Good news is page 84 material. Could we ever expect it to be different?

No city or cottage, no town or county, is spared from the excess of bad news and its bad karma. On the front pages, the ordinary and the graceful give way to the bizarre and the banality of evil. A constant drum of doom gives many a feeling of hopeless, despair and worse apathy. The lesson learned is that the bad often triumphs over the good.

Newspapers and television don't report the good deeds taken for granted, the simple gestures that lay the foundation of a good life. If they do, they don't do it enough.

Newspapers don't write about kids who grow up to be leaders in proportion to the bad and what we ought to do for the lawbreaker. Television news doesn't report the creation of new jobs and industries; it reports mostly the layoffs and hardships. Nor does it report about some of the real teaching that goes on in a classroom or other joys of learning. Maybe those kind of stories aren't priorities.

Worst of all, the daily television talk shows accentuate the disorders of modern man who seems to bent on obliterating the normalcy of human life --- making room only for the seven deadly sins. Perhaps that's the way it should be reminding us all of Fallen Man. But what's unsettling is that we can't tell where on the road the guard-rails lie. Who are our guides today?

Real heroes are very few and far between -- playing second fiddle to the ones loosely defined as heroes such as athletes or politicians. Religion is treated as if it were toxic waste. Honor and the old values cannot be taken seriously anymore because those who held them in high esteem were once -- and almost exclusively -- dead white males. The nuclear family is now a myth. Patriotism has been distorted and disposed as a barbarous relic.

Such is life as we cross the bridge to the 21st century.

It is a would be tragedy is we let the newspaper and TV people measure our lives for us. Very few of us think it is truly great to be alive in a world that experiences so many changes in such as short span. There is the computer and the Internet; international trade is bring people closer. Peace and prosperity do break out.

If we were to believe only the newspapers, the radio boxes and the television sets, very few of us would be aware that we live in a great neighborhood in a great city in a great country.

Which brings me to the topic of some things for which to be grateful. Often times we take living in this city for granted. To be sure, this Boston boy finds himself at odds with the cocky, know-it-all attitude of latter day Bostonians, a trait handed down by the Pilgrims, Brahmins, and postmodern liberals -- the antiheroes of progress -- who know better about most things.

You would not know it from what I've probably written before on these pages and elsewhere. Here in this newspaper I'm just another messenger joining the damning chorus of doom, a rampant critic-at-large. But since Thanksgiving is the time to make an honest accounting, I'm here to tell you that at least for a day or two the bets are off -- that for this column, we should all count our blessings in this great neighborhood in this great city of Boston. There is reason -- to paraphrase the much abused Bob Dole -- to be "the most optimistic man in America".

What is so great about East Boston, anyhow? Start with its people. For years, we've been marginalized. In the city's history books we've been ignored; we often feel as if we are not part of the city's culture. We've been isolated and not only by geography. Do they pay attention to our arts, our architecture, our aspirations?

East Boston is not Area B. It is not the Back Bay. It is a place where the people work hard and care about stitching the seams of real community. It's about having groups that throw parades, join parent site councils, set up art galleries, run bingos, organize Little Leagues, plan for open space, and in fine American tradition give government a hard time. It was no secret that East Boston had one of the lowest crime rates over the last couple of years. That's because when all the shouting is done, people come to work together in East Boston.

There are other things for which to be grateful. How about the Boston Public Library and its branches like the East Boston branch on Meridian Street? Which other city can make a claim to have as good a library system as ours? And which has a richer history and a better mission?

Certainly not any libraries in the suburbs. Over the door at our BPL hangs the timeless motto "Free to All"!

Then there's the Boston Symphony Orchestra world renown and on the radio on Saturday nights for free. There's the Charles River and the Boston Harbor, the Boston sky-line, The Boston Gardens and the Boston Common. And Fenway Park, the most intimate park of them all.

There's the North End of Boston and Haymarket, with a street life so rich that it can't be replicated anywhere in the United States.

We ought also to give thanks to live in a city that can boast of being a financial center and health care capital. And a city with the kind of entreprenuerialism that can name a fine lager beer after its great patriot, Sam Adams.

And there's the Museum of Fine Arts, the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, the theater district, the book stores and cafes.

We owe so many people, places and things gratitude in this city and East Boston. So after you read your newspapers and watch your television news, remember one thing: always, always count your blessings.