"Wow, what a heroic dog."

I experienced a miracle today. I was on my lunch break at work, there was a newspaper there, and I got to read it. Being a JMC student this would seem commonplace, but with work and school there is literally no time for luxuries. Today, however, I smashed convention to pieces and I read the paper.

We all know the sad story of the UWM student who was shot dead while delivering sandwiches in Riverwest. Well, I searched farther into the paper and found yet another story of violence and death. A man in search of drugs shot and killed two brothers in their 30s and their mother - point blank, in the head and chest. Subsequently, I found, on the opposite page, a quite dissimilar story. A housefire with a woman inside. She was an amputee - one leg was missing. Her dog brought her the phone so she could call 911. The dog then retrieved her prosthesis so she could get out. Having troubles the dog assisted her yet again. Once outside it was discovered that the cat was trapped upstairs. Indeed, the dog rushed into the house to rescue the cat, but sadly, both perished in the fire. "Wow, what a heroic dog," I thoutht. I don't believe I have ever read two more contrasting stories on two opposing pages of the JournalSentinel. On the front page was an article about the threat of asian carp in the great lakes. Reading the article I learned that in Chicago about 100 years ago they some how reversed the direction of the Chicago river water. They altered the geography enough to shift the slope of the riverbed and cause it to empty into the Mississippi instead of Lake Michigan.

There is no point here. Maybe my point is that the newspaper is really great. During my lunchbreak I was saddened, shocked and appalled, inspired, and above all, educated (and I didn't even pay for the paper).