SURE COULD USE A LITTLE GOOD NEWS

In 1983, Anne Murray had a #1 hit on the Country chart called "A Little Good News".  In 1987, when Ray and I started dating, we would listen to many of his cassette tapes in the car on road trips.  He loved then, and still loves now, country music.  Since he did most of the driving, we listened to most of what he liked on the radio (and this before CD's, Satellite, Ipods).  The song mostly went along the lines of how there were sad stories always rolled up in the local paper, Bryant Gumbel had nothing good to say, someone robbed a liquor store, someone took a hostage, a building burned down, or maybe someone stole a plane.  There weren't any good news stories.  There was never anything good to report.

Last week, this is exactly how I felt.  What the heck is going on?
While in Napa on vacation, a thirty-four year old man named Aaron Alexis shoots up the Navy Yard.  He kills twelve people and wounds four.  He is killed himself in the shootout.  He was under a delusional belief that he was being controlled by low frequency electromagnetic waves.
Next, we have the government shutdown.  Eight hundred thousand employees furloughed.  Some patients come in, because they have the free time.  Some patients cancel, because they don't want to chance paying a co-pay.  They don't know when they will be going back to work and when they will get paid.  Until last Saturday (five days into the shutdown), the employees didn't know they would be getting back pay.
And on Thursday, a thirty-four year old dental hygienist was gunned down and killed because she tried breaking through the cement barriers at the White House and led police on a chase to the Capitol.  She, too, was delusional and thought the President was stalking her and claimed to be the 'Prophet of Stamford'.

Today, a four car pile up on I-95 at five thirty in morning here in Stafford, VA (350,000 furloughed employees were called back to work today) caused a fatality along with a seven mile back up and the highway being shut down.  People were asked to stay home a little while longer until the lanes were open again (VDOT did not open up the two HOV lanes to add relief).
This afternoon an accident occurred down the street from my office.  Hazmat called to the scene.  Ray's "fifteen minutes more to get home" commute took forty.  My eight minute commute, 3 hours after the accident, took twenty-five minutes.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring on Day 9 of the partial government shutdown?

Summertime sequestrations, shoot outs, furloughs, fiscal cliffs, debt ceilings, chemical weapons used on innocent people, nuclear weapons seized--different, newer terms and phrases but still seems like Anne would be singing the same old song.  Bad economy, fighting on foreign soil, change in policy, Third World assassination, people firing shots in anger and dying in vain (or what I think might be useless reasoning).  And so it goes.

And as Anne Murray would sing (and I would sing along with Ray in 1987), we sure could use, a little good news today.  This has nothing to do with Panama (well, my fingerprints are being held up since that department is shut down), and it has everything to do with Panama.  I am concerned about the events of the day.  Mostly, really, I am just concerned about the future.