Today is Christmas 2006 -The Gospels tell the "good news" about the birth of Jesus.
And we celebrate the day quietly because our family gathering was, by tradition, held yesterday.
From another direction - "openthread," a DailyKos diarist posted a little known aspect of the good news Christmas story. . . it's fascinating. Also from DailyKos, "mcjoan" warms your feet.
"A little lucky" - The news this week is excellent in that the NASA shuttle landed safely. The good luck story was written by Irene Klotz at Reuters for Yahoo! News. But it is much more than luck. As in the old cartoon ditty says, "Skill and daring saved the day." I quote from her story:
Space shuttle Discovery flew through gray Florida skies and safely touched down on a Kennedy Space Center runway at twilight on Friday to cap a 13-day mission to continue construction of the International Space Station. We're thrilled to have you in Florida," astronaut Ken Ham, at Mission Control in Houston, radioed to Polansky as the shuttle rolled to a stop after its 5.3 million-mile journey.
"Congratulations on what was probably the most complex (station) assembly mission to date," he said.
"You've got seven thrilled people right here," Polansky replied. "Thank you and I think it's going to be a great holiday."
Landing was nearly diverted to a rarely used strip in New Mexico, a prospect that would have cost millions of dollars and up to two months time to return the shuttle to Florida.
"Every now and then it doesn't hurt to be a little lucky," shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach said.
And we hope for more good news from the story that Abbas and Ohlmert are holding peace talks. And it may be coming because Israeli PM Ohlmert is offering a prisoner release. In the opinion of many the key to any hope of peace in the region lies in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe there will be more good news there in 2007.
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