This morning, shortly after reading on my iPad that there had been a couple more mass shootings, including the one in California at the garlic festival, someone in my rural neighborhood got out a gun and started firing. This is not weird or unusual for this neck of the woods, but having spent many years of my life in the city, gunfire functions as an alarm. It’s a a signal to freeze, listen, and possibly seek an interior room of the house, which is is exactly what our cat did when he heard the first volley.
The firing I heard (and I’m assuming that’s what it was) was probably just someone trying out a new gun or doing some target practice but in today’s charged environment of random shootings, angry tweets, and general hatred, guns make me nervous.
But this isn’t a story about guns. This is about news. I read news headlines and stories multiple times a day. That’s how I knew about the latest shootings. I read more and more compulsively as the news gets more bizarre. I read the dominant narrative, left wing responses (by which I mean very left) and corporate views (Reuters, et al).
You’d think that hearing all these views would give me hope, as in, thank goodness not everyone is a neoliberal! But despite the fact that it’s July, with hot sleepy weather to match, I still feel somewhat stressed out. This seems wrong. I mean, it’s summertime, for Pete’s sake, and I’m in beautiful Vermont. What’s to stress about? Oh wait, I forgot — everything. But having acknowledged the problem, I’ve also found a solution.
Walking past the calendar on my fridge, it occurred to me that I could apply the radical therapy of avoidance — I would take a “vacation” for the first few weeks of August, ending on the traditional final day of French vacances — August 20, or “Vingt Août.” I’m not talking about a vacation involving travel (we did our run out to Buffalo already) or a cessation of work (simply not possible), but one thing I can take a break from is news.
Yes, it’s time for another news moratorium. It would not be my first. I took a news break two years ago in 2017, which I remember because it was the month Glen Campbell died — the only news I saw that week. My husband was to tell me if anything of immediate life-or-death import was happening (a nuke headed for the Northeast, for instance) but otherwise, I was to hear nothing.
The result was predictable — I was more relaxed and happier. When caught up later with the news of the past week, I didn’t really feel as though I’d missed anything either.
This time, I want to attempt a longer break from gloom, doom, and scary monsters. From August 5 through August 20: No national news. No international news. No commentary. No news!
Because you know what they say — “no news is good news.” Hopefully, it’s also true that “what you don’t know, can’t hurt you.” So bring on summer! I’ll have plenty of time to catch up with the awfulness later.
