Every weekday afternoon, Suzi and I watch “BBC World News America” on our local PBS station.
Katty Kay is the regular anchor, but her usual Friday fill-in, Laura Trevelyan, was at the desk last week. That had us wondering who might cover last Friday: Nada Tawfik, Larry Madowo, the woman whose name I can never remember …
… “You,” Suzi said.
In addition to the obvious — me not being a BBC employee, although I did take a tour of the London studios — there might have been a small logistical issue, since I was sitting in the rocking chair of my living room in Massachusetts wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants.
But I could have run upstairs and thrown on my suit, and I’m sure the BBC has skilled technical people who could advise me on making part of my house look respectable for reading the news.
After all, when Katty Kay was anchoring from her basement, this is the setup her son put together for her.
But even if they got that all lined up for me, there would have also been the minor problem of having no preparation at all. Sure, someone could have sent me the story intros to read, but the post-story interviews with experts would have been a bit hairy.
I could see myself asking Dr. Ashish Jha, a frequent guest on coronavirus matters and the distinguished dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, “So how screwed are we, and when will we ever get unscrewed?”
That probably doesn’t meet the standards of the folks at Broadcasting House.
Years ago, I had a dream that at the public radio station where I worked as an intern in graduate school, one of the newer interns was asked to anchor one of the local half-hours of “All Things Considered.”
Although we sometimes got stories on the air, hosting was never something that actually happened, but in the dream I passive-aggressively stomped around until someone got the point and gave me my own half-hour (which, if this were a thing that actually happened, I would have totally deserved).
However, when I got in studio, the schedule sheet and script they left was for different part of the newscast, and I had no idea how to fix it, so it was a disaster.
By the way, Larry Madowo anchored Friday’s newscast. He did his usual professional job.
WHAT I WROTE
If you look really, really hard, through really good binoculars, “normal” may be starting to come into view. (C’mon vaccines!) But what will that look like, and how will we know when it happens?
STUFF I READ
Alexia writes about keys … not the kind we open our doors with, but the kind we all have for each other.
Renata’s working on not feeling guilty about everything.
Scott has lived in a lot of places, but he’s leaving the house where he grew up.
Rosie figures out her love language. What’s yours?
With Valentine’s Day coming up, Jamie has ideas for healthy dates.
According to Austin, Aaron is questioning his decision to live where he does.
Pamela writes about an important lesson from a funny creature.
One of Becky’s favorite baseball players retired. He was OK, I guess.
Michelle has a friend who’s an evil genius, and sometimes he uses his powers for good. (She also shared this post from S about being a target, not a victim.)
There are some things that Pea Green just doesn’t have time for these days.
Zoe realizes she’s becoming a lot more risk-averse.
If you don’t hang up at the end of your phone call, Vee (or whoever’s on the other end of the line) might hear you say something stupid.
It took a month, but Savannah finally got back on the slopes.
Lindsay tried very hard to be in a good mood, but life happened.
When I refer to great writing as aspirational, something that I’ll always be chasing even if I’ll never get there, this is what I mean.
“I won’t discard the photos, but I may never look at them again. The sorrow is too much, the longing for a time passed too great. It would hurt my heart to delete, to discard, as much as it hurts my heart to see them.”
TWEETS I LIKED
It’s pandas playing in snow. Need I say more?
It’s like they built the yard for that purpose.
Also among the favorite baseball writing (or writing in general) I’ve ever read.
Specials are always funny, but someday, just once, I want someone to ask a server’s opinion on something and get the answer “Really … you don’t want to order that. It sucks. Get this instead.”
Well … hello there.
Good … because my cat will run for the hills.
I’ll still be your friend even if you think of Coldplay as the best of anything, but understand that I will question some of your life choices.
Anyone want to go in with me on a church converted to a house that’s really, really extra?
A Silly Place 
Fun post; I think the old normal will never come back. We’re all making up a normal that won’t seem “normal” for a long time. But in the meantime, let’s be kind to “funny creatures” and all creatures, big and small.
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It will be very interesting to see how people define “normal.” I remember back when I was part of a project to imagine the first weekend after the pandemic happened (back in May, mind you … we were so optimistic then), and I mentioned to someone that I was surprised how many of the stories were basically normal stuff you might do on a weekend, that no one was really letting their imaginations run wild.
She basically replied that at that point in time, “normal” was exciting.
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🙂 Yes!
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Thanks for sharing, Bill ☺️
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Katty Kay is on MSNBC sometimes and it’s funny to see what her set-up/basement actually looks like! I mean, whatever works at this point. I’ve stopped caring what other people’s backgrounds look like.
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And from the pictures I’ve seen, her MSNBC hits are at a different angle than when she anchored from her basement. The thing that we find funny is that a copy of Tim Shipman’s “Fall Out” is clearly visible on her bookshelf, as it is on mine.
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As always, thanks for the mention 🙂
Michelle
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