What Have You Heard Today

Even though I live in a small village that doesn’t mean I’m out of the mainstream of what’s going on in the rest of the world.

It might seem like that if you’re walking on a deserted beach with no other souls in site but there is electricity available and that means television, phones, computers, and the Internet at a touch of a finger should you so desire. There are some who come to live here or vacation here that shun that aspect of life but since I’m in the newspaper business I use all of the aforementioned devices to keep track of what’s happening. I have different approaches to hearing my daily updates but one of them is to listen to Jim Rome, a radio and television host. He’s categorized as a sports talk guy but his interviews frequently range to subjects definitely not about sports per se.

For example today he was talking about the differences between living in the Mid West and their style of living as opposed to living in the South. It had started as a comment by a listener about an upcoming football game and quickly escalated; the phone lines lit up with callers comparing lifestyles, which one was best and who was cool and who wasn’t, and which group was smarter. It’s a good thing it was an electronic exchange between listeners and callers because it could have brought folks to blows if it had been in a bar or salon!  

The point of this is I was driving listening to this on the radio and it made me think of all the different things you hear about daily. For example I heard about a friend in Portland who is trying to sort out her feelings about the joy of having a daughter who has just given birth to her first child and the terror about her son who is returning to his second tour of duty in Iraq.

I heard about another friend who thanks to bad aim didn’t shoot someone. I heard from a friend in Texas who just produced a gala party for the Huston Astros Baseball team’s retired star Greg Biggio, but the most down to earth thing I heard today was about a musician friend who lives in Reno and whose daughter attends college in Arizona. She was faced with a major decision; pay to get her lap top computer fixed for school or get the bass guitar she’s been coveting for months. Last I heard Dad was strongly suggesting fixing the computer!

I’m sure he is no different that the others I heard about today, they all have things going on, opinions about what they can and can’t do, but thanks to electronic communication at least they can get to the task at hand instead of waiting on the pony express to bring a letter in a month or so or a smoke signal to give them direction. But then again maybe there are those that would gladly live that way; “what ya don’t know, can’t hurt ya!”