This content was created by Kim Gaskill. This content was uploaded by Kim Gaskill. This is a YouTube video titled "DS156 Current Events Notre Dame Burning" (created 2019-04-30) featuring Kim Gaskill as the sole host of her Daily Spark segment. The excerpt is a first-person commentary (mostly English, opening with “¡Hola!”) in which Gaskill urges listeners to stay aware of major current events, uses the Notre Dame cathedral fire as a focal example, shares an anecdote about someone conflating Notre Dame the cathedral with the university/football program, and comments on generational differences in cultural and historical awareness.
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¡Hola! It's a new day. I'm Kim Gaskill and this is the Daily Spark. How do you get your current events, your news? Now I'm not going to get into political stuff here or what type of news you follow, but I do feel as members of a society we have a responsibility to be at least aware of current events that have an effect on society as a whole, not just a specific group or not a trending topic, but things that will affect globally or nationally a discussion. What I mean by that is like the fires in Notre Dame right now. It's, it's a trending topic, but it is also a current event. There's a lot of history there. There's over 1,000 years of history with that cathedral and a lot of things that go with it. Now over the years they've had movies about Notre Dame and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and and all of that stuff. But most people should be aware of something that iconic because over the course of their 30 or 40 years of living in society, someone should have mentioned that in a conversation at some point, I would think. Just like if I had a conversation about the Statue of Liberty or the Pope or the diamond mines in Africa, or things that if I say a topic, most people that pay attention to what's going on in the world, just even a little bit, would have an awareness of what I was talking about. My brother said he was in the mall last night and he was having a discussion with someone about these fires in Paris, and a 30-something-year-old woman came up and chimed into the conversation and said, "Oh, I don't know much about that." And but she heard the word Notre Dame, and they may have pronounced it Notre Dame. And so she said, well, I watched that movie though, Rudy. Well, now if you know anything about that movie Rudy, it's about the football program at Notre Dame, the college, and something totally different than the cathedral Notre Dame in France. But she associated that with her because the only thing she knew about Notre Dame was the football program. So when people were talking about it, that's where she went immediately in her mind. Now, I would think that a 30-something-year-old woman would have an awareness of Notre Dame in France, at least that it was a cathedral. Maybe she doesn't know the history of it. There's 1,000 years of history that's gone on with that. I wouldn't expect her to know anything about how many gargoyles are on it, or what— even what religious order has used that cathedral. Although most people know that a cathedral, those Catholic cathedrals, are of a specific belief, but Even people don't even know that. They don't know that a mosque or a cathedral is representative of something on a broad scale. And I find that sad. I, I wonder how people can have conversations. Actually, people don't have conversations because of that. We are so far removed. If you ask me to have a conversation about a celebrity, I probably can't have that conversation with you. I do not follow current events on entertainment and celebrity. '30s for the most part. I couldn't tell you who the top 5 entertainers are right now, but I know that some people of this 20-something generation would know every detail, but they wouldn't have a clue that the Liberty Bell is in Pennsylvania. It's just things like that that make me wonder what people choose to listen to and to watch to know what's going on around them. Think about that today. What do you choose? Join me again tomorrow for another Daily Spark.
