Joanna Schroeder has a very, very strange love story to tell you on this Sunday morning.
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First, I want to tell you that this is NOT a sponsored post. Nobody paid me to write this. I’m seriously writing a love letter to a TV show on my own volition, simply because it matters that much to me.
Part of being a balanced grown-up, I’ve found, is knowing what stresses you out and what relaxes you. Some people drink wine to wind down, others read a book, some do yoga. I do all those things sometimes, but they don’t key into that instant “ahhhhhhhh” for me that the sound of the opening notes of Sunday Morning‘s trumpet, played by Wynton Marsalis, does.
My parents watched Sunday Morning when I was a kid. As long as the show was on, it meant the panic and mayhem, the cajoling and bribing, the begging and tantrumming that went into our family getting ready for church would be put off yet another segment. Another mini biography of a less-famous President, another behind-the-scenes look at how some everyday object is made would hold back the inevitability of pulling on tights, buckling dress shoes, and trudging into the snow only to spend hours of the blessed weekend listening to Bible verses and life lessons and playing Jesus trivia in basement classrooms. Not all those segments were interesting to a kid, but the they were our saviors, these segments with calm voice-overs and tastefully-dressed journalists talking to tastefully-dressed interviewees.
I feel like the tone for what I like, and even what I love, has emerged from my peaceful childhood associations with Sunday Morning. A voice like Charles Kuralt had, like Charles Osgood has today, holds enormous power over me. I’m the person who will fall into a trance listening to NPR is there’s a fantastic voice telling a fantastic story. Sometimes I even have to pull my car over because the world goes dark around me as the story builds.
These men have also influenced my crushes and my loves. To this day, the sexiest thing to me is a guy who knows more than I do about something. When my husband quietly adds ridiculous streams of numbers together in his head, calculating tips or interest in his mind, I blush. A well-constructed sentence, spoken in a modest and composed voice, can make me swoon.
And I want my funny guys understated, a little bit nerdy, and always holding an insightful revelation close to the vest for a big reveal at the end. I need a weekly dose of Mo Rocca doing something weird like examining his beard hairs under a magnifying lens and asking if he should be embarrassed by the growth pattern. I miss Bill Geist, whom I sometimes honestly think is my uncle and I don’t even know why… I guess because he’s been a part of my life for so long now. I often think about how he’s coping with his Parkinson’s.
Growing up on Sunday Morning (as well as NOVA on PBS), has also ruined me for any other type of news. The mayhem of cable news, the graphics and the crawl and the multiple faces on one screen… I see the value, I know people like it, but it stresses me out. I want the information, but I need to feel like an expert is teaching me, not like the news is being shot at my face from a cannon, complete with explosions and flashing lights.
Today I DVR Sunday Morning, so I can dole it out like medicine for my soul. After the kids are in bed, before I start loading magazine content for the morning, I put on Sunday Morning for just a single segment and I take a moment to breathe. I don’t need wine and I don’t need a Xanax (as much as I would like one). I just need to know that somewhere, journalism with integrity is happening and beautiful stories are being told, and that our favorite show is appreciated by enough people to hold its weekly spot for this many years—almost as many as I’ve been alive.
So trumpet on, Sunday Morning, and know that you’ve got a lifelong fan in me.
Since you have spoken my mind, I assume there are many more of us. My kids know of my devotion to this show, and as of only recently, my 11 year old daughter now asks me to wake her for the show. Growing up in the late 60’s early 70’s, television was not a big part of my childhood . The only set we had was in my parent’s bedroom and only played the news and occasionally on Sunday night, Wonderful World of Disney. But Sunday morning was special. We didn’t even realize we were watching a news program. Now… Read more »
Love it!!!