Discovering the News of the Day and Ditching the TV

Apollo 11 takeoff

As a kid, I didn't pay a lot of attention to the news, even though it was the sixties and seventies, and a hell of a lot of history was happening.

The first major event I remember was the moon shot. Not the landing, the takeoff. My Dad told me to pay attention and remember this, because it was history. I didn't even know what history was. I was four and a half. The smoke and speed of it all amazed me. We watched it on our neighbor's big black and white TV. Looking at color photos now, I think that that would have absolutely blown my preschool mind!

The next thing I remember was Watergate. Man, that pissed me off. Not because of what it was, but because Dad would change the channel from reruns of Get Smart to the hearings, which were so boring!

Somewhere in there, my sister and I watched the final moon shot on a 12 inch black and white tv in her room.

One day my Dad turned on our 12 inch TV and we watched Nixon announce the end of our involvement in Vietnam. I didn't know anybody who had gone, and being 8 or 9 years old, it wasn't major news for me. But a week later, we were at a celebration about the end of it all on Cambridge Common, and I remember a whole crowd of people singing "The war is over now, Kumbaya..."

And then while I was at Camp Blazing Trail in Maine for a month, the camp director called us all to the dining room, where her tiny TV was placed at one end of the room with the volume turned up, and we heard Tricky Dick utter these words, "Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."

After that, I ignored the news, until the 1976 election. I was in sixth grade, and our teacher ran a classroom election in our Massachusetts school. That was the first time I ever heard the name of Jimmy Carter, a man who, over the rest of his life, I grew to admire and to deeply DEEPLY respect. In the classroom election, I voted for Ellen McCormack, solely because she was a woman. I didn't even know what party she aligned with until JUST now, when I Googled for her name, which I had forgotten by the time of the actual election.

Jimmy Carter won our classroom election (Cambridge, Massachusetts is a very liberal city) by a landslide. This was the last major event of my childhood that I remember. At least, I recall nothing major until I was a teenager a few years later.

Then in 1979 the shit hit the fan in Iran. A whole BUNCH of US citizens were taken hostage as the Shah of Iran was deposed. I was paying attention for a couple of reasons. The first was that right until the crisis occurred, my Dad's company, Laser Displays, was preparing to do a major show in Tehran for the Shah's birthday, for which they would be paid $8.5 million dollars. My Dad stood to get a HUGE bonus, as he had brokered the entire deal. Thirteen year old me had mental images of a rabbit fur coat, leather boots, gold jewelry, and that went up in smoke, so I was royally pissed. Wouldn't you be?

The other reason was that Bill Keough, one of the hostages, was my friend Bobby's favorite uncle, and Bobby was a wreck. Worrying all the time, and who can blame him?

When Reagan was inaugurated and then the hostages were freed within MINUTES, I knew there was something really dirty in the water. I remember, too, being disgusted that Massachusetts had voted Republican by a margin of less than 1%. I felt like a bunch of fucking IDIOTS had betrayed our beautiful state's roots and traditions.

After that, I became a bit of a news junkie. My news organs of choice were the Boston Phoenix for local coverage, and the Boston Globe for national and world coverage. We did not own a TV, because my Dad felt that they were an utter wasteland filled with garbage. 

Dad was right about that, by the by. I have not had TV service since 2004, and I really REALLY don't miss it. I own a TV and DVD player for watching movies, but we have no antenna, no cable, no dish, no service. I have a few streaming services as well, for Sam and the rest of the household. I don't really watch anything on them, though. Instead, I read the news from many sources online (even Fox, you need to keep track of what they are saying!). For entertainment, I fuck around on Facebook, play some games on IWIN, talk to my friends on Discord and Facebook, aand read on my Kindle.

I am desperately seeking a hobby that doesn't require a lot of fine motor skills. For example, because of my arthritis, I can no longer crochet or do collage. If you have any ideas, drop them in the comments, and I will love you forever.

Signing off now.

And that's the way it was...