Still Curious
Something’s been rattling around inside my brain for a couple of months now, so I figure I’ll kick it out here, and we can both forget it.
It was something Steve Karlin — the great 6 and 10 p.m. anchor on KCCI-TV in Des Moines — said on his last newscast before he retired. Trying to keep from crying, Steve said, “You cannot continue doing something you love forever — no matter how much you love it.”
Sounds so simple and true, doesn’t it? But it becomes quite profound and personal when you find yourself slowly giving up things you love because — well, because you get too old to do them.
Over these past few years, I’ve been fortunate. My doctors have knocked back the illnesses that threatened me, and I’m still doing most of what I used to do. I used to love playing golf, but it got too tough. I still love walking several miles a day. Sharon and I have given up overseas travel — which we really liked — because it’s just too hard on our bodies.
But we still plan to fly to the Midwest in a few weeks — though for a much shorter time than in previous years — and rent a car for the drive back West. We’ll take a few more days than usual to get back home, because driving long hours each day has become too tiring.
And, of course, I retired from doing something I loved ten years ago — broadcasting. My body — and my mind — were both insisting it was time to go, so I went. I continue to do a bit of radio work in Iowa — remotely, from California — but the time is coming when I’ll have to cut back on that, too. Not yet. But it’s coming.
I realize that getting older means, yes, you are continuously — and if you’re lucky, only gradually — giving up things you love. Perhaps you replace them with something else. In my case, I’ve become involved with the Madera County Historical Society and the North Fork History Group. I can still do research and write and talk — and both of those groups need that.
But perhaps the biggest thing I can still do — is being curious. Being curious is probably one of the big reasons I went into journalism a half-century ago. I wanted to know how systems worked — specifically, how government worked and how it interacted with people.
So as the youngest TV reporter in Fresno, I covered the city council and the board of supervisors and the courts and the governor and the elections. I also got to cover major events such as the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping, big forest fires and, yes, crime.
As we moved around, my jobs in bigger cities gave me the chance to produce and report on elections and candidates and events all across the nation. Plenty of governors and presidential candidates and, yes, even presidents.
And though I’ve been out of day-to-day journalism for a while now, I’m still somewhat “with it” in terms of awareness.
And I’m still just as curious about what’s happening now as I was decades ago. So curious that I sometimes get discouraged — really, really discouraged — about where we are as a nation.
Where we are is this: We’re on course to have a presidential election involving two guys who are too old to run. One of them continues to yammer and lie — loudly — about how the last election was “stolen” from him — though there’s not a scintilla of evidence to back him up.
The other guy says he wants to “finish the job.” What job?
Isn’t it curious that our nation finds itself in this seemingly unending political cycle of political dysfunction that gives us these “choices”?
I also find our current gun situation curious. By that I mean the seemingly weekly mass killings, mostly involving AR-15’s, that are destroying families and churches and neighborhoods in so many cities. Just in the past few weeks here in California, we’ve had one mass shooting that killed six in the small Valley town of Goshen; one that killed 11 in the Southern California town of Monterey Park; another that killed six in the Northern California town of Half Moon Bay; and one, this past weekend, that killed four in the desert town of Mohave.
Of course, in recent days we’ve had mass killings in a Nashville grade school; at a party in Alabama; and inside a home in a rural Texas town.
And the usual response, besides the ritual “thoughts and prayers,” is — nothing. Oh, yes, we always hear it’s not guns that kill — it’s people. Curious, then, isn’t it — how all those killings involved — not knives or ropes or chains — but guns. And we seemingly just keep moving on, as if mass killings are a natural part of life in America — something we just have to learn to “live with” — unless, of course, we die in one of those shootings.
Curious, isn’t it?
And, yes, I’m curious about the precipitous decline of the profession in which I made my living for decades. Journalism, it seems, is getting a bad rap these days by lots of folks who don’t like what it’s reporting. Seems hordes of disaffected people only want to read or watch the “news” that agrees with their political or social biases and, yes, hatreds.
How else to explain the decline in trust by so many people in such main-stream publications as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times — as well as in the mainstream ABC, CBS and NBC News? Well, here’s my take: These news sources don’t give conservatives the type of daily “Democrat-bashing” they need — and they don’t give liberals the type of “Republican-bashing” they need.
Yes, in our infinite wisdom, we’ve created news sites and news sources that traffic only in fact-less partisanship — and that’s just what many of our brethren seek. Not news.
Curious, huh?
There are other things I’m curious about, of course — of much less import than all the above. For example, why are some professional sports franchises always so mediocre — while others excel? Just what do people see in all those “reality” TV shows that, honestly, insult the intelligence of their audience? And why are so many people seemingly so upset — almost out of their minds — over Kelly Ripa being joined as co-host on her talk show by her husband, Mark Consuelos? Really, what’s up with that?
Well, I’m no longer in the “biz,” — which I loved working in — so I’m looking at all this as an outsider. Do I miss what I used to do? Sometimes. But I’m a big believer that you should always leave before someone else wants you to. Leave ’em wanting more, as the saying goes. I hope I did that.
One more note. One Saturday night in 1969, I was listening to the great KNBR Radio in San Francisco — then owned by NBC and sounding every bit as good as an Owned-and-Operated station should. On this particular evening in February, one of KNBR’s legendary “voices” had his last music-and-gab show before retirement. It was emotional — Budd Heyde had been there for 30 years. And on that night, he read one of the tributes a listener had written.
It said, in part: “The clock on the wall catches up with us all. It’s part of the great Program Plan.”
Yes, I’ve remembered that all my life. That is what happens, isn’t it? That “personal clock” catches up to all of us. Darn it.
I already have a pacemaker to speed up my heart. I’m curious about how to slow down that clock.