WordSisters

Category: American life

  • Home and Away

    College recruiting, corporate management and consulting carried me across much of the United States. Although some of that travel prompted future visits, a suitcase in one hand, briefcase in the other wasn’t the most satisfying way to explore cities and countryside. There are cities I enjoy, mountains worth the travel, lovely ocean sides. Driving across the plains or open lands remind me how different our life experiences are from fellow citizens.

    The Midwest continues to be where I am comfortable living my life. Green spaces, cities, the Great Lakes, agriculture, forests blend well. We considered moving during our careers, imagining our lives in desert lands or other river cities, even one Canadian possibility. Except for Canada, I don’t regret passing up those changes.

    Something moved me in the childhood lands of Pat Conroy and Flannery O’Connor. The charm of old Savannah and the Lowcountry areas of Georgia and South Carolina felt homey. I wanted to stay for a year, maybe two, and learn about the rhythm of that region’s residents. To walk where azaleas and trees blossomed in March, to witness the loggerhead turtle’s journey, to try Sunday church once more, to celebrate holidays differently.  Biscuits tasted better, seafood fresher, crayfish better than a slab of whitefish. 

    Weeks in Maine challenged my Midwest assumptions that farms were farms, days on the shore universal, that New England was an area of wealth and education. Spending weeks in a London flat introduced reality to daydreams of living in a congested metropolitan area. Nearly two weeks in a small Irish community felt nice, but I wanted to go home. This stretch of the south felt like it could be home as if the slower movement of my mature life would be acceptable in a place that has nurtured so many artistic folks.

    When the roof needs repair, spring returns to stormy winter, property taxes increase, daydreams happen about a mythical life in a charming setting where all seems lovely. But roofs deteriorate there, summer temps and humidity can be high, history and today’s politics lean away from my values. Best to keep Savannah on my writing retreat list and my home in the Midwest. I’ll be back with a notebook, laptop, and good walking shoes during azalea season.

  • Information Blast Zone

    A group of creative writers gathered for our annual retreat this weekend. A few of us had been local government news reporters and all of us are voracious followers of news media. For a second year, we admitted to not watching much national coverage or reading news that could be interesting. We frequently skipped the big stories which seemed redundant yet not very thorough. Like almost two-thirds of Americans, we are all tired of news.

    News sometimes appeared to be repurposed to be featured many times. You might read it in an online tonight, see in in print the next day, see the same copy in a second online newspaper a day later then featured on an electric media show. How old is the information? How important? How close to the information’s original offering is the rejiggered version. Hard to know.

    The 2023 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that Americans’ fatigue with news continues to climb. The Pew Research 2020 study reported that two-thirds of us feel that fatigue. Here’s Reuters current facts:

    • More than one in ten Americans report turning news off. 
    • 41% of women and 34% of men say that they sometimes, or often, avoid news. 
    • While the study is global, American specific data also show specific areas of fatigue including about one-third of participants staying away from news of the war in Ukraine, forty percent avoiding national politics and an equal percentage not watching coverage of social justice.

    There isn’t a lot of information offered about why the numbers are dropping except that news followers are staying within their chosen silos and going to news that is more comfort than challenging. If a viewer doesn’t like the Trump story, watch international news. If it is climate change coverage that is overwhelming, maybe the stock market is more interesting. And when all the breaking news color bands feel like a repeat of yesterday, maybe home remodeling shows or sports coverage or reality television provide a break. 

    Folks who study how Americans absorb news point to the 1980 CNN effect–broadcasting news twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week. If you hear a story once, you’re going to hear it possibly every hour, maybe half hour. The 2022 Berkley Economic Review called the CNN model a market failure intensifying conspicuous bias that results in inefficient coverage of other news. Policy makers and decision makers are impacted by the continuous messages.

    Jon Stewart’s observation may be the best. His opinion is that the 24/7 news cycle elevates the stakes of every moment putting the public in the “information blast zone.”  And there we get tired.

  • Basics of Love

    The basics of love can be as simple as the thrill of sparkling diamond fireworks appearing seconds after the burst of red and blue or hearing a particularly well-arranged version of a favorite song.

    The word may be more loosely than the emotions. We love a football team, a blue car, our neighbor’s tabby cat, the smooth sauce on a half rack of ribs. There are friends we love. Relatives we love. Family we love. The one most desire, a someone to love. 

    Loving is a gift of humanity as well as a trigger into dissatisfaction, loneliness, despair. Sometimes the search for a place where love can be shared is difficult and it isn’t always successful. It is helpful to identify that when it emanates from another human.

    “Hello in There,” a song by John Prine is the story of an older man who lives in a city with his wife. Their only son was killed in a war. Most days they sit around and watch the world. He encourages people to look at older folks passing by, remember how lonely they might be, and try saying hello. If possible, spread a thin little layer of love to someone in need, even an acknowledging smile to the person next in line. Maybe you prefer to think of that tiny effort as paying it forward. Doesn’t matter. May the love come back to you as well.