to view or not to view

I got e-mail from my sister the other day. She is new to the computer world and I read her e-mails even if they are these ‘pass on to another person or you’ll die a fiery and terrible death by unga bunga’ emails. Oh well, I’m waiting. I’m sure I will eventually die, so what the e-mails say must be true.

My sister’s e-mail was this list of things from the 50’s and maybe early 60’s. You read the remark and fill in the blank. Some were trivia from old TV shows; others were completing words in commercial jingles. I got them all right. When I scrolled down to the bottom of the letter and read the answers, sure enough, I was spot on! This made me sad. It made me sad that I remembered all this stuff from the past and I watched it on TV. I mean, what does it say about yourself? That I watched enough TV, even back then when there was no cable or satellite and there were only four stations, that I remembered it all? Think this way, I immersed my brain in TV, and not into very many books, or very many experiences and communal meetings with nature. It just made me sad to think about it. Sure, I’ll post the e-mail at the end of this write up so you can see if you were saturated to the point of depression like I was.

The thing is, right now, we have a TV and it is hooked up to Direct TV Satellite. We did downsize about a year ago. It is a small flat screen deal, no surround sound, no HD. I’ve had the Direct TV for over five years now. We used to have two receivers. They sell them this way so you can hook up one in the usual TV watching place, and another in the bedroom, as they suggest. More receivers are available as well, one for every room of the house if you so desire. You use one dish, and many receivers, all over the house. Well, in our case, the second receiver was at my daughter’s house- like having another dish antenna on a travel RV or something to that effect. They had another dish. Those dishes are found at the thrift stores on a regular basis. I paid for the satellite service. Now the daughter and her family has moved and where they live they have cable. They don’t have a dish anymore. Since we are moving back to the cabin later this month, after finishing our 3 month house sitting gig, we’ll be without the TV when we move. You see, we brought the dish over here and put it on the railing at the back porch. We took it down off the tree we had it on at the cabin. Now, there is too much snow and it is too cold to get out on an extension ladder and reinstall the dish antenna. So, we’ll go without TV and I am looking forward to it.

I vow to read more and listen to more radio broadcasts. Tour around the dial and see what’s on, such as, discussions on local issues on a fabulous PBS station called http://www.wojb.org/, Community Woodland Radio, out of the Lac Courtes O’realles Indian Reservation South of where I live. I’ll also stream http://www.khum.com/ out of Northern California. It is called radio without the rules. Check it out. A lot of great programming with little commercial interruption. There will be more to find on the radio and more music overall. I’ll be busy archiving all my old cassettes onto CD’s with this new machine I got as a gift. Imagine, all those old tapes on CD’s, or on my iPod! Besides the reading and listening and tape editing, I plan on talking with my spouse. Maybe even do some listening to my spouse. I want to add ceremony into living. Burn candles and incense; sit in the glow of a gas light at night; listen to the sounds of nature from inside the cabin and out; see the eagle fly by, and the Hawk. Watch the squirrels and other birds. The plants will start to bud in Spring. The sun changes its course; the moon too. The Great Lake Superior, right out my front window, will be different in color, texture, shape and form everyday, and I’ll pay attention and actually see it and feel its energy. All this without TV. I know, it’s all there with TV as well, but we have grown accustomed to turning on the set and sitting there just as we turn on the iMac or PC and sit there. After all, it is a screen, and it projects an electronically generated image. Maybe not as forceful as the TV and definitely without the commercial interruption, but a screen none the less.

I won’t quit the internet or blogging, but I will spend more time off of it than I do on, which is the case more than I like to admit. When someone asks me if I saw that crazy commercial about the penguin that sits on his mother I’ll proudly exclaim, “No, I don’t watch TV.”

Here’s the e-mail pop culture quiz:

Send this to your ‘old’ friends, better known as ‘Seniors’. It will drive them crazy! And keep them busy and let them forget their aches and pains for a few minutes!

1) After the Lone Ranger saved the day and rode off into the sunset, the grateful citizens would ask, Who was that masked man? Invariably, someone would answer, I don’t know, but he left this behind. What did he leave behind?________________?

2) When the Beatles first came to the U.S. in early 1964, we all watched them on The _______________ Show.

3) ‘Get your kicks, __________________.’

4) ‘The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to ___________________.’

5) ‘In the jungle! the mighty jungle, ________________.’

6) After the Twist, The Mashed Potato, and the Watusi, we ‘danced’ under a stick that was lowered as low as we could go in a dance called the ‘_____________.’

7) ‘N_E_S_T_L_E_S’, Nestle’s makes the very best . . . ._______________.’

Satchmo was America’s ‘Ambassador of Goodwill.’ Our parents shared this great jazz trumpet player with us. His name was _________________.

9) What takes a licking and keeps on ticking? _______________.

10) Red Skelton’s hobo character was named __________________ and Red always ended his television show by saying, ‘Good Night, and ‘________ ________’.

11) Some Americans who protested the Vietnam War did so by burning their______________.

12) The cute little car with the engine in the back and the trunk in the front was called the VW What other names did it go by? ____________ & _______________.

13) In 1971, singer Don MacLean sang a song about, ‘the day the music died.’ This was a tribute to ___________________.

14) We can remember the first satellite placed into orbit. The Russians did it. It was called ___________________.

15) One of the big fads of the late 50’s and 60’s was a large plastic ring that we twirled around our waist. It was called the ________________.

ANSWERS:

01. The Lone Ranger left behind a silver bullet.

02. The Ed Sullivan Show

03. On Route 66

04. To protect the innocent.

05. The Lion Sleeps Tonight

06. The limbo

07. Chocolate

08. Louis Armstrong

09. The Timex watch

10. Freddy, The Freeloader and ‘Good Night and God Bless.’

11. Draft cards (Bras were also burned. Not flags, as some have guessed)

12. Beetle or Bug

13. Buddy Holly

14. Sputnik

15. Hoola-hoop

Peace to All.

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