While We Were Out

After spending a few days at a lakeside cabin in Northern Minnesota,, it's time to make a few observations.

• Unless you have satellite TV, the only channel you can get in these parts is a CBS affiliate that used to be a local station based in Alexandria, but beams programming from the Twin Cities. So instead of events that affect so-called "Greater Minnesota" (which makes the state sound like one big suburb), people here get daily reminders of why they live where they live and not in "Murderapolis".
• On the radio, your choices on the FM dial are country music, classic rock and pop standards. No Top 40 and certainly no hip hop. (No wonder the youth of the North Country couldn't wait to flee to the Twin Cities, or at least Brainerd) If you want talk (whether you're liberal or conservative), go listen to MPR's news service. There are also plenty of places where you can listen to Twins baseball. Just try finding one after the sun goes down.
• Watching TLC's "Little People, Big World", which focuses on the Roloff family, whose parents and one child are of the vertical persuasion (I refuse to use the word "challenged") while their other children are what we consider normal height. Anyway, tonight's made for TV adventure found the Roloff adults in Las Vegas to attend a public speaking seminar, prompted by the wife's having been invited to speak at her old alma mater. By the end of the program, we watch Mrs. Roloff give a polished speech before a packed audience. Could it be that the audience came because of what this woman had to say, or is it because they knew her from TV?
• Of course, we didn't come all this way just to watch TV. There was fish to be caught (most of them thrown back because they're either too small or the wrong kind of fish), loons to be heard, mosquitoes to be swatted, and a placid lake at sunset to be admired. Better than reruns, right?