Island of Good News

[Greg Montalbano]

Thanks!
A-and a Happy Krimble to you.
~~Greg

>From: RR.TFCNY at mail.fdncenter.org (RICHARD ROMEO)
>Date: 	Mon, 16 Dec 1996 12:55 EST
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Island of Good News
>Sender: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org
>
>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:
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>The Island of Good News
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>"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."
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>--Fernando del Pasos, _Palinuro of Mexico_
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>Richard Romeo
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>Coordinator of Cooperating Collections
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>The Foundation Center-NYC
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>212-807-2417
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>rromeo at fdncenter.org
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