sheep's guts

Welcome to our first International Reader! Bruce Leslie is a friend and visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge. The SUNY history professor is also a devoted fan of WXXI hosts Simon Pontin and Richard Gladwell. In a recent e-mail, Bruce writes that he was streaming Richard’s show “With Heart and Voice” on Sunday morning, and he sent a picture of his residence in East Anglia with an 11th century Saxon church in the background. Inside the church, he says, is a plaque to the American airmen from the nearby base who died during World War II.

Greetings to you, Bruce, from Our Little Town where last night the sixth graders put on a holiday concert in the Middle School Auditorium. In the middle of the Sixth Grade Orchestra’s performance of "The Nutcracker March,” the guy (a father?) sitting in front of me pulled out a hand-held Playstation to help pass the time, proving that Americans are the most dedicated multi-taskers on the planet. Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale gaming devices out of men's bodies?