Columns

Here at the Beacon, we’re constantly evaluating what we’re doing and how well we’re doing it.

In the past year, we’ve made a number of content and design changes to better serve our customers. As we continue to grow and develop, we’re always looking for feedback from our readers.

This week, I ask you to take a look at the two pages of television listings that appear on 5C and 6C. The pages feature a sampling of televisions channels offered by local cable companies, as well as broadcast channels.

As Mom slid two bowls of cornflakes across our breakfast table toward my brother and me, she announced, “Tonight your father is returning home from work, and I want you to go out to the chicken pen and get me one of those roosters for dinner.”

Jim was just 9, and I was 10 years old. It would seem like a pretty tough assignment for kids that age, but we had watched Dad kill, pick feathers and gut a chicken for dinner many times, and so we thought we were ready to be “big boys” for Mom.

A wise (?) old sage, I think it was Crocodile Dundee, once said it’s useless to worry, because most of the things we worry about never happen.

With odds like that, worry then must be a good thing.

My own usual day of worry began at precisely 5:55 a.m., after clock radio news that the next president has a trillion-dollar deficit not-to-worry about jarred me out of a light sleep.

Subsequent worries, er, I mean “choices,” followed.

Coffee or tea?

After more than a year of not seeing friends and loved ones in Canada, I was excited recently when a week away from work gave me to chance to fly north to reconnect.

Waking at 4 a.m., I set out on my adventure to fly several thousand miles and end up in a time zone two hours behind where I started. The flights were uneventful. The layover times were just enough.

After landing on time at my Canadian destination, I breezed through Customs and patiently waited for my luggage to be unloaded, spin down the rotating conveyor belt and send me on my way.