Out and About – Week of April 27th

Fourteen years ago this month, I had my first column published. An awful lot has happened over the past fourteen years. I am thankful for you readers who let me know that you appreciate my contribution.

Last week I shared an opinion about how the “Seventh Inning Stretch” in baseball came to be. Here’s another opinion a bit more believable:

This theory credits its beginning to an 1882 baseball game at Manhattan College in New York City.

The Manhattan coach, Brother Jasper, noticed that the student fans were getting very restless, so he somehow prompted them to all stand up and stretch during the middle of the seventh inning. This practice continued at subsequent games. When the college team played several exhibition games against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, the students did their seventh inning stretch. It then started to catch on at the major league level. You just don’t get this kind of news from the Wall Street Journal.

It seems as though Covid-19 has slowed down just a bit. This means that our life, as we know it, might be getting back to some sort of normalcy. I’m thinking that we should proceed with caution. Just because a parachute slows down your rate of decent, it doesn’t mean that you should remove it before your feet hit the ground. For a while, I’ll still avoid large crowds and I will pay more attention when washing my hands. I’m not planning to travel too far from home, but it will be nice to get into town more often.

The biggest lie I tell myself is “I don’t need to write that down….I’ll remember it.”

Growing up in the fifties, we had a television that received its signal from an outside antenna. We didn’t pay anything in order to watch to or three channels on the set. Of course we had to put up with commercials, but they weren’t as numerous or as irritating as they are now. Some were even funny.

These days we pay a good price for any type of cable service. I was just wondering why we have more commercials while we already pay for cable service? I’ve done a bit of research and have found that for every half hour of programming, we are subjected to ten minutes of repetitive ads. I’ve really become attached to that remote “Mute” button. I’ve also been thinking that if the drug companies would cut back on their ads, they could cut back on the cost of prescription medication. Finally, is there really a need to advertise toilet paper?

“Service is the rent you pay for room on this earth.” ~ Shirley Chisholm

See you Out and About! Hopefully soon!!

Submitted by Norm Stutesman