I drove back from Des Moines yesterday and since I was alone I had to forgo the luxury of reading or knitting while I drove. 
Fortunately I was able to get a talk show on a Kansas City radio station and their variety of topics kept me focused for a couple of hours.
When I first tuned in they were discussing the fact that Maine became the 5th state to legalize gay marriages and will probably be followed by New Hampshire in the next few weeks. I’ll keep my opinions on this issue to myself but I always think it’s enlightening to listen to these topics to see what opinions are offered in hopes that I’ll learn something – and I did!
The argument against gay marriages often takes the route that it’s contrary to biblical teachings – but when it comes to U.S. and state laws, there is a separation of church and state so what the Bible says is not relevant (according to the law) to this argument.
The show then switched to several different topics and for each one, they did an interview with one or more “experts” and then invited listeners to call in or email their questions and/or comments.
Here’s what I learned:
Dream jobs – according to this reporter, everyone has a “dream job” in mind – that job they would take if pay or location or benefits were not important. Several listeners called in with their dream jobs and even though I wasn’t among them, I did give thought to what my dream job would be.
I’m probably experiencing the closest thing to a dream job right now since I consider myself a part-time community volunteer but my other option would be to become a tour guide for a bicycle touring company. Of course in my dream I would never encounter difficult people but instead would guide fit individuals over 50-60 miles of rolling hills every day followed by gourmet meals and fine wine at night. Every fourth day we’d take a day off to sightsee – and of course we’d never get rained out.
Housing Prices – the next topic concerned the fluctuation of housing prices across the U.S. with comparisons to those markets a year ago. Have we bottomed out on prices? How quickly will they come back? What about mortgage rates? Callers responded from Florida to Michigan to Arizona to California to Iowa – and all except Iowa had experienced severe drops in the median home prices and were seeing little to no new home construction. Only Iowa had remained relatively stable and was seeing an increase in median prices over a couple of years ago.
Facial disfigurement- with the recent facial reconstruction of Connie Culpfollowing a gunshot wound, the topic centered on the pros and cons of being born witha disfigured face vs. becoming disfigured later in life. I was a bit puzzled at first about the comparison but they did an in dep interview with a gentleman from Great Britain who was born disfigured. He related that he’d never known anything other than his disfigured face and because of the reactions of people as he was growing up, he learned to look inward for acceptance. He thought life was going great until he was 17 and applied to become a priest and the Catholic Church told him he was too ugly. So much for all those lies they’d told him all those years about “looks don’t matter.”
His comments made me realize my own prejudices about others, especially with physical traits. Since we are usually turned off by something that relates to us it’s no secret that it takes me longer to get to know and accept people who are extremely obese – guess I’m afraid if I ever get started on uncontrolled eating, that’s how I’ll look.
I gave up a few hours of old rock music but gained some insight into some topics I would not have explored otherwise. I argued with the host on occasion but what’s really important is that I learned some new things and used my brain.
And I made it home in record time without a speeding ticket.
