We have grown electronic ears....

Have you noticed that people seem to have grown electronic ears in the last 5 or so years. It's unusual NOT to see someone, either in your home, or on the street that doesn't have a pair of earphones sticking out of their ear or a bigger pair sitting on top of their head. People are involved in themselves. They have isolated themselves from the rest of the world and immerse themselves in music, television, or talking to a more favored person on the other end of a cell phone.

It was bound to happen. With more and more humans invading our space, we feel the physical boundaries that make us feel safe disappear. The earphones help us feel safe again, and isolated from the crowds of strangers... or even from our closest friends, or spouses.

It is a common thing in our household for me to talk to my wife for 2 or 3 minutes, and turn to hear the response, only to find her engrossed in a TV program, oblivious to my wisdom. I'll never be able to say it that well again... Then it gets even funny when we both wear headphones at the same time.. I'm listening to music and she is listening to one of the hundred or so murder/crime programs that are on TV(CSI New York, Las Vegas, Miami, St. Louis, etc....Murder He wrote.. The Unit...Criminal Minds, etc etc..) (I often wonder if she is slyly learning how to commit the perfect murder of her husband.) She might say something to me, which I'll ignore since I can't hear her, then she gets my attention, and by the time I have my headphones off to ask what she wants, she has hers on again... until we usually give up communicating or both take them off. (Gosh, two people in the same close space without headphones.. is that some kind of new age sex?)

Then, there are the times when you find something in a book, on the web, or in a movie that is really interesting and you turn to share it with your spouse and she (or he) has earphones on. You realize that they will have to pause the DVD, the TIVO, or iPOD, take the earphones off and ask you to repeat what you said, and what was to be an interesting but pretty much unimportant remark turns into a big deal... you feel like they might say or feel... "you interupted me for that comment... again?" So, we start to keep things to ourselves more and more. Not a great commentary on the future of marital relationships.

Of course, you can understand teenagers wearing them. Anything to muffle the sounds of parents fighting, or commanding them to do something undesirable (like everything) is understandable. I'm sure they have trouble talking with each other in the same way as adults do when wearing earphones. It must not bother them as much. It must be scary to go on a date and neither have earphones with them. (Do they do that?) Do teenagers call "unprotected sex" that sex they have without wearing earphones?

Of course, the most irritating place you see people with earphones is in a car on the freeway. You see them alone on the freeway, animated in a conversation, apparently with themselves and then you see the earphone and microphone. You wonder if they will see the car in front of them slow down, or quickly turn in front of you to make that left turn off the freeway they almost didn't see, or.. just driving too slow.

The most confusing is when I go up to a receptionist who appears to be looking at you, ready to greet you, and she starts talking.. "your red hair is really appealing, you should get it done again. Just let me know when and I'll go with you..." confused I say 'huh? I don't have red hair..miss, what are you talking about?'. "Oh sorry, I'm on the phone.. just a minute... gotta go Mabel, later.." No evidence of a phone, until you see the little tube coming out of her ear.

I have a suggestion. They should start making headphones with little microphones and transmitters so we can cut in on the material people listen to. That would be especially good at home. I can then override the kids or my wife's program material to announce.."you should hear this great piece by Glenn Miller..." Think of being able to actually talk to the driver next to you... (shiver!)

Maybe we will evolve to the place where everyone wears a headphone and microphone, kinda like you would wear glasses. You'd always be in touch... then again.. you could just not wear them and it might accomplish the same thing.

We are a species in need of constant stimulation it appears. Music pounding our ears, TV pulsing our eyes, vibraters shaking our skin, ATVs bouncing our brains against our skulls, etc.

Just to relax... what's that? Quiet? What's that? Calm, What's that...

Too Much News....

I've been off the Evening News routine for at least 5 years, actually it was the day that Bush was sworn in for President. I decided that to reduce my stress about Bush becoming Pres, I'd just not watch him. I've kept my word... except for a few times my wife had CNN on when I entered our RV.

