A Little Good News

It was 1983 and the world was a mess: no real "named" wars like we are facing today, just a bunch of fighting and infighting that was leaving people dead in the streets all over the world; and there were riots and bombings and the war on drugs was just starting to get intense.

In January that year Mount Kilauea started to erupt on the Big Island of Hawaii and is still flowing today.

On February 18th of that year, over 2,000 people were massacred in Assam, India and 13 people were killed in an attempted robbery in Seattle, Washington, and a week later the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would buy out and evacuate Times Beach, Missouri due to the devastating effects of dioxin contamination.

For the avid television watcher, the highlight might have been the final episode of M*A*S*H.

April 1983 saw the first flight of Space Shuttle Challenger; Tokyo Disneyland opened; and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed, killing 63 people.

July 1983 brought us the Black July communal riots in Sri Lanka, leaving an estimated 3,000 Tamils dead; and heavy rains and mudslides in Shimane, Japan killed 117 dead.

In August, Hurricane Alicia hit the Texas coast, killing 22 and causing over $3.8 billion in damage; and opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. was assassinated in the Philippines.

In September, we heard the news that Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet war plane, killing all 269 on board, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald. In addition, Gulf Air Flight 771 crashed in the United Arab Emirates after a bomb exploded in the baggage compartment, killing 117.

On October 23rd, simultaneous suicide truck-bombings destroyed both the French and United States Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and six Lebanese civilians. Two days later U.S. troops invaded Grenada.

It was against this background that a young singer named Anne Murray released a song that quickly caught the world's attention, and for good reason. In the song, the listener is reminded of all the bad reports fed to us every day from around the world, and quickly becomes part of a plea to work for positive, lasting change.

"Just once how I'd like to see the headline say ...

'Not much to print today, can't find nothin' bad to say', because ...

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town ...

Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down ...

Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain ...

We sure could use a little good news today" ...

And then -

"Oh how I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair ...

And how we cleaned up the air, how everybody learned to care ...

Whoa, tell me ...

Nobody was assassinated in the whole Third World today ...

And in the streets of Ireland, all the children had to do was play ...

And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA ...

We sure could use a little good news today" ...

Come to think of it, not much has changed in the past 30 years.