Reality TV, Books and Radio

I like reality shows, and reality books, and reality radio. Reality books are very hard to come by at our local library. They used to have a section at the front of the library for 'new books' that usually had about 100 reality books and about that many fiction books. Well, the county got a new chairman of the County Library Board and our city library board members and the head librarian got into a big fight with him. Now, we have a new head librarian and the city board has been put in their place as simply 'advisory'; no authority. Things have changed. The new books now have about 20 to 30 reality books, mostly cooking and instruction books and 3 or 4 hundred fiction selections. At one time, I could count on going into the library and 3 or 4 of the current reality books on the best seller list would be there in the 'new selections'. But no more new reality at our library except for health and cooking.

I like to listen to NPR on the radio. Every morning they have 5 hours of news shows to start off the day. On TV, even the news shows are not much about reality any more. Mostly they have the same topics on all five major network news shows. I have noticed that many of the little incidents that the network news programs run into the ground week after week do not even merit a mention on NPR.

But there are some good reality TV shows. I like to learn about people from far off places and about odd ball things that I have little knowledge of. The other night I was watching a program about nomads in Mongolia. It was so interesting. They had a baby camel that the mother rejected and they were trying to get the mother to take the baby. I kept thinking that what Daddy used to do with the cows was tie her legs together and make her let the calf nurse. After a time that is what they tried with the camel, but she still rejected the baby. Then, two small sons road all day to a nearby city and enlisted help from a musician to place a charm on the baby camel. The musican could not come right away, but in a few days he came and played his fiddle or something that looked like a fiddle. It worked, or something worked, and the mother accepted the baby. These were nomads that lived in the large white tents and moved every winter to grazing land in the mountains, rode camels and drank camel's milk, but, outside their big white tent they had a satellite dish that they watched Tom and Jerry cartoons on.

Do you know how raisins are made? I would have guessed that grapes would be picked and hauled to a processing factory where they are dried with modern machinery into raisins. NO. The raisin grape vines grow in rows a few feet apart, like any other grape vinyard. When they are ready to be made into raisins, rows of brown paper, like grocery sack paper, are rolled out between the rows. The grape bunches are picked by hand and laid onto the brown paper between the rows. At night, the paper is rolled over from each edge to protect the grapes from moisture. The next day the grapes are exposed to the sun again. This goes on for, if I remember right, about 2 weeks, then the grapes are bundled up into the brown paper and taken to the processing factory. If the factory is not ready to package the raisins right away, they are stored outside in wire cages in their brown paper. They spray fumigant to keep away the insects. Sometimes they lay for weeks outside in this cage before they are packaged. The green grapes you buy for eating at the store are favored for making raisins.

Maybe Patsy will try buying some grapes and making us some raisins in a brown paper grocery bag. Please don't spray them with Raid.