Monty Python Got It Right

I love a slow news day. 

 Wake up.  Pour the coffee.  Turn on the TV to accompany your preparations for the day. 

And our top stories this morning: 

·         Princess Katherine’s wedding gown on display! 

·         Lindsay Lohan wears $1000 Manolo Blahnik shoes while claiming she cannot afford court-ordered psychological counseling. 

·         Do men do their share of household chores? 

·         And Donald Trump may announce, again, he’s running for president. 

Hooray!  We can exhale.  We can start the day free of new stress. 

Remember Simon & Garfunkel?  “I can gather all the news I need from the weather report.  Hey!  I’ve got nothin’ to do today but smile!” 

Yeah.  No news is most definitely good news.   

All right, you may say there is, in fact, news.  The “heated” debate over raising the debt ceiling, for example.  But this, for me, is not exactly news.  Or maybe it’s news in the same sense that professional wrestling is sport.  The players are in costume.  They’ve rehearsed their roles.  The outcome is decided.  We just watch to boo and hiss on cue.   

The oppressive heat wave dominating so much of the nation is news.  That weather report is nothing to smile about.  Unless like me, you used to live back there with thirty-one straight days of 100+ degrees and the concomitant double-digit humidity.  I try not to rub it in too much with my Okie relatives.  Poor form and all. 

The last flight of space shuttle Atlantis is sad news for the American dream.  But I heard this morning that NASA plans to put an astronaut on the surface of an asteroid by the year 2025.  Not exactly riveting in the moment, but something to look forward to in an abstract way.  

The players’ lockout is resolved for professional football.  Thank God. 

The SF Giants met President Obama to receive his personal congratulations for winning the World Series last fall.  That’s cool.  Tardy, but still cool. 

Best of all, nothing new to worry about today.  Nothing to add to the list of disquiets that we mull over a little bit each day.  Reviewing them.  Taking them through step-by-step, from the beginning.  How did it start?  How will it end? 

No new contingents of suffering in the world.  Only those already categorized and compartmentalized.  No new wars, or oil spills.  Only the wretched, distressing, but normal batch of car wrecks and shootings.  One animal attack, but everyone’s going to be OK. 

If anything’s startling, it’s what we take as routine, even expected, though not quite acceptable. 

So it’s make the bed.  Brush the teeth.  Get the husband off to work.  Read email.  Plan dinner.  Buy groceries.  Write.  Putter.  It’s all pretty darn good.  In the big picture. 

I’ll just thank God in Heaven for the incredible life I’m privileged to live, feeling especially free from the weight of a big news day.  Only the same old straws today.  Not a single new one. 

Coming up:  Four new ways to barbeque chicken!  I can deal with that.  I love barbequed chicken.  Matt, Natalie, Al, and Ann all wearing aprons.  Cute.  I miss Meredith, but network life goes on. 

Wait.  Uh oh.  Breaking news?  Oh no.  An explosion in Oslo.  Awful.  Absolutely awful.  Terrorists?  No.  One man!  One truly screwed up man.  Young people on a remote island.  Horrific. 

Damn.  I thought the world might maintain its status quo just this one day.  Maybe not an equilibrium of all good things, or even equally bad things, but a balance of sorts.  No new dreadfulness just this once. 

Alas.  

Our globe is populated by human beings after all.  Flawed.  Unenlightened.  Messed up.  Selfish.  Greedy. 

But wait.  What’s this?  The Good News Network!? 

Our Top Stories today:

·         Gates Gives $42 Million to Safe Sanitation Projects

·         Young Baseball Fan's Act of Generosity Caught on TV

·         North and South Korea Hold Constructive Talks

·         Logging Plummets in Mexico Reserve for the Monarch Butterfly

·         Terrified Kitten Rescued From Irish Freeway

·         Danish Mystery Donor Leaves $200,000 in Red Cross Bin

·         Healthy Snow Leopard Population Found in Afghanistan

·         From Down and Out to Happiness: It’s a Wonderful Life (If you let it be)

·         "Liter of Light" Brings Sun into Dim Shanties Using Only Plastic Bottles

·         Dalai Lama Offers A Roadmap to Inner Peace

·         Former Child Refugee Becomes Hero to Hundreds of Afghan Orphans

·         Teen Athlete Gives Entire $40K Scholarship Prize to Runners-up

·         U.S. Returns Recovered Artifacts Taken From Iraq  

And the best news of all:

·         Research: People Who Look on the Bright Side Age Best

Congressional Priorities like Lost Rainbow Toads?

