Dave Richards for May 8th…………….
--Congratulations are going out this week to the Rotary Club of Woonsocket for their very successful ‘Rotary Days Touch-A-Truck’ event last weekend! They really out-did themselves this year, even including a helicopter among the impressive vehicles put on display for the youngsters. After last year’s all-day rains you might have understood if they kinda backed off this year, but they did not and when you added the picture-perfect weather we had on Saturday, they really knocked it out of the park this year.
This is just one of the many ways the dedicated and caring members of Rotary make our community a better place in which to live.
--I was asked by The Fabulous Denise to thank everybody in our city and state government responsible for the six dollar tax rebate check she received in the mail yesterday. She couldn’t wait to show it to me…….or to cash it. As she wisely put it, “Every little bit helps!”
--I was recently asked to join the Board of Directors of the Blackstone Valley Independent Business Alliance, known more commonly as the Blackstone Valley Buy Local Group. I have always admired their work, so I accepted the invitation. Some of the people who have lead the organization from the beginning have had changes in their lives, as happens now and again, and the members who have stepped up are full of new ideas and energy to take this vital group to ‘the next level’, as they say. It’s really very advantageous to have the veteran leaders helping the new ones, what a great position to be in!
Outgoing Buy Local President Jeanne Budnick appeared on our station along with incoming President (and former Treasurer) Dave Gobeille to “pass the torch” recently, and you’ll be seeing them in display ads here in The Call. President Dave reminds members to look in their postal mail for the yearly membership renewal letter, and asks those non-members who wish to join to message him on the Blackstone Valley Buy Local Face Book page.
--I attended a meeting yesterday with some friends to hear all four members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation speak on various topics.
You can probably imagine that I went there not expecting to learn anything new, since in a state the size of Rhode Island where we have a unique access to our Congressmen and Senators, we know each other and have discussed these matters before. But I did learn something which made an great impression upon me, and I want to share it with you.
Being in the broadcasting business, I hear all the news reports from Washington all day and every day. The nature of the stories and the depth of the reported divisiveness troubles me. Yet here I was in a room with 400 other people and nobody wanted to hear about the ‘latest tweet’ of the Chief Executive or the legal implications of the scandals and near-scandals we hear about on the news incessantly. These people only wanted to know about how our representatives at congress planned to make their family’s lives better and more secure.
Wow. What an impression this meeting made on me! When I’m with others from my profession, everyone is climbing over each other trying to trip up the congressman or senator into giving them the juicy sound-bite on what the news media has collectively decided is important to their audiences. But here, nobody cared about “quotable quotes”. They only cared about how the federal government was going to help or protect them and their families.
And, as I sat there for those 75 minutes, I realized something else which impressed me even more. I realized that these four leaders, all members of the Democratic Party, who I have criticized roundly and rightly, I think, in the past for spouting the “Party Line” of bashing President Trump first and then the Republican Party in general before answering any question………..didn’t do that once. Not once. They were talking to a roomful of regular people instead of reporters and they behaved like regular people themselves. Regular, intelligent, rational people, all four of them.
Remarkable.
So I have resolved whenever I am with either a member of our congressional delegation, a state officeholder, or even a member of our municipal governments to remember to ask them questions that really matter first, and not go cheap and ask them about what’s “in the news”. My colleagues may laugh at me, but I’ll bet I will get a more honest and true response to my questions than they will. I like that idea…..because I hate the “Party Line”.
--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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