Hopes and Dreams (Patricia Potter)

My house is repaired after its recent drenching from a hot water heater gone amok. It took two weeks of intrusive workmen, but the bad produced some good. Things were fixed that needed to be fix before, but I couldn’t help resenting the theft of time.

But now it’s finished, a new proposal as gone out, and waiting time begins. I’ll finally clean up my office, take a try at cleaning closets (good luck) and prepare the garden for fall. Leaves are falling, though we haven’t experienced the real fall festival of color yet. But it’s coming, and I’m looking forward to it.

The annual community garage fair takes place today. I had planned to participate but time crept up on me. Instead, I suppose I will wander among my neighbor’s offerings. But I have my own treasure today. I finally broke down and bought a digital camera. I’ll try to get some pictures of the neighborhood madness for next week.

In the meantime I thought I would talk about today’s television offerings. With few exceptions, they’re pretty dismal these days and if it were just me, I would probably reach for a good book instead. But I usually watch television with my Mom in the evening, and her hearing is such that she can’t keep up with rapid fire dialogue of dramas, so we usually watch news or reality shows. I have learned to like ten-year-old repeats of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” and -- the good lord help me -- “Are You Smarter than a fifth grader?” Usually I’m not, but I learn something new. I like that, even though it’s humbling.

Lately we’ve been watching “America Has Talent.” I always detest most of the early programs during which they purposely feature terrible acts for the express purpose of humiliating performers. But as the programs go on, moving stories emerges and talent lights the stage.

One is Donald Braswell, a great romantic singer who lost his voice in a motorcycle accident decades ago, but worked and worked and worked to bring it back. He did, and the audience – and me – love him.

There’s Neal Boyd, a wedding singer who has a voice that might well equal the great Parvaotti (one of my favorites) and moves the audience to tears. His mother couldn't afford to go to Las Vegas to hear him, and their neighbors raised the money. There’s a pretty young blond girl who worked on the assembly line before earning a place in the top ten. I watched her grow in each succeeding performance. Though, sadly, she didn’t make the final five, she unquestionably started the road toward a successful career. There was the three-year- old from “‘Merica ” who won the hearts of everyone who heard her, and a young, autistic lad who could go out on the stage and belt out a song.

I love the emotion of the winners, the hope that shines from their faces and then the joy as they take another step forward. . I suffer with them as they wait on stage to see whether they progress to another level, and I hurt for them. I’m always reminded of when I was a kid, and I stood waiting to be chosen for a baseball game or a race. I remember the hurt when I wasn’t. It was a mighty hurt then. It was nothing, of course, compared to hope and fear of a assembly line worker or a wedding singer waiting to see whether he or she won a million dollars and a contract to play Las Vegas. Each one of these performers is a book. I’m cataloguing them in my mental cupboard.

So now you know the worst about me. I have, albeit reluctantly, become a reality show addict.