About a week ago I came home from dinner with my family, logged onto my computer and had a survey from NPR's Marketplace asking how I felt about the $700 billion bail-out. I'm never short on strong opinions so I sat down and typed a furious diatribe. A cloud of mad-black-smoke rose steadily from my keyboard as I quoted my husband, my brother, my dad, and my mom from our dinner conversation. The web-based-form was peppered with my take on corporate greed, sub-prime mortgages, deregulation and predatory lending practices. Throw in a few expletives and you get the picture.
In one cathartic plunk of the "send" key I sent off my 2 cents worth into cyberspace thinking, "Whew, am I glad to have THAT off my chest!"
Twelve hours later I had a phone call from Marketplace Public Relations team. I thought the PR rep might suggest anger management therapy but instead she tactfully noted what a colorful family I must have. Then asked if we would be willing to host Tess Vigeland from Marketplace Money for dinner on Monday?
Long story short, and fast-forwarding through several utterances of "You have to be kidding me...", Ms. Vigeland was our dinner guest tonight. My dad played his vinyl recording of "I Hate to Wake Up Sober In Nebraska" before dinner. My mom cooked a lovely meal which culminated in something chocolate and fabulous. And I delighted in sitting down with a posse of smart and concerned people (my family) to talk about economics. It was a lively conversation, and a delightful dinner. One I won't soon forget.
Ms. Vigeland said to check out the evening Marketplace broadcast on Tuesday for our segment. Sadly, Nebraska Public Radio doesn't air the nightly evening show so you'll have to log onto www.marketplace.org to download the show, or check out Tess' blog and her photo gallery for her take on dinner with the Landis-McKibbin clan.
3 comments:
Oh Melis! That sounds like such a fun adventure...and yes, you do have a wonderfully colorful family.
I want to know what you wrote in...do share!
My furious typing was on one of those web-forms that disappears from my sight as soon as I pressed send. Its the Internet's equivalent to the etch-n-sketch. I can't even recall what all I wrote just the act of writing and then it was all gone.
Lovely dinner, though. I'll post a link to the segment on the show if it appears on Wednesday.
That is too cool! I really want to read what you wrote, too ... you always put things so perfectly ...
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