Hello, Newsies! Thank you for allowing me to be Tuesday’s good-news-getter for the second time. Last time I completely messed up the publishing. I’ll try to be better this time.
When I first considered joining the Good News team, I selected this picture of a snow-covered Joshua Tree because they grow near where I live and I think they are beautiful any time of year. With what is happening in the park, I think it is important to keep these beautiful trees in our hearts and minds, so I’m going to continue to have Joshua Trees as my Good News avatar.
Martin Luther King
His life is not in vain. I know he’s called me to stand for justice
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was speaking in San Francisco at an interfaith ceremony on MLK Day. She encouraged people to follow King’s example by working on the ground and giving back.
“Dr. King challenges us in so many ways, by demonstrating his values but also challenging us to act in time,” Pelosi said. “We must all be committed to making sure that the arc of justice that he talked about bends more rapidly than some other people may expect.”
She also spoke about a bill working its way through the House that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour as well as legislation to combat voter suppression.
The quote in the link at the beginning of this section is from Lois Riddick, a 70-year-old San Francisco resident, who attended the march for the first time Monday and honored King by walking the route with the help of a cane.
Growing up in Louisiana, Riddick said she picked cotton as a child. Her parents sent her to San Francisco when she was 18 for better opportunities.
“My humble beginning has made me who I am,” she said.
The Mueller Investigation
We are all waiting impatiently for Robert Mueller to release his report, and the tension got higher last week when Buzzfeed released an encouraging scoop only to have Mueller’s team put the kibosh on everything by saying Buzzfeed’s article wasn’t accurate.
I think we can relax. Mr. Mueller isn’t saying they are flat-out wrong, just that they need to be more careful about accuracy, and that is our Good News in the Mueller Investigation.
As Even Hurst at Wonkette reminds us
Relax, Everyone: Donald Trump Is Still A F*cking Criminal
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office (SCO) has issued a statement, almost 24 full hours after Buzzfeed's story on Donald Trump ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the failed Trump Tower Moscow deal started blowing everybody's minds. Mueller's spokesman says actually BuzzFeed got it a bit wrong. This is significant because 1) Mueller's office NEVER talks, and B) well, they're not actually saying BuzzFeed got it WRONG wrong. Just, you know, kinda wrong.
The op-ed continues to explain why he believes Mueller’s warning was intended to temper the enthusiasm a bit when the report hasn’t been delivered yet.
Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel has a similar perspective:
The Buzzfeed story is important for the concrete details it adds to a story we already knew — and these reporters deserve a ton of kudos for consistently leading on this part of the story. But it has unnecessarily overhyped the uniqueness of Trump’s role in these lies, in a way that could have detrimental effect on the country’s ability to actually obtain some kind of justice for those lies.
So why is all that good news? Because things are progressing apace. We just need to be patient.
Good news in Religion
A Texas church with 200 members paid the school lunch bill for an entire school district
Loaves and fishes in the modern day! Now that is what Jesus Christ would have done.
Texas church pays off school lunch debt
In an interview with NBC 5, the church’s pastor Chris Everson said that helping the community is what the church is called to do. Everson said, “If the church does not impact the community the church is in, then the church isn't doing its job.”
“With us having the opportunity to make an impact, then we are doing what Christ has called us to do to – serve the least of these,” he added.
If more churches behaved in a Christ-like manner, we would all be better off. But there is other good news in religion:
A church removes pastor for homophobic signage
Pastor exits after controversy over anti-LGBTQ sign
A pastor in Lake Shastina, CA, put up a sign saying “Bruce Jenner is still a man, homosexuality is still a sin” and his congregation revolted, all but one member saying that as long as this guy was their pastor, they would abandon the church.
The sign prompted a few people to organize the Shastina Love Rally “to show our love and support for the LBGTQ community; not only to our community, but worldwide.” The first rally took place Jan. 6, and the second one is planned for Sunday.
Amelia Mallory, a resident of Lake Shastina and organizer of the rally, said the sign was shocking. When the organizers reached out to the pastor about taking down the sign, “He seemed really not open to the idea,” she said.
“Even acknowledging that we live in a more rural, and generally a more conservative area — the fact that somebody thought that that would be accepted by our community was definitely surprising,” Mallory said.
Good news in the natural world
Man accidentally discovers how to make corals grow 40 times faster
After an “oops” turns into a “Wow!” scientists are growing new corals faster than they can “plant” them in grow-out tanks.
A discovery-by-accident is bringing hope for coral reefs
One man’s happy accident has brought new hope to the recovery of coral reefs around the world.
Dr. David Vaughan stumbled upon the groundbreaking discovery as he was working with corals at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. He had been trying to remove a coral from the bottom of a tank when it broke into a dozen pieces.
To his shock, all of the pieces regrew to the same size in just three short weeks, as opposed to the three years it had taken to grow the original coral.
Good news in science
Coal may be dead, but the abandoned mines may have a second life as underground farms. It seems the tunnels and shafts are perfect for growing things and there is no concern about extreme weather affecting the process.
Abandoned mines make excellent underground farms
Old coal mines can be 'perfect' underground food farms
Mine shafts and tunnels are seen as "the perfect environment" for growing food such as vegetables and herbs.
The initiative is seen as a way of providing large-scale crop production for a growing global population.
Advocates say subterranean farms could yield up to ten times as much as farms above ground.
President of the World Society of Sustainable Energy Technology, Prof Saffa Riffat, believes the scheme would be a cost-effective way of meeting the growing need for food.
They are turning coal mines in Appalachia into farms, too
And to conclude, a puzzle
Some of you enjoyed the Juliecrostic I posted last time, so here is another. If it isn’t your thing, feel free to ignore. For those who are solving, I will reveal the solved puzzle at the end of the day. Let’s keep the puzzle discussion in one nested comment block so as not to annoy other posters.
This style of puzzle was invented by Julie Waters here at DailyKos. She is gone now, but we keep her memory alive with puzzles we have named Juliecrostics in her honor.
A Juliecrostic consists of a grid of words. The grid contains three or more columns and a variable number of rows. All the words in a column have the same number of letters, and each column has one more letter than the one to its left. Between each column is a single-letter column of letters that, when read down, spells out a secret phrase.
To build the grid, solve the first word in a row. The next word in the row will be made up of all the letters of the word to its left plus one letter. Save the extra letter in an in-between column. When you have completed the grid, it will reveal the secret phrase.
Here is an example of a completed puzzle with the secret phrase of COLBERT STEWART:
Today’s puzzle has words of 4, 5, 6 letters. There are 7 rows of 3 columns and here are the clues:
- 1a Rip
- 1b Glutton
- 1c Warm up
- 2a Leaked red
- 2b Amalgamate
- 2c Gather together
- 3a Listeners, sometimes
- 3b Takes chances
- 3c Swaps
- 4a Payment for belonging
- 4b Music by the double
- 4c Looked for prints
- 5a Came apart
- 5b None of the above
- 5c Owl
- 6a Reagan, Howard, Weasley
- 6b Something you do in bed
- 6c People with titles
- 7a Sarah Palin’s verbal tic (Remember her?)
- 7b Will Rogers’ thing
- 7c Parlors