Another aspect to manage
carefully when living up here in ‘these here mountains’ is the intake and processing of
information… There are no daily newspapers in Spencer. There is a weekly
newspaper – the Mountain View - which reports all local events, from arrests to
arraignments to accidents to foreclosures and birthdays! There are local
newspapers in Sparta (White County) and McMinnville (Warren County) which are a
little removed from us – don’t really care about Warren County High basketball
teams – and I don’t know (honestly, I have not inquired) if they deliver to our
house. With the newspaper not being there, you have left radio, TV and the web. Well,
there are no local radio stations to speak of (although NPR on the WEB is still
there) and our TV coverage comes from Nashville (frankly, I really do not care
if there was another shooting last night in West Nashville!) So, one is left
with network news, and this is where you really have to pay attention,
otherwise you fall pray of the nuances of news network… ABC, NBC and CBS
network news come up once a day for 30 minutes (actually about 13 minutes if
you subtract commercials) at 5:30 PM CST all three of them and, of course, you
have to pick one because they even break for commercials at the same time! Although
I like Brian Williams from NBC, the level of information is the same in all of
them: general, sanitized, summarized and managed for the time allotted, so I
does not matter which one you watch. And then you have the really dangerous
ones: cable network news! If you watch one, you have to watch them all,
otherwise you are left skewed (or is it screwed?). On the left, there is MSNBC
with all its liberal biased reporting; on the center there is CNN; and on the
right there is the fair-and-balanced, FOX NEWS. The same piece of news is given
three different slants; for you to get a flavor of the actual information you
have to watch the three channels, sift through the shameful ideological BS, and
then take what is left with a grain of salt. (For example, this past week
Rupert Murdock – the owner of FOX – was declared unfit to run a corporation by
the UK House of Commons. MSNBC reported on it for a whole morning, about five
hours; CNN reported on it for about five minutes; FOX reported on it for ZERO
seconds!) So, you’re left with the Internet news outlets, most of which are
backed by reputable news agencies (AP, EFE, UPI, etc.) and, like with TV, you
have to read the same report on more than one outlet in order to get some of
the actual facts. Bottom line is that, if you want to learn a bit about what’s
going on out there, you have to work for it. More later…
I was remised last week to
mention that the Miami Heat CRUSHED AND DESTROYED the NY Knickerbockers!
(Thanks Lillian for keeping me on the ball!). Now, on the second round of the playoffs,
the Heat is tied at 1 game a piece with the Indiana Pacers; let’s see what kind
of spanking they end up administering to the Pacers!
We finally had a break on the dry
weather this past week-end… It finally rained long and sustained and, even
though we are still several inches below the normal rainfall levels, we are
moving in the right direction…
Mothers Day came and went… It was
the 2nd Mothers Day since my mom’s been gone… I tried to give Jan a
very pleasant day and I think I was successful even though her children could
not be here; several new, old, young and ‘more-mature’ friends called to wish
her a good day. Her daughters sent her flowers and have some other presents to
give her next week when she’s in Gainesville for a week with them. I called
Ligia, my sister, in Venezuela and wished her a Happy Mothers Day!
Now, food for thoughts:
“When
a diplomat says ‘yes’, it means ‘maybe’; if they say ‘maybe’, it means ‘no’; if
they say ‘no’, they’re not a diplomat at all!”
Warren Christopher
US Secretary of State in the 1990’s
So, keep practicing diplomacy, my
friends…
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