Reading between the lines

I find scanning the news and social media can be frustrating, so I’ve been trying to look beyond the headlines. Here’s some things I’ve noticed and learned over the past several weeks:

–When someone starts off by saying, “I don’t mean to be rude,” you know the next comment out of their mouth is going to be rude.

–I learned that you really can go home again. Yup, I learned that Novelist Thomas Wolfe was fool of BS when he wrote in 1940 that you can’t go home again. Kevin Bacon returned last weekend to Payson High School in Utah, where the iconic 1984 movie “Footloose” was filmed, for the school’s final prom night and the movie’s 40th anniversary. The school is being demolished for a new school. Bacon who is 65 — yes, let that sink in for a second — returned to the school to pose for selfies and signed shirts and memorabilia. No word if Bacon went running through the halls dancing and strutting like he did as a 25-year-old in the barn scenes in the movie. “Everybody cut, everybody cut, Everybody cut, everybody cut, Everybody cut footloose!”

–The National Football League will hold the first round of the 2024 draft tonight. The draft has evolved into an entertainment event all its own, spotlighting both the future stars of the NFL and the latest in men’s fashion. Top draft picks will spend thousands of dollars on their outfits and accessories to walk the draft’s red carpet. USC quarterback Caleb Williams is expected to go first and has indicated that his suit will be star-worthy. If I were young and talented to go in the first round, I suspect my outfit would leave the masses disappointed. Does a blue polo and khaki pants count as fashion?

–I haven’t picked up a book by A.A. Milne in ages, but the older I get the more I’m convinced that Milne was a genius and the smarter Winnie the Pooh grows in my mind: 

• “A hug is always the right size.” —Winnie the Pooh
• “The things that make me different are the things that make me, me.” —Piglet
• “You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.” —Christopher Robin
• “If you live to be a hundred, I hope I live to be a hundred minus one day, so that I never have to live a day without you.” —Winnie the Pooh
• “It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine.” —Eeyore

–When we were young kids, my family went on vacation and my three brothers and I were crammed into the backseat and, of course, ended up fighting with each other. We were so rowdy that at one point my dad pulled the car over and and yelled, “don’t make me turn this car around.” Of course, we settled down and a few hours later we made it our destination. I thought of that trip last week when NASA confirmed that a 2-pound piece of hardware that was used at one time in the International Space Station survived atmospheric reentry and hit a home in Florida in March. NASA discarded a massive pallet of old batteries from the lab in March 2021 expecting that the batteries would burn up. The cylindrical-shaped object survived the trip though the Earth’s atmosphere, however, and ripped through the the homeowner’s house. I don’t know how something like that happens, but I’m guessing NASA needed an angry parent aboard the space station waving a pointy finger to make sure everyone behaved and no trash got thrown out of the space station. If we had someone up there saying, “Don’t make me turn this space station around,” I suspect we wouldn’t be reading stories about space trash landing on top of some poor, unsuspecting person’s house.

–And finally Author Simon Sinek reflected recently on how vital it is to have friends who allow you to be vulnerable and the power of the “eight-minute catch-up.” Sinek championed short catch-up conversations and how the simple act of reaching out for support is an essential part of the human experience. “The end of the day, eight minutes of a friend’s time can make all the difference in the world.”

Okay, I can’t put my reporting up there with legendary Walter Cronkite or even Cincinnati’s own intrepid Les Nessman for that matter, but that’s the news for this week.