I have always loved surf guitar music.
I’ve never caught a wave in my life, but as a kid the surf/chicks/hot rod craze of the early 1960s hit me hard. My cousin, David, and I spent hours listening to the Beach Boys. I took over my sister’s Jan & Dean albums and wore them out, too. The Ventures were required listening and any other surf records I could get my hands on.

But my real treasures were 45s of instrumental standards “Wipeout” by The Surfaris, “Apache,” by Jorgen Ingmann, and “Pipeline,” by The Chantays, all found in a box of records I rescued from the city dump when I was about 9 or 10 years old. (To this day I’m not sure my mom ever found out that my dad let me scramble into the pit to salvage those gems. Stay tuned for that adventure and what other musical treasure was recovered.)

It started my love for the surf-instrumental sound. So when I heard about a band last Halloween playing in Corvallis with a name sounding something like surfing zombies, I had to check them out.
Jumping into another dump of sorts, I began surfing the Web and came up with more treasure: The Surf Zombies.

I dove into one of their Google entries and ended up at the band’s MySpace page (http://www.myspace.com/thesurfzombies), where there’s a short biography and a few songs to sample. I hit the player and was rewarded with full surf-guitar reverb ala Dick Dale and His Deltones from a song titled, “Hammerhead.” For those of you unfamiliar with Dick, think of the hard-driving guitar instrumental “Miserlou” from the movie “Pulp Fiction.”
Jackpot.

I listened to all of the songs available on that site and heard samples of a bunch of others and searched the Web for more. Their first CD is the self-titled “The Surf Zombies,” from 2008, which was followed by “Something Weird,” in 2009.

The Surf Zombie’s lay down a heavy bass line, with reverb guitar gliding effortlessly over the top, giving them a distinct, rich full-bodied sound.The songs range from the hard-driving shred of “The High Rip” to the heavy grind of “Space Ape,” to the playful “Hammerhead.” Most of the songs play less than 3 minutes.

The band recently received a glowing review in The Gandy Dancer, which bills itself as the longest-publishing rock instrumental magazine in the United Kingdom.

This wasn’t the band that played in Corvallis. So who are these guys? I dug a little deeper and found they come from one of the most unsurfable places on the planet — Iowa, where the only waves are in fields of grain.
So what is a throwback surf rock band doing in Cedar Rapids and not Huntington Beach? It’s home to Brook Hoover on lead guitar, Joel McDowell on bass, Kyle Oyloe on second guitar and baritone, and drummer Erik Marshall.

The Surf Zombies in action, from left: Kyle Oyloe, Erik Marshall, Joel McDowell and Brook Hoover.

Speaking for the band, Hoover described The Surf Zombies as, “basically a bar band that plays original surf-sounding instrumentals. We like to think of it as if the surf craze lasted a few more years, and what would it sound like with the discovery of fuzz pedals.”

Just like me, Hoover said he and his mates were hooked early on the sound.

“We were exposed to it as teens by a friend’s uncle, who just knew the beginning of “Pipeline,” Hoover said. “We flipped out on the slide and menacing riff. We also had the 45 of “Wipeout” and played it at talent shows.” (For a hilarious-looking but great-sounding video of The Chanatays playing “Pipeline” on The Lawrence Welk Show in 1963, got to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j09C8clJaXo).

Formed in 2005, The Surf Zombies got off to a killer start, opening a show for none other than Dick Dale himself, the originator of the surf guitar sound.

“It was our first gig. It was pretty cool,” Hoover said. “The songs we do are tough, so we were pretty busy trying not to screw up.”

They didn’t, and the word was out on the Surf Zombies. Several sold-out gigs followed and then their first CD, a 15-song effort of original music with titles like “Speedo,” Space Ape,” “They Feed at Night,” and “Nothing Good Happens After Midnight.” A song from that album was used in a season 3 episode of “High School Reunion” on TVLand.

“Something Weird,” their next CD, which has Hoover’s 1967 Mustang on the front, has 21 tracks and features songs like “El Funebre (The Hearse), “Surfin’ Ghoul,” “The High Rip,” “Alien Eyes” and the title track, “Something Weird.”

