Over the Air;

Electricity along with frequency and radio waves--FM; AM; VHF; and UHF--never cease to amaze me. We flip on a switch and see the newscaster; the actor; the on-the-scene news reports as clearly as we see the dog sleeping on the couch across the room. Dogs can't see TV. At least mine don't. They won't be fooled like some cats which are tricked into getting indoor exercise by batting their clawless paws at fish in an aquarium or birds in a aviary in Kitty Videos.

We see this miracle and take it for granted as much as the dogs take us being there for them for granted. We don't even question why we see and hear life on a TV screen or hear a voice and music on the radio... unless it for some reason doesn't work.

Those frequencies darting through the air are an amazing thing. You pick up a cell phone and dial a number and one other of the billions of cell phones answer. Why? How? Don't you ever wonder?

A funny thing happened a long long time ago when I lived in Vestal NY, and we had cable TV, and a dog with a chain collar. We were watching something on TV, the remote coveted by whomever tuned in the show. The dog was itchy and shook his head and neck scratching, and causing his chain collar to make a noise... a certain frequency of noise... and it changed the channel.

"Who changed the channel!" was the rebel call. When it happened again when the itchy dog again had scratched at his collar, my sons put 2+2 together, and pulled the collar off the dog. Later when their dad was watching something on TV, they took the wadded up chain and threw it against the floor. It took a few throws to get just the right frequency, but, by golly, the channel changed. Trick complete, and Dad's yell was, "Who changed the channel, though he was fully in charge of the remote."

Frequency is an amazing thing. I'll go out in the crowded parking lot and have forgotten where I parked my car. Whether locked or not, all I have to do is hit a button and I can either see the lights go on or off, and, now, with my new car, though I haven't used it yet, if I'm way off from the site where I parked, after mindlessly having walked into the supermarket thinking about my purchases instead of where I'm parked, I can hit the "panic button". The car will let me know where it is. Amazing.

If we suddenly went back a hundred years in a time machine and just described one of these modern items, any of us would probably be burned as a witch.

Sometimes when you are taking life for granted, think about these amazing modern devices. If the world as we know it ended tomorrow, and we had to start over, could you build one of these things?... do you know the first thing about how it works? I don't. I'm just thankful I can do what I'm doing now and transfer all these words to a blog somewhere in Internet Space. How amazing is THAT!?