Today’s Positive News

A couple nice stories. First from Sunday’s Letters to the Editor in the Statesman:

Rosemarie Coleman writes:

There are still decent, honest people in society

I recently was parked on the side of Wal-Mart in Meridian and thoughtlessly left my purse in the shopping cart.

I would like to thank the kind gentleman in the military for finding and returning it to Wal-Mart with everything untouched. How lucky I feel to be spared a lot of hassle and heartache.

Indeed there are still decent and honest people left in our society.

Thank you, thank you sir.

What a fine representative of the people we have serving in our military.

Then we have some Las Vegas school students who politely asked for change and got it:

Even someone who believes you can fight city hall might think twice before taking on the lunch lady. But some second-graders who raised their voices over reheated frozen green beans are being rewarded with tastier vegetables.

The menu at William V. Wright Elementary School is getting a makeover after Constantine Christopulos’ class went on a poignantly polite letter-writing campaign aiming to see less of that particular vegetable in the cafeteria.

”A little boy said, ‘Anything, anything, I’ll even eat broccoli,”’ said Connie Duits, the lunch lady. ”So that one touched my heart.”

The children were careful to offer praise as they expressed their concerns.

”Dear Mrs. Duits, The food is so yummy and yummy. But there are one proplem. It is the green beans,” wrote Zhong Lei.

”We love the rest but we hate the green beans,” wrote Viviann Palacios.

The Las Vegas students undertook the exercise in mini-democracy after the class read a book called ”Frindle,” in which a boy contemplates organizing a boycott of the cafeteria.

”I asked the kids, ‘Is that a respectful way of doing it?”’ Christopulos said. ”And they said, ‘Oh, not at all.”’

As a result of the students’ campaign, the food service department of the Clark County School District sent staff to the school to see what alternatives they preferred.

Good job by the teacher to teach some manners and respect in addressing the issue, while still address the issue. This is enough to provide a small beakon of hope for our political process. If this lesson in civility lasts, maybe someday will talk like reasonable human beings or maybe not.