Good news! Good news! So much good news that I had to say it twice!

You might think that a week with yet another mass murder at a school could not be a week of good news. And yet, students are getting angry, and that, my friends, is very good news. It seems that they’re tired of sacrificing their friends to the NRA. That anger could yield results if we support them!

We have to back up a bit though, because the week did not start on Tuesday. It started on Monday with the unveiling of the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama. If you were not thrilled by these amazing works of art, I don’t quite know what to say to you. Stunning. Unique. Just wow. A lineup of portraits of our presidents and first ladies will never be boring again. So, great start to the week.

Tuesday was a bit of a downer, of course, because of that school shooting. The thrill came a day later, Wednesday, and each day after that, when surviving students began to find to their voices. Thoughts and prayers? Great, yeah, thanks so much, but damn it grownups, get off your asses and get these bleeping guns out of our schools. We want to grow up and have a life. You’ve got your life. We want ours. Kids routinely grieving dead classmates needs to stop. This is not normal elsewhere around the world. It’s only routine here, in America. Why? Guns.

Let’s hear it for justifiably angry teens focusing on a national crisis that’s much too close to their hearts! I will be paying attention to their plans and doing what I can to support them.

Then on Thursday, I got to tour the Bailey Boushay House on Madison. BBH is hard to summarize because so much is going on there. It started in the early ’90s as a hospice for AIDS patients, and it has evolved as treatment has evolved. Now it supports, on an outpatient basis, people who are HIV positive and need help managing their meds. It offers a place to hang out, eat, take a nap, do some laundry, take a shower, get mental health and addiction treatment, and take meds under supervision.

BBH also has the most compassionate nursing home/hospice program I could imagine. As the need for hospice for AIDS patients declined, BBH found that their expertise could be used to care for other people with challenging end of life needs. Spare beds welcome people with ALS, Huntington’s disease, and other complex medical conditions that are not well served in traditional nursing homes. Staff do everything they can to help patients and families. So, good news there!

Friday brought news of indictments against Russian citizens and corporations who have deliberately stirred up trouble in the US related to our 2016 election. Again with the good news amidst the bad. Although Congress has yet to tackle this head on, the details supporting these indictments make it clear that we need to keep our eyes open as we head into another election year. It’s good to have some clarity about how these disrupters operate as opposed to just rumors. Thank you, Robert Mueller.

A good week? Great portraits. Angry, motivated students. Amazing programs to help vulnerable people. Indictments based on real information to help us protect our elections. Yes, I’m calling this a good week.