Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force/AP

U.S. Air Force crew, assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, assist evacuees boarding a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 21, 2021. As of Aug. 25, the Pentagon said 88,000 people had been airlifted out of the country.

As Kabul was falling to Taliban forces, the phones and inboxes of U.S. military veterans across the country were blowing up with desperate pleas from their Afghan interpreters and partners in America’s longest war. 

“It was just gut-wrenching,” says retired U.S. Army Col. Mike Jason, who commanded a task force with special forces in Afghanistan, who was getting voice text messages from an Afghan military commando – a war college classmate now on the run.

The commando had stood his post to the end, but was now unable to get back to his family. “He was hiding out in a safe house. I’ve got those voicemails for posterity, but I can’t listen to them,” he says. “To hear the fear and panic in his voice – and the sirens.”

While he ultimately managed to pick up his wife and children, the Afghan commando had to pass through three Taliban checkpoints, only to be stuck outside Hamid Karzai International Airport with thousands of others.

Ultimately, he made it through the tightly packed sea of desperate people, with the help of NATO contacts inside the airport, and flew with his family to safety. “It was hugely emotional,” says Mr. Jason. “I was so happy and relieved.”

Those feelings were short-lived, however. Calls, texts, and WhatsApp group messages from other colleagues and military academy classmates – whose interpreters and former Afghan colleagues were also scared and stuck – started pouring in.

In the days since, Mr. Jason and hundreds of veterans like him have launched what they’ve dubbed a Digital Dunkirk, falling back on their military training and setting up ad hoc operations centers from their kitchen tables, working round the clock to get their former battle buddies out. 

“We’re all using our networks and our common language of military planning. We have groups that are very tactical – like just, ‘OK, how can we help them get through the gate?’ And a command group that’s, ‘Let’s think deeper – how do we get more planes to land? What laws and authorities do we need for that? Who should we be talking to?’” Mr. Jason says. As in most battles, they are getting by on minimal sleep – fueled, he says, by the customary soldiers’ diet of “rage and coffee.”

“It’s all an ad hoc system”

As President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he does not plan to extend America’s Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, the work of these veterans continues. Since late July, U.S. military and chartered airplanes have flown out more than 88,000 people fleeing the Taliban  – what officials call one of the largest and fastest air evacuation operations in military history. 

“Thus far the Taliban have been taking steps to work with us so we can get our people out. But it’s a tenuous situation,” President Biden said. “We’ve already had some gunfighting break out. We run a serious risk of breaking down as time goes on.” 

Yet veterans who have been sounding the warning for years about the need to get Afghan colleagues out of the country express frustration at the chaos now making that task so difficult – even as they have found deep inspiration in the way veterans have come together in the endeavor to get it done. 

Susan Walsh/AP

President Joe Biden speaks about the situation in Afghanistan from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Aug. 24, 2021. The president has refused to extend the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, despite bipartisan pleas for more time to save people from the Taliban.

“It’s cool, but it kind of [ticks] me off that it’s all an ad hoc system,” says Garrett Cathcart, who served in the country from 2010 to 2011 as an Army cavalry troop commander and has been working to get an Afghan engineer with whom he worked out. “He built my combat outpost for me. He built a school for girls. At one point, I had a vehicle get stuck in a ditch and roll so far that the U.S. military could not get it.” The engineer commandeered Russian-made cranes to do the job.

Mr. Cathcart notes that even a friend who was awarded a Medal of Honor, the country’s highest award for combat valor, has been unable, as of yet, to get his interpreter to safety.

The deep frustration is punctuated by moments of celebration. When a group of West Point graduates got word that two of their former Afghan classmates who had attended the academy with them were unable to get out of the country, Mr. Cathcart and others “shot up flares” to their networks, which rallied to work official and unofficial channels. 

Ultimately, both Afghan officers made it to an evacuation flight, one by getting a former West Point professor on the line, then holding up his cellphone to the ear of troops at Hamid Karzai International Airport, who let him through the gate. “You can have an ambassador [pleading your case], but sometimes what you really need is a sergeant at the front gates,” Mr. Cathcart says. 

Entire families on the line

A State Department letter, cited by vets, tells Afghan visa holders to push hard, be prepared to wait nine to 10 hours, and bring supplies of food and water and a fully charged phone.

Afghans also vitally need documentation of their service to the U.S. military or proof of the visas they already have. However, many have burned critical paperwork for fear of running into Taliban forces, who, though saying the right things at the moment, could later seek retribution against their families – or against them, if they fail to make it out.

