''I confess that I am an unreconstructed optimist. Not a naive one; I ve lived too long for that, long enough to have experienced a resounding case for pessimism. I have vivid memories of the Great Depression, and I ve lived through several wars and those international anomalies that we call police actions. I ve watched what has seemed to me to be a rather steady decline in both public and private morals, and a growing confusion about ethics. And of course, I ve watched the increasing prevalence of both evil and inanity (sometimes they re synonymous) in television and on the Internet.'' from the Introduction But: There is God. And because there is God, there is goodness. I profoundly believe that God is at work in our world and that our planet has not yet been written off as a lost cause. History seems to tell me that though our human race appears so often to dedicate itself to its own destruction, God is always at work, usually, I think, behind the scenes. And because of God, faith, love, and goodness keep being reborn. So I write about Life from the Up Side.