Thursday evening things

 * Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday. Only one class, and hopefully I can get a bit of research work done; have not got any done in a while because "urgent" things (e.g., cleaning my lab on the thought a job candidate was coming in - they did not, as we're predicted to have iffy weather tomorrow) squeezed out the important ones yet again.

* Emilo Delgado passed away. He was "Luis" on Sesame Street. I watched the show when I was small and I remember the People of Sesame Street - Bob, and Luis, and Gordon, and Susan, and Maria, and David, and Mr. Hooper - there were probably others, but they weren't as regularly on there. I also watched it a bit when I was out of the regular demographic but my younger brother watched it. 

It was a show designed, I guess, for "disadvantaged" children, to catch them up before school, but for kids like me - growing up in a lily-white suburb - it was the first time I really saw African-American actors, or Hispanic actors, and the fact that they were all friends and all got along, that meant something. I don't think it ever "preached" it - though I guess maybe in the St. Francis sense it did ("preach the Gospel always; use words if necessary).

It's interesting how someone you watched in a show as a child dying seems to hit harder than an actor or actress you mainly knew as an adult, but I guess formative years are important? I remember feeling really sad when Fred Rogers died. 

* I've gotten up to the heel flap on the pair of "simple" socks I'm knitting from a hand-dyed yarn. The cuff was all ribbed and it took FOREVER (ribbing takes a long time because you have to alternate between knit and purl stitches, so you're moving the yarn every stitch). I'm going to do the feet plain. Also the next pair of simple socks I do will have a ribbed cuff  (so they stay up) but a plain leg. 

* I'm picking away at various books. I'm reading Charlie Connolly's "Last Train to Hilversum" (which is about the early days of radio, or at least radio in the 20th century. ) "Hilversum" is a town in Holland that a lot of people who were shortwave radio geeks would know because it was where a number of transmitters were; I recognized the place name as I was a a shortwave radio geek back in the day. (Where I live now, it's very hard to pick up good signal, and also I suspect some stations have shut down their SW operations, and I mostly listened to the BBC anyway, and I can get that through an app on my phone).

I was also reading something the other day about how in the late 1990s, the "consolidation" of American radio stations began, and how a lot were bought up by enormous companies, and in most cases, the local staff and programming was replaced by satellite-feeds, and yes, I have noticed that. I don't listen to over-the-air radio much here, because even for emergency information, there are almost no local stations and even during heavy weather, they are still broadcasting the out-of-LA-or-wherever music feed, and that's disappointing.

I am old enough to remember LOCAL local radio - with local weather people who were actual meteorologists and not just pleasant voices who had a few classes in weather, and news people who went "out on the beat" (a couple times in the early 80s, when we had some wee tiny earthquakes where we lived, they went out and interviewed my dad - the head of the local university geology department - to explain why no one needed to be freaked out). And there were sometimes local programs - I remember a swap-shop type of thing that I personally found interesting but at least one of my friends rolled her eyes at. I miss all that now and I admit I kind of wish it would come back; the idea of more local information rather than "random bad news story of the world," "random bad news story of the world" "random dumb news story from somewhere totally different in the nation" "story that really isn't heartwarming but is presented as if it were" where NONE of the stories are local news. I do not thinK consolidation is always a good thing.

* I'm also reading a Mordecai Tremaine mystery; I guess there were five of these. The author is not well known and wrote under a pseudonym. But I think I'm losing my taste for mysteries; they make me sad in a way they didn't in the before-times; I think I've reached a point where I've seen so much death and misery that reading about even *fictional* death, even fictional death where the victim may have been a despicable person, is upsetting. Which is weird and I'm not sure what I move on to - high fantasy? Sci-fi? 

Though I've noticed that more and more - sad themes or violence in entertainment, and I nope out. (I'm thinking, as I think I said, of getting Disney +, mainly because they have some of the nice kids' movies I like - there is conflict, yes, but things are usually worked out and there's not the....