U.S. veterans have been troubleshooting this particular problem, too. “We tell them to take pictures, upload everything digitally, clean your phone, and when you get to where you need to go, we’ll email it back to you,” says Mr. Jason. “We’ve basically become their digital cloud.”

This can-do drive among veterans working round the clock has nonetheless created stress when they feel like their efforts fall short. “I’ve had Afghans find me and send me the most desperate and heartbreaking messages pleading for my help, and I know there are countless veterans experiencing the same thing,” says Kristofer Goldsmith, a forward observer deployed to Sadr City, Iraq, who lost contact with his interpreter after the country’s invasion by the Islamic State and fears he was killed. Mr. Goldsmith wants to do what he can, he says, to spare fellow vets from the same heartbreak on behalf of those who “not only put their lives on the line, but their entire families on the line.”

That said, he adds, “a lot of veterans are near a state of crisis.” 

These concerns have prompted the Department of Veterans Affairs to post open letters in the wake of the Taliban takeover to those who might be “questioning the meaning of their service or whether it was worth the sacrifices they made,” and urging veterans to look out for one another. 

“What I’ve seen not just from vets but more importantly the VA is the recognition of the moral injury that some folks are feeling right now,” says Mr. Goldsmith, who last week pulled together a bipartisan network that includes organizations from the Lincoln Project and Human Rights First to veterans groups such as Vietnam Veterans of America to sign a letter to the president, asking to extend the evacuation deadline.

Now Mr. Goldsmith and others continue the titanic effort to get their comrades out. “I’m trying to remain optimistic. I think that the Taliban has every incentive to make sure that this goes smoothly, because they’re acutely aware that without international support, Afghanistan’s economy will continue to be in complete free fall.”

They are hoping, too, that the deep respect the military is generally granted by their fellow Americans will rally others to the aid of their Afghan friends. “As veterans whose lives were shaped by these wars, we recognize that these Afghans have sacrificed more for this nation than anyone using hateful rhetoric,” Mr. Goldsmith says. “The trust that Americans have in our [veterans] community is great, and we want to wield that in a responsible and helpful manner.” 

“We’re doing this 24/7, we’re not sleeping”

Since 2014, veterans have been working in a bipartisan fashion behind the scenes with three administrations and five Congresses “so we didn’t have those who served alongside of us languishing,” says Doug Livermore, a career Special Forces officer who was deployed to the country multiple times and is now a board member of No One Left Behind, an organization to support the Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who served with U.S. forces.

“There have been a number of groups sounding the clarion call for years and years about the dangers to them and, more recently – for about the last year and a half – the actual need for an evacuation,” Mr. Livermore says.

Yet in their conversation with Biden administration officials, and with Trump administration officials before that, “there was a very big concern about the optics of the U.S. government sponsoring a mass evacuation while at the same time saying we had full confidence in the ability of the Afghan government to stand and fight.” 

Through it all, the organization has tracked the number of interpreters who have been hunted down and killed in Afghanistan. “We understand that there’s a real human cost of delays in processing these applications,” he says.

Its work has yielded successes: Two weeks before the fall of Kabul, the group and others succeeded in getting a bill led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and a parallel House bill passed to streamline the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process and help remove countless barriers created by clerical errors. 

Mr. Livermore cites an example: “We had a letter of recommendation for an SIV rejected because the signature at the bottom didn’t have a date next to it, even though there was a date at the top.” 

Today, its board of directors has been on “nonstop fundraising calls” and launched a GoFundMe page. “We’re doing this 24/7, we’re not sleeping, because there’s always another donor to be spoken to, another aircraft to lease,” he says. 

The group is raising money to charter planes; the cost is roughly $650,000 for a flight in and out of Kabul that gets between 170 to 300 people on the plane, depending on its size. The planes are often provided by sympathetic contracting companies that have generally been “absolutely amazing in doing operations at cost.” 

The vast majority of the organization’s donor money has gone toward financial and resettlement assistance once interpreters are granted an SIV and arrive in the United States. The group has SIV ambassadors in most major U.S. cities, and some job placement programs in place through Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, and Lyft, among other companies.

“We’re at the airplane with signs and American flags when families arrive at some ungodly hour because they’re flying from the other side of the planet,” exhausted and often with young children in tow, Mr. Livermore says. 

Still, despite all this, “by the time they arrive it feels like a homecoming, since we already consider them Americans who have made immense sacrifices for our country,” he adds. “They’re ready to embrace the American dream and weave themselves into the fabric of our society.” 

The founder of No One Left Behind, Janis Shenwari, was, in fact, an Afghan interpreter who arrived in America in 2013 with $3,000, all of his family members’ possessions packed in one suitcase each.