If you haven’t already figured it out, SZ is heavy on monster/horror themes (think The Munsters meet Beach Blanket Bingo. Come to think of it, I think Herman Munster went surfing once), which is part of the fun for me. I grew up digging all things creepy, from TV shows and movies to monster magazines and plastic models like Dracula and The Mummy (if you have any, let me know).

Hoover, having grown up in the ’60s, is a fan, too, and his band nails the vibe.

“All that stuff is the heart of The Surf Zombies,” he said. “I like monster models and that kind of creepy fun from the 60’s, and the SZ is my way of expressing how I feel about being scared of The Wolfman and Bigfoot and Jaws and (the movie) “It’s Alive” and hosts. It’s just my take on 60’s pop culture the way I see it and feel it!”

If you want to download some of their music, you can go to http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=332470180&s=143441. Their CDs are also available on Amazon.com. If you’d like one of the band’s T-shirts or a hoody, I can get you the info.

Hoover said the band would eventually like to tour. I asked him if they would ever get to the West coast.

“I can barely get these slugs to Illinois!” he said. “We’d love to come out West… no plans as of now. But we do get offers to travel the USA.”

Their third CD is in the works, with Marshall writing songs for that one, but no date has been set for its release. Hoover said some videos are also in the works.

“The new CD will have some fresh, happy surf instrumentals,” Hoover said. “Plus some real, dark, spooky tribal voodoo vibes that will be down and dirty sounding.”

I can’t wait.

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From upstairs in my house I can look out the window into the backyard at my victim, its lifeless form sprawled on the ground. It wasn’t murder. I didn’t mean to do it. It was more like negligent homicide. I was trying to do the right thing. But bad advice – not to mention being cheap and lazy – cost another living thing its life.

I’ve been hiding from the truth, hoping the whole thing was just a nightmare. But it’s time to come clean and face the music.

My new lawn is dead.

Not dormant like all the other lawns, sleeping soundly and dreaming of spring. But pale, hay-colored, E.T. in the stream dead.

It all started in the fall. Being my first new lawn I wanted to do the right stuff before winter, which meant weed and feed. Easy. But applying the stuff meant using something to spread it with. And on the back of the bag there was all this gibberish about pounds per square foot, what to spread it with and how and blah, blah blah. I have a hand-crank broadcast spreader for seed, but using that meant possibly killing everything else in the yard. A push-type drop spreader would do the trick, but I didn’t have one. I got on the phone to the one guy I knew had put in a lawn – that lived.

Ric. He suggested I use a much simpler method: “Just spread it by hand. That’s what I’ve done.”

How simple and organic. Like the early settlers, reaching into their canvas bags slung over their shoulders, casting weed and feed onto their log cabin lawns. What could go wrong?

Donning rubber gloves, I took my bag of weed and feed and began slinging the tiny pellets around, trying to lay down an even pattern. Back and forth, back and forth, around and around, until the whole area was covered.

Then just a little more here.

And there.

That spot needs a little more.

Oops, missed a spot.

Too thin over there.

Not enough here. There. And there, there there there and… there. Pretty soon the whole bag was gone.

Let weed killing and nourishment begin.

After a time, weeds began to turn curl up and turn black. All seemed well, until one day I looked from the upstairs window and noticed a funny pattern on the lawn, almost like the bleached ribs of some animal were tossed around the yard. I went down to check it out: the grass was dying. I tried watering it to see what would happen. Nothing.

Grass continued to die. I figured it would stop, but death was everywhere. Soon, it was all gone. The lovely grass that had  caressed our feet all summer was now as dead as the public option. That’s right: weed-and-feed-icide. Our two daschunds, the Weener Boys, trot over its carcass callously, doing their business with no regard for the departed.

Sure, I made excuses: It was too hot when I applied it; the Weener Boys did it; it was Tuesday. But I knew right where to put the blame.

On Ric.

No, it’s my fault. I did it. Instead of relying on Ric’s  voodoo gardening, I should have read the directions. How much per square foot? Seems too complicated. Is there a Lawn Care for Dummies book? Of course there is. But being and American male means never having to read the directions, right?

Tell that to my lawn.

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I’m here to tell you that is not true.

I have planted my first lawn and I have to say the results are mixed. While it looks better than the weed factory it replaced, it’s not quite as good as some of the golf course-like lawns put in by friends of mine. Now, granted, some people use professional landscapers, but it all looks so effortless I thought, “Hey, I could do that.”

