Ruth Bass

So this year, with the state in dire straits financially and the governor calling for cuts and for caution, the legislators must decide whether to accept a raise or reject it. A couple of them have already announced that they will take the raise and give it to one of the charities in their locales because they want to be sure their constituents get the money.
It is hard to imagine very many taxpayers signing on to that idea with enthusiasm, since most of us would prefer to make our own choices for charitable contributions, not have a senator or representative take our money and decide for us."
The Berkshire Eagle, January 12, 2009

"Things are out of whack. When the beggar shows up at the door in an Armani suit, one is not inspired to put anything in the tin cup. So why on earth would three auto chief executive officers fly to Washington on their private jets?
The main reason is that they’re out of touch. The person who rattles a cup for a handout looks doleful, dresses badly, talks pitifully and seems to be truly in need. Real or fake, he/​she plays the part.
What the American auto guys don’t get is not only that they don’t see what everyone else sees right now, but that they have been out of touch for decades. It’s been years since we owned an American car from fabled Detroit.
We switched to get well-nigh perfect performance, minimal repairs, economical use of gasoline (before the price hit the roof) and the ability to get into the garage every night, whatever the Berkshire weather."

November 2008

"Sunday night, except for public television, has gone from favorite evening – the days of “Boston Legal” and “Without a Trace” – to cipher. And the occult has invaded everything, ever since the lovely blonde woman started dreaming about the solutions to crimes on “The Medium.”
Now we have detectives who see things, a lawyer (just cancelled) who participated in wild visions, a so-called mentalist who grins charmingly and figures out stuff with no more evidence than you’d find in a helping of pasta and a truly troublesome ghost who is driving the lovely Izzie crazy on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
We quit “ER” when it started hemorrhaging all over the hospital floor, but were excited about the level of scripts and ideas in “Grey’s Anatomy.” Now the writers have apparently run dry on interesting reality and have turned to sensation, improbability and the resurrected dead.
At least in “House,” one understands it will take an hour for a slew of medical geniuses to make wrong decisions and nearly kill a patient before miraculously saving the poor person who should have had better care to begin with. But an instant diagnosis an hour of television does not make.
The worst problem on the screen at our house this year, however, is unpredictable, annoying and disruptive. It’s not in the schedule, and it’s our own fault, sort of. Each time it comes as a surprise, often as a gratuitously inserted bit, and while one of us jumps to the mute button, the other grabs the dog.
He’s still a puppy by most measures, and when he hears a dog bark on TV, he starts to arf, running to the window and tearing about as if he were a museum watchdog. You might expect most of the barking on the screen comes naturally, along with an Alpo commercial, for instance.
Not so. In every English movie or show, dogs bark, and a finger must stay on the mute button throughout. In street scenes of detective shows, dogs bark in the background. In sit-coms, all sorts of people own noisy dogs.
Ours is learning. He knows we don’t want him to bark his head off when we’re watching TV, so he is tending toward an anguished, somewhat muffled wail and an appeal for reassurance.
We figure producers won’t change their ways, so the dog will have to learn. Desensitizing, the trainers call it. It takes only half of forever, apparently. It would be nice if black cats could cross detectives’ paths instead of the woofing thing.
But we know the English movies are a hopeless case."

December 2008