Dirty Feet

I have to admit I enjoyed my time away this past month.  It gave me time to relax and reflect.
A long vacation gives us the luxurious time to read the books you got for Christmas and time to search the Internet for impossible projects for your home.   Another of the things it allows time for, on the inevitable rainy day, is to watch television.  That’s something I don’t do very much, and my ‘stay in the house’ days in February reminded me just why I gave it up.

In February we lost some personalities that I remembered very well from my childhood.  One was Shirley Temple, the little girl against whom all other little girls were measured back in the day.  Although her movies were already considered old, with dimples and bouncing curls and talent she danced her way through my early
television experience.  Watching her routines with Arthur Treacher (later the fish and chips king) was pure magic.  Every little girl of my generation wanted to be either Shirley Temple or Annette Funicello from the Mickey Mouse Club.   Today my grandchildren are exposed to Honey Boo Boo and her dreadful family, and more is the pity.

In that same time frame we also lost Sid Caesar.  My parents always loved Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.  They were part of our family evening line up along with Your Hit Parade, Ed Sullivan, Perry Mason and, of course, an endless assortment of westerns.  The comedy was silly and slapstick, but my Dad thought Sid Caesar was a comedic genius.   Years later my husband and I would look up to see him taking a seat in Wolf’s Deli on West 57^Th Street in New York.  Caesar was working on Broadway at the time, looking very dapper in his black turtle neck with the Times tucked under his arm.   He sure wouldn’t make it on television today.

 

Today we seem to find great humor in putting inappropriate sentences into the mouths of children and the elderly.  Personally I don’t enjoy the raunchy comments written for elderly women like Betty White.  She has the show about Cleveland and another one with “comedy” vignettes that have elderly people doing outrageous things. One episode I could not get away from fast enough had an 80 something woman making sexual advances to young men on a city street.    It seems we laugh at situations and conversations that would have horrified people not so many years ago.

Channel surfing during some inclement vacation weather gave me more information about shows than I really ever needed to know.    I now know there are at least four shows about life in Alaska that make me very thankful I live someplace else…anywhere else, actually.  There’s a show about an obscenely wealthy family of duck call producers, and one about backwoods entrepreneurs who produce moonshine.  There are shows about drag queens and drag racers, chefs and psychics and psycho-babble experts.  With the legalization of marijuana in a couple of states I bet we’ll soon be setting the DVR to record new shows about producing and using what promises to be the new favorite American crop.  It’s all about entertainment…right?  

The ugliness of confrontational TV shows that drag the most personal and sordid details of the participants lives into the spotlight is mind numbing.  Why anyone would want to air their dirty laundry on national TV while they scream obscenities (bleep-bleep-bleep) at one another is simply beyond my comprehension.  "Today we will interview a woman who claims to be the schizophrenic step child of a hearing impaired devil worshiper!"  I always wonder where they find these poor souls…but there appears to be a stream of them steady enough to keep Jerry Springer in expensive suits.

I am reminded of a quote I once read. I’ve long since forgotten who said it but it went something like, “I refuse to let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”  That still seems to me to be a very wise statement. 

I don't want to sound preach-y here, but even if you don’t watch a lot of TV, you really should take the time to go around the dial just to see what’s on.  Is this really  what you want to invite into your home…and into your mind?  It might be as disturbing to you as it is to me when you think about what our children watch on a daily basis.  

I’m not naive enough to suggest we return to the Shirley Temple days;  I know perfectly well the Good Ship Lolly Pop sailed a long time ago. However, if what's on TV right now represents what we have become, I'm afraid we may discover that we are all holding hands on the deck of the Titanic.

                                        Life is Good  

                                                   

Reach out and Put the Touch on Someone

Funny how old advertising slogans stay with you.   “Reach out and touch someone” keeps coming back to my mind a lot these days.  It a telephone company campaign urging people to keep up their family connections by using the phone.  This was back in the days when we watched our long distance fees.  That’s not why it keeps coming to my mind, however.

I consider myself to be a reasonably generous person.  I’ll lend a hand, or a blouse, or some money to friends and family when it’s necessary.  That’s what we do…we take care of our own, right?  But for the last few years giving to United Way and the Red Cross and the church and the local food pantry doesn’t seem to be nearly enough.

My husband and I just recently returned from a trip to Florida.  Since our stay was a month long we had to shop for groceries and toiletries from time to time.  At the entrance and exit to almost every store a table was set up to collect money for football teams, new fire trucks, a bird sanctuary or pet rescue.  Stopping at a traffic light you might get a tap on your window from band students collecting money for new uniforms or firemen carrying a boot they hope to fill for whatever cause they’re trying to fund.

 

Back in town after our break from the winter weather we find cashiers (as they are instructed to do) asking if we’d like to “round up” for the domestic violence shelter, or donate a dollar for juvenile diabetes. In restaurant waitresses are hawking shamrocks that will be signed and posted on the restaurant walls if you donate a dollar.   This is also the season when parents help their kids sell cookies, candy bars, popcorn and assorted gift items by sheepishly leaving the signup sheets in break rooms at every business.

Not to be forgotten in the continuous pitch on the internet of acquaintances who are in “sales”.  These internet entrepreneurs never seem expand their pool of potential customers to anyone other than their Face Book friends list.  “I’m close to my goal on my (fill in the blank) party or order…can’t someone help me out and buy something?”   Electronic panhandling is rampant.  I never thought I’d miss the days when your friends actually invited you to their homes to share punch and cookies so they could guilt you into buying something or booking a “party”, but I do.

My email in-box is filled every day with requests from political parties who “try not to come to our members too often” but seem to overcome that thought on a weekly basis.  I hear daily from deserving programs and hospitals and not so deserving televangelists, from groups sinking wells and building schools in foreign countries and organizations who strive to feed the hungry on our own shores.

 

Snail mail doesn’t suffer any shortage of donation requests either.  Daily I am asked to support the fund raising efforts for wounded veterans, children in poor countries in need of surgery, food, and shelter, abused animals.  Groups trying to save the rain forest or seals or polar bears, also find their way to my mail box with great regularity. 

      

This endless winter will soon be over and the walks and 5K runs, always for a good cause, will begin.  A dollar a mile to help find a cure for any number of dreadful diseases…and watch out for youngsters brandishing “Car Wash!!!” signs who will be charging your vehicle at every turn.

I don’t know if everyone got the idea from the long established campaign of The Salvation Army, an organization I believe does a great deal of good.  Personally, I try to remember to keep change in my purse at Christmas because I suffer an hour long guilt trip every time I pass a bell ringer and fail to contribute. 

   

If I put money into the container on the way into the store I feel I have to explain myself to get out the door if the bell ringer looks over at me as I exit.  “Uh…you got me coming in.  I..uh…I gave the cashier my change”.  I slink away after rummaging through my coat pockets that produce nothing but a lint covered cough drop.  “Really….I gave you money on the way in.”

It probably sounds jaded, but I know a lot of these requests are strictly raising money to support the overpaid infrastructure of the organization.  That is not to say all of these things are run by con artists; but it’s really hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys any more.  I prefer to support local efforts whose results can be documented and, hopefully, witnessed.

 

I am not making light of the needs we have in our country and around the world.    It just seems to me that we pay more than enough in taxes to take much better care of the needs of our citizenry without having to constantly pass the hat. 

As irritating as this constant barrage of arm twisting can be, I will keep contributing to things I believe in and reevaluate them from time to time as the “reach out and touch someone” landscape changes and evolves.

                                                             Life is Good