Moron.

First, landscapers have these things called … it’s right on the tip of my tongue … oh yeah: workers. And they seem to do most of the “work” putting in the lawns. Not at my house.

In about a month my backyard will host a  wedding shower for the daughter of one of our best friends, so Julie and I are under the gun to get everything ready, including a new lawn. We had planned to put a yard in several years ago, but seeing no need to rush, we put it off for 10 years. But the shower thing kind of gave us an incentive.

We decided to seed rather than roll sod, a decision I’m beginning to question. While I’m no perfectionist, I am picky enough to grouse about the weeds that have already popped up in what I had hoped would be a pristine patch of grass. I mean, c’mon, it’s a new lawn. At the very least I deserve to look out upon an endless patch of green with no interlopers.

Don’t get me wrong. Over the years, weeds and I have had an understanding: if they stay green, they can stay. From a distance a green lawn is a green lawn, in my opinion. I hesitate to call the space in front of my house a “lawn.” It looks more like we’re the West Coast distributor of dandelion seeds. But were I to kill them all now my yard would look like a moonscape, and hot weather isn’t the greatest time to reseed.

Anyway, the back yard project started with a lot of promise. I killed the weeds and what little grass was left and rented a rototiller to begin preparing the ground. After raking piles of rocks, roots and other debris, I rented a roller and flattened the ground. I then seeded it with, because of  a monsterous spruce tree that dominates the landscape, a special blend of shade-loving grass, then spread some compost over it and watered and waited.

And watered and waited.

And watered and waited.

Finally, after about 10 days, a green haze began to appear over the dark earth like the fuzz on a peach.

And there they were. Peeking out of the soil along with the grass were thousands of tiny weeds . What kind of weeds? That’s like asking, “What kind of bear is chewing on my leg.” WHO CARES!  All I know is they weren’t grass. I’m guessing they came from seeds left over from the previous lawn. Initially, the compost was a culprit, but I’ve spread that stuff all over the place and no weeds have shown up anywhere else. I don’t suspect the seed company. Any company sending out that many weeds isn’t in business long.

Regardless of origin, there they are, tauntingly lifting their broad leaf arms to the sun, squeezing out innocent grasslings. I’ve mowed three times now and have been told I can soon spread weed and feed to kill them off. But that seems like a lot of extra time, work and expense.

And, after all, they are green. And mowing them isn’t any harder than mowing the grass. It’s already been a lot of work. Maybe I could just leave them alone, kind of a botanical live-and-let live.

Besides, being a West Coast distributor, I have a reputation to uphold.

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That may sound kind of funny for a non-fan, but once upon a time he was easy to listen to and not so scary to look at. Currently, my brush with Michael Jackson is listening to “ABC” by the Jackson 5 on a 14-track CD of Motown hits for kids my wife bought for our grandson, Kendrick. If I never hear it again it will be too soon.

In the late 70’s with the Jackson 5  (I endured a few jokes about the name thing) and early 80’s as a solo artist, there was no mistaking his talent and genius. He hadn’t yet taken a wrecking ball to his face and we didn’t yet grasp the whole picture about his preoccupation with little boys. At the time, I thought the whole Webster thing was a publicity stunt.

For me, the “Thriller” album was his crowning achievement. That was driven home by his stunning performance of “Billie Jean” on the TV special, “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever,” in 1983. We saw the glove, the hat and the moonwalk for the first time, all melded together in a routine that launched a generation of fans and imitators.

“Thriller” is the one Jackson album I own. I pulled it out of the trash when I was working for the Barometer student newspaper at Oregon State. I’m guessing the paper had gotten it as a promotion and someone chucked it. Being the pack rat I am (”Hey, new album!”), I fished it out and took it home, thinking I could chuck it later myself if it stunk.

It didn’t stink, and while I didn’t wear out the grooves on it, I did spin it a few times just for the “Thriller” and “Billie Jean” tracks. The “Thriller” video was also fun. Being a horror fan I liked the zombie theme. But there was waaay too much dancing for me to watch it  more than a couple of times on MTV.

His participation in the “We Are The World” video project in 1985, which he co-wrote and sang in, was memorable because my wife was teaching at North Marion High School at the time and had her students lip sync to the music for a video of their own. Jackson also had a 3-D big-screen video at Disneyland that was fun to watch.

