Another Monday, Another Ramble

Oh, I know it's a holiday. Not really in the true sense of the word because it has nothing to do with religion but few of our holidays do anymore. Labor Day is really about unions, not labor as in working. And labor unions have done some pretty good things for workers so I suppose it is fine to honor them in some way.

I once belonged to a union, the Communications Workers of America. I even wanted to be a union steward at one point.  That actually turned me against that union. I began to get a better look at how our local was run, I also got a better understanding of how unions operated. I have come to view unions in much the way I view government.

Being retired, I have nothing but days off now so holidays mean much less to me now except the occasional inconvenience of no mail, banks not open (ATMs tend to make up for that), and I can't watch my money disappear in the stock market. I would add that the government offices are shut down but that may not be such a bad thing.

In case anyone noticed other than me, I did not post yesterday. That will become routine, Sundays will have no post. I may extend that to Saturday also but I am not sure. It's not that I need a day off but I thought "why the heck not?" "Heck" might not have been the word used either, now that I think on it.

Another thing you might have noticed is the Comic Strip is not always there when you come to this site. There seems to be a problem with http://www.comics.com. This is not a good thing. I like that page. Whenever I am unhappy or blue, I can go to that page and find something to chuckle about. Since I do not subscribe to a daily newspaper, I have no comics pages to peruse any other way.

I don't know about you but I don't like reading the paper anymore anyway. It's sad, in a way, because I know the newspaper business is shrinking, people are not buying them anymore. Too easy, and too convenient, to get our news via the web. But the newspapers didn't help themselves by using only a few press services. There just isn't that much difference between them anymore. Plus, there is little competition in the newspaper business since one paper usually ends up dominating a town.

When I was young, I had a paper route. I delivered the Miami News. It was an afternoon paper. It was eventually pushed out by its rival, the Miami Herald (which came out in the morning). It was common in the 50s and 60s for cities to have two or more papers. Even small cities. Now it is rare except for major cities and there isn't much difference between the ones that still survive. The perspective is pretty much the same, the slant is pretty much the same, and the reporting is all from wire services, for the most part.

The same has been happening with TV news. The major networks (ABC,NBC, CBS) are pretty much the same news format, the same reporting, the same perspective. Cable news is a bit better but not by much. The depth of the reporting is pretty much non-existent.

Good? Bad? Who knows? And that leads to "Who cares?"

I have a suggestion. Liven up your life, watch the stations that you think you disagree with. Yell at the TV from time to time. And then read a book. You'll thank me for it later.