SNL

When we moved to the valley, in Avalanche, it was hard to get a television signal, without putting an antenna on the ridge, or buying a large, expensive, unattractive sattelite dish to mount in the yard.  We opted out, stashing our little black and white tv in the granary attic.

 For many years we watched no tv, that is, until we had children who were old enough to start digging through the dusty boxes of our former life, in the granary attic, who discovered the old black-and-white tv.  Sofie brought it into the living room, squeezed tinfoil around the rabbit ear antennas, plugged it in,  and we all sat watching as a snowy blizzard with shadowy figures came into view on the small square screen,  our first look at  Saturday Night Live. We were hooked.  For years we continued to listen to and watch what little we could see of Friends, and Will and Grace, through the snow, never able to see what the actors' faces looked like. Eventually, my husband brought home a larger antenna, which leaned against a tree in our front yard, and brought a little more clarity, if turned in the right direction. This meant someone had to go out and turn the antenna, while television watchers inside yelled when the picture was clearest. In summer and winter we watched somewhat better tv with this system.

Still, the hard hearted parents were against the idea of becoming a tv watching family, so this compromise held. Our children grew up, and rejecting our idioscyncrasies,  have moved to far away places with ample bandwidth, and clear signals. Today, I confess, in our own living room,  is a huge, black, flat screen tv sitting in front of my living room window, blocking most of the view into the front yard.  We watch a lot of Netflix on it, but in order to see a bird,  fawn, or approaching storm cloud requires walking over, and looking out over the top of it. So, we can change our minds.

The woven inlay, teal-and-cream colored square in this cushion commemorates our first SNL viewing experience, our first tentative dip back into the mainstream we'd so gladly quit.