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Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay. We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.

Contributors:

Joe Guidry

Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.

Jeff Stidham

Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.

William Yelverton

William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.

Jim Beamguard

Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.

Jackie Papandrew:

Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.

Camille Beredjick

Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.

Jim Harnish

Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.

Angela Hunt

Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.

Sheryl Young

Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.

Christie Gold

Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.

Natalie D. Preston

Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.

Fernando Figueroa

Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.

Gary Beemer

Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.

Nicole Yunger Halpern

Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.

Kris DiGiovanni

Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com

H. David Braswell Jr.

H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.

Sean Marcus

Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com

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Do You Mind If I Think?

Posted Oct 4, 2011 by Nicole Yunger Halpern

Updated Oct 4, 2011 at 08:38 AM

If I knew much about TVs, I might drool over the ones in a gym near my house. They’re wide and flat and as glossy as a preened feather.

Since I don’t know much about TVs, I sigh over the ones in the gym. Whenever I find the nearby machines empty, I switch the TV off. Whenever the only people nearby are reading newspapers or wearing iPods or reading newspapers on iPods, I ask if they’d mind if I switched the TV off.

“How come?” a man asked once. I smiled a sheepish little half-smile.

“I’d rather think.”

Speaking of sheepishness: Did you know that sheep chew their cuds after eating? Up rises the food they’ve swallowed, to their mouths, where they mash it up further. The more they chew, the better they digest. Although humans have one-upped sheep in iPod construction, sheep trump humans in rumination. We swallow lectures from our teachers, headlines from newspapers, music from our iPods, harebrained blogs from TBO.com. Mom told us not to swim for twenty minutes after eating, so we can digest lunch; why not digest the day’s events for twenty minutes on the treadmill?

“I’ll be finished soon,” Mr. Curious told me. “Feel free turn the TV off then.”

Several minutes later, he signaled that he was leaving.

“Have fun—” Amusement crept into his voice— “thinking.”

I’d asked Mr. Curious’s permission to turn off the TV because he’d arrived before I had and because MacDonald’s doesn’t have a monopoly on the first-come-first-served rule. Whenever a gym-user wants to change the channel, he or she asks, “Is anyone watching this?” or “Mind if I change it to Fox?” or “You don’t want to watch that trash from Fox, do you?”

Everyone hesitates before switching stations—but no one hesitates to switch the TV on.

If I’m enjoying the Blank Screen Channel five minutes before the evening rush, I’ll start scowling at MSNBC within ten minutes. Newcomers think nothing of supplanting the flag I’ve hoisted in the TV Territories. In retaliation, I…well, I slip on earbuds and power up my iPod. Nothing drowns out unwanted noise like slightly-less-unwanted noise.

Perhaps I should view flag-supplanting as a causus belli. The next time a tank-topped woman declares that she wants to watch trash TV (as one did, whereupon everyone’s opinion of her soared), I should declare war. If Mr. Curious has a right to watch CNN and China has a right to conquer the moon now that the rest of the world has abandoned it, I have a right to quiet. I have a right to ruminate.

Herds of columnists complain that iPods and TVs have turned us people into sheeple. I won’t bore you by echoing them. I demand the right to act like a sheep.