Friday, September 9, 2011

These Are not the Best of Times

I know a number of people purse their lips when I tell them I watch/listen to PBS/NPR for my evening national news fix. I can't help it-I grew up in a large household where everything, no matter where in the house it started, spilled over to everything else to the point that I'm not sure how my mom and dad or any of my brothers and sisters could hear one another think. Television news in our house as kids was like going to church.

That's why I enjoy being to put the noise on pause and simply sit and listen to a grown-up report the day's events with straightforward words and unadorned visuals in reports that last a lot longer than those who've grown up on US commercial broadcasters are used to seeing and trying to follow.

No one shouts at me or yells at anyone else elsewhere in the video frame. It's not peaceful or bordering on soporific, just calm and reasoned. I can hear and listen (the former a physical function and the latter a cognitive process) and make up my own mind in my own time.

You and I have lived a decade in the shadow of the Great Nothing, the War without End, the Same As It Ever Was but we can remember another time, a different one-one that was better or one we believed (in hindsight) to be so. That's not true for the people in this story, produced with a great deal of care and thought.

Far more of both than the people trying to dismantle our Public Broadcasting System have shown in their explanation of why and with what they'd replace it. It caused me look again at my beliefs and assumptions and how they have shaped (and perhaps, bound and bent) my world, often losing sight that I share this space with so many others, some leaving and some who just got here-many of whom in both instances I will never know.

"And I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own... For we are always what our situations hand us- it's either sadness or euphoria." And on days such as these, perhaps an equal mixture of both.
-bill kenny

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