I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned this in the past, but one of the great charms of early public television was the auction, which is running all this week on WGBH and WGBX in Boston. Back in the day, this was one of the main ways in which local public stations paid the bills; for an entire week, the station will auction off donated items from businesses and individuals, including "an antique fire engine, a week's stay in a villa in Portugal, two acupuncture kits, 500 pounds of chicken, a stuffed gorilla and a cruise on a Chinese junk." Among the guest auctioneers at WGBH are Arthur Fiedler, Gene Rayburn, John Updike, and Curt Gowdy. We had one of these in the Twin Cities when I was growing up, with similar prizes and local celebrities; although I never bid on anything, I never missed watching it, either. This week's listings are, as you might have figured, from Eastern New England.