Mr. Shenwari endured Taliban death threats stuck to his car windshield, sheltering in safe houses, and changing locations every day before he got out. 

He was an interpreter for Matt Zeller, a U.S. Army combat adviser living on an Afghan army base while training its military. Mr. Shenwari saved Mr. Zeller’s life during a Taliban ambush. 

During firefights, Mr. Zeller would hear Taliban commanders telling their fighters over the radio to shoot the interpreters first. “They knew the interpreters were our eyes and ears, and our cultural and linguistic bridge. Without them, we couldn’t do our jobs.” 

The bonds U.S. troops formed with them are lifelong, he adds.

“I don’t think I can explain to people properly how strong they are. I want to suit up and personally get them out,” he says. “Their safety is as important to me as that of my daughter – and every vet I know feels the same way.” 

Editor’s note: Information about Kristofer Goldsmith’s interpreter has been updated.

Francisco Seco/AP

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks at a NATO foreign ministers' video meeting. The U.S. ended the war in Afghanistan by a unilateral decision on a unilateral timetable, leaving NATO allies largely in the dark.

It’s not so much America’s exit from Afghanistan, as the manner of it. And it has left U.S. allies – from Europe through the Middle East to Asia – asking themselves a deeply unsettling question: How far can we rely on Washington to help safeguard our vital security interests?

The core reason for their concern is that a war launched and prosecuted for two decades alongside America’s partners in the transatlantic NATO alliance was ended in a matter of weeks – by a unilateral U.S. decision, on a unilateral U.S. timetable, with little consultation and virtually no meaningful input from the allies.

Clearly aware of allied angst, the Biden administration is insisting that the Afghan withdrawal was a special case – an overdue end to a “forever war” – and that, in the words of national security adviser Jake Sullivan, America’s bonds with long-standing partners are “sacrosanct.”

But there have been growing signs that such assurances are unlikely to prove sufficient to allay allied concerns. 

The broader message being drawn – not just by NATO’s European members, but by allies further afield – is that the strength of their own ties with Washington could depend on American domestic politics, over which they have no control. On the heels of Donald Trump’s presidency, when he openly questioned the value of U.S. alliances overseas, they worry that the traditional bipartisan consensus in Washington, which ensured that the United States would unquestionably provide security ballast worldwide, may now be a thing of the past.

More European autonomy?

Europe is suffering an especially strong case of the jitters. In Germany, Armin Laschet, the man most likely to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel when she steps down next month, called the pullout “the greatest debacle that NATO has experienced since its foundation.”

In Britain, the NATO country that contributed the most troops in Afghanistan after the U.S., Washington’s behavior has left a particularly sour taste. That was clear in Parliament a few days ago, when former Prime Minister Theresa May asked, “What does [the pullout] say about us as a country? What does it say about NATO, if we are entirely dependent on a unilateral decision by the U.S.?”

John Macdougall/Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a news conference in Berlin, Aug. 24, 2021, after a virtual Group of Seven summit on the crisis triggered by the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan. Washington turned down pleas by European allies to extend the Aug. 31 deadline for a U.S. withdrawal so as to allow their nationals to evacuate.

The position of the current prime minister, Boris Johnson, was made no easier by President Joe Biden’s initial public defense of the decision to leave Afghanistan, framed in exclusively U.S. domestic political terms without even mentioning NATO. And this past weekend, British newspapers reported that the White House took 36 hours to return Mr. Johnson’s call last week.

No one in London is suggesting that this means NATO is finished, or that its own often-trumpeted “special relationship” with the Americans is over. But there have been calls for a new, more sober assessment of security plans – and suggestions that French President Emmanuel Macron is right to suggest that Europe needs to invest in greater “security autonomy” from the United States.

Nor are the Europeans alone.

One of Israel’s leading security commentators wrote a few days ago that “the real effect on America’s allies, especially Israel and the pro-Western Arab regimes, is that America, now and for the foreseeable future, has a heightened awareness of its own limitations,” and that this meant the allies would have to be readier “to fend for themselves.”

From Ukraine to Taiwan

Such concerns are being felt most acutely by allies bordering Washington’s two main strategic rivals: Russian neighbor Ukraine and the island democracy of Taiwan off the eastern coast of China. While Mr. Sullivan’s remarks were clearly intended to assuage their worries, both Moscow and Beijing have wasted no time in trying to stoke them.

A Russian security spokesperson and a commentator in the Chinese state media struck a strikingly similar tone in their statements last week. “Pay attention to Afghanistan,” their message ran. “That’s what happens when you rely on Washington.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is due in Washington later this month, was already nervous. He is frustrated by what he feels is insufficient U.S. support against Russian encroachment on his country, and support for Kyiv’s bid to join NATO.

