Why, Back in the Old Days….
I’ve just learned about a new blog that’s definitely worth a visit: Liberty and Culture. It’s the product of Anders Monsen, whom I first met quite some years ago when he came to the U.S. from Norway to take part in a seminar of the Institute for Humane Studies and, having arrived a day or two early, called me up. We arranged for him to stay in my house in Virginia until the seminar started. I picked him up and introduced him to the television in the guest room while I went to prepare dinner. Thirty minutes later he wandered into the kitchen and mentioned that American television was pretty boring. “I guess so, ” I recall having responded, “but why do you think so?” “Thirty minutes of just the weather, that’s boring,” was the response. I went back to the guest room (really the couch in the finished basement) and saw that the TV was set on the “Weather Channel.” In Norway, at that time, at least, you turned on the telly and you got what you got: one channel run by the state. A few minutes later Anders discovered MTV and then the stack of Gary Larson books on a coffee table, half of which elicited laughter, and half of which elicited puzzlement.
He came back to the U.S. after that seminar and has been doing very well here ever since, along with his wife and their daughter.
Oh gee Tom, and here I thought you noticed (click on my name below)! In any case, I welcome Anders to the blog-o-sphere and wish the “new guy on the block” well.
Yikes. An amusing yet true anecdote, as I grew up with only one TV channel for the first two decades of my life. I’ll never forget also how Tom introduced me to Calvin and Hobbes. So sad that both Gary Larson and Bill Watterson stopped doing comics. I’ve been blogging on and off (well, mostly off) since early 2002, so I’m not really that new on the block. However, I have for the most part kept a low profile, mainly blogging for myself and own interests, but I’m glad to share the same theme – Liberty and Culture.