TIME TO MOVE THE DIAL

Because the old solution no longer works.

Thirty three years ago, I installed a new clock radio below a kitchen cabinet in our new house and it has functioned flawlessly ever since. Every day it provides classical music for background when needed, it always gives the correct time, and it acts as an audible timer for cooking.

It has served its purpose so well that the small dial indicator cord apparently decayed and I discovered fifteen years ago that the dial pointer no longer moved to the left to show the frequency. The tuning dial had been accidentally moved while installing a new microwave oven and there was no way to tell where it was. I had to open the case and manually move the tuner back to the left to find the station. We had never moved it so I didn’t bother to repair the broken cord.

The pointer has not moved since.

^{Image by an aggravated @willymac}

Not until this morning.

Something has been going wrong with the programming on the National Public Radio frequency because the news on the hour and the half hour has become more partisan and less objective. In the past six months, it has become irritatingly biased and unworthy of being called news; Propaganda Radio would be a more appropriate name.

Now, I enjoy having a peaceful breakfast in the early hours with Brahms providing soothing entertainment, but I do not like being suddenly annoyed awake by clearly slanted news being stated as indisputable fact.

I did not suddenly get stupid.

Yesterday the irritation reached a breaking point when one of the reporters made a statement clearly designed to upset me, personally, among the millions of listeners! I had been triggered! That was IT!

No more of that propaganda, bless my Paganini!

I’m not going to sit there and have my intellect insulted with blatant political twisting of fact from a source that once was faultlessly reliable.

So, I got up from my breakfast walked over to the radio and turned the dial slowly up in frequency to the right to the same country music station the radio in the bedroom awakens me to in the morning.

That was the last time for moving the dial.

Now, instead of being sedated with flute and oboe solos while trying to remember how to eat my grits, eggs, and toast, I can listen to songs about love, dogs, and pickup trucks; about broken hearts and new love, and about Tennessee Whiskey and Strawberry Wine.

To make it even better, the music station does not have news breaks.

No politics needed, thank you very much.

We have our own lives to lead.

~ finis ~

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