Use vinegar to make scratchy towels soft, and other life hacks from grandmas

Only five percent of lawyers are Black. This attorney wants to change that.

A steer ran wild on a busy interstate. A cowboy with a lasso gave chase. 

About that $9 billion ‘profit’ from credit card late fees

Trump’s indictment video features a litany of favorite falsehoods

Haley falsely links rise in girls’ suicidal thoughts to trans athletes 

Viral Pentagon explosion hoax took off from pro-Russian accounts

Truth or hogwash? Fact checking privacy pitches from WhatsApp and Apple

Meta employee morale is low. Mark Zuckerberg is touting AI to fix that.

I read your financial advice. Here’s why it doesn’t work.

More Americans own stocks. This is great for their financial future.

9 money-smart books that make the perfect graduation gifts

Greta Thunberg holds last school strike as climate activist graduates

A Russia-Ukraine timeline: Key moments, from attack on Kyiv to counteroffensive

Ukraine presses counteroffensive as flood evacuations continue in south

How a Trump appointee tried to destroy Voice of America

7 abortion questions every presidential candidate needs to answer

Saudi Arabia just bought professional golf. What else is for sale?

We asked: Can you bring vape pens on a plane?

‘It’s like Starbucks’: Inside Thailand’s legal weed scene

Disney’s most exclusive tour: 12 parks and a private jet for $115,000

Five things a climate reporter wants you to know about making indoor air safer

Hazardous air quality from wildfire smoke takes a toll on outdoor workers

How life for animals changed when humans stayed home during the pandemic

Rory McIlroy has come to terms with golf’s future, but he still hates LIV

Tucker Carlson drops first episode of bare-bones Twitter show

Chris Licht fired at CNN after programming blunders, staff revolt

Thai Curry Snow Pea Stir-Fry

Don’t believe the backlash. Saturated fat actually is bad for you.

Matcha gives these pancakes a verdant hue and a nutritional boost

Carolyn Hax: Grandparents want help hiding their bigotry from the kids

Miss Manners: I don’t drink. How do I answer, ‘What are you drinking?’

Ask Amy: We moved for husband’s job and now he’s contacting his exes

Hong Kong prisons work to compel loyalty to China among young activists

In scramble for EV metals, health threat to workers often goes unaddressed

DeSantis’s war on 'woke' and what that word means today

Corn, chicken and ribbons of egg make this summer soup shine

A crisp snap pea salad turns indulgent when paired with burrata 

Trump on tape: ‘Now I can’t’ declassify secret Iran papers

The three tiers of Donald Trump sycophancy

Leo showcases the smart flavors of a first-time chef in Annapolis

Settle in, Wizards fans. This turnaround will take a while.

A college ace threw 124 pitches — and MLB teams grimaced

For the better part of the past half century, Vietnam veteran Bob Luckett has been working in the construction industry.
Luckett, 69, started out as a laborer in a masonry company after completing his military service in 1971. It was tough work at first. His boss “was great, but he worked you to death,” he said, and soon Luckett developed an allergy to the lime in mortar.
“My hands were like hamburgers.”
So Luckett took on a supervisory role, and steadily rose through the ranks before starting his own contracting company in 1998. He took charge of projects from designing and building homes from scratch to doing remodels and additions. He sold the company in 2015, and did some consulting and project management for local construction companies. But he knew he wanted something different, something more.
Then Luckett heard a report the radio one day about the challenges veterans face finding a job after leaving the service, and the idea for a new venture was born. In November, Luckett founded <a href="https://www.veteransnextmission.org/">Veteran’s Next Mission</a>, a nonprofit that offers veterans a paid four-year training program to prepare them for a career in the construction industry.
One recent afternoon on a quiet tree-lined cul-de-sac in Arlington, Va., Luckett was hard at work with his first group of trainees. The crew was working on a $185,000, 12 x 16 feet addition to a home Luckett designed and built 12 years ago for a newly wed couple. Now that the family has grown to include three kids, they needed extra space. And so Luckett is back to help his old clients, and some veterans looking for an opportunity.
“Put a nail in, right there,” said Luckett, pointing at a corner where two wooden boards needed to be held together.
Gripping a gray nail gun tightly, Brian Mandes fired once.
“Well, that was refreshing,” Mandes, 44, said as the nail gun gave off a poof of cool air. Mandes spent 14 years in the infantry in the Army National Guard. He had completed a tour in Iraq, where he was armed with an M4 rifle and an M2 .50-caliber machine gun. But he had never fired a nail gun.
“I love it. Every chance I get to use it, I use it,” Mandes said.
Under Luckett’s close guidance, his trainees put up form boards along the perimeter of the concrete base of the structure. They painstakingly measured out the wood, sawed it to the precise length, and affixed it to the concrete slab. At each step, Luckett would first demonstrate what to do, then have Mandes and Derek Lett, another trainee who served as a cavalry scout in the Army from 2011 to 2013, repeat the procedure. A third trainee, Lisa Duan, 24, was off that day.
Construction is a “very natural” transition for veterans, Luckett said, because it shares so many elements of military life: working outdoors, teamwork, organization, and discipline. “It’s a good opportunity for veterans.”
And Luckett thinks that veterans bring an additional element of grit to construction work. “A lot of other construction sites, it’s raining, and the guys are gone,” he said. “[For] these guys, it’s just water.”
The veteran unemployment rate stands at 3.4 percent, lower than the national average of 4 percent for nonveterans, according to the <a href="https://www.dol.gov/vets/newsletter/pdf/May-2017-VETS-Monthly-Employment-Overview.pdf">latest May figures</a> from the Department of Labor. But some veterans face greater challenges finding employment than others. Those ages 18 to 24 have an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, more than two percentage points higher than nonveterans the same age, according to Department of Labor statistics.
Such statistics were just one reason Luckett was moved to act.
He works alongside his trainees from early morning till midafternoon, Monday through Friday. They learn how to pour concrete, and install framing, siding, roofing, dry wall, and insulation. They earn $12 an hour, with a $1 increase every six months. The goal is to provide them with skills so that at the end of the four years, the veterans can either pick a trade to pursue, work with a remodeling company, or start their own business.
“Every day is a learning curve,” said Lett, who hopes to graduate from the program into a well-paying job in the construction industry.
But that challenge is familiar to the vets. Both Lett and Mandes said the work brings back fond memories of the Army.
“I miss the camaraderie, so this is perfect,” said Mandes. He wants to start his own contracting business one day, and for now he is getting extra practice on his construction skills through a hobby of his: building miniature houses.
Watching Luckett at work on the construction site, it’s hard to believe that he will soon turn 70. Gripping a sledgehammer, he gives a wooden stake a good whack to drive it into the ground. His stance is solid, his swing smooth and strong.
Veteran’s Next Mission is only a few months old, but already Luckett is looking to expand. He is currently in the process of recruiting more trainees and trainers, so that the group can take on more than one project simultaneously.
“I tell my wife, ‘These guys keep me young,’ ” he said.

Mary Hui is a Hong Kong-based writer. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, the South China Morning Post, and CityLab.

Mary Hui

The Washington Post

name

prism://prism.query/site,/lifestyle/inspired-life?limit=20

Inspired Life

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/lifestyle&limit=20

Lifestyle

Washington Post Lifestyle gives you the latest fashion and beauty trends, home d&eacute;cor pointers, food and recipe ideas and reviews, relationship advice, travel ideas, wellness tips and much more.