What's Become of America

Questioning What’s Become of America

Since we have returned to the USA, I’ve been evaluating all the things we spend money on to decide if there are things we have been paying for that we don’t really need.  Now that we are on a fixed income, the little things need to be examined before we can enjoy the big things.  I’ve mentioned that we have turned off the AC and learned to live in an 80° home, which has saved us lots and lots of expensive electricity.  Last week I got our TV/Internet bill and realized that we were paying about $75 just for the TV.  I went online to check out my Comcast account and found that somehow we had some Premium Package for $65 and were paying $10 a month to rent a box so that we could have DVR. (I had to look up what that was, which shows you how much we used it.)  I’m sure that when I signed up there must have been some trigger that kicked in after the first year bumping up the price and since we weren’t here, I just missed it.  And so, I did the unthinkable, I downgraded our TV!

When I finally got through to Comcast to figure out how to do this, the lady at the other end was simply flummoxed. I don’t think anyone had ever downgraded and certainly not to the lowest of the low, basic cable. “Sir, you realize that you will not get any premium channels with basic?”  Yes, I replied. “Sir, you realize you won’t get online TV schedules or movies or extended sports?”  Yes, I replied. “Sir, you really don’t want to keep the DVR option?” Yes, I replied.  Please just tell me what I have to do to downgrade.  Finally, convinced of my treachery and before calling Homeland Security, she gave me a list of things I had to do, which involved lots of unplugging, labeling of cables and a visit to my local Comcast office to hand deliver the cable box, cables, and first born grandchild. After convincing the woman at the store that I was of sound mind and body, she took everything and gave me two boxes containing little cable boxes and remotes, all free of charge, and reminded me once again that I would be missing much of the TV Experience.

I now have two little TVs set up and receiving all the stations, really many more stations that we would ever watch, as well as a hook-up via Apple TV to get Netflix and other free stuff from the Internet.  Not only am I saving fifty dollars a month, I’m also using lots less electricity. I just read that those fancy DVR boxes are always on and always transmitting and receiving to the tune of 275 kilobytes of electricity a year, whether you watch the TV or not. This is the same amount of electricity it takes to run a 21 cubic foot refrigerator for one year!!

So this led me to start questioning what happened to America.  At the risk of this sounding like an old man’s rant, I am really perplexed how we allowed ourselves to go from a free service to a fee service.  It used to be that all you needed to watch TV was a television and an antenna, either on the roof or if you lived close enough to a big city, a rabbit ear antenna.  With these antennas you could get all that was available on TV at the time.  We, living forty miles from New York, could get national stations like WCBS, WNBC and WABC as well as some local stations, WPIX, WNEW, WOR and WNET. That was it, but that was all you needed.

Now in order to get even the basics you have to subscribe to a service like Comcast. They tell you how much you have to pay and you decide if you want TV or not.  The fees go from $20 for Basic up to $100 for Super Duper Get A Life, You Really Don’t Have Time To Watch All Those Channels.  The thing is, Comcast isn’t producing a thing, the shows are still generated by folks other than Comcast and despite how much you pay you are still getting all the commercials!  Even worse, Comcast tells you how many TVs you can have hooked up to watch TV and you pay extra for each TV.  Our home is wired so that technically we should be able to bring one cable in from the outside and hook it to the main box in the basement and then every room in the house would have a hot cable connection for phone, TV or Internet.  When I asked the cable guy about doing that he just laughed and said that it was no longer possible to do what was common practice just six years ago.

So, where did we go wrong?  How did we allow ourselves to get into a situation like this?  I know that in some cases it was the only way for folks living far from big cities to get any type of connection, but it is the same now regardless of where you live.  End of rant!

We live in exciting times here in Charles Town. On Tuesday we felt the earthquake that shook up the East Coast.  Having lived in Southern California we are no strangers to earthquakes but there you always expect them. Here, they are quite rare and we weren’t quite sure what it was.  I was, of course, in the kitchen prepping for dinner. I thought it was a large military helicopter flying low over the house that caused the copper pots and pans above the range to start moving and grooving.  Cindy was in her office and she knew right away that it was an earthquake, although she was puzzled since supposedly we don’t get earthquakes here.  The reaction in DC was off the wall for what was really a non-event, but that is typical of how Washington deals with everything. We can’t wait to see how they are going to deal with Hurricane Irene.

It is Sunday noon and we have bright blue skies and lovely breezes.  Irene did little here but water our lawns and gardens, for which I am grateful.  It looks like Irene wasn’t the major catastrophe that everyone was predicting, which is good because even with all the advanced preparations and warnings there was still loss of life, property and electricity.  Things should be all up and running in DC by tomorrow and the airports are coming on line with more and more flights. We expect that our flight later in the week to Florida will have no operational issues to keep us from daughter Megan’s wedding on the 4^th.  The wedding will, however, prevent me from posting a blog next week so we hope that everyone is safe and sound and has a lovely Labor Day Weekend.  For me, I’m going to be wearing all my whites until Tuesday the 6^th!  See you in September.

Best wishes, Cindy and Wm.