I've been thinking a lot about the news. I do see a bit of stuff like Larry King Live, when my wife has it on, so I know a little about what's on. My feeling about the TV news programs is this: they are first, well-overdone, second, professionalized gossip, third, for the most part way too repetitious, even when the names of the victims changes, fourth, fear-inducing, nay-saying to the nth degree, and fifth (there are many more points), way too self-indulgent.

News is big business today. Not a way to inform us, but a way to provoke us and to sell us. Think about the last newscast you saw. Were you happy and content after watching it or did you want to strangle someone nearby, or send a package of white powder to the lastest power-grabbing corrupt politician? Did it inform you of the latest thing to beware of in your life, the latest reason to look over your shoulder, the latest scam to protect against and the latest chemical threat to your water supply that might happen... etc etc ad borum.....

The news scares us into buying things.. buying stuff for our homes to make it safer, buying things to carry with us to protect us in the event of a mugging, a person to hire to sue someone when they harm you, a person to vote for because he or she will protect you, etc, etc etc. We have a fear based economy. Just think about it, and look at the ads on TV to see which ones are based on rationale arguments for something you need, and which ones are just fear inducing.

I have a suggestion. If NBC wants to start to drag itself out of the rating doldrums, they should just give up the evening news and produce the best weekly news program possible, with a monthly one to summarize the months news.

Then, the little details of who shot whom, who cheated whom, what flood did what to whom where, etc would all start to sort themselves out into some reasonable priority.

Again, I have no hope that this would work. People generally want to hear gossip.. the more and the more often the better. It's better than engaging their minds in something creative and productive. Sigh... (again).

Death Valley perks me up (finally)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to drive from Pahrump, Nevada to Death Valley National Park to do some photography. I had been waiting for a good weather day before we packed up and left Nevada, but it wasn't going to happen, so I took what nature offered. The Morning was offered to me as partly but mostly cloudy, with rain approaching by afternoon. Well, I left early in the morning, (my time of day) and headed out of town (after a quick stop for a sinful taste of a McGriddle for breakfast). I was anticipating a day with nature's beauty and a day away from civilization.

My attitude quickly deteriorated as I drove past the structures that went for the town of Pahrump. First, 2nd rate casinos, then what seemed like miles of one-off little junky looking shops, and then the amazing variety of ugly homes with discarded automobiles in the front yard, punctuated by the occasional rotting motorhome or bus, trash everywhere, a wrecking service next to a neighborhood store, etc. I think what got me going the most was my view of the horizon beyond these unsightly human artifaces. It was so beautiful. The mountains in every direction presented a unique type of geology and form. The sky was blue and the clouds that were there seemed to be just right for photography. But, if I let my sight return to the road (which habit enforces), and the surroundings, I just couldn't avoid the negative thoughts about how little respect us humans (at least us Americans in the USA) have for the environment we inhabit. My thoughts briefly returned to the neat little homes in the villages of northern Europe. Rarely would you see anything (house, tractor, automobile, store, church) not still in use, productive and accentuated with a few flowers, even if it was 300 years old. People kept up their yards no matter what the "income level" of the neighborhood. You could tell there was a built-in pride of the people about where they lived.

I'm really not picking on Pahrump, Nevada. Riding around in our RV for almost 5 years, this is common all over the USA. Nevada tends to be a bit more "independent" in their approach to the environment. (Can you blame them when the US Government uses their state to blow up Nuclear bombs and wants to store the nation's Nuclear waste in their state?)

I guess what finally put me over the top in Pahrump was this home I passed built on the top front edge of a really nice butte jutting from the side of a mountain. The house was not well done and the yard and environs appeared to be pretty junky. Without the house and the human environs, I would have stopped to take a picture. This reminds me of several areas in Wyoming that have homes (some nice looking, and others with the junk cars, etc.) built at the base of beautiful red rock that normally would be part of a National park or State Park.

Where is the pride? Is it buried in years of treating the USA as a limitless frontier that can be trashed because there is so much of it? Does it stem from the same energy that makes us decide to build a building, spