Island of Good News

[RICHARD ROMEO]

To counteract some of the paranoia, dread, and general malaise filtering 
thru the aethers of this list and our everyday lives I quote the 
following:



The Island of Good News



"where the inhabitants, aware that the world is not all tribulation and 
adversity, and that murders, bank robberies, shipwrecks, rapes, bombings, 
kidnappings and other countless tragedies and misfortunes are not 
necessarilly the order of the day; aware that, daily, thousands of normal 
children, dogs and flowers are born and millions of people celebrate 
their silver and diamond wedding anniversaries, their five years of 
retirement or their 10,000 days of life and millions of others get 
through the morning, the afternoon, and the night without having their 
wallets stolen, without somebody setting fire to their homes, without 
falling ill, without slipping on a gunpowder skin, without weeping for a 
death in the family, without losing their jobs, without suffering a heart 
attack, without quarreling, and,  in short, without suffering any 
particularly serious misfortunes or mishap; aware that in hundreds of 
cities and provinces, no earthquake, flood, drought, civil war or any 
other kind of disaster, cataclysm or catastrophe has occurred, decided 
therefore to produce a newspaper and a news broadcast for every household 
so that the inhabitants of each house, after learning every morning that 
the sun had risen and after opening their eyes and learning that not only 
themselves but also that the universe was alive, could take stock of the 
good that had occurred in the sitting room, the dining room, and the bed, 
the good news of the milkman's timely appearance, the good news the soup 
hadn't boiled dry and no glasses had been broken, that none of the family 
had felt stabs in the liver or had toothache, that the canary hadn't died 
and nobody had nightmares and the iron didn't break down and nobody asked 
to borrow money from anybody else and auntie had a birthday and all the 
others had non-birthdays and 2 letters and 3 postcards arrived, 
punctually, containing a summary of the figures of all the millions of 
people in the world who had not suffered any fatal or insurmountable 
tragedy but had effectively experienced many good and pleasant or 
fantastic things.  Therefore, it's all part of the statistics and, 
therefore, of another less fortunate island."



--Fernando del Pasos, _Palinuro of Mexico_



Richard Romeo

Coordinator of Cooperating Collections

The Foundation Center-NYC

212-807-2417

rromeo at fdncenter.org