A day as the webmaster.........

What is it like to look for “good news” all day? As the webmaster for http://www.goodnewsnow.com/ that is what I do for about 7 hours a day. The rest of my day is updating graphics and checking web stats answering emails. I like to hear from our readers about news story ideas. I love it when they send photos. The people I tend to hear from are non-profit organizations that want to promote what they are doing. That is something we want to do.

I really like the arts so I would really like to have more stories about people in the arts, especially if they are involved with doing something for others. I like to hear success stories. There is a young musician from Ft Worth I have started to follow. His name is Daniel Hunter. He is 17 and is touring with Warped Tour and had his first CD out. I saw an article in The Star-Telegram last month and then this week Billboard. He just amuses me. I like it that he is doing so well. He reminds me of Johnny Depp in Benny & Joon

I think one of the biggest benefits I am receiving from doing the site is that when I am not amusing myself is how much I get to read and learn about all kinds of subjects. This includes a better understanding of the web and how things work here online. I am getting a great education.
The down side is what I call bad news days. That happens when events like the shootings at Virginia Tech takes place. All attention is on the tragedy and it is hard to find upbeat stories. I try to look for the good in what is going on. Sometimes I just give up and wait for the next day and work on some other aspect of the site or look for new news sources. So looking for good news can be depressing.

Here is my favorite story today. Search led to family, diary and a cause

It is about a man in Nazi Germany who realized he could not oppose the regime in the present so he kept a diary of events and his opinion to bare witness in the future. His grandson is a college professor who has translated the diary and is trying to get it published. They both want people to learn from the lessons of history.

Almost a year old.

Good News Now started up mid June 2006. I haven’t blogged in a month because we redesigned the site late March. The month of April has been sort of a trial month to get the bugs out. We did two things. We went from FrontPage and me having to keep the site up that way to Dreamweaver and a data base. I think we have had fewer problems on the day to day maintenance. I like the database. We plan to add search capabilities sometime in the future so you can search our archives. I am able to search from the back end of the site which is helpful. The second thing we did is made the site interactive. People can post on our forum and comment on the news articles. We have people sign up for the site, but only a few comments. We will be working on that. I plan to spend more time commenting myself so hopefully you will join in.

What we really want to see happen is have people send us their news stories. We have had that happen. I get emails from Iraq a couple of times a week from a few of the military reporters. That is very cool for me. I always post what they write. I am working on a story about a couple who rescues horses. They have a place in Michigan where you can go meet the horses and also a new website. A woman from Denton Texas, Holly Melton writes a daily devotion that we post through her Associated Content site. We are driving traffic to her site which is good for her and she is regularly one of our most read posts each day. If you are a writer I invite you to submit good news related stories, it will help your traffic. Someone on our MySpace site sent us info on an event in Atlanta called 500 Songs for Kids

"It will be a world record if they can pull it off -- and Josh Rifkind, one of Metro Atlanta's top music promoters has a history of doing the impossible.

In one 10-day period, in May, 500 bands will appear at Smith's Olde Bar -- 50 bands a night will only one song each. The songs will be from the top 500 songs of all time, as determined by Rolling Stone Magazine."

I really like hearing about stories like this one.

We are looking for new about events or news about how your church, club, school, organization or business is making a difference and making “good news.” Contact me at ruthieonart@ruthieonart.com. If you need help in writing the article that is OK. Just give us your leads.

Spring Deep in the Heart of

When I think of Bluebonnets I think of Texas, we rule. There is an unspoken ritual some of us indulge in here, deep in the heart of. It is the shooting of bluebonnets. I mean with a camera. The quintessential bluebonnet portrait is as Texas as well let me think, big hair. Bluebonnets bloom in April. This year they arrived a tad early; today to be exact… much to my surprise and delight. The blue sky after our tornado weather that we in Texas are know for also, lured me out of the house with my camera. I took off to look for wildflowers. Pulling over and parking my car next to Plano’s Bluebonnet Trail. I joined my fellow Texans in the ritual. It is community thing. We talked of years gone by as we shoot away. I asked some fellow bluebonnets aficionados if I could take their group picture for this story. It is their third year of bluebonnet portraits. I understand. We all agreed we would be back again next week to see if the Indian Paint Brush would be ready to bloom. That adds a whole other dimension to the experience. You won’t want to miss it.

When I came to Texas I read numerous articles complaining about this ritual. “People trampled the flower in order to get pictures!” those stories stated. I lived in fear for years and never entertained the idea of getting a close look, much less walking in them. But let me ask you, “have you ever walked in a meadow?” It is easy to step around the flowers. All good bluebonnets aficionados in Texas do.

Bluebonnets are the official Texas state flower. I say bluebonnets because there are five species of bluebonnets that are the official state flower. This was due to the Bluebonnet War of 1901. The Texas Legislature inadvertently chose the Lupinus subcarnosus to be the state flower to the dismay of the Lupinus texensis supporters who want this sturdier species of deeper color to represent the state. It took until 1971 for the problem to be resolved. Not daring to start another Bluebonnet War they chose every known species of bluebonnets for the state flower. They are as followed: Lupinus subcarnosus, Lupinus texensis, Lupinus Havardii, Lupinus concinnus and Lupinus plattensis.

Just goes to show that you learn something new everyday. And to the relief of my conscious I learned: IT IS NOT ILLEGAL to pick bluebonnets in Texas. It is not illegal to pick wildflowers in Texas. That is an urban legend probably propagated by parents who told us to eat our vegetables because there were starving kids in China.


by Ruth Eshbaugh
Good News Now
www.goodnewsnow.com

Now that I got that Rant off my chest.........

USA Today did it this month, MySpace announce their intent this week to go with interactive news. That means news with reader comments. Good News Now will be going interactive Monday, March 18, 2007. When you click on a news story link you will go to a new summary page. That page will give you a brief summary of the good news story, why I think it is good news and a link to the full story. It will have a place for you to sign in and leave your comments. At Good News Now we are always nice, well most of the time... we try.

We are also hosting a Good News Now Forum page. It goes online NOW! Our goal is for you to share and comment on good news. We are looking for the local, grass roots stories the press doesn’t cover.

Everyday we search the internet for good news, but we know most good news doesn't get reported. We want to know about your organization, church, school or family. Have you done something news worthy that we should know about? Let us know. We will post the best on our main site.

Methodist panel backs Bush library

Methodist panel backs Bush library


When Ronald Reagan died and people began to talk about his legacy, I wasn’t sure if I was on the same planet I had been when he was president. Could they be talking about the same man?
I think SMU considered this phenomenon when deciding to approve the Bush library. Why is this story under reported? Because Bush is unpopular at the moment. I think a presidential Library is a plus for any university especially when it is the First Lady’s alma mater. I say, “Shame on the faculty for their short sightedness, hooray for the panel and the school's Board of Regents who approved it.”

Fav story today

My favorite story today is about an artist! I found him in the Washington Post. I am a big Washington Post fan because of stories like this one:

A Breath of Fresh Art
Graham Caldwell, Blowing Hot and Cool
Graham Caldwell is a glass artist, but not in the traditional sense. This means the works he exhibits has no function and is not necessarily beautiful the way we know “beautiful glass.” Caldwell uses the medium of glass good and bad and transforms it into contemporary art. Good in its beauty does not override the statement he is making and bad in that glass wears and tears and breaks. All are a part of his work.

His currents show is:

Anatomies by GRAHAM CALDWELL
February 17 - March 31, 2007
Opening reception: Saturday, February 17, 2007, 6:30-8:30pm

G FINE ART
1515 14th St NW Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005
202-462-1601
Hours: Tue - Sat 11 AM - 6 PM

Check out his work there. Click on artists and the on Graham Caldwell and let me know what you think. I say, “enchanting.”