Dave Richards for November 21st
--With Thanksgiving just days away, I’m getting excited for this, my favorite of all the holidays. Thanksgiving has everything I love in a holiday. It has the annual Woonsocket High vs. Cumberland High School football game, which we broadcast each year, (and I LOVE live remote broadcasting). It has family. It has food. And it usually has good memories. What more could you ask for from a day? All my favorite things! So, even if you don’t come from Woonsocket or Cumberland, please consider going to the high school football game in your home town and make a day of it.
--I’m not happy with my opinions on Black Friday. I’m not happy because I see only one positive thing in it, really. And I also think the day which started off as an inside thing within the retail industry has become diluted and ineffective and, well, worse than a cliché’. It has become a joke. I mean, really. How many people do you know will wait for weeks to buy that Honda Accord on the day after Thanksgiving to save a “ton of money”?
Now, the one positive thing I’ve seen come out of the so-called “Black Friday” phenomenon is Small Business Saturday. Yes, it did start as a promotion by the American Express credit card company to offer some balance to the consumer gluttony of Black Friday. But the idea behind Small Business Saturday is essentially a good one. There are more small merchants in this country than there are big box stores. And, I can personally attest to having the nightmare in my head of what would happen if “Goliath” really did beat “David” in the retail wars. It would just be so wrong.
So please make your plans now to walk calmly and purposefully to your local merchant this Saturday. You’ll know who they are. They’re the stores which don’t have idiots camping out in front of them for days, and who advertise in the local newspaper and on local radio instead of the national TV outlets. You can’t miss them. They’re real nice people who treat you like a friend and a neighbor because…………..you are one.
--By the time we get together next week our 2017 Milk Fund Radio Auction will have begun. For the first time ever, we are actually starting in November. This is because the way the days of the week play out this year, with Christmas Day falling on a Monday, we would lose 4 auction days if we waited to December 1st. We hope you understand, and that you will tune in both on radio and on the internet and bid to support our favorite Christmastime charity, The Milk Fund. It’s what Greater Woonsocket does to help ourselves each year.
--Here’s a Rhode Island trivia question for you. “Name the real life Rhode Island family band that the 1970s network TV show The Partridge Family was based upon………….” If you said Newport’s The Cowsills, you get an extra quahog with calamari and coffee milk!
I was thinking about that this past weekend when I heard that one of the singers and actors of The Partridge Family TV show, David Cassidy, was hospitalized with worsening health problems. By the time you read this he may have actually passed, since he was listed in critical condition as I wrote these words. The reports tell us he was surrounded by family and friends while several of his internal organs continue to fail. This is sad.
It made me think of a member of my own family. My loved one had a very difficult childhood which over time grew into a very difficult early adulthood. To the horror of our family, drugs were involved. She just couldn’t choose good friends or spouses which were good for her and she got into a lot of trouble. Our prayers were eventually answered when she finally met a good man and straightened her life out. But serious damage had been done. As the years passed, she ended up with a lot, and I mean a lot of internal health problems.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s, we always heard about the dangers of drug use. When you’re very young, it doesn’t hit home. But later in life it can hit you very hard when damage which was caused to internal organs you didn’t notice when you were young becomes damage you cannot ignore…..and, in some cases, damage you cannot overcome.
We were told that David Cassidy needs both a liver and a kidney transplant. But considering his self-announced dementia, I’m not sure if he would be a candidate for such a life-saving operation, since doctors may feel other patients may make better use of the transplanted organs. It’s all just sad, really sad.
But let it be known that the warnings of future consequences we give young people today about the effects of recreational drug use are not just “Boogie Man Stories”. People are really dying younger than they need to die as a result of their ‘youthful indiscretions’. And that’s what really bothers me about the current movement to decriminalize marijuana.
--On the lighter side, sometimes you just gotta laugh at the timing of certain events. Two weeks ago I wrote in these pages that I thought the Commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell, was the wrong man for the job and that he should find work elsewhere. Then, last week, as if he had read my column, Goodell made national headlines when his demands for severance were made public. How would you like to have $50 million, your own private jet, and paid healthcare insurance for you and your family for life, just for leaving your job? Remember, I never said the man was stupid, just the wrong man for the job and he must go. But if that’s what it costs to make him go away…………..I’m not sure it’s worth it.
--That’s what I think. What do you think? Comments to: dave@onworldwide.com or postal mail to Dave Richards, WOON Radio, 985 Park Avenue, Woonsocket, RI 02895-6332.
Thanks for reading!
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