A Little Good News – Roger Ingalls

Every few years I hear this song by Anne Murray and it makes me realize what’s happening today isn’t any different than what was going on years before. All the madness we see and hear about the bad economy, middle-east fighting and third-world killings were also troubling us ten, twenty or more years ago. Here are the lyrics to the song written in 1983.

I rolled out this morning
Kids had the mornin’ news show on
Bryant Gumbel was talkin’ ’bout the fighting in Lebanon
Some senator was squawkin’ ’bout the bad economy
It’s gonna get worse you see, we need a change in policy

There’s a local paper rolled up in a rubber band
One more sad story’s one more than I can stand
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

I’ll come home this evenin’
I’ll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage, somebody steals a plane
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

It’s amazing! Thirty years later and nothing has changed. My first thought when I heard this song again three days ago was, “man…this is pathetic, we hope, push and fight to make the world a better place and we get nowhere…how depressing”. I take a deep breath, think a little more and try to tell myself that this lack of progress is OK by saying, “most of us are still alive and getting by, maybe this is how it’s meant to be…it’s just the circle of life repeating itself”.

But here’s the problem; I want a little good news (the song), if not today then tomorrow. I want an evolving humanity. Why can’t we have world peace, clean air, healthy free people and children playing without fear?

Think positive, be progressive.