News isn’t all bad

Published 5:55 pm Friday, June 5, 2015

I’ll be the first to admit that the news, be it local or state or international, is full of no-good, horrible, very bad stuff.

Personally, it doesn’t bother me much, but I know many an optimist who takes to Facebook regularly to gripe about the negatives always on the front page. The bad things happen, and I think we need to know about them so we can address the problems, but we also need to remember that there is good out there even if it isn’t widely reported.

Thursday afternoon, I had a friend tell me that I was too serious, and I realized I hadn’t belly-laughed in over a week.

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I took to the WWW for a chuckle and was gifted the most amazing story: two baby dwarf goats received pajamas and were videoed frolicking about their barn. Their names are Winifred and Monty, and they live on a farm in Maine. The video of them playing in onesies made me laugh like I hadn’t in weeks. I highly recommend the video to any and everyone with an Internet connection. Just search baby goat pajamas. You will not be disappointed.

In other good news around the country, an eight-year-old boy cut his hair that he started growing out more than two years ago. Then at six, Christian McPhilamy saw a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital commercial, and wanted to learn about the hospital. His mom looked it up online and told him all about it, and they came across and ad for hair donations.

Christian told his mom he wanted to donate his hair, so he grew his blonde locks longer than a typical little boy would and recently chopped off enough for four 10-inch long sections of hair. The hair was sent to Children With Hair Loss, which is a charity that provides hairpieces and wigs to children at no cost.

Last month an Orange, Texas, police officer had to tell a high school senior that both of his parents were killed in a motorcycle accident. Kazzie Portie, 18, was set to graduate high school in less than a week. He told officer Eric Ellison that he didn’t want to go to the ceremony.

“I said, ‘You are going to walk!’” Ellison told BuzzFeed News. “Your mom and dad will have front-row seats looking down from heaven, and I’ll stand in their place. I’ve got your back.”

Ellison went to the ceremony and gave Portie a hug onstage, which was rightly met with a standing ovation.

Don’t ignore the bad news. I think it’s important for being informed citizens. But also don’t forget it isn’t all doom and gloom, especially in a world with goat pajamas.