So, I was watching hing Connecticut Public TV the other night, and … oh wait, that’s wrong: I wasn’t watching.

And why was that? Because Connecticut’s public television (CPTV) is one of the nation’s worst public broadcasters. It’s a station that focuses on myriad British mystery reruns, tired personal service lectures while frequently ignoring major educational television programs like Great Performances.

And why would they do this in a state where the populace is well educated and well off financially? I asked, and I was told by one of the TV execs that its because viewers want British mysteries no matter how old along with self-help talks no matter how repetitive.

“Our programmers know that’s what our viewers want, and they want them at certain times and certain days of the week. We know what gets good ratings, and we want to provide programming that. meets the needs of our viewers,” the executive told me in an email a couple of weeks ago.

I mentioned that broadcasters in other, smaller states like South Carolina originate a number of network programs while Connecticut doesn’t seem to do any. “We feel like we’re serving what our viewers in this state want,” I was told.

Pretty narrow, even shabby thinking, if you ask me. It’s why — in spite of a life-long affection for and participation in public broadcasting — I refuse to support the Connecticut system. Their approach to the lowest public denominator is a disservice to this state and many of its residents. Including me.

Until there’s some new leadership and some new thinking — is that even possible in this system? — count me out. This is a broascaster badly in need of reform.

Children massacred. Teachers murdered trying to defend those children. What a horror we have seen in Texas this week.

And what a horror we now see unfolding — again — with our Republican politicians. “Guns are to the problem, people are,” they proclaim as they rise to the defense of the National Rifle Association.

No, guns are the problem. And they are the problem in this country. Not overseas, where mass murders are almost unheard of. Not overseas, where gun ownership is minuscule compared to the United States. Not overseas, where sane regulations help assure some level of safety for the populace.

Here? Guns have rights, declare Republicans. They are paramount. People’s right to live — children’s rights to live — do not exist. We must protect the guns above all. Doesn’t the Second Amendment make official that everyone is entitled to guns? Tamper with that and you tamper with the Constitution, and then you take away gun owner’s rights.

Never mind the children. the adults. The ordered. The suicides. The tens of thousands of deaths each year that are the fault of all the guns we have in our society.

What would it take to have Republicans turn sane? For each Republican to have one of their children massacred? Would that make any difference? Is the gun that sacred?

I don’t know. And that’s shameful. All of us ought to be assured that members of our political parties can speak with one voice in protection of our families. But that’s not the case. The Republican voice speaks only in defense of guns.

The Republican voice is sick. The Republican voice is shameless and repulsive and must not prevail.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott would make a great late-night comic if it weren’t;t for the obvious fact that he is “incoherent, incapacitated and confused.” And those are Scott’s own words, my friends.

Indeed, he spoke them earlier today as part of his insistence that President Joe Biden should resign. Here’s exactly what comedian Scott said:

“He’s (Biden) unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated and confused. He doesn’t know where he is half the time. He’s incapable of leading and he’s incapable of carrying out his duties. Period.”

Now, who does that seem to describe mostly accurately? If you said Donald Trump, you’d be right. Perfectly. Remember Trump trying to walk, mangling sentences and words for four years, hands shaking as he tries to drink water, refusing intelligence reports because he thought them boring without pictures (and don’t forget, reading intelligence reports requires intelligence)? It’s a down-and-dirty description of Trump, only Scott left out the lying and corrupt part.

Scott is actually just angry at Biden because the President scoffed at Scott’s proposal to force low-income Americans to pay income taxes. A great plan, eh? That will really attack the problem of inflation. It’s such a poor idea it makes you wonder if the author of it might be incoherent and confused.

Maybe it’s just part of the comedy routine.

You’d think hospitals would be focused on providing quality care for patients. But as a crucial part of the health care industry, that’s not what they seem too be focused on. So what’s on their minds? It’s money, specifically making money. And even more specifically, making more money from patients and their insurers.

Here’s the latest: hospitals around the country are concerned because they’ve had to pay their nurses more during the pandemic. So they insist they need to increase what they charge for services in order to keep their profits up. And they are insisting that should be at least a 10% hike in their rates.

I think we all know who’ll pay those increases: us. Patients. The hospitals will yank their rates up, insurers will need to increase their premiums — nobody should take any losses, of course — and the patients with or without insurance will pay whatever it takes.

It’s already bad enough that hospitals charge fees for their services that are all over the map, fees depending on the insurer, the patient and maybe how much money they need this particular month. Patients with Medicare pay one rate, those with other insurances pay different rates. Those with no insurance pay something else. And there’s never any transparency about who pays how much for what service.

Hospitals are supposed to post prices for their services. Ever tried to find those prices? It can be almost impossible because no hospital wants another one to know what they’re charging. And they certainly don’t want patients to know what they might have to pay.

And speaking of slippery, consider the allied hospital services that don’t accept a certain form of insurance, like Medicare. These greedy, self-serving individuals and corporations sneak their people in and then charge outrageous fees to unsuspecting patients who thought they were covered by their insurer. It’s a nasty surprise, but it’s following a grand tradition of fooling patients and misleading everyone about costs.

It’s also shameful. Wish our lawmakers could stand up to these lobbyists for the health care industry. There are so many important changes that patients deserve and need.

It’s been a while. Thanks for your patience, if in fact you’ve been patient about it. Or maybe you never noticed, in which case “hello again.”

Exactly why I’ve been gone is something of a mystery. There was an issue with the website, but my administrators fixed it quickly when I asked. No, the problem is with me, of course. I’ve had plenty of things to write about, but each time it seemed I should write, I didn’t. Maybe laziness? I turned 81 since the last entry appeared, so perhaps I’m just tired?

Nah. It just didn’t happen, and now it is. Enough. End of story.

One of the topics we’re seeing frequently in some of Connecticut’s newspaper letter writers is how their personal freedoms are being eroded by Democrat socialists try8ing to force everyone to get vaccinated. This, in spite of the fact that neatly 80% of Connecticut’s adults — the grown-ups — are fully vaccinated. The complainants are a minority who mostly speak with their Trump and Fox News-addled tongues.

Give ’em this: they are a noisy minority to be sure. They write letters regularly and use the same howls of protest each time. Are they vaccinated? Probably many of them are though there’s no way to know for sure. Still, their precious individual freedoms are being taken away by the “Nazi” Democrats, and whether or not they give even a moment’s thought to the idea of the greater community good is hard to know.

My suspicion is that their fevered political dreams — impelled by the worst of the right-wing Republican demagogs, Fox opinionators and always-Trumpers — means they can’t see beyond their own selfish ideals. It’s a pity and while we can’t know for sure, the similarity of their gripes suggests the same origins.

So let’s leave it at that. Enough for this moment. Enough to know my basic philosophies haven’t budged much in my absence. Thank goodness. If anything, I’m ready for more. And let’s get started….

Having wasted space and thoughts on a topic as slight as the Oscars, let’s see how much lower we can go with a short commentary on the Golden Globes, eh?

NBC made headlines this week saying it would not televise the Golden Globes Hollywood show next year because the Foreign Press Association, which gives the Globes, has no diversity and needs reforming. That seems evident.

There apparently are only a few more than 80 people — that’s all? — who vote on all the Golden Globes. Some of them don’t live in Hollywood, and apparently even more don’t bother seeing all the movies out there. And the group has no black members. Other than that, it’s just a lot of fun, I suppose.

So the question quickly arises, if anyone bothers to think about it, why does anyone pay attention to the Golden Globe? Well, mostly because of the money involved: the Globe organization gets money from the telecast to sustain itself, and NBC makes cash by charging the program sponsors. And, as at the Oscars, actors get to revel in their narcissistic glamour for one more evening.

Watching the actors is getting less interesting. Watching them cavort at a ceremony put together by such an unworthy organization as the Foreign Press Association seems more and more a bad joke.

Hey NBC, let’s just drop it altogether, ok? No loss. But I’m guessing somebody will take it upon themselves to come up with another awards show no matter how depressing and ill-thought-out it might be. And maybe that’s something Donald Trump can manage in his last years.

I didn’t watch the Oscars the other night. Apparently I was not alone.

Viewership dropped off nearly 60% from the last telecast to a figure just under 10 million people. Now, that’s still a lot of viewers, but comparatively speaking, it’s not much at all. Why is that, we wonder?

I think there are several reasons, beginning with the pandemic which killed hundreds of thousands of people — hard to get that out of mind — and which among other things closed up movie theaters around the country. It also shut down a lot of movie productions. Bottom line, there weren’t a whole bunch of new movies to watch, and the usual places for watching them weren’t open.

That’s not all, however. Hollywood choice of movies for production and distribution tuned out to be a lot of dramatic, intense, sad films — not exactly what a suffering nation would most appreciate. So, hardly anyone one saw the movies Hollywood made; I couldn’t even name the films nominated for an Oscar, much less the directors and actors involved. Why should I bother watching the actors and directors and the rest celebrate themselves for doing something I was never remotely involved with?

And the answer is — I didn’t. And of course neither did others like me. I doubt many or possibly any felt a loss about it.