His next album, “Bad”, in 1987 was OK, but I wasn’t buying the tough-guy persona he tried to project in the video. And looking back, for me, that was the beginning of the end, although he probably had things going on a lot sooner than that. He was still a genius musically, it’s just that in his later years I couldn’t get over the sheer creepiness he exuded, from his bizarre face to his weird antics with kids (his own and others), sleepovers at Neverland and Lisa Marie. while it didn’t erase his genius, it made me almost forget about it, and certainly not care about it.

As news editor, I read a lot about Michael Jackson over the years, whether I wanted to or not. A lot of it was stuff about his bad finances, court cases for molestation, marriages and such. It’s all pretty sad stuff.

And I’m guessing that just like any other odd, troubled icon who dies, I’ll be reading sad stuff about him for years to come.

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“It’s about time,” she said. “Those kids are getting a little old for those parts.”

I got to thinking about that. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, will be 20 next month, with two more movies after this one to complete the series. The finale, “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows,” will be a two-parter, the first film set to release in November 2010 and the second July of 2011. Part I is still filming and Part II is in pre-production, according to The Internet Movie Database.

By the final release date Radcliffe will be 22. Harry is only 17 in the final book, so that’s not too bad for Hollywood. Remember Robert Redford playing a young Roy Hobbs in “The Natural”? He was 48 portraying a 17-year-old.

By those standards Radcliffe and his castmates could play Harry Potter roles for years, or even after a long layoff make comebacks. But by then the movies might have a little different angle, crafted for an aging fan base. Here are come of the titles they might use:

“Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Gall Stone”

“Harry Potter and The … What Was I Saying Again?”

“Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Your Own Mind”

“Harry Potter and The Goblet of Metamucil”

“Harry Potter and The Order of Bran Flakes”

“Harry Potter and The Half-Price Senior Discount”

“Harry Potter and The Gassy Bowels” (Farts I and II)

It could be a hot franchise for an aging population. The AARP might want to get on board now.

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I talked with my co-worker Steve Lundeberg, and what chaps him are 1, actors who play two different characters on the same show, and 2, screwing up the show’s time line. Both instances, he said come from MASH. The first involved Harry Morgan, who played Maj. Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele in 1974, then returned as Col. Sherman T. Potter the following season. The other involved the 1951 pennant race between the Giants and Dodgers (”The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!) The race, he said, was out of synch with other events in that time period.

My irritants are less scholarly.

One is sparks flying off of vehicles when being shot at by the bad guys. I mean, showers of sparks, like they were shooting flint bullets. I know sparks are possible when hitting metal, but hardly in the volume some shows depict. I guess they want to show where the bullets are hitting near the good guys for dramatic effect, and for that reason I get it. But then there are no holes where at least a couple of bullets wold have penetrated. Kudos to “Burn Notice” which showed in a preview recently three shots leaving the tell-tale hole with paint blasted away in the hood of a car.

Worst offender: Numb3rs on CBS — This show has more sparks than a fireworks display.

Another is backwards fire. This effect shows up in both shows and commercials, where a warm, crackling fire is shown and the flames are flickering in reverse. Why? This one escapes me. Isn’t fire forward better than fire backward? I looked this effect up on Google, but got little information, other than to use it for safety reasons in large special effects. But a little fire in the fireplace? I don’t get it.

Worst offender: None specifically comes to mind, but you see it here and there.

Another effect is what I call the Poorly-Executed Empty-Vessel Trick, or, “Can’t you put something in that cup to make it look like you’re really drinking?” When someone is handed a cup, say, with coffee in it, it’s obvious they aren’t drinking anything, for two reasons.

1. Containers with liquid in them have a certain heft that’s hard to fake with an empty cup. Same goes for barrels, buckets, what-have-you. I guess if you had to do take after take of drinking the same thing you’d get sick of whatever it was. And heavy buckets might hurt someone, so I get it. But a simple fix for the coffee cup thing would be to make the cups heavy, like they had something in them.

2. The first sip is too deep. They take a swig of coffee like the cup is cold and half full, when we know baristas heat that stuff up to 900 degrees and fill it to the rim. In reality, actors would be screaming in pain, spewing molten java all over the place.