Taiwan has less reason for immediate concern: The Biden administration has moved to strengthen both its political and security commitment. But that didn’t stop President Tsai Ing-wen from drawing a lesson from the Afghanistan pullout. “The only option for Taiwan is to make itself stronger, more united and more determined to defend itself,” she said last week. It wasn’t a realistic option, she added, to rely “on the momentary goodwill” of another country.

The key question now is how far allied worries are justified, and how Washington will respond.

That may prove a delicate, high-stakes challenge. While President Biden’s eagerness to get out of Afghanistan was in keeping with Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda, he has also stressed his determination to restore U.S. international leadership and to reinforce U.S. alliances. They are critical, he says, to curbing Chinese and Russian autocratic ambitions, and to addressing global challenges like climate change.

Now, will America’s allies trust Washington enough to follow his lead?

Like many school districts, Brunswick School Department in Maine suddenly has a lot more laptops and tablets to manage than it planned for. School officials in the seaside town scrambled to purchase enough devices for all their students to learn online last year after the pandemic hurtled kids out of buildings.

As the district prepares to reopen for full in-person learning on August 30, teachers are attending training sessions and figuring out just what role technology will play in their classrooms. There’s a simmering sense of anticipation about how far educators have come with technology, and its potential to enhance student learning.

“I am excited,” says Brunswick kindergarten teacher Stephanie Lucas, who describes herself as slow to get on board with technology, but more experienced after teaching remotely. “My goal for this year is to see how I’ll make [digital tools] effective in the classroom.” 

As teachers develop lesson plans, they also face lingering questions, in Maine and nationally, over the possibility of a return to remote learning and concerns about ensuring all students have access to the devices and high-quality broadband they need to do classwork and homework. 

Nationwide, significant progress has been made since March 2020 on closing the digital divide – the chasm between those K-12 learners who have access to reliable internet and computing devices at home and those who don’t.

Efforts by states and districts in the first nine months of the pandemic closed 20% to 40% of the gap between K-12 students with and without broadband internet, and 40% to 60% of the divide between students with and without devices like laptops and tablets at home, according to a January 2021 report from Common Sense Media, Boston Consulting Group, and the Southern Education Foundation. Researchers say there’s likely been more progress – and some steps backward – since then, as they watch for the results of new federal programs established this spring. For some educators heading back to school, though, the change is already clear.

“We have a much more equitable approach to technology and access to technology than we had in the past,” says Shawn Lambert, assistant superintendent for Brunswick School Department. “Children are learning how to be even more resilient, and technology is helping that happen.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

During a recent class for teachers called "Going 1 to 1 in the Classroom," in Brunswick, Maine, educators work on procedures to use with students for the care of devices.

The American Rescue Plan in March 2021 created the $7.2 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund, which allows schools to apply for funds to pay for home broadband and devices for their students. The $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, which provides broadband subsidies for individuals and families. The infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate on Aug. 10, would extend the EBB program, with some modifications. 

A June report by New America Foundation and Rutgers University found substantial progress in home broadband access since 2015. Based on a survey of families with children ages 3 to 13 and with incomes below the national median of $75,000, the report determined that, in 2021, 1 in 7 children do not have broadband internet at home, leaving them either unconnected or with poor quality connections. Barriers for high-quality broadband include affordability and availability.

Some advocates say the recent efforts, while praiseworthy, also show the need for long-term solutions rather than temporary stopgaps. The January study from Common Sense Media and its partners suggests a majority of the programs helping students will expire after just a few years. Adoption rates have been low so far for the Emergency Broadband Benefit, and the Emergency Connectivity Fund had a short application window during schools’ summer vacation. 

Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow in governance studies and director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution in Washington, recently suggested creating a “No Child Left Offline” initiative.

“We don’t have a plan, I think, that’s comprehensive enough and nationally driven on what we’re going to do if we have to go remote, and we don’t have a plan of integrating digital access more permanently into our educational systems equally,” Dr. Turner Lee says in an interview.

Community collaborations

Lasting change will take the joint effort of communities and service providers, note some in education, who are already seeing results from the approach. “It has to be a collaborative effort,” says Mark Racine, chief information officer for Boston Public Schools. “I think that’s what’s worked very well in Boston. We have such close relationships with other city agencies, and local libraries and community centers. But there is only so much that the schools can do.” 

