates with local artists and lifestyle brands to put on Junk Journal Club events, which draw attendees from as far as Fresno and regularly sell out within minutes of tickets dropping. Owolo charges around $35 on average per ticket, just enough to break even.
On top of its in-person programming, Junk Journal Club also boasts a Discord community, which Owolo calls its “virtual town square,” of nearly 1,700 members from across the globe. There, club affiliates swap journaling tips, share their own spreads and coordinate regional junk journaling meetups.
Junk Journal Club members agreed that L.A. is a notoriously difficult place to make meaningful adult friendships because people live so far apart and don’t interact much with those outside of their circles.
But attending club meetups has made befriending strangers easy, they said.
Izik Vu, 25, of Gardena has weekly junk journaling dates with other Junk Journal Club members who live in the South Bay. El Segundo native Adrianna Dreckmann, 25, who struggled to rebuild her social life in L.A. after attending college in the Midwest, went to an Oasis concert earlier this month with someone she met at a February club meetup.
“As you get older, you’re no longer in those isolated bubbles of college clubs and classes and stuff like that,” Dreckmann said. “So you kind of just have to make them yourself.”
Arine Dekermenjian, 40, the Santa Ana-based owner of Lalgan stickers and junk journal supplies, gained one of her closest friends through sponsoring a Junk Journal Club event.
“It was just that kind of instantaneous connection,” Dekermenjian said. “I feel like I have known her my entire life.”
As someone who historically had a small circle and struggled to make friends as an adult, Dekermenjian said, “I didn’t realize there’s this part of me that’s wanted this all along.”
Even for self-proclaimed introverts like Christa Hansen, 31, showing up to Junk Journal Club meetups alone is manageable, because everyone is so friendly.
“One thing that really helps people break the ice is a lot of times people are really generous with their supplies,” Hansen said. “So people are just sharing things, exchanging things, showing pages of their journal, and then suddenly it doesn’t feel very scary to talk to them.”
Christa Hansen’s junk journal includes three-dimensional elements that lend it the quality of a children’s pop-up book.
(Christa Hansen)
Hansen went solo to the August Junk Journal Club meetup, but within an hour, she was fangirling with a pair of roomates — Paige Schaeffer, 27, and Millie Jones, 27 — whom she’d just met, about the cult-favorite Nathalie Lété Sticker Book and prominent junk journaler Martina Calvi, dubbed the “Craft Queen” by her followers.
“Wait, I would freak out if I got to meet her,” Schaeffer said, gushing.
Calvi, 30, who lives in Sydney, would have laughed shyly. She never set out to be the world-famous junk-journaling influencer she’s become.
She was just a “crafty girl,” who had tired of outdated Y2K sticker designs and decided to take matters into her own hands, she said in a recent interview with The Times.
“I started out by making my own sticker sheet just at home, in my bedroom. And people wanted to buy it, but I never wanted to start a business,” Calvi said. She listed just one sticker sheet, then a few more, and wound up with an internationally beloved junk journal supplies brand, Martina’s Tiny Store, whose products are sold at Urban Outfitters locations throughout the U.S. and Canada.
“A lot of my influences are like Rookie Mag, Tumblr, Sofia Coppola, all of that. But really, it’s my childhood and my teenhood, especially that I draw inspiration from,” Martina Calvi said.
(Martina Calvi)
Last October, Calvi released her book “The Art of Memory Collecting,” which guides readers through 15 different craft projects to flex their creative muscles. The chapter on junk journaling resonated so much that just a year later she is set to release a book entirely dedicated to the hobby. (Hansen already preordered it.)
Calvi, who has finished 30-plus junk journals of her own, believes it’s human nature to collect tidbits and tokens to make meaning out of our everyday lives, that everyone has a box under the bed or a shelf in the closet spilling over with ephemera. But as for this “crafty renaissance,” she said she’s seeing among the younger generations, there are factors other than pure nostalgia at play.
“It’s definitely linked to what’s happening at the moment, I think, with the rise of AI and living in such a digital era,” Calvi said. “I think it’s only natural that we feel pulled in the other direction, almost like we’re finding comfort in the tangible and handmade — that’s familiar.”
On top of that, craft clubs are a low-cost way to socialize that doesn’t involve drinking, something a lot of young people are looking for in a time when living costs are high, she said.