Worst offender: NCIS — I like this show, but the way the actors hoist their cups around you’d think earth had 1/3 the gravity.

Another stupid effect is the Slurpy Straw Trick, where someone is given a full cup of pop, which they whip around like it was empty, of course, and then drinks from the straw, to which a noise is added to let you know, “Hey, she’s drinking.” But the sound is the sound you get when you hit the bottom of the drink. Suggestion: Leave out the noise. We get it. They’re drinking. No sound effect needed, at least not the one currently in use.

Worst offender: Again, NCIS: The lab tech Abby gets a huge pop at least once an episode. I guess the spurpy noise makes sense, since it’s obvious the cups are  — you guessed it — empty anyway.

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I want that job. And I have credentials. Growing up I watched a steady diet of Warner Bros. cartoons, so I am familiar with contraptions, provided by the Acme Corporation,  like boulder  catapults, dynamite arrows and rocket-powered skates. Testing out the Coyote’s gadgets  sounds like a blast, considering most of them blew up the Coyote. I’ll be sending in my resume.

The show reminds me of the debate that kids imitate what they see on television. Is that true? Absolutely! It’s one of the great things about growing up in the TV generation.  If it’s on TV it must be true. Watching TV and reading comic books helped kids answer a lot of important questions: Would I bounce if I jumped off the house? (Probably). Where can I get invisible paint? (You have to make your own out of everything in the bathroom AND kitchen cupboards). Do X-ray Specs really work? (Sadly, no).

From the age of 5 through 7 I went through a phase of testing cartoon physics 0n my own. I can tell you the results were spotty.

Anvils:  Dropping them on people’s heads, etc., was always funny, but I found out reality was impractical. My grandfather was a blacksmith and he had an anvil in his shop. This mass of iron was way too heavy to figure into my plans. That was an experiment thankfully averted, but would have been useful as part of a teeter-totter launching device (see Flying). The next heaviest objects were large river rocks, but I could never get a big enough one over my cousins’ heads.

Safety pins: A stick to the bum was always a great sight gag, but never as much fun in the real world, as I found out after sticking my sister with one. To my great disappointment, she did not shoot up through the ceiling like a rocket (see Flying).

Guns: Not an option. They were never a problem, because from my earliest recollections I learned to fear my father’s belt and grandfather’s razor strap if I messed with any firearms far more than I wanted to repeat any shenanigans ala Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck (See “Rabbit Fire,” 1951).

Super strength: Popeye and Mighty Mouse were my role models here, particularly Popeye, who’s arms swelled up like balloons when he ate spinach, just in time to beat Bluto senseless. One night at dinner I wolfed down my meal, which included spinach, and quickly rushed outside to test my muscles before the effects wore off. I immediately grabbed one of those old metal pedal tractors and tried to press it over my head. I got it about eye-height before it came crashing to the ground, narrowly missing my feet. Clearly spinach was not effective. I made a mental note to try again in the morning after eating Mighty Mouse’s favorite cereal, Cheerios.

Flying: The jury is out here because of a lack of evidence.

The teeter-totter method was of limited success. Small objects flew great, but getting a kid big enough to jump on the other end, from a high spot, was difficult. No conclusion.

The pin method was  a no go. After testing on my sister, I, like any good scientist, tested it on myself. Painfully, no result.

A trusty Official Mattel Beany & Cecil Beany-Copter, circa 1960.

My most ambitious test flight came when I was about 6. We lived on Santiam Highway, currently the site of the Carriage House Plaza, in the early 1960’s . I was enthralled with a cartoon called Beany & Cecil and the fact that Beany could fly with the use of his propeller-topped cap. One day a commercial came on and there it was: A Beany-Copter by Mattel. I had to have one.

After much badgering I was given one and the flight trials began. The operation of the cap was simple: you put the propeller on the top of the cap, wound it up, then pulled on the two yellow cords to release the mechanism that allowed the propeller to spin, thus lifting me into the heavens. The cap didn’t really fit well. It was hard plastic, uncomfortable and kind of just sat on top of your head. Today it would be classified as top-flight nerd gear.