BPS has made sure every school building has staff to support families with technology. Families are also aided by community groups like the Boston Public Library, which is lending Chromebooks and hot spot home kits to those who need them. BPS distributed 55,000 Chromebooks and 6,000 hot spots to students last year and paid for 2,000 Comcast internet vouchers. “I was taken aback by how few of our hot spots are actually used, sometimes at all, but especially on a regular basis,” says Mr. Racine. There’s a role, he says, for a hot spot for a student who becomes homeless, for example. But, he adds, ”We really found early on that home broadband is our priority and has to be the priority for closing the digital divide.” 

BPS applied for help from the federal Emergency Connectivity Fund to purchase additional Chromebooks so students can keep a laptop at school and have one at home. Mr. Racine says some counterparts he has talked with around the country have been hesitant about applying for ECF funds because they don’t know if they will have the budget in the future to sustain updating and replacing the new technology. Boston was already planning on moving to one-to-one devices for each student and had funding allocated in their budget for a four-year refresh cycle. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Prepping for the new school year, Narumi Wigandt, an educational technician, unpacks chargers and cords for the new MacBooks that line the shelves next to her, on Aug. 18, 2021, in Brunswick, Maine. The devices are headed to seventh and eighth graders.

“We’re in a new age of instruction with teachers being able to feel comfortable trying something new and exploring new platforms,” he says, adding that security of the network keeps him up at night, considering the rise of ransomware and cyber attacks on educational institutions. 

Elsewhere, in San Antonio, Texas, several local school districts joined with partners, such as city officials and private companies, for Connected Beyond the Classroom, an initiative to bring home broadband to 20,000 students. As part of the effort, the College of Education at Texas A&M University-San Antonio is running a help desk for students and parents in two local districts. The university is also hiring at least 20 high school students for paid internships to assist with the help desk and learn skills for future jobs. 

“We wanted to be more than just a support mechanism. We wanted to do something that would be a win for the community and schools,” says Carl Sheperis, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. 

“This is essential to access education”

When the pandemic hit, Brunswick School Department, serving about 2,300 students, already had a laptop for every student in seventh and eighth grades through the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, which since 2001 has provided a laptop for middle grade students. But there weren’t enough devices for the other grades, and the district initially cobbled together a plan of giving older students computers that were on hand and providing paper and pen packets for younger children. The district also lent hot spots to families if they needed them. 

“All of a sudden we went from, ‘Hey, it would be nice to have [devices for each student],’ to ‘Hey, this is essential to access education,’” says Mr. Lambert, the assistant superintendent. 

In July 2020, the district received federal stimulus relief funding that allowed it to invest about $1 million to purchase iPads for children in preschool through grade three and Chromebooks for older students. Due to supply chain delays, the district finished distributing devices in January 2021. The six public schools in Brunswick operated on a hybrid schedule for most of the 2020-21 school year.  

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Ashley LaCroix, a technology integrator for Brunswick School Department, pauses after teaching a class for educators on Aug 18, 2021, in Brunswick, Maine. “Our world is digital literacy now. Having students be able to create and not just consume is huge,” she says.

Ashley LaCroix, a technology integrator in the district, coaches teachers on best practices for the classroom. She’s leading optional professional development training before the 2021-22 school year begins to help educators think about how technology tools – such as Seesaw and Google Classroom – can boost student engagement and creativity.

“Our world is digital literacy now. Having students be able to create and not just consume is huge,” says Ms. LaCroix. 

She trains teachers to use tools that help students create digital portfolios that parents can see and leave comments on, or record themselves reading and watch their progress. Older students can track homework and grades, digitally mark up texts, and get feedback from teachers online. 

The possible uses of technology are only starting to be explored, with researchers and educators still assessing what works – and doesn’t work – for young people. A May-June 2021 survey of 118 European middle and high students found that 73% of student respondents said it was easy to concentrate on reading in print, compared to 23% who said the same about reading on computers.

“For all the right reasons, schools ... have been striving to make digital learning opportunities available to all students,” writes Naomi Baron, a professor emerita at American University in Washington who was involved with the survey, in a statement to the Monitor. “However, in the process, there has been precious little thought given to what the learning ramifications are of shifting so much (sometimes all) of education to digital platforms.” 

Back in Brunswick, at a recent training entitled “Going 1 to 1 in the Classroom,” Ms. LaCroix answers questions from a handful of teachers about where they should go for help when needed and how to talk with parents who wonder why their young children are using technology. In the weeks prior to the session, she shared her philosophy on such exposure in a phone conversation.

“By giving students digital literacy skills,” she says, “we’re trying to give them the opportunity to become whatever they want to be when they graduate.” 

