NEWS

My radio comes on at 6:00 a.m. with news. I start thinking about the day and what I want to do with it. But the news is bad, always bad, really bad. It’s been bad for a long time and that’s a sad, sorry way to start the day. I have to beg the question; is the news all bad or is there just so much news they never get to the better news? I know that a 13 year old girl is pitching on a boys team in the Little League World Series and she is pitching very well. Beyond that, it’s all downhill. Some stuff sounds good but only because it’s counter point to terrible stuff. They have had some success treating victims of the Ebola virus but the virus itself is fatal in 2 of every 3 cases. The Israelis and Palestinians stopped fighting for a couple of days but they are killing each other again. Congress is on vacation but they haven’t done any work in years. They all understand how public opinion polls rate them worse than dreadful but they are all convinced that they are the good guys and it’s the other guys screwing things up. Big banks are paying astronomical fines for the crimes they committed in the housing fiasco of 2008 but the worst offenders have even more wealth stashed away now than they did before. Ferguson, Missouri was singled out as a great place to live only a few years ago. All it took to peel back that veneer was for a white policeman to shoot an unarmed, black teenager. To make matters worse, a grieving, angry community has been exploited by criminal looters and Jim Crow pushback, supporting use of deadly force and attacking the victim’s character. 

I’m getting tired of bad news. I remember, 40 years ago when CNN started giving us news 24-7. It spawned the age of News Junkies, people who couldn’t get enough Wolf Blitzer. Now it’s compounded by political hyperbole and propaganda on ridiculous talk shows. Now there are so many news outlets that you can pick your mis-disinformation as it be, from a wide range of outlets who are much more concerned about their ratings and advertisers than they are about unbiased reporting. So it all gets spun before it goes on air. Each one of us represents a demographic that has been targeted by producers who know what pushes our buttons. Even the weather channel, even PBS; they all frame language and stories to appeal to a well defined sensibility. Of all the news organizations, the BBC is probably the least-spun, unbiased news on the dial. 

I spend a lot of time on highways and Interstates. As I search station to station, I can recognize the tenor of background music and tone of voice so I don’t have to wait for a polarizing statement before I hit the “Skip” button again. Behind the visor on the passenger side I have a CD sleeve with a dozen or so CD’s. I don’t think I can listen to them all in one day. Switching back and forth between road noise, surfing the dial and music, I can hold out for several days. It beats bad news. It’s always a surprise when the radio goes silent and my dashboard comes alive with an amplified, cell phone ring tone. So I touch a button on the steering wheel and say, “Hello.” After we finish and hang up I can touch another button and my dashboard will ask me what I want. I tell it to call a different person. “Do you want to call this person?” it asks. I tell it I do and shortly the phone rings and I talk to someone else; never take my hands off the wheel or my eyes off the road. That’s pretty good news. I slept in the car at a Pilot truck stop in Bristol, TN recently. At 6:00 a.m. I walked up to the diesel fuel counter with my ditty bag and asked if I could have a shower. The young woman didn’t ask me for anything, just punched in a code an handed me a receipt with the assigned shower and pin number. She smiled a real smile and said, “Have a great shower.” That was great news. Shower are free to 18-wheelers but cost $10 or $12 for a 4-wheeler like me. I came out a half hour later, fresh scrubbed in clean clothes and got myself a cup of coffee. At the convenience store counter, I was behind a young man who was buying snacks, smokes and a cold drink. Something was not right, he turned and headed for the back of the store. The same young lady had changed counters. She watched him for a moment then looked at me, with my cup of coffee and a $5 bill. She had already keyed his sale into the register; she smiled the same, genuine smile as before, nodded her head toward the door and told me to have a great day. I thanked her, thanked her again going out the door. That’s good news. 

On my last road trip I bought four new T-shirts. Several light weight, white ones for the hot weather and one from the Martin Guitar Factory gift shop. My shirt drawer is full and I can afford to buy new T-shirts even before the old ones wear out. That’s great news. I got my camera back from the Canon Servicer Center in Virginia just before I left home. When I tried to take photos, it wouldn’t hold a charge on the battery. In Pennsylvania, I sent it UPS, back to Canon. When I got home two weeks later there was a notice on the door; UPS had tried to deliver it and would again the next day. When the bell rang I knew who it was. I signed the electronic receipt and took it inside. Reloaded, new battery, fresh sim card and I came back outside to see how it worked. I looked around for something interesting and the best  I could do was a late-summer grasshopper, perched on the garden hose on my porch rail. It’s that time of year, big grasshoppers only get big after a series of molts (instars) where they shed their exoskeleton, increase in size and grow another chitinous, outer coat. It takes lots of instars over the growing season to get big. This guy was maybe only one instar away from being the herd bull. I put on my macro lens and leaned right up next to it. Shutter-click, shutter-click and I had enough. My camera is working again and that’s great news. I’ve got fresh blue berries, strawberries, apples and tomatoes in the refrigerator. If I had peaches too, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. So there is good news. You just won’t get it from the news media. I shut the radio off in the morning as soon as I get the message. I’ll hear it all, soon enough. But it means I survived the night and that’s great news.