The Rainbow Toad of Borneo gives me hope.

Last seen in 1924, the spindly-legged creature was dismissed as extinct by the less-than-faithful among amphibian specialists in the scientific community.  Yet, it lives.  It survived in obscurity. 

The precise location of the adult male, adult female, and juvenile toads found in three separate trees in the Penrissen Mountains of Borneo is protected by the scientists of Washington-based Conservation International.  Poachers seeking brightly hued amphibians cannot be trusted.

Think of it – not seen in 87 years, but alive, well, and perhaps most remarkable, not forgotten!  If the Rainbow Toad can resurface, why, so could good manners in public places.  Even generosity.  We might find and revive courtesy on the roadways.  Dare I say it?  We could see cooperative policy making in Washington, D.C.

Maybe it’s not too far-fetched to harken back to the days when our elected representatives recognized the common goals of our country.  They worked on our country’s issues with a problem-solving approach, once, ‘way back when.  They understood the well-being of our country ranked above their party loyalty and their re-election didn’t they?

If scientists can find a 2-inch toad in Borneo after it spent 87 years alone in the rain forest, maybe politicians can find courage in Congress today.

If that little toad survived all this time, minding his own business, clinging to trees, being beautiful, contributing to the ecosystem, doing his part when we weren’t looking, maybe Democrats and Republicans can take a lesson.

Of course, there is another, less encouraging angle on the “long lost” phenomenon.  It’s reflected in the love letter rescued from the dead letter purgatory of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, post office, and now on its way to its intended recipient after 53 years.

Since the letter, signed, “Love forever,” was written to Clark C. Moore, he has married twice, fathered 21 children, retired from teaching, converted to Islam, and become a Muslim cleric.

The 74-year-old Moore, now known as Siddeeq, currently lives in Indianapolis and says he waits with mixed emotions for the letter to arrive in his mailbox.

"I'm curious,” he told reporters, “but I'm not sure I'd put it under the category of 'looking forward to it.’”

He and the letter’s author married later in the year it was written, 1958, and had four children before divorcing.  They no longer speak.

Siddeeq told reporters that the romantic piece of mail is "just a testament of the sincerity, interest and innocence of that time."

Well I wouldn’t entrust the fate of the Rainbow Toad of Borneo to him!  How cold!  How cynical!
 
OK, maybe we can never recover our innocence.  But sincerity and interest forever gone?  Say it ain’t so!

I hope our elected officials can reach into their hearts and minds and find the sincerity and interest that inspired them to seek office in the first place.

I hope they will muster the mettle to step up in the face of the jaded around them.  It’s pretty important. 

We don’t just need a new debt ceiling; we need thoughtful restructuring of our borrowing, spending, and raising of funds.  We need stable funding, I repeat, stable funding for our schools.
 
We need accountability and justice for the engineers of the bank failures.  We need jobs!
 
We need to stop spending $10 billion per DAY on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We could feed hungry people at home and around the world. 

No more blaming.  No more posturing.  No more lost interest in the work or false sincerity of effort.  The American economy is not a lost love letter.  The sentiments of the American people cannot be dismissed as a quaint reminder of times gone by.

Washington scientists placed the Rainbow Toad on the “Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs” list (really).  They persisted in their search and found him.  Let’s hope his location doesn’t become his undoing.

Some of us are like the lost Rainbow Toad of Borneo, making it just fine on our own, thank you.  We often wish Washington would quit focusing on our stuff and leave us alone. 

But too many of us are not doing fine.  Too many may be unable to survive and thrive without a team of representatives who will go to the ends of the earth on their behalf.

Maybe Washington could establish a “Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Priorities” list and start working on that.