2017 Life Logs, Day 29: Catching Up on Correspondence
Date: Sunday, January 29, 2017
Weather: Slow Slide into Colder Weather; High Temp 42, Low 24 F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, NH
I devoted today to catching up on correspondence. I made some progress, but will have to continue this tomorrow. I’m so far behind that I am just now sending thank you notes to all the wonderful family and friends who contributed to New Hampshire Public Radio to celebrate Mark’s life. Although September 11, 2016, seems like only yesterday, when I look at the calendar it tells me it was four and half months ago. In addition to those thank you notes, I got one email sent out and that was to my friend Linda Stuart who is biking around the world with her husband, Mike. A few days ago they returned to Guayaquil, Ecuador, from the Galapagos Islands and today they were headed out of town on their trek to Peru. I no sooner sent that email than I got a call from Linda. They had, indeed, biked out of Guayaquil but were already in a hotel for the night. The phone communication was a bit garbled, but it was wonderful to just hear Linda’s voice and know that she and Mike are doing great. My only New Year’s resolution was to do a better job of keeping in touch with friends. I didn’t get very far today, but at least I made one baby step toward that goal.
Late this morning I got a call from Ollie requesting that I come over and bring his bike to him. It was left in my car at the end of the day yesterday, and I had promised him I would bring it over this morning. Just before that call, I realized that I had not made reservations for the last “Greatest Show on Earth.” Ringling Brother’s Barnum and Bailey Circus is closing down for good in May and I want to take Sam, Jonah, and Ollie to the circus before it is no more. Heather, Jed, and I had talked about whether to go see the circus in Rhode Island in early May or in Worcester, Massachusetts in mid-April. So when I returned Ollie’s bikes, Jed and I discussed dates, and when Heather got home from a run, we made a group decision to attend on Easter Sunday in Worcester and made the reservations. And then later in the afternoon, I attended the Volunteer Fair in downtown Falmouth. People of all ages turned out to check out various possibilities for volunteering. The fair started at 3 pm and I didn’t get there until 4:45 . . . and the place was packed and more people were coming. It made me very proud to be a part of this community.
Tonight as I have been writing this log, I have also been watching “Tom Brokaw at NBC News—The First 50 Years”. I’ll have to watch this another couple of times to take in all that was presented, but for me the one thing that stood out tonight was when Brokaw interviewed Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star in the Broadway musical Hamilton. When Miranda was asked to make a comment on politics in the real world right now, this one statement stood out as profound to me, “You can get a different set of facts by just changing the channel.” Of course, there is no such thing as a “different set of facts”. There is truth and there are lies. But in todays’s mix of mainstream networks, cable networks, and social media, it is easy to be confused. I watch MSNBC, but I know they are a left-leaning cable network and I fact-check anything I hear that might be questionable. People who watch Fox need to do the same as that is cable network that caters to the extreme right. My father was a third-grade educated man from Appalachia. He was a stubborn, bigoted, hard-working man. He made me take secretarial classes in high school because he said all girls should be secretaries. My lowest grade in all of my education was in high school shorthand, so thankfully I didn’t become a secretary. He told me if I went to college, I would never be allowed to return home. But I was just as stubborn as he was. I went to college, I came home, and he never said another word about it. But the one thing I learned from him that has always made me a better person was to never, ever tell a lie and to never trust a person who lies. So that’s my bottom line. And right now, our new President is making it increasingly difficult to tell who is telling the truth and who is not as he is labeling all media as dishonest. That is so dangerous to our democracy. As I wrote those thank you notes today to people who contributed to New Hampshire Public Radio in celebration of Mark’s life, it reminded me of my faith in National Public Radio as the one place I know I can always turn to hear the truth. All people in the media are not dishonest. Most of them work hard every day to bring the truth to the American people. We must listen with discerning ears, but we must never, ever turn our backs on our mainstream media. It is the backbone of our democracy. Mark’s passion was the same as National Public Radio’s mission–“to create a more informed public.” And I, for one, am all in on that mission. Whoa. That’s my rant for tonight. Time for bed!
