Friday's Odds and Ends

Kudos to the 89-year-old woman who has been broadcasting for blind listeners for seven years in North Texas. Adell Campbell has a general-interest program, The Eyes of North Texas, that has about 2,000  subscribers. The show,  which is broadcast twice a week, 9 a.m. on Monday and 11 a.m. on Saturday, is on North Texas Radio for the Blind, which is part of a local nonprofit Reading & Radio Resource.

The general programming at the station focuses on reading newspapers and magazines to the subscribers, but Adell likes to add some entertainment. She starts each show by reading a cartoon, usually one that pokes fun at politics. (I knew there was a reason I liked this lady.) Then she will often have a guest. 

She enjoys doing the shows and has no plans to stop any time soon, although she admits that her age is beginning to have an impact. In an interview with  Eden Stiffman in The Dallas Morning News she said, "Getting old is a very humbling process. And I'm not inclined to be humble." 

One of my favorite cartoon characters is Crankshaft from the strip written by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers. He's a curmudgeon, like my husband and I, and we both can relate to his world view. In a recent strip he is looking out the window at the bird feeder in his front yard. "The bird feeder is full of squirrels again," he says. "Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. If I put up a squirrel feeder, I wonder if only birds will come?"

In another strip, Crankshaft is shoveling snow and his neighbor looks over the fence. "Hey there Crankshaft," he says. "Snowy enough for you?"

The last panel shows the neighbor ducking a snow shovel that is flying through the air.

Finally, this from Dilbert. He is walking along the sidewald with Dogbert and says, "Studies show it takes ten thousand hours of practice to be great at anything."

To which Dogbert replies, "I would think a willingness to practice the same thing fro ten thousand hours is a mental disorder."

Dilbert says, "That makes me feel better about my mediocrity."

"You're welcome."

Literary Lessons:  This one is from Thornton Wilder, "You see, imaginative story telling consists of telling a number of lies in order to convey a truth; it is a rearrangement of falsehoods which, if it is done honestly, results in verity."