Now, Beany could fly just by standing on the ground and somehow making his hat’s propeller spin. I tried this and — nothing. The propeller took off and I was left standing there holding the stupid yellow cords. Of course, the next logical move was to get to higher ground. I climbed a ladder that was leaning against our carport roof and, from what seemed like a really high vantage point, lept out into space and pulled the ripcords.

Seconds after hitting the driveway, I came to my senses and learned a valuable lesson that day — that Mattel made defective Beany-Copters. The propeller wasn’t supposed to leave the cap. Everyone knew that, just by watching the cartoon. But my day of flying glory would have to wait. After several trials I lost the propellers.

I recently came across a Beany & Cecil cartoon titled, “Beany’s Beany Cap Copter,” in which Beany, Cecil and Cap’n Huffenpuff are off to Washington, D.C., to patent Beany’s invention. In that episode, Beany demonstrates how the copter works, saying, “don’t climb on anything, just stand on the ground.”

Good advice. I wish I’d seen that one before I took a test flight. I’m sure that episode was in response to a wave of kids launching themselves from carports all over the country, giving  Mattel lawyers heart attacks.

But likely I wouldn’t have listened anyway, much like today. I have to see things for myself. Besides, maybe my technique is going to be the right way.

Now, where are those Cheerios?

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I can’t argue with that.

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I transferred there from Central School, which had and still has abundant pasture, halfway through second grade and remember spending part of my first recess looking out on what looked like a giant parking lot. The only visible vegetation was a hedge that ran along the north side of the building that housed the first- through third-grade classrooms, and some oak trees at what they called the intermediate end of the playground, some of which are still there. Around the playground was a chain-link fence, which gave the whole thing kind of a prison-yard look.

It made for tough games of football, where somebody always fell down, and any game that required running and jumping. It was like a great big cheese grater that scoured skin from hands and knees and leather from brand-new footballs. But you knew the risks and went ahead anyhow. I still have scars on the palms of my hands from taking a header now and then, sliding along the asphalt, picking up bits of gravel along the way. I wear those scars proudly. Like kids everywhere, we made the best of what we had.

The office was well-stocked with band-aids, alcohol, iodine and other stuff to stanch bleeding knees and hands. But we didn’t care. In fact, we subconsciously courted disaster by bailing out of swings at what we then thought was a perilous height, leaping off the monkey bars during a game of tag, zipping off of the end of a greased slide, or flying off, voluntarily or otherwise, of a four-kid-propelled merry-go-round.
None of those were sanctioned activities, and, depending on which teacher was on duty at the time, could get you in big trouble, or what passed for big trouble in our world. The worst of which was to sit out recess in detention being tortured with some old-school kind of punishment. The worst for me was having to write to 1,000 — yes 1, 2, 3, 4…. 1,000. Believe me, it takes longer than you think. And the way I clenched a pencil, sustained writing was painful. Al-Qaida suspects would have cracked.

So, toxic, ground up rubber tires? Kids today have it so easy.

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After Friday I went into a three-day weekend in which I spent most of it cleaning our house and nurturing my new lawn in the back yard (watch this space for a future new-guy-seeding-new-lawn-not-very-well blog), taking care of my grandson and tending to other bits of life. So, my apologies to my faithful readers (3). Keep reading and enjoy this little tidbit:

Every day I slog through the wire, looking for stories to fill some of the pages of the D-H . Most are boring, some interesting, and a lot are distressing (see “Man kills family, then self) to the point of making me think, “I quit.”

But a few rise to the level of heartwarming and life-affirming. I found one of those today.

The story was on the National wire, which takes in all of the stories from around the U.S.  There is more to it, but this is the gist.

It happened in N.Y., where a man attempted to rob a Long Island convenience store with a baseball bat. The owner grabbed a rifle from behind the counter and told the guy to drop the bat. The robber then broke down into tears and said he was out of working and only robbing the place to feed his family.
Now the store owner had a few options (shoot him, call the cops, take the bat and hit him), but he chose a refreshing one: compassion. He gave the guy $40 and a loaf of bread and told the guy to never rob again. When the owner went to the back of the store to get some milk for the man to take home, the robber fled.

The owner, who had come to the U.S. 20 years ago from Pakistan, said he felt very good about what he did.

So do I. It’s just a reminder that there are far more good people in this world than those who would do harm.

(Look for this story in today’s D-H.)

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