Here’s something we’re all going to be missing for the next few weeks: Meeting strangers.
We’re all going to keep in touch with friends, family, and acquaintances via phone, Skype, social media, texting, sexting, and whatever other tricks you have up your sleeve. But in the course of a normal day you and I might happen to meet several or even several dozen people for the first time. There’s a huge value in that. And for the foreseeable future, we won’t be having it.
I’ve Never Met A Person From Burkina Faso.
Meeting strangers broadens us, makes us more aware that the world is bigger than our little circle. Whether those strangers are of a different color or religion or sexual orientation or gender, they remind us that the current living gang of humanity is a rich tapestry, indeed.
Now, we know many (many, many, many) people stand on their heads to avoid mixing with people even a hair’s breadth different from themselves. I pity them; their lives must be an ordeal of sameness. Imagine going through life not contemplating why that woman wears a big plastic ring in her earlobe or that person is neither identifiable as male or female or that other one wears his hair up in a turban. Those of us with a true love for humanity relish being challenged in those ways. It helps us learn about them — and ourselves.
Why, if you were listening to the radio, would you want to hear the same song over and over again rather than an unending stream of different songs of different genres from different eras?
So, for now, our circle will be tightened — far too much so — and that’s another casualty of this novel virus.
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Bus Boys
Addison (L) & Lewis Rogers
The last original Big Talk aired last night — at least for the next few weeks. If I’m being forced to stop producing new shows, at least the last such one was a blast. The past two weeks I’ve aired a two-parter with Addison and Lewis Rogers, the Busman’s Holiday Boys.
They are…, well, let’s see, alive! I mean it. They’re filled to their respective brims with music, joy, laughter, and brotherhood (both familial and in the metaphoric sense).
Here are the podcast links for Part 1 (aired Thursday, March 12, 2020) and Part 2 (aired yesterday). Big Talk airs every Thursday at 5:30pm on WFHB, 91.3 FM
Next week, old stuff. But considering the entire world’s pop. does not listen to any given Big Talk, there’s a great chance you might have missed that show the first time it aired. And, BTW, why doesn’t the entire world’s pop. listen to Big Talk?
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Big People, Small House
Another thing having to do with this coronavirus semi-quarantine: A lot of couples who live together are either going to be strengthened in their intimate bond after this thing is over or divorce lawyers and moving van companies are going to be doing fabulous business. My guess? The answer’ll be both.
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Okay, More On The Bug
Here’s a good, simple explanation of how vaccines work. Researchers may be on the cusp of developing a COVID-19 vaccine, although making sure the world’s people get it will be the big hurdle.
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