Catching up on May and June (cont.)… McGuffey, Ohio, home of the Scioto Marsh, is having their 125 year Anniversary Festival this summer. I wrote a newspaper article on it. During the Depression, families moved from all over Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia… to eke out a living in the onion fields of the marsh. They lived in shacks on the periphery of the marsh and the whole family would pitch in. Life was hard, but folks shared, families were close, and people appreciated what they had. It would be a good lesson for us today. I just read that the average American household, for instance, wastes $1,500 of food each year… I also wrote a story about a local man who restored a ’70s stock car. It’s in beautiful shape, made for a good story… but, frankly, traveling around an oval at speeds over 200 mph is, in a very real sense for these drivers: playing Russian Roulette. What’s more, you have to wonder if God looks at it that way… I also interviewed an art professor from a local college. He teaches a course called “Visual Literacy.” He said most people are remarkably visual, yet they often don’t see. That is, a barrage of pop-culture imagery comes at people constantly through television, social media, and so on. And advertisers, show producers, and such, use subliminal, and not so subliminal, messaging to influence people to keep watching the show, keep buying the stuff, and so on. As there is a lot of noise pollution in society at this point, there is also a lot of “visual pollution.” We would do well to unplug as much as possible… In covering a local village council meeting, the mayor, in the aftermath of a village fireworks display, said the event went off magnificently. One of the councilmembers didn’t agree. She proposed “silent fireworks” next year, “…like they do in a town in California,” she said. No action was taken on this that night, and it would be safe to say that this council woman was in the minority. LOL.
