‘The World is Too Much with Us,” the first line of a William Wordsworth poem, bemoans how mankind is caught up in greed and the quest for material things, so he turns a blind eye to the beauty and promise of nature.
I have two variations on this theme. First, “The Snow is Too Much with Us,” to describe the miserable and incessant pounding we have received at nature’s hands-this season not so much beautiful, as cruel.
My second theme for the endless winter of 2015 is that “The News is Too Much with Us.” I’ll start with this.
As you may know, I used to be a reporter — the old-fashioned kind, armed with an inquisitive nature and relentless joy of the hunt, equipped with a notebook and pen, and then a microphone and camera. I got into the business because — like all good reporters — I’m a bit snoopy by nature, so I loved to chat with people and tell their stories. I also loved hearing stories, which is why, like an addict getting a daily fix, I turned up the news wherever I went — on the radio, the television, reading the papers, and more recently, catching up online.
So it is a vast sea change when I say out loud and in print that I cannot stand to hear the news any more. I have hit my threshold of tolerance for all the evil that man is capable of and all the atrocities that are being committed in every corner of the globe today. I heard a great line that described recent terrorists — that they have 7th-century ethics but are armed with 21st-century weapons. Yup. Medieval and inhuman.
I had once believed that man was on a one-way evolutionary path, that with every generation, every invention and work of art created, that we were evolving towards a pinnacle of our collective potential. So much for Pollyanna and her idealism. If anything, mankind is devolving into a baser form of what we are supposed to be. How else can you explain public beheadings caught on video and then posted for the world to see? How else can you explain assassinations of writers and artists who have the courage to speak their minds, and then are silenced for their audacity?
My morning ritual used to consist of getting my coffee and turning to my computer to catch all the latest headlines. I can pinpoint when my aversion to the news — once my bread and butter — began. It started with the beheading of James Foley last summer. It gained momentum with the ghastly murders that followed, and then, sprinkled into the stomach-churning mix, the bloodbath at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, punctuated by kidnappings by Boko Haram, and then even more beheadings, kidnappings, and unbelievable acts of man’s inhumanity against man.
There was another turning point: the revelations that Brian Williams, the once trusted voice and face of NBC’s Nightly News, was caught in a blatant lie about a story he covered, inflating his own role to make himself more heroic. What a jerk; what a traitor to the industry. There are those who think he should be allowed to return from his six-month suspension (without his millions of dollars in pay); I say throw him out.
Normally I am much more forgiving. However, there are so many journalists who work so hard to tell their stories with truth and courage, that Williams is a disgrace to the profession. He knew better. When the cult of personality becomes larger than your responsibility to tell the truth, it’s time to cut and bow out. Maybe there’s a hint of jealousy in my rigid, don’t-give-an-inch attitude, but the guy had one of the best jobs not just in television, but in almost any industry, and he blew it. Moreover, he sullied the reputation of a much vaunted news organization, one headlined by my childhood heroes, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, who anchored the flagship nightly newscast from 1956 to 1970.
My new listening choice is books on tape when I’m traveling by car, or Sirius XM radio where I can turn the dial from one decade to the next lickety-split, like a time traveler, popping out of one period of history into another. Not being fixated on the news is much better for my peace of mind, and I’m not missing it very much at all.
And now, for the second part of my diatribe and my word play on Wordsworth: the weather. The snow is too much with us; too much snow is with us. However you want to turn the phrase, it’s been a wicked winter, and we are all spinning dreams of spring in our heads.
Actually, having just finished major round two of digging my parents out of their northern New Jersey home, this winter has my father (and me) both wondering how long they can stay there, especially if weather like this continues. He would have moved into a condo years ago, but my mother, like a pioneer woman of old guarding the homestead (not armed with a shotgun, but she might as well be), refuses to leave.
It is my hope that she will be able to do as she wishes, but the future is not going to show us its cards any time soon. I will regard my snow adventures as opportunities to work out my arms, practice ice skating with boots, and have my mother feed me piping hot sweet potatoes and coffee when I am done.
