Watching Radio

     We lost one of my favorite people this week, Andy Griffith. His show has been on in reruns as long as I can remember, and I still stop what I'm doing when I hear that familiar whistle. The news and entertainment shows went on and on about Andy and it was all good.
      It seems that when I was a kid, our town and life was a lot like Mayberry. Or maybe it just seemed that way because we lived a sheltered life. If our parents listened to the news, they didn't talk about it in front of us. It would be a while before television brought bad news right into the living room where we couldn't ignore it any longer.
     Don Knotts, who played Barney Fife, was from West Virginia, and there is a Don Knotts Boulevard in Morgantown.

     Our local NBC television channel, the one that keeps us informed of school closings and boil water advisories, traffic accidents, fires, and frightening windstorms like the one we had the other day, is feuding with Dish over the price they should be paid for their shows, and as a result, the channel is blacked out and we have to watch its rival on CBS instead. There's a chance they won't give in and after all we went through to get their signal, there will be no more Today show (I'm angry with them anyway), America's Got Talent, or (gasp) Jeopardy. Lucky for me, there's Jeanie Kenkel and her blog, The Jeopardy Fan, to keep me posted until something's settled.
     Meanwhile, I watched CBS' morning show today and it's pretty good. I didn't realize Oprah's friend, Gayle, is on it.

    We have been feasting on summer squash and cucumbers from the garden.

I found this clipping in a book; it is from an old, old newspaper but I haven't figured out the year it was printed. Maybe someone else can:

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Labor Comes Out Last,

From the Financial and Mining News.

Tennyson can take a worthless sheet of paper and by writing a poem on it make it worth $500. That's genius. Vanderbilt can write a few words on a sheet and make it worth $5,000,000. That's capital.

The United States can take an ounce and a quarter of gold and stamp upon it an "eagle bird" and

"twenty dollars". That's money.

The mechanic can take the material worth $5 and make it into a watch worth $100. That's skill.

The merchant can take an article worth 25 cents and sell it for $1. That's business.

The ditchdigger works ten hours a day and shovels out three or four tons of earth for $1. That's labor.

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     Our satellite deal gives us more than 70 Sirius music channels, we've discovered, and some of them are good. There's an Elvis channel, Bruce Springsteen, Grateful Dead (not for me), lots of opera, hip hop, show tunes, country, and Grand Old Opry, among others. Some of these songs we haven't heard - well, since Opie was a boy, and so we sit down, reading the information that is displayed with each one; in other words, I'm embarrassed to admit, watching radio.

     See you next week!