And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, Editor Emeritus

... that the holiday season disrupted my usual routine to the extent that the new year rolled in and I was down to my last book.
As an addict, I felt a bit of panic, and immediately ordered a supply from a couple of catalogs, and nine new books eventually came on the same day. When I told that to somebody, I was asked why I felt it necessary to have a new book at ready when another is finished.
Well, I find television, and televised movies for the most part, not to my liking.
And as I have noted here before, I have not attended a movie in a theatre for about 40 years. When the Oscars are announced, I rarely recognize either the story or the stars.
But that’s not true this year.
I have read two of the books which are featured in this year’s nominations, Lisa Genova’s “Still Alice “ probably a year and a half ago, and I mentioned here at the time how much it affected me. More recently came Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl, “ which I had passed up the first time it made the list of best sellers, but could not resist the second time around, when it reappeared with the movie announcement.
I probably will never see either movie. Popular movies don’t seem to make it to television for at least five years, and at my age I don’t plan on anything five years in the future!
I watch television primarily for athletic events, and many times will mute the network announcers to listen to radio voices more familiar with the team I favor. When I do that, unless I leave a very short audio bar, I wind up with the closed captioning option on screen. If I felt sorrow before for people who cannot hear (and I did and do!) that feeling is increased when I realize they have to depend on that written TV screen scroll. It is pathetic! Wrong words. Wrong spellings. Long delays.
Sometimes, I just hit “mute” to get rid of an annoying announcer. There’s a guy who made his debut (in my world, at least) covering wrestling meets last year. I think his name is Shane Sparks, or close to that. Now, he may be a dutiful son, attentive husband and loving father, but his treatment of college wrestling is right off the script of professional wrestling and, I feel, totally inappropriate for college.
An aside. I wish Sen. Joni Ernst had not made such a big deal about bread wrappers protecting shoes. I’m squeamish because I used dry cleaning bags inside outside clothing while covering late season football games and on winter hunts, and took some kidding for same.
But I stayed warm!