Opinion: Saber digs deep for good news

I would like a feel-good topic on which to write. As I look around, bad news is everywhere. Even bad news from the sports pages is so bad it has become front-page headlines.

Sorry sports and celebrities

From the National Football League, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick has been indicted on charges of promoting and betting on dog fighting. Based on the scope of the indictment about treatment of fight dogs, it appears that this is at the top of the list of despicable crimes. Dog lovers are up in arms. The seriousness of the charges likely causes many of them to fantasize about serving on the jury.

The National Basketball Association has a referee charged with betting on games he officiated. That could spell disaster for the league.

Major League Baseball, long saddled with a steroids scandal, is in the bad news cycle due to suspicions that Barry Bonds’ home run record is tainted by his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

We just can’t get away from celebrities.

According to the latest reports, it appears that celebrity airheads Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie are about to join fellow socialite, Paris Hilton, as ex-convicts. Should the two of them be in jail at the same time, I don’t know if the tabloid media will be able to simultaneously exploit both momentous events.

Of course, there is the image of our fine city being forced to stand by and watch another Springfield (Vermont, for heaven’s sake) bask in the spotlight as the host city for the world premiere of “The Simpsons Movie.”

Discovery

Where can this columnist go for a nice feel-good topic? Eureka! I have found it.

From my clipping file comes a romantic story about two star-crossed lovers. I clipped this Associated Press story five months ago, but it’s not out of date because the lovebirds lived 5,000 years ago.

Waiting a few months for the Rusty Saber to immortalize them is no problem.

Archaeologists have unearthed the bodies of a young man and woman buried with their arms around each other in a pose that can only be called cuddling.

Romance oozes from every facet of this story.

The bodies were discovered in Italy among 30 other graves, all buried separately, in the city of Mantua, a few miles from Verona. Yes, Verona, where William Shakespeare placed his star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.

Putting the lovers into perspective, Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig, said the skeletons date back to the Neolithic period; she added that double burials are unheard of during that period. Apparently, true love overcame even burial taboos.

The romantic spell is somewhat disturbed by the fact that the burial site was discovered in the midst of preparing for construction of a factory. At least it wasn’t a fast food restaurant.

By their very nature, scientists look only at facts and leave emotion and romantic images to the poets and dramatists. Even so, chief archeologist Menotti can’t ignore the ambience. She says that while experts may never know the cause of death, the couple were almost surely buried at the same time, and the cuddle demonstrated a relationship born of deep sentiment.

“It was a very emotional discovery,” Menotti told the AP reporter. “From thousands of years ago, we feel the strength of this love. Yes, we must call it love.”

The scientific method seems to have been overcome by romance. I guess you could call it “Romeo and Juliet: The Final Act.”

Who says the Rusty Saber never covers feel-good subjects?

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.