Lovely Amy portrait by Tom Cruze

It wasn't easy to talk to Amy Krouse Rosenthal about her "Beckoning of Lovely" movement.
People are gloomy.
I reckon they are not perky.

The acclaimed author-filmmaker gave me a "Please Beckon Lovely 12/12/12--12/21/12" post-it. It now sits on my office desk next to a photo of forlorn actor Harry Dean Stanton (plugging a gig when he sang at The Mint nightclub in Los Angeles)

It is challenging to hear about saving the world when the core of small communities are torn apart. But I latched on to a wonderful comment from Rosenthal's recent Tedx talks: "What you seek you will find, what you summon will find you."

Rosenthal has written for "O" magazine, McSweeny's, and contributes to WBEZ-FM. We had been talking baseball. I was tellling Rosenthal about Bill Veeck and his son Mike Veeck.
Mike believes "Fun is Good," and I believe fun opens a lot of doors.

"Remember as a kid you would be in the stadium and you'd say, 'I'm going to look at all the red shirts?" Rosenthal asked. "Suddenly all the red popped out. Then you'd go, 'I'm going to look at all the yellow shirts?' and the yellow popped out. That's what I'm talking about. It's your lens.
"Sure, people are blue, as we should be. It's interesting how the whole country got in synch and there's a unified sympathy and despair to a degree. And that's needed to make the change."

She told me to check out BuzzFeed's 26 Moments That Restored Our Faith In Humanity."

"My husband e-mailed it to me yesterday," she said. "We showed it to the kids last night. It's really what we need. It's the only thing that makes sense right now......" and her voice trailed off towards tomorrow.

The days soon will be getting longer.