On Going Home

Those of you who know and for those of you who don't, I lost a childhood friend to cancer recently. I returned home over the weekend for a memorial service. It was the first time I'd set foot in my hometown in 18 years. I left New Jersey and moved to Pennsylvania and have lived here since 1990. I drove through my hometown about six years ago when my aunt passed away. The place still looked the same, but a little different at the same time. The memorial was at a church my family and I attended which burned down five years ago and was rebuilt on the outskirts of town. The old one was at the center of town. It was great seeing everyone, under the extreme circumstances. The scene was also surreal. I felt like the scene at the start of the film 'The Big Chill', where old college friends are brought together by the funeral of another friend. Good movie, great soundtrack by the way. Obviously there was catching up to do, kids, marriages, etc. We reminisced about Joe and told stories. It made for a special time. Later that night, I got the tough question put to me, via instant message ironically, 'why did you leave?' It was tough to answer. First, my parents told me to get out of town and experience the world. Ultimately they helped facilitate this when they divorced and went their separate ways. So my parents were responsible with their actions and words. Some of it was me also. Pennsylvania became a safe haven for me to deal with their divorce and I had met some great new friends. Life started over for me, essentially. So, while moving on is nice, it is okay to go home once in awhile, say every 18 years. Until next week, keep learning.

I'm back

I apologize to my three readers for my 10 week hiatus, but I had some writer's block and summer vacation things to work through. I lost a good friend to cancer, which made me reexamine my own life and get in touch with a lot of old friends. These things, however, have little to do with my blog this week. I wanted to talk about the 24 hour news networks. I have said before that the two party system is killing this country and may eventually be the death of it. The ability to fill 24 hours is almost impossible, so what the viewer gets is spin and attack on the opposing party, as filler. In the old days, the local network news covered your hometown and it was followed by a half hour of national news on the major networks. Your hometown news consisted of five to fifteen minutes of death, fires, and tragedies depending on what part of the country you lived. This was followed by a few minutes of weather and sports and wrapped up with something from the lighter side to leave you laughing. If you wanted more, you bought a newspaper. For younger readers: a newspaper was a daily publication reviewing the previous day events in your area. The national news told stories of world events, beyond your hometown. I don't know when these two half hour shows became "not enough" for the viewing public. It may have been the first Gulf War in the early 1990s when CNN gave us inside coverage, or perhaps when the Internet became mainstream in nearly every household. Either way, the news that a lot of us grew up with is a thing of the past, with newspapers bordering on extinction. The 24 hour news networks, at some point, turned news into political commentary based on their leanings. FOXNews is working democrat Barrack Obama like a boxer on the speed bag, while MSNBC did the same to republican, George W. Bush. How about just reporting the news and leaving the commentary? It has become so bad that Comedy Central added The Colbert Report to it's late night "news" line up to counter balance the more liberal Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Although Colbert's right wing rhetoric is often tongue in cheek, it makes for two of the best half hour programs on television. The viewer gets news and comedic spin, mocking the opposite political party. The other problem I have is the fact that the news organizations fail to be on top of things at times. My Twitter friends were reporting Michael Jackson's death three hours before any 24 hour news network broke the story. Now I know my friends are good, but three hours? How does that happen? They're not even getting paid to report. Were the news networks possibly too busy blasting their rival political party to notice the passing of an American icon? I think this may be the case. Until next time, keep learning.