2025 Life Logs, Day 122: Hard to Keep a Positive Attitude
Date: Friday, May 2, 2025
Weather: Rain Early, Then Partly Sunny; High Temp 60, Low 52 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
My ‘Beyond the Whitehouse’ course met this morning. This week we focused on William Howard Taft. His aspiration was always to become a Supreme Court Justice, but due to circumstances and the insistence of his wife and family, he became President. Almost a decade after his presidency, he did get his dream job. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. So far in this course, we have focused on Thomas Jefferson who built the University of Virginia after his presidency, then John Quincy Adams who spent almost three decades in the House of Representatives, post presidency. Grover Cleveland’s claim to fame was being the first president to serve two non-contiguous terms. Until Donald Trump, Cleveland was the only US President to do this. And then this week it was Taft. Next week we focus on Herbert Hoover. I will miss that class, but we all know what Hoover did after his presidency. The last two weeks of the class will highlight Jimmy Carter and George W.
I came home and worked on the photo project that I really need to get done, went to buy some plants for the garden, and came home to continue working on the photo project. All of those things are fun and uplifting, but the reason I titled today’s log ‘Hard to Keep a Positive Attitude’ is what our current president decided to axe today. I’ve known that funding for public broadcasting was on the chopping block, but today it was made official, and I was surprised by how hard that hit me. Having spent so much of my life dedicated to public radio, I guess I should have expected it, but still, I found it very depressing. Compared to how so many people’s lives are being torn apart by Trump’s actions, the need for public broadcasting pales. But we can’t let ourselves make that kind of comparison. Lives are definitely more important, but we have to fight to keep everything. Despite the cuts, public broadcasting will continue because only a percentage of the budget is federally funded. Public broadcasting is member supported, but relying just on member support is a little like trying to keep the Defense Department funded by bake sales. The end of federal funding will affect public radio differently from public television. But the cuts to both, in the beginning, will mean that very small stations in far away places will be closed. As with all these cuts, the marginalized lose the most.
