Soooo… when watching the new season of Downton Abbey with my wife and daughter I find myself reflecting on my 14 days in the wasteland without news. I have not been entirely successful but thus far feel self pleased with my effort.
We drove home from Michigan, 10 hours in the car on New Years day and that is normally a ride where I listen to NPR most of the ride and certainly do it on the hour so I could hear the hourly news. Over and over again, listening for the minute changes and updates regarding Syria (still in a civil war), Obamacare (still an unfolding disaster), Congress (dysfunctional), the economy (recovering but slowly and with less viable jobs) and of course Obama (struggling). Instead I listened to Outlaw Country on Sirius. Heard a couple of new artists. The drive went well.
Woke up January 2nd for my normal ritual of reading The Post-Dispatch during breakfast at home. I don't get much out of it normally and surprisingly I didn't miss it much. I am considering allowing myself the right and privilege of perusing the sports page. But not yet… it… it is too soon. Instead I read the New Yorker from last week and it was fabulous. It always is but this was a great issue with a profile of Pope Francis and a story about a sustainable, off the grid DIY farmer/engineer in Northwest Missouri. Long articles… with substance. Weird.
The ride to work normally meant more NPR, flipping out when bored to listen to asinine rantings of Jamie Allman. This guy makes stupid into an art. It is so classic as he is one of the announcers who only became a stupid Nazi because people like it so much. There is not a single irrational thing he is not capable of saying at this point and although I never learned anything by listening to him, it reminded me of the huge base of stupidity that Fox’s local affiliate is built on. Instead I listened to Mike and Mike on ESPN, another good choice but I had to hear about the Minnesota kicker saying he got fired because of his stance on same sex marriage so… I turned on KDHX and heard some more new music.
I didn't have to go to court in the morning and flick between NPR and the lord and master of demagoguery...Glenn Beck but, no court trip. I normally read the Wall Street Journal but today brought the New Yorker to finish up those articles while I ate at my desk. Once again, the New Yorker is probably cheating but it is not really “news” because it comes a week late and really only covers whatever it wants. If it is cheating I can live with it.
Instead of surfing news sites at work I worked in screw off time on my best music of 2013 list list which led to me listening to a lot of recently released music on Spotify and downloading quite a bit to the iTunes library.
This led to a drive home listening to Neko Case’s new CD as well as the CD from Camera Obscura and frankly, all of that is really so much better than listening to NPR.
The weekend came and I found it really easy to avoid all media. Had breakfast with a friend Saturday. Worked and listened to music and then went home and read and napped. Went out to dinner and then Sunday morning came. It was snowpocalypse with the beginning of one foot, sub zero drubbing of the St. Louis area. I wanted to read the Sunday Post in front of a fire so badly that I could taste it. Doing it while eating a hot breakfast would have been even better but I had another New Yorker and I had a book to finish. I avoided watching the weather terrorists though I was powerfully drawn to it. I also avoided my Sunday morning ritual of “Meet The Press”.
Snowpocalypse Monday did lead me to turn on channel 5 to check the roads but all i heard was road conditions. I SWEAR! I no longer know who is President. For all I know the healthcare roll out is going smoothly and they have already authorized raising the debt ceiling. My current thoughts are that I am going to allow myself the Sunday Paper and perhaps even the weekend Wall Street Journal but it is too early to say for sure. It is not that news is bad. Just like booze isn't “bad” (well i guess it is poison) but like booze, news is bad if you over consume and I think we are all over consuming too much “crap” news that is not really news at all but alarmist entertainment. Blah, blah, blah.
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That was week one. Week two had some lapses. I took a trip to Arkansas. I read the Arkansas Democrat last Saturday. It did nothing but reaffirm that I am not missing anything. I did avoid NPR pretty successfully but I have found that I am really coming to hate sports talk radio. KDHX has really been the nice surprise. They still have too many blues type shows and blue grass type shows but overall it is a mix of music that exposes me to new music and entertains and keeps me updated regarding the latest shows.
I am not sure the exercise is serving it’s purpose which was to allow more reading of other stuff. I have been using breakfast to read some books of the Old Testament. In my new Bible study we are starting Nehemiah and I found I had not retained much of it from high school in Mr. Grundman’s class. Also, the next week’s New Yorker was not quite as compelling. Still, it is interesting filling the reading time with something other than the pap that newspapers have become. I am not at this point Zen like in my relaxation but… I will give it another few weeks and gut it out till the end of the month and report. Peace.
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