Michael Malone - Weebly

"Good-bye, Ida."
"Oh. Good-bye, honey." She held up the corners of
his mouth with two fingers. "Now, smile, and the world
smiles, et cetera."
"Sure."
Coleman Sniffell had never considered the world a
great grinner. If he tried to imagine Earth a face, he saw
a miserable sneer stretching from Africa to India. In his
view, the irritating optimism of people like his wife could
be sustained only by ignorance of a planet that Sniffell in
fact did know more about day to day than anyone else
in Dingley Falls, since his job for many years had been
to summarize the public news for the Dingley Day. And
the fatalism with which he tolerated his private
annoyances was rarely alleviated by anything he read in
the reports of the world that lay in neat stacks on his
desk. Sniffell didn't know it, but he liked his job.
Everyone finds satisfaction in constant confirmation
of deeply felt beliefs. What the apple was to Newton,
famine in Bangladesh and obstruction of justice in
Washington were to Coleman Sniffell. Every day, news
of new disasters, corruption, brutality, greed, folly, and