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

These root cellars, located on the side of a hill across from the puffin colony in Elliston, Newfoundland, are affectionately called “upstairs/downstairs.” They are just two of the root cellars to be found in the “root cellar capital of the world.”

When traveling through Elliston, a speck of a town perched off the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland’s Bonavista Peninsula, the sharp-eyed may notice five-foot-high structures scattered all over the town.

The bunker-like oddities are made of stacked flat stone, with small wooden doors offering a way inside. Tucked into the sides of grass-covered knobs or hidden in old potato fields, and with wisps of weeds and grass poking out from their facades, they seem to blend into their natural surroundings.

For years people had questions. “Are they bomb shelters?” they asked. Some wondered if anyone lived inside, or used to. “Are they from old Viking settlements?”

Actually they are Elliston’s root cellars: venerable food pantries that secured a source of food – carrots, parsnips, turnips, or beets – for Newfoundlanders as far back as 1839, even through the bleakest winters.

They may have been forgotten in history, with the advancement of refrigeration, global supply chains, and quick, on-demand food delivery. But their prominence in Elliston is a story of a town’s reinvention, and today they are far more than a quaint piece of cultural heritage. Root cellars epitomize the “grow local” movement, an ethos that has only deepened with pressures from climate change and a pandemic that have given the globe a glimpse of threats to food security.

“Root cellars almost fell into the backdrop,” says Troy Mitchell, a root cellar enthusiast and food security advocate in Newfoundland. “But growing up, the idea of having some control over your food was well known and just expected. I’ve noticed in the last year and a half, food security is something that people are latching onto.”

Sid Chaulk, the maintenance man for Tourism Elliston and local expert on root cellars, pulls out nails that he uses to latch a root cellar the tourism office uses (tourists sometimes leave it open, not realizing there are vegetables inside, he explains). “It’s dark and dingy, if you don’t mind coming in,” he tells me. “Keep your head down.”

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

Sid Chaulk, a local expert on root cellars, stands next to one of the 23 root cellars he has restored, out of the 135 that dot Elliston, Newfoundland, on Aug. 1, 2021.

We head through one door, and then another, a double seal to keep the temperature at a constant 5 degrees Celsius (41 F) through blizzards or the odd heat wave. Inside, 60 pounds of turnips and 100 pounds of potatoes sit patiently in a wooden bin, waiting to be selected for the Jiggs’ dinner – a pile of bread pudding, pea mash, parsnip mash, salted beef, and boiled cabbage and carrot – served on Sundays at the adjacent Nanny’s Root Cellar Kitchen.

When Mr. Chaulk was growing up here, with six brothers and a sister, they relied on their root cellar. They had no refrigeration. His mom used the space to keep eggs, her pickled foods, and homemade jello too, which got them through springtime. Just as the structures inspire the imagination for unknowing visitors, they became fanciful worlds for kids, who sometimes teased a sibling by shutting him inside, even though they always got in trouble afterward.

He still grows potatoes; his son grows carrots and beets and stores them in his own root cellar. But most had gone into disuse, overgrown by fields and forests – until the 1990s. That’s when Elliston, like so many fishing communities, was decimated by the cod moratorium of 1992. Overnight, communities lost the only economic engine they had, the cod harvest. For a time the municipal tax base was so paltry that Elliston turned its lights off.

And then the city turned to tourism. Elliston boasts one of the world’s best land-based sites for viewing puffins, a seabird that has long drawn tourists. And many of the most prominent root cellars line the road leading to that colony. Elliston declared itself the “root cellar capital of the world,” and the town set out to restore 135 of them. Mr. Chaulk had a hand in the work on 23.

Mr. Mitchell, who is from Twillingate, northwest of Elliston, recently finished geo-mapping the root cellars that his late father-in-law began documenting in 2008 in that area. Theirs are a different design because of materials available, with an inner core of concrete topped by a mound of earth, and they found 232 – not that anyone is competing with Elliston, he assures me. “Elliston was the originator. Well before, they made root cellars cool again.”

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

This Jiggs’ dinner, a traditional Sunday meal in Newfoundland, is made in part from vegetables stored in the restaurant’s root cellar. It includes a pile of bread pudding, pea mash, parsnip mash, salted beef, and boiled cabbage and carrot.

They are perhaps at their “coolest” during the annual Roots, Rants and Roars festival, which demonstrates the grow-local ethos at its apogee. Held for two days in September in Elliston, it features “cod wars” between top Canadian chefs, ingredients gathered by local foragers, and of course root vegetables presented in any number of manners. Chris Sheppard, who has been co-running the festival since 2014, once designed a root cellar doughnut: carrot cake with parsnip cream cheese icing and fried beet chips on top.

