And Now This Pause...
CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer recently celebrated his tenth anniversary as anchor of Face The Nation.
One rainy night last week we were visiting some friends, and after dinner the lights went out.
We figured it was just the weather and they would come back on soon so we just kept talking in the dark and listening to the rain.
Well, the lights never came back, but here's the surprising part. It didn't ruin the evening; it made it better.
It reminded all of us of when we were children, before television and before air conditioning when families went to the front porch after dinner to cool off.
We remembered sitting in the dark for hours, talking, looking at the stars, hearing things the grown-ups didn't know we heard because they thought we had nodded off.
We live in the Information Age, but we're bombarded with so much information from all sides — the television, the radio, the Internet — it becomes a distraction. Sitting in the dark, it was as if we were freed from all that. The conversation got better because our imagination came into play. And we could pause from time to time to listen to the rain.
I must also confess the discovery of another secret delight. When it's dark you can close your eyes at any point in the conversation without offending anyone. Very relaxing.
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