“The only man I envy is the man who has not yet been to Africa for he has much to look forward to.”
The rain is still falling. I have started to build the ark. I haven’t told the dogs yet. They’ll be surprised. It is supposed to rain all day. It will be chilly, in the low 60’s, and also quite windy. Even the branches are swaying. I’m in my winter ensemble which includes a sweatshirt and socks. Days like today mean cozy and warm.
When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV while sitting on the floor close to the screen and, despite my mother’s prediction, I did not go blind. TV was black and white then, but it was still a bit of a miracle. I had favorite programs, many of them westerns, but I guess I got my fill back then as I am no longer a fan of westerns except for a few of the old ones like The Lone Ranger. I still watch that every now and then.
I have always wondered why people didn’t notice that, except for the glasses, Clark Kent and Superman looked exactly alike and that Clark was never there when Superman was. Later I learned about suspension of disbelief, and it works for everything, especially my B science fiction movies. I enjoy the stories by ignoring the silly, even ridiculous, plots, by suspending disbelief. I had an answer when I was asked, “How can you watch this?”
This morning I had to grind more coffee before I could make a pot of what I suspect was the original nectar from the Gods. The aroma of the coffee beans was, and please excuse this as I couldn’t help myself, heavenly.
Where I lived in Ghana, there were no TV’s and computers were way off into the future. Telephones were scarce, and all calls from my school were long distance if they connected at all. My principal had a phone in her office, but I never saw her use it. Radios were the news and entertainment centers, but I didn’t have one of those either. Ghana had several newspapers, most of them graphic, but I didn’t buy those either. Each week the Peace Corps sent us the NY Times section The Week in Review, their attempt to keep us connected. It didn’t work. All of that news was in another world, far away from mine.
I remember once when I was sitting in the yard of the Hotel d’Bull, the only decent hotel in town, and having Coke after market shopping. There were a couple of white guys sitting at another table. That was a rare sight in my town. I guessed I was a rare sight to them as well because they asked me what I was doing there. I told them I lived there, in Bolga, that I was a Peace Corps volunteer. They had trouble digesting that. They couldn’t wait to leave. I felt sad for them.
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September 25, 2023 at 12:15 pm
Hi Kat,
The cold front brought no rain to my casa, but the high temperature today will only be a cool 86°. Yesterday, we set another triple digit record. Hopefully, yesterday is the end to this scorching summer.
When I was a kid I never gave any thought to the fact that TV was in monochrome and not color. My revelation of that fact came to pass when I went to my first live baseball game. It dawned on me immediately that the grass was green and the infield was tan instead of shades of gray. My father took me to an exhibition game in 1955 at Dallas’s old minor league ballpark. I was surprised that my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers actually wore royal blue baseball caps and that the Milwaukee Braves wore dark blue caps with red brims.
The human mind can be easily fooled especially at a young age.
September 25, 2023 at 11:22 pm
Hi Bob,
It stopped raining then started again not too long ago. Tomorrow we’ll have sun and be in the mid 60’s. That’s the usual fall day around here. We have said good-bye to summer.
I liked TV, and that it was black and white was no never mind, but I was thrilled when my father bought the color TV. I remember Disney’s Wonderful World of Color and how beautifully colorful the opening was. The other show I remember in color was Star Trek. The red shirts were easily identified.
Some programs were filmed in color but shown in black and white before there were color TV’s. The Cisco Kid, some of Superman and Zorro are three that come to mind.