Monday, September 26, 2022

The Elder Statesman

 

I've been around a long time and I'm proud of that.  I've been lucky.  I realized what I wanted to do at an early age, and I had a chance to do it for decades.

Occasionally, my experience forces me to explain some things-- like George Banks, blizzards, major political events and elections, writing scripts on steno pads and legal pads, manual typewriters, cassettes and tape reels, records, pagers and pay phones...  It's a very long list.

Somehow, giardiasis and contaminated water was the newsroom topic on a recent morning.  According to the water company at the time, (NOT the current one), beavers under stress were on the move and doing their business in reservoirs.  The water company didn't have filtration plants, so that bug infested water was piped in to homes across northeastern Pennsylvania.  The state forced the water company to build filtration plants, and it gave you the privilege of paying for it.

As I was explaining this to a coworker, I was struck by the absurdity of it all-- how we were forced to pay for water we couldn't drink, how the water company was asleep at the switch in the first place, and how it hoped chlorine would take care of the problem.

We've come a long way since then.  Still, looking back on that period reminds me of how we survived, in spite of ourselves.