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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 2017
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Good news abounds
LOOK FOR IT, AND CREATE IT YOURSELF
By MURIEL JENSEN
For The Daily Astorian
H
appy New Year a little late.
Whatever your political incli-
nations, the world seems to be in a
scary place in time. We may have a renewed
arms race, in some areas we’re seeing a roll
back of progress in anti-discrimination, and
fear and suspicion are everywhere. There
are obviously reasons for caution, but fear
and isolation will only hide us away from
all that’s good as well as bad.
While looking for uplifting news online,
I discovered The Good News Network.
Good news does abound, and fi nding it in
the last place you’d expect to see it is a seri-
ous upper.
As in the story of the woman whose
police offi cer husband was killed by a man
whose family didn’t have enough money
to travel to where the murder occurred to
claim his body. The victim’s wife sent the
assailant’s wife money to travel. Then when
she heard there were children involved, she
made sure they had gifts
for Christmas. Her claim
was that the killer’s fam-
ily was as innocent in the
crime as she was. Wow.
Jim Ford, a repo man,
reclaimed an older cou-
ple’s ’95 Buick because
they were fi ve months behind in payments.
Apparently the cost of the older man’s med-
ication had doubled since the previous year,
and their meager income couldn’t cover
everything. Ford was so touched by their
situation that he shared their story with
his co-workers, and started a GoFundMe
account for the couple. The account made
enough to pay off the car entirely and give
the couple extra spending money. Ford and
his co-workers pooled their resources and
stocked the couple’s pantry.
A farm family in Indiana suffered the loss
of a granddaughter in a farming machinery
accident during harvest. The family were
so overcome with grief, they weren’t able
to harvest the last 112 acres of wheat still in
the fi eld. A friend put out the word, and 60
farmers showed up with their own equip-
ment to fi nish the job. Other friends arrived
with sandwiches and cookies to fuel those
working. The volunteers fi nished in seven
hours what would have taken the family
more than a week by themselves.
Brenda and Curt Heuer adopted fi ve sib-
lings so they wouldn’t go to separate fos-
ter homes.
Margaret Fleck, a grocery store manager
in fi re-plagued Saskatchewan, Canada,
camped for days in a parking lot to prepare
and serve meals to battling fi refi ghters.
A group of Palestinian fi refi ghters vol-
unteered their services to battle a serious
fi re in Israel.
And adults aren’t the only ones fi lled
with kindness. Jared Hill wanted to
take Emily Jarrell to the senior prom in
Manasses, Virginia. But his immune system
was weak from chemotherapy, and his doc-
tor said he could go only if he wore a mask.
His entire class wore surgical masks to the
prom so he wouldn’t feel out of place.
A 9-year-old girl, Emma Burkhart of
Durent, Oklahoma, received two blankets
that were exactly the same for her birthday.
Having heard that many children are home-
less and cold, she decided to give one of
the blankets away. Then she began to col-
lect blankets to keep more children warm.
The Keep Kids Warm Blanket Drive was
born and gained momentum, local busi-
nesses became drop-off points, and she’s
collected over 350 blankets.
Phoebe Brown, 7, of Independence,
Missouri, found a discarded winning lottery
ticket worth $100. She contributed it to the
Sycamore Hills Elementary School food
drive rather than treat herself to something.
Kindness and caring aren’t limited to
our species. A pair of stray dogs, a Chihua-
hua mix named Isabella, and, Isaac, a blind
Husky, were found wandering the streets
of southern California. Isabella was obvi-
ously acting as seeing-eye help for Isaac,
and would call the Husky with a bark if he
wandered toward the street. The pair was
taken to a shelter by a concerned stranger
where the staff got the word out on social
media, asking for a family who could adopt
the bonded pair. With many dogs to care
for and limited resources, the concern was
that Isaac and Isabella wouldn’t be placed
A recent www.goodnewsnetwork.org homepage.
Good news does abound, and fi nding it in the last place
you’d expect to see it is a serious upper.
W riter’s
N otebook
Jim Ford created a GoFundMe account to help an elderly couple pay off their car.
Larry Miller/Wikimedia Commons
Gary Snyder, the poet laureate of Deep
Ecology, says, “Find your place on the
planet, dig in, and take responsibility
from there.”
before time ran out. Fortunately, a couple
willing to take both dogs arrived just in
time. We’ve all heard stories of pets saving
someone in their family, but one dog living
in service to another was a new one for me.
So — as big and scary as the world is
today, with the example set by all those gen-
erous adults and children, and all those in
our own county who volunteer at the Clat-
sop County Animal Shelter, with Search
and Rescue, through mentoring programs,
and all the other ways we try to help each
other, I have a thought on what those of us
who have to stay close to home can do to
work on our little corner of the world. (Be
forewarned that I have done math to work
this out. Numbers are so much less creative
than words, so that seldom ends well for
me. But I did fi nd help online.)
Clatsop County has an area of 1,085
square miles. According to the most recent
census, 37,039 people live here. Thanks to
one website that translates square miles into
square feet, and another that turns square
feet into acres, I leaned that that gives each
of us 1.7 acres on which to make our stand.
I’m imagining Clatsop County as a giant
grid with each square in it representing 1.7
acres. It’s probably a little less than that
because I didn’t know how to account for
rivers and lakes and hilltops where a person
couldn’t really stand, so I didn’t even try.
With these calculations, some of us are get-
ting our feet wet, and some of us are breath-
ing thinner air, but you get my point.
My doctor has a sign in his waiting room
with a quote attributable to Gary Snyder, the
poet laureate of Deep Ecology, that says,
“Find your place on the planet, dig in, and
take responsibility from there.” I believe
that was meant in an ecological sense, but I
think it could work socially, too.
If 37,039 people dug into their 1.7 acre
spot determined to be patient and kind, to
be civil and polite, to be unafraid of other
people until there was defi nite reason to be,
to think positive and do everything possible
to make things better, not just for ourselves
but for everyone around us, wouldn’t that
have to make a difference? Couldn’t we
spread it like a good virus, infecting every-
thing around us until we had a goodness
epidemic that could affect the whole world?
I can hear you out there. “What a Polly-
anna. That’s enough to gag a maggot.” But
what else have we got but each other and
the determination to change things for the
better? I think we should take the exam-
ple set by all those noble people willing
to extend themselves, and carry on their
efforts. Imagine if we did affect positive
change. If we can do that in little ways,
maybe we can do it in big ways, too.
What if the world became a better place
— and it started in Clatsop County?
Astoria resident Muriel Jensen has pub-
lished more than 70 books and novellas.