Kalli LeVasseur, 33, one of Owolo’s earliest sources of junk journaling inspiration, saw a similar craving among her peers in Chicago for a sense of community that didn’t revolve around drinking or being glued to a screen. It’s a huge reason she and friend Cheyenne Livelsberger started Chicago’s Cool Kids Craft Club, she told The Times in a recent interview.
Another motive, LeVasseur said, was more personal. In 2023, LeVasseur lost her grandmother unexpectedly. Around the same time, her brother became very sick, and her father was diagnosed with cancer.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t think I can handle one more thing,’” LeVasseur said, adding that she told herself, “I need something healthy to do as I’m moving through this grief.”
LeVasseur’s grandmother was a quilter, and her mother a scrapbooker, so crafting, to her, was in her “lineage.” But she struggled to commit to any particular practice, always feeling that they were too demanding or restrictive. Then she stumbled upon Calvi’s content.
“I Instacarted from Michaels one night the actual journal that I got for the first time, and literally from that moment, I haven’t stopped,” she said.
Kalli LeVasseur’s journal pages range from curated, sticker-laden spreads to what she called “junk dumps.”
(Kalli LeVasseur)
Through junk journaling, LeVasseur came back to herself, and got back into the world, she said. It’s counterintuitive, given crafting is generally understood to be a solitary, home-based activity. But to fill your journal, you have to go places.
“It feels so corny, but truly, it has changed my life,” LeVasseur said, her voice breaking.
“Obviously, there was the grief piece of it,” she said. “But in adulthood, especially now that I’m in my 30s and jobs are more demanding, having time to create and play with no pressure and making that part of my routine has genuinely made my life much happier.”
Owolo’s Junk Journal Club guestbook, which lay inconspicuously among the party favors at the August gathering in Glendale, was filled with many such expressions of joy and gratitude.
“Thank you so much for creating a space for us all to get creative and get out the house,” one signee wrote in the guestbook. “This is my second meetup, and it’s hard to leave without a smile on my face.”
Nandi Owolo encourages Junk Journal Club attendees to sign the guest book at her club meetups.
(Malia Mendez / Los Angeles Times)
“I loved sharing this space with you,” another echoed.
Sometimes Owolo reads the messages late at night in a Canter’s booth in Beverly Grove and just cries, she said.
Maybe she’d make a stop later that night. But for now, she had a party to throw.
It’s not so easy to save these days. With wages stagnant, taxes high and the cost of simply being alive in 2025 becoming more expensive, stashing away even small amounts of money for rainy day fun or passive income is maybe harder than it’s ever been.
Some are doing it though and doing it handsomely. One source has revealed that the most active investors in the UK (as a group) are saving £529 each month. Kudos to those folks on finding half a grand from every pay cheque.
But with that kind of savings rate, what could the end result be? Could it hit the million pound mark? Could it earn a meaty second income? Could it lead to a retirement age of 45? Let’s find some answers to those questions.
Outperforming
A sector that has dominated for growing wealth in recent years is technology companies, in particular American ones. As the world becomes more and more digital, I think any investor should consider owning US tech stockAmazon (NASDAQ: AZON) to build their nest egg.
The online marketplace has grown hundreds of times over in a couple of decades, but that’s not what anyone should expect from here on out. A hundredfold increase in the firm’s $2trn market cap would make it worth as much as all the world’s money and other financial assets ($130trn) and the world’s GDP ($110trn) put together!
That’s not to mention a price-to-earnings ratio of around 35. That’s very expensive, as far as stocks go. It could mean a long way to fall if things go pear-shaped.
But as the number one online store in many of the world’s biggest economies and with a money machine like AWS (Amazon Web Services) bringing in income, this might be another tech company that outperforms index funds in the future.
Questions
Let’s return to those questions of nest eggs, passive income and retirement. With a basket of high-quality stocks (perhaps including Amazon) helping to grow those savings, the returns look very fruitful indeed.
Is a million pounds possible? Yes. A £529 monthly saving grows to £1,091,244 given a 10% return rate for 30 years. Though lower return rates offer much lower end points. An 8% return grows to £745,123 and a 6% return to £515,517.
How about passive income? Well, a 4% drawdown rate gives £43,649 per year. Over £3,500 a month (tax-free in a Stocks and Shares ISA) sounds like a pretty good outcome. But inflation will mean that impressive income stream will have much less buying power than it would today.
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How about early retirement? Replacing the day job with passive income is trickier to calculate as it depends on how old an investor might be.
But one of the great advantages to investing in stocks independently, rather than through a typical pension, is that there’s no age restriction on when the withdrawals can begin.
