A recent addition to the New York Times is a heartwarming weekly list on page 2 of the paper. The Week in Good News poses an immediate question. Is it better to read the good news before the rest of the paper or save it for after the editorial and the Op-Ed columns? Good news takes up only about a quarter of the page, so it can’t possibly counteract all the bad news, even if you see the paper on an average Monday, when the Times can be no more than 50 pages, or on Sunday, when all the sections can reach 300 or so. There’s only enough good news for a brief weekly list, even though a majority of subscribers would be delighted if they saw the list daily. That’s not currently likely. Finding winsome and charming news items hasn’t been an easy task for the last two years. The Times really has to reach out, far, far out.

One day a week or two ago, there was an amazingly beautiful duck found swimming in a Central Park lake. The duck’s colors were brilliant, totally unlike any ordinary American duck. A bird spotter called it a Mandarin duck; the rarest duck in the world; perhaps an escapee from a priceless duck collection, but no one can be certain. The duck may have swum across the Pacific and flown to New York, though that seems hardly likely. Ducks don’t appear in aviaries because they like to be warm, safe and wet, preferring backyard spas to the icy ponds where they might be shot for sport and dinner. Nice as it is to have a gorgeous mystery duck, it can’t be consolation for the murder of a journalist.

This past week, the good news included a story about a community outreach program operating New York’s animal shelters. The leader of the nonprofit has discovered four thousand dogs in the city. He plans to tell their life stories in a book. Kittens rescued in trees are really too commonplace to appeal to Times readers, but dog stories? Will he search the Metropolitan area for the families with whom the dogs lived? Ken Foster, the author of the forthcoming volume, says “No matter how completely different we are, if you have dogs in common it cuts through whatever else you might think would be a barrier”.

Maybe just not a political barrier.

Thanksgiving week began with a smiling Syrian refugee displaying her first roasted turkey, a picture completely welcome until you saw the photos of less fortunate refugees and asylum seekers surviving in tents on the southern border states. Thousands of them, and only one happy Syrian, enchanted by Brussels sprouts. Masada Anjari’s turkey seems to have overwhelmed a Russian asylum seeker who’d fled anti-gay persecution in his country. He decided to settle for baking a pumpkin pie, happy to learn that Thanksgiving was a holiday celebrating the idea of treating strangers with generosity, charity and humanity. Originally, it was.

Earlier good news included this year’s New York Marathon winners: Mary Keitany from Kenya and the men’s champion, Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia.  On a November visit to New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art often has exhausted marathon runners sitting on the steps; some deciding not to continue; others determined to finish, no matter when.  Just having entered the marathon enhances any résumé. That’s surely good news for contestants, and the rewards to male and female winners are an equal $100,000. Originally, when only a few people ran around Central Park, the prize was an Elgin watch and a can of soda.  Those marathons were open only to men.

Lavender as an effective aid for anxiety was another cheering suggestion. In addition to a pleasant scent, lavender can apparently diminish all sorts of worry; from wildfires, floods and mudslides, all the way to mass shootings in public places. It might not work as well on force majeure or gun control, but it might help with environmental legislation. Inhaling lavender is far more agreeable than gas fumes or coal smoke. The newest members know that.

Rooftop gardens, popular on New York apartment houses, are a relatively new amenity; perfect for buildings with a flat roof. Those seem to be relatively rare in the newer spiky skyscrapers; altogether impossible for private houses that have mansard, gable, saltbox or dormers up there. The tiled roofs in the southwest can’t become a cornfield or a tomato patch. A roof garden is a strictly city perk.  A domed roof, like the one on the Capitol of the United States, must be radically altered from the inside. The changes needn’t be obvious from the exterior. November 7^th, 2018 was just a hint. Once both halls turn blue, the Week in Good News would take over the front page, celebrating The Week of the Best News Ever.