Season’s Greetings from the Colorado High Country.
I may have complained about this last year, but this year I’m calling an official end to an old tradition in my household, namely The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If it were as easy as clicking an app and getting live streaming (we’re longtime cord-cutters living in a high, semi-remote valley with no broadcast TV) we’d get all the joyful, over-commercialized noise that comes with the event.
No, first the NBC app needed updating. Second, I had to enter an activation code on my computer upstairs. I did so, signing in via Facebook, giving NBC my e-mail address, etc. You’d think they’d be happy with beaming in the commercials to one more household but, no, let’s collect some information!
And for the information they took from me, I got absolutely nothing. Well, another activation code, anyway. Restarting the app got me another activation code to enter.
For all I know there was an easy fix to this I was overlooking. Maybe I needed to restart the FireTV stick, but it’s already irritating enough that I have to take it out and re-insert it into the side of the television every time I want to watch something. That apps for streaming live television require updating, that I have to enter in codes from my computer, that I can’t simply turn on the television and watch something without jumping through hoops—forget it, then. Just forget it.
I try not to be angry about it, but I do miss all that stupid noise, however stupid. We were even getting into the dog show that followed the parade when we lived in Colorado Springs. It was something we had on in the background while waiting for the turkey to cook.
Now it’s just quiet. Maybe I’ll put on some music later.
I’ve often reflected as I pace the living area downstairs that, in a way, we’ve brought this 109-year-old house full circle. Radio wasn’t even a thing when this house was built. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were some broadcast television stations in the San Luis Valley when television came to rule our cultural schedules in the 1950s through the 1980s. But with enough people willing to pay a fortune for cable and satellite service, why bother paying to maintain a broadcast affiliate station for a vast area (between the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts) with only 40,000 people in it?
So instead of the sonic and visual wallpaper of television in the background, we have the curtains open to the sunlight. I wonder how many sunsets were missed in this house because the families living here had the curtains drawn and the TV on. It wasn’t that long ago that the days of the week were defined by what show was broadcast that day.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a good thing because I honestly do miss the noise sometimes. There is a feeling of connectedness, too, that’s gone missing. Poor me, I’ll have to depend on my usual websites to find out what Hot New Gotta Have Thing people are going to fight over in the stores this year.
I’ll get over it. Like so many things I’ve been denied in my life, the denial becomes a blessing for which I am eventually profusely thankful.
I may have complained about this last year, but this year I’m calling an official end to an old tradition in my household, namely The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If it were as easy as clicking an app and getting live streaming (we’re longtime cord-cutters living in a high, semi-remote valley with no broadcast TV) we’d get all the joyful, over-commercialized noise that comes with the event.
No, first the NBC app needed updating. Second, I had to enter an activation code on my computer upstairs. I did so, signing in via Facebook, giving NBC my e-mail address, etc. You’d think they’d be happy with beaming in the commercials to one more household but, no, let’s collect some information!
And for the information they took from me, I got absolutely nothing. Well, another activation code, anyway. Restarting the app got me another activation code to enter.
For all I know there was an easy fix to this I was overlooking. Maybe I needed to restart the FireTV stick, but it’s already irritating enough that I have to take it out and re-insert it into the side of the television every time I want to watch something. That apps for streaming live television require updating, that I have to enter in codes from my computer, that I can’t simply turn on the television and watch something without jumping through hoops—forget it, then. Just forget it.
I try not to be angry about it, but I do miss all that stupid noise, however stupid. We were even getting into the dog show that followed the parade when we lived in Colorado Springs. It was something we had on in the background while waiting for the turkey to cook.
Now it’s just quiet. Maybe I’ll put on some music later.
 |
| I love how this display outside of the real estate office combines symbols of the adjacent seasons. |
I’ve often reflected as I pace the living area downstairs that, in a way, we’ve brought this 109-year-old house full circle. Radio wasn’t even a thing when this house was built. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were some broadcast television stations in the San Luis Valley when television came to rule our cultural schedules in the 1950s through the 1980s. But with enough people willing to pay a fortune for cable and satellite service, why bother paying to maintain a broadcast affiliate station for a vast area (between the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts) with only 40,000 people in it?
So instead of the sonic and visual wallpaper of television in the background, we have the curtains open to the sunlight. I wonder how many sunsets were missed in this house because the families living here had the curtains drawn and the TV on. It wasn’t that long ago that the days of the week were defined by what show was broadcast that day.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a good thing because I honestly do miss the noise sometimes. There is a feeling of connectedness, too, that’s gone missing. Poor me, I’ll have to depend on my usual websites to find out what Hot New Gotta Have Thing people are going to fight over in the stores this year.
I’ll get over it. Like so many things I’ve been denied in my life, the denial becomes a blessing for which I am eventually profusely thankful.
 |
| That’s a wrap. Thank you, Thanksgiving 2018. |
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