By MONTE DUTTON

I’m getting old. I am old. It follows that I am set in my ways.

The evening news. I like to watch it, but it’s getting harder. The anchors could be AI-generated. They’re not. There apparently is a Tom Llamas. Wikipedia says so.

The network shows are all roughly the same. They open with lurid emergencies.

California redwoods snapped like twigs! Tornados rip across the Midwest, leaving a path of destruction across four states! An earthquake decimates a Pacific atoll!

The middle section is mostly political.

The war is over. The war is not. We have a deal. We don’t. The Strait of Hormuz is open. It’s closed again, Gas is up. Gas is down. Gas is up again. Sprinkle in other ingredients to taste.

The end is heartwarming.

This Idaho town gave its postman the best delivery ever! This woman’s pet dog chased away a grizzly bear!  Teen lifeguard saves 92-year-old man from drowning!

All that’s fine, but every night, on four stations at once? The names change, but the stories remain the same.

By the way, I’ve lived in the Asheville-Greenville-Spartanburg market for almost my entire life, and this sudden switch of networks is disconcerting. WSPA is the CW? WYFF is both NBC and CBS now? I want it to be one or the other. And another channel that’s one or the other!

I feel like a character in Blazing Saddles.

“Mongo only pawn … in game of life.”

Wellpilgrim.com takes its name from John Wayne, who liked the phrase, and the Kris Kristofferson song “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33, Hang on, Hopper.” The title of the site comes from my favorite song, Michael Burton’s “Nightrider’s Lament.”

If you’d like to contribute to the site, I can be reached at Adventure Village #6, 15 Adventure Ridge Road, Brevard, N.C.    28712.

I’d appreciate it if you’d consider buying one or two or five of my books, which are available on Amazon and at other bookseller sites. Two novels, Cowboys Come Home and Lightning in a Bottle, are available in audible versions.