For a second straight year, the festival has been re-imagined amid the pandemic. Visitors take a picnic basket prepared by participating chefs and do their own hike along the rugged coastline, with a Spotify playlist available of music by artists who have performed in the past. But Mr. Sheppard says the festival, one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s celebrated culinary events, has a deeper meaning, connecting the past to the present when it comes to self-reliance and food security.

“We went through a period of time in the beginning of the pandemic when grocery shelves were getting very bare because food couldn’t be brought over,” he says. “I hope we don’t forget what we’ve experienced over the last year and a half.”

In a city with as much abundance as there is need, a tiny Manhattan nonprofit aims to reallocate the excess – one cookie, one blender, and one bike helmet at a time.   

Over the past four years, House of Good Deeds has funneled more than 150,000 pounds of clothes, household items, computers, catering equipment, and more from donors to recipients – keeping it out of landfills. Unlike organizations with concrete goals – disaster relief, ending homelessness, promoting literacy – this shoestring operation has a more profound purpose: fostering altruism. 

“Our overarching mission is to show people how easy it is to help others,” says co-founder and executive director Leon Feingold. His model puts free donations directly into the hands of people who need them, rather than to charities that primarily sell the merchandise and use the proceeds to fund their work. While New York has plenty of places that take donations, House of Good Deeds offers something its brethren don’t (and that anyone decluttering values): quick disposition. This is especially useful in a city where most charities request drop-offs, few folks have cars, and people generally ditch usable but unwanted articles on the sidewalk for lack of storage.

Most days find Mr. Feingold picking up goods across the city, sometimes within hours of a query about pickup. The only stipulation: Things have to work – clothes usable and appliances operable.

“If it’s something you can give to a friend without getting the stink eye in return, it’s probably safe to donate to us,” he says.

The group, which runs two formal monthly events, dramatically ramped up during the pandemic when many charities were pulling back or closing. The marquee affair is a massive yard sale-type giveaway in donated space with just about anything you could get at the mall.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Leon Feingold stores some House of Good Deeds donations for giveaway in his own New York apartment.

Its pop-ups – either a blood drive, food or clothing giveaway, neighborhood cleanup, annual bicycle helmet giveaway, or other ad hoc event – appear around the city’s five boroughs. Mr. Feingold and his handful of volunteers deliver food to homebound people, stock community fridges, and help fill food pantries. They also field requests from new parents, people recently released from prison, and others with specific asks. The group’s Instagram page connects donors of large items to recipients.

The monthly giveaways attract hundreds of retirees, young families, and singles. They browse well-organized stations stocked with housewares, clothing and shoes, electronics, cleaning supplies, toiletries, and leftover inventory from shuttered retail stores. Attendees are surprised everything is free, says Tracy McAllister, who has received and donated items, and volunteers each month.

Ms. McAllister discovered House of Good Deeds at a pop-up in May 2020 when she was unemployed. She picked up clothes, shoes, bedding, and housewares. Since then, the group has provided her with an Apple desktop and air fryer, shirts and new sneakers for her young sons, and a used microwave for her mother.

“I love how they take care of people,” Ms. McAllister says. 

At the July giveaway, 300 people lined up around the block in Chinatown and were admitted 20 at a time, due to COVID-19 restrictions. Everyone was masked and had 20 minutes to fill their empty shopping bags and pushcarts. Some browsed; others made a beeline for specific sections. Most left with their arms full. By day’s end, about 70% of the inventory was gone, which organizers say is typical of a good day.

About halfway through the event, Claudia and Julio Sobral arrived with bags and two suitcases of housewares and clothes. Helping their daughter clean out her studio, they didn’t want to leave things on the curb.  

After seeing the operation, Ms. Sobral said, “There’s an element of dignity [here]. People ... feel like they’re shopping as opposed to digging in bags on sidewalks.” While groups like the Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries International also help people, she says they are businesses “employing people, and the public has an opportunity to buy secondhand goods. All great.” But, she says, House of Good Deeds gives its clients options for which money is not an obstacle.

Forgoing pay for the value of altruism

A former professional baseball player, lawyer, and real estate agent who grew up middle class in Long Island, Mr. Feingold is the driving force behind House of Good Deeds. He says he takes no salary and stays afloat on donated goods, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, and Medicaid.

He says he works 80-hour weeks training and finding volunteers, fundraising, paying bills, repairing vehicles, running social media, and schlepping donations – occasionally to individuals, mostly to central locations until they can be donated. Recent donations have ranged from a 200-pound ice cream maker to a pair of men’s khakis. 

Many of his 12 core volunteers have paying jobs, so most of the operation falls on him. He acknowledges he, too, could get a paying job but feels this work is more important.

“Do we really need another real estate broker? Do we really need another lawyer?” he asks. “I’d like to think, and honestly believe, that there is more value in what House of Good Deeds does than in a dozen real estate brokers or lawyers.” 

Founded by “paying it forward”

Mr. Feingold and his late wife, Yuanyuan Wang-Feingold, founded House of Good Deeds in 2017. They were inspired by personal tragedy and the goodness of others. Within a week of getting engaged in 2016, Ms. Wang was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Mr. Feingold turned to his Facebook clan for assistance. One person helped get the uninsured Ms. Wang medical help. Others donated $30,000 for care and expenses. One of Mr. Feingold’s Facebook friends from 15 years earlier, a wedding planner, organized a 300-person ceremony in a week. Everything was donated – the venue, ice, band, bouquets, food.

“People we knew and people we didn’t supported us in ways we didn’t know we needed,” he says. “That kind of fortune happened because each of them cared enough to make it happen.”  

When the couple exchanged vows, they pledged to pay things forward. The first giveaway was of Ms. Wang-Feingold’s belongings after she died in 2017. 

Fast-forward four years: Mr. Feingold needs 1,500 to 3,000 square feet of permanent space for storage and monthly giveaways. He’s talking to city officials, private businesses, commercial real estate companies, civic and religious organizations, and philanthropists about a gratis location. The group’s Chinatown locale was donated by Asian Americans for Equality, but now the group again needs the space for its own programs. House of Good Deeds’ $25,000 annual budget – from donations – covers fuel, insurance, and some storage but won’t dent Manhattan rent rates. 

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer says House of Good Deeds makes a huge contribution but that finding a free, permanent new home is a tall order. 

Despite the uncertainty about where his operation will end up, Mr. Feingold still collects offerings, confident something will hit. One donor, Jackie Tian, manager of the Levain Bakery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, gives Mr. Feingold unsold pastries to pass along weekly. She likes her unsold $4.50 scone-sized cookies going to good use. 

“Leon has no hidden agenda. He helps everybody,” she says. “When someone donated a couch for our staff room and we needed to get it moved, Leon volunteered.” She adds, “Otherwise, we’d have had to have gotten a U-Haul. It’s like ‘what does he get out of it?’ Nothing, except that he wants to help people. ... He says, ‘Just pay it forward.’”

Reuters

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, left, and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visit the historical city Ad Diriyah near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 31.

For half a century, Iraq has been either an aggressor toward its Middle East neighbors or a victim of them. On Saturday, it will try to play a different role, that of a regional mediator for peace. It is a role learned the hard way and now largely driven by young Iraqis, whose common slogan is “We want a country” (Nureed watan).

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, whose past work includes leading an Iraqi foundation for conflict resolution, will be hosting a summit of Arab and Iranian leaders. The main aim is to end the violent rivalry between two big neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as their meddling in Iraq.

Since coming to power as a reformer last year after mass protests against a corrupt elite, Mr. Kadhimi needs regional calm. Elections are due in October and Iraq faces an acute drought, electricity cutoffs, and terrorist attacks on democracy activists.

“We are in a sensitive situation. We need to calm the political situation until we reach the elections,” he told The Associated Press in an interview.

Since early 2021, he has brokered initial talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, using his experience as a former journalist and intelligence chief to find common interests between them. His convening of a summit suggests both countries are ready for a deal, perhaps first in settling one big dispute, their proxy war in Yemen.

“Iraq has succeeded in gaining the trust of these countries, and accordingly, it is working toward the stability of the region,” he told AP.

Since Iraq’s liberation from a dictator in 2003 by the United States, its fledgling democracy has been racked by internal rivalry between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. But the Iraqi people found some unity in their 2017 victory over the Islamic State caliphate, followed by youth protests in 2019 against corruption and the divvying up of resources by ethnicity and religion.

Iraq is not alone in feeling pressure from restive youth. Leaders in Saudi Arabia and Iran know they must satisfy the demands of young people, which can only happen with regional peace and economic investments. In Iran, voter turnout for a June presidential election was the lowest since the 1979 revolution. In frequent protests, Iranians shout “Down with the dictatorship.”

Within Iraq, Mr. Kadhimi has earned enough trust between political factions to make modest reforms. Now he also has enough trust with neighboring countries to act as a bridge for reconciliation. He has seen Iraq as both aggressor and victim. He can help others find a way to end that cycle of conflict.