And then there’s yet another reason: the narcissism of the whole enterprise. Hollywood congratulating itself once again. Actors who are paid so much having another opportunity to show us they are regular guys. Or, worse, preaching to us about one or another matters from their exalted positions in the universe. I’m weary of that. And also I don’t care how someone looks in their new dress that someone else designed for them. And I really don’t care how many orphans they rescued in the last 12 months.

So it was mostly a wash for me. I feel I missed out on absolutely nothing because I spend the evening watching a game show on TV and reading a book about English history. I’m not ruling out going back to the movies down the road — that’s up to you, Hollywood — but I’m pretty sure I’ve watched my last Oscars ceremony.

I’ve got a lot more books waiting, too.

In late 1941, the historian Alan Nevins wrote about an America confronted by an unimaginable global war against both Japan and Germany in a politically divided atmosphere. He called for an “heroic mood” that could only be achieved “If the whole people be enlisted on as nearly an equal an basis as possible” to stave off “the grumbling, rumor-mongering and passive resistance that will become the vocation of large groups.”

He could as easily have written that about the anti-vaccination groups and individuals circulating in noisy numbers today. Theirs are voices raised in another time of crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic which has already claimed more than 500,000 American lives, many of them needless victims.

“This is a free country and I am free not to get a vaccine,” shouts one of them. Others insist the vaccines are poisonous and will kill. Still others believe they are part of a sly government plan to control its citizens. And some apparently believe God will decide whether they will I’ve and die no matter what the vaccines do.

To vaccinate or not? To protect yourself and family and friends or to insist on your freedom to ignore the requirements of public health. Tough call. Wait – not really.

There was a day-long hearing at the Connecticut Capitol today in which people argued over the state’s proposal to remove religious exemptions from mandatory school vaccinations. Most people apparently argued against changing the exemptions.

One of them was quoted as saying, “Religious freedom is not just about the right to worship in a church or synagogue. It’s about not having to violate your core beliefs to culture nor to government.”

Another put her gripe this way: “I cannot imagine the disappointment my son will feel if I have to tell him he will not be able to enroll in camp or school next year because our religion doesn’t matter to the state.”

I’m willing to grant these are sincere expressions from concerned parents. On the other hand, nothing truly infringes on their “freedom” to have their children vaccinated against diseases that can affect the children they come into contact with. Or, does your insistence on freedom to do whatever you want impinge on the majority’s wish to be safe from potentially fatal diseases? I hardly think so.

There’s a lot of political right-wing conservatism running through some of these comments. These are anti-government voices as much if not more than expressions of “religious” rights.

By the way, these proposals do not “force” anyone to be vaccinated (and at this point they don’t involve the Covid vaccine). They do, however, bar un-vaccinated children from attending a public or private school, no matter whether the anti-vaccination decision is a result of a religious or personal belief. So, no don’t get your kid vaccinated if you don’t want to – but don’t expect you will get all the benefits that accrue to kids who do get vaccinated. Like safety.

The claim that vaccines are not safe and cause deaths is simply not grounded in truth. It’s an excuse. For every instance where something like that has occurred there are tens of thousands of instances where nothing of the sort happened. Hundreds of thousands. And more.

So, hold to your beliefs, no matter whether they be based on religion or politics. But in the process don’t endanger the lives of many, many others to protect themselves from your “freedom.” Please.

What can we calmly but bluntly take away from the acquittal at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial?

Well, first, it isn’t really an acquittal. A majority of the Senate (57 members) voted to find Trump guilty, including seven members of his own party (the responsible ones). The rest condemned themselves as surely as Trump as cowards. Like I said, that judgment comes calmly and bluntly.

Second, it effectively eliminates Trump from another appearance in a national election. He is clearly extremely damaged goods even as he maintains a cadre of of white believers and sycophants. They probably won’t go away in large numbers, but neither will their shouts and screams drown out Trump’s ghastly record of lies and embrace of criminality.

Third, Trump’s record of encouragement to Capitol rioters on January 6 will forever be the most lasting element of his legacy. It was permission of an effort to destroy democracy, an inducement to a mob to storm and even kill members of Congress (including Trump’s own vice president Mike Pence). The films of what actually happened will always be the starting point for consideration of Trumps life. And that consideration will be devastating. Not only will tyrump be viewed by coming generations as our worst president but also as the one who so severely threatened our democracy.

Those are the obvious lessons we have learned from this second impeachment. In some ways they are an affirmation of what we already knew about Trump. In other ways they give us so much more devastating assessments of this man.

He is a criminal offender, a man whose disdain for the rule of law — so many things he did even before his criminal insistence that the elections as stolen from him — forever marks him as America’s great disgrace. shame on Donald Trump, even as he has none.

And why say that? Just these facts: Trump has never condemned the rioters and rioting of January 6. He has never apologized for it. He has never acknowledged he played any role in it.

It is his legacy.