My grandfather was born in Alabama in 1920. He was a boxer in the Navy and a chef who taught himself to read and loved science fiction. He had so many L. Ron Hubbard and Star Trek novels that I never saw him read, but I know he found time to. We had a ritual: anytime I was visiting, we would watch 60 Minutes. It always came on after the local news, so we’d get a solid 90 minutes of quiet time together. He was persistently enraptured. Whether the anchors were interviewing a world leader or walking through a high school, he had the same posture; he wanted the information and to see the world differently. He let me see him as he saw things he had never experienced. I learned to appreciate the power of media by watching my grandfather’s curiosity. He was comfortable because he knew what he didn’t know.

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