5.05.2003

I Really Needed That

So I’m stuck in traffic this morning, listening to WTOP so I can hear the traffic reports (which, naturally, said not one word about 395 or the mixing bowl). And as is often the nature with WTOP, just about everything other than the traffic reports is depressing, war-related sound bites. Finally, realizing I’m never going to find out what’s behind all of the congestion, I switch over to WAMU, the local public radio station, just in time to catch a Morning Edition story on Carroll Spinney — better known as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch (Spinney has penned a new autobiography, The Wisdom of Big Bird/The Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch: Lessons From a Life in Feathers). And it wasn’t a quick, thirty-second blurb either, but a full story, covering Spinney’s early career, his pairing with the late Jim Henson on Sesame Street, and the death of actor Will Lee — along with Sesame Street’s decision to deal with that death directly (specifically Lee’s alter-ego, Mr. Hooper). Maybe it’s because I’m part of that first Sesame Street generation, but just hearing the story made me feel lighter, made my commute a lot less stressful — I don’t even remember the traffic once it began.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ll still be cranky today (especially considering that the encoding I left running overnight did not work), but probably a little less so than I would have been otherwise.

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