Good News!

I don't know about you, but I can use some. While a lot of news is bad, I came across a story that hasn't gotten much attention but which I found uplifting. As a prelude, one year ago tonight, Obama was elected. When he proposed to sit down with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the Police Sergeant who arrested him, James Crowley, people reacted largely according to the way they voted: some admired the gesture and some laughed at it.

But when I read this week that two men met quietly in a Cambridge bar, talking for an hour over a couple beers, out of the spotlight and barely reported in the press, I thought it was a good sign. The two men? Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley, minus Barack Obama. As the article described it:

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley were spotted at a pub in Cambridge Wednesday night.

The owner of "River Gods" told WBZ the two sat in a booth together and talked for about an hour.

While many of Obama's campaign promises have been broken and many of Bush's worst policies continued, the fact that what was called the "Beer Summit" led to a second round of talks, and beers, I take that as Reason for Hope.