Your Head Trucker has fond memories of veteran CBS newsman Charles Osgood, who died at his home in New Jersey yesterday, age 91. He was a thorough professional who delivered the news along with a little something extra - warmhearted humor. And often a charming poem, a rare thing to hear on a news program, as his trademark bow ties were rare to see.
Osgood will, of course, long be remembered for his brilliant contribution to American speech as the man who popularized the acronym POSSLQ: Persons of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. Or at least, I had never heard of it until he broadcast a poem about it way back when:
And yet, Osgood had deep thoughts to share, too - and here is a most appropriate example:
The celebrated TV newsmagazine CBS News Sunday Morning first aired on January 28, 1979, so Wikipedia tells me. My, how time flies; seems to me as if it's just been around forever. I can't say I've been a devoted fan of the program - even in 1979, when I was still struggling and starving my way through college, I was rarely up early enough on Sundays to watch it. I'm afraid that age has not improved my aversion to early rising, and now that I am retired, I rise or sleep at all hours, quite impartially, according to mere whimsy.
But when I have caught the show, here and there through the years, I have nearly always enjoyed it: a kinder, gentler news program, with a light, thoughtful touch that is sorely needed in the frantic, ranting world of today. Here are a few short clips to remind us of what television has been, and still can be.
And be it said to the show's renown, Sunday Morning has been the last, the very last refuge of the spirit of Poesie - a dead, despised, and forgotten art. For many years, the inimitable Charles Osgood valiantly led the arrière-garde; and now the distinguished Ted Koppel takes up the faded banner:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
