Voices

I've been thinking lately about the capacity and the reach of a person's voice. Over the last month I've read 3 different novels by Fannie Flagg that mostly center around life in a small town in Missouri. One of the main characters, named Dorothy, is a housewife raising her children in the 1940's and 50's, and I've found myself very intrigued by her life. She gets asked to do a daily radio broadcast from her home, and ends up doing it for decades (they put a big radio tower right in their backyard). And the show is so sweet -- it's a half-hour show in the mornings and it's full of local news (such as "Don Jones wants me to remind you that if it rains on Saturday, the Elks picnic will be moved indoor to the VFW building), local "marketing" ("Bud down at the hardware store says if anyone still needs a rake for this fall season, you'd better hurry down and get one because he only has 4 left!"), comments on the weather ("Isn't this morning just lovely? The birds are singing so sweetly here and the sun is shining - I hope it's shining on you, too, wherever you are") recipes, contests, etc.

The quote that really caught my attention was,

"Had you been there, between 9:30 and 10:00 am, unless somebody had knocked you out cold, most likely you would have been listening to the "Neighbor Dorothy"
radio show just like everybody else except for old man Henderson, who still
thought that radio was a silly invention for silly people. Both the high
school and the elementary school scheduled study periods between 9:30 and 10:00
am so the faculty could hear it in the teachers' lounge. Farm wives for
miles around stopped whatever it was they were doing and sat down with
a pad and pencil at the kitchen table to listen. By now Dorothy Smith
was one of the most listened-to radio homemakers in the mid-west, and if she
gave out a recipe for maple swirl pound cake that day, most men would be eating
it for dessert that night." (italics mine)

There's something so comforting about this idea to me. I suppose it largely has to do with the feeling of community it stirs up, but beyond that, I think it's so interesting to think of the effect that one voice was able to have back then. Apparently, these "housewife radio shows" were pretty common in that era... many small towns had shows like that. Were these women the precursors (quite literally -- pre-computer cursors!) of the modern blogging housewives??

In this day and time, though, the concept of having one person have such a powerful voice is mind-boggling isn't it? There are so many voices all the time! With all the various media outlets and internet information out there, life is beginning to feel to me like meals at the Wray family dinner table have always felt: you might have something to say, but good luck finding anyone who can hear you above the din of everyone else talking! Sometimes I feel like if I ever came up with something really important to say (hasn't happened yet), I would be faced with the equivalent task of going into a basketball stadium when the championship game is being played, trying to get everyone to hear my message.

I guess I'm just mulling over the changes in our society, the dramatic increase in voices that we all now hear. There is obviously a lot of good in having so much input at our fingertips and in our ears.... but sometimes I long for the days of the Neighbor Dorothy show. Although I'm sure if I lived then, I would be complaining constantly about boredom, right?

We are where (and when) we are, so for now I'll just keep my little voice squeaking away, and above the rest of the din, perhaps someone else will occasionally hear me. :)