reasons to be cheerful

Dear Reasons to be Cheerful.

You are a refreshing space for positive news in an ocean of muck; "how opera classes greatly improve covid lung recovery" "how to reinstate the right to repair" "how landlords and tenants can talk it out" are a great beginning to many years of headline galvanization.

I really like this site, it's content and it's editorial objective. So, I got super excited when I saw you're seeking contributing editors and immediately tried to drum up pitch lines for stories from where I live in Costa Rica, in Central America, in all of Latin America. 

I hopped up to scribble on my white board. I waited. I wrote "24 reasons to be cheerful", I waited, then "south of the border". Then I wrote the numbers 1 through 24 as a list, then I lay down for a nap.

Off the top of my head I could not pitch a cheerful recent story. I could pitch "Stories we'd be cheerful about if... ", "Costa Rica the richest...", "Only two nations have beaten the American army back to America, Vietnam and Nicaragua...", "Lets talk about bugs, a visit to the La Salle Museum...", "Who the heck sold us all this razor wire and how much did it cost?...". 

They're all stories of intrigue that could be told in such a manner so as to name the names without placing the blames, but keeping the maths, the maps and the timelines as accurate as possible. 

"Tiny spaces, going places..." "Trams, why steam punk made public transport awesome again..." "Google maps, San José, no pedestrian remote view...". 

As I state in my résume, I am not a fan of cars, generally, and I do not own a phone. I am however, in the close contact with urban information architects that have been seeking somewhere to critique the "pura vida" infrastructure in a luxury based economy that's been rebranded at world trade fairs as "essential".

We don't have a lot of light reading on important subjects down here. Online, we're currently invested in the freedom of memes and the subjects of disclosure all whilst hushed by corporate marketing, which for me, a career journalist of 30 years between Chile and New York,  witness to several attempts at nation branding, is reason to be cheerful.

I'd love the opportunity to amplify your publication in any capacity. I'm a very fast and accurate translator  and could scout for other collaborators across the region. We could key up lists of weekly topics, the conversations, opinions and controversies they address. 

While I've not published in print in many years, this is the link to a memoir I wrote: Catracha