I watched some, not too much, of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and they sure were impressive in HD. All of the coverage is in HD, and it’s scaled down for regular TV. This made me think about the looming end of analog broadcast TV on February 17, 2009. When that happens, my little LCD TV that Carol bought for me Christmas 1999, will no longer work.[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/AUG/China.flv 440 330]This TV is very important to me, because it’s what got me out of a very deep and dark place emotionally, while I was face down for weeks on end, stuck in something called a vitrectomy chair, following a second surgery for a detached retina.
Before getting that TV I listened to the radio all day, but as much as I love radio, doing that didn’t lift my spirits. Reading was impractical, but I could put that portable TV on the tray of the chair and watch it out of my “good” eye, which later had problems of its own.
There was a UHF station in Boston that showed a lot of old Bonanza episodes, and those became the highlight of my day. I was amazed by how adult the show was, and by how much innuendo there was in the writing.
Besides the TV, something else Carol did that was helpful was she read out loud from Thomas Hardy’s tragic book “The Mayor of Casterbridge.” It’s not a very cheerful story, but I really got into it, and enjoyed discussing its characters and themes with Carol. Since then we’ve watched several different adaptations of “The Mayor of Casterbridge.” The recent A&E production is very good, but Dennis Potter’s version with Alan Bates is probably our favorite.
And I must also say thank you to D.F. Rogers, who played Dragnet radio shows from the 50’s for me, that we listened to on Eric’s toy R2-D2 cassette player. When I was down and out, doing that was a lot of fun. Hard to believe that was almost nine years ago.
