🍭 This news is no tricks, all treats

It’s Tuesday, Boston.

🗳️ PSA: We are T-minus seven days until Election Day *shudders*, and 5 p.m. today is the deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot, which you can do here.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Why Mass. smelled like smoke

• Cambridge’s new romance bookstore

• A very Boston proposal

Up first…

GOOD NEWS

Nobel prizes, noble causes, and Northern Lights, oh my!

Today, we’re trading tricks for treats. And by treats, of course, we mean good news.

Here are the feel-good stories you might’ve missed this month:

🏆 Massholes kept racking up the Nobel Prizes. This year, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, two Mass. researchers, won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discovery of microRNA, a.k.a. teeny tiny pieces of genetic material that could lead to new ways of treating cancer. Unsurprisingly, the duo have some pretty impressive backgrounds, with PhDs from Harvard and MIT, but according to Ruvkun, the prize still “changes everything” for him as a researcher. 

🏀 Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday are doing good by Boston. And we’re not just talking about their fire start to the season. Brown and Holiday joined forces to launch a business accelerator program this month with aims to help close the racial wealth gap in Boston. The accelerator program includes $250,000 worth of funding and support for each biz. Awardees include the Dorchester Art Project, Uvida Shop, Future Masters Chess Academy, and more. Check them out here.

❤️‍🩹 This beloved local food influencer is finally back home. Joey Calcavecchia, the N.H.-based foodie content creator, is back home after a car crash on I-93 earlier this year left him with a collapsed lung and a fractured skull. But thankfully, he’s on the mend, with ambitions to get walking again as soon as he can. For now, Calcavecchia is already dipping his toes back into his foodie ways, posting new bites on his Instagram. If you want to donate, his fam put together a GoFundMe. 

🎓 Holy Cross is putting its money where its mouth is. This month, the school announced that it’ll cover tuition costs for students whose families make less than $100,000 a year. That’s a massive step up from its previous limit of $75,000, especially since Holy Cross costs $83,320 a year to attend *sobs*. This news is even better coming after the serious sticker shock of several local colleges hitting the $90,000-a-year threshold, with more expected to follow. 

📚 Porter Square Books got a little help from its friends. The beloved Cambridge bookstore got itself some new (bigger) digs this month right down the road from its old space. But instead of a moving truck, the bookstore enlisted a human chain to move its first load of books. More than 300 community members showed up to pass books the quarter-mile distance between the two spots, person by person. By all accounts, it was totally adorable. 

🌃 And finally, Mass. continued to cosplay as Scandinavia. By that we mean, the Northern Lights showed up again. And, per usual, they were completely gorgeous. Just look at these pics from Boston.com readers.

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CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

😶‍🌫️ It’s not just you: Mass. smelled like smoke yesterday. The smoky odor and general haziness you might’ve noticed Monday morning were thanks to a bunch of brush fires across Eastern Mass. this weekend. On Friday night, the National Weather Service flagged that the weekend's dry conditions and winds would make for very spreadable wildfire conditions, and they certainly did, including a 100-acre blaze in Salem. The good news is that the smoke should be pretty much gone by now.

🥶 Your heating bill increases should cool off a little this winter. We can’t blame you for turning on the heat before Nov. 1. Especially since the Northeast will likely see a much smaller year-over-year bill increase this winter (think: 1% more for natural gas and 5% for electricity). And while you may think: increase = bad, relatively speaking, it’s pretty good news given the up to 10, 15, or 17% increases we’ve seen the past three winters (which left one Globe writer with an $800 bill difference). So yeah, we’re claiming this as a W.

🍔 B. Good is looking more like B. Gone. Recently, the good-for-you, good-for-the-planet burger company closed down three of its Greater Boston locations in Woburn, Downtown Crossing, and on Northeastern’s campus. The closures are part of a larger brand “reassessment,” and we probably won’t see any more in the near future, including the still-open Cambridge and Newton locales. Gia would like to personally pour one out for the chicken caesar wraps, which single-handedly fueled her college experience.  

❤️‍🔥 Romance readers, we have a little treat for you. OK, more like a big treat: Lovestruck Books, a brick-and-mortar, romance-specific bookshop, is coming to Harvard Square this winter. The store will stock primarily romance books, plus a smaller selection of general fiction. Until then, they’ll be holding events (see: this sold-out practical magic screening, or this not-sold-out romance writing panel) and selling books online, including off of this Boston.com-curated romance starter pack. 

QUICK QUESTION

🌡️ Have you turned on your heat yet?

ONE LAST THING

A very Boston proposal

You’re swiping through Southie guys on Hinge. This couple is getting engaged on top of the Pru.  

This week’s “As I See It” column in the Globe chronicled a very elaborate, very Boston proposal created by Bradley Colebank for his financée, Leslie Reitz. The proposal was actually a handmade treasure hunt that took Reitz on a tour of the city and their romance.

With the help of a chauffeur, she hit the Alibi Bar at the Liberty Hotel (where they met), the Public Garden (their first kiss), Banyan Bar + Refuge in the South End (their first date), before arriving at the View Boston observatory atop the Pru. 

And waiting there, just after Golden hour, was Colebank, who popped the question when she arrived. Live vicariously through their romance here.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🌇 Thanks for reading! Maybe love IS real.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, the Lincoln Hotel, for supporting local journalism and offering New Englanders a holiday getaway worth remembering. 

🍽️ The results are in: 52% of readers are leaning toward voting “no” on Question 5, with another 37% leaning toward “yes.” Industry workers on both sides wrote in to share their thoughts. One said: “I know from my history in the service sector that these jobs are precarious, and the lowest paid among us get screwed over by the current system.” Another said: “As a former server, I am certain all the servers currently working would be bringing home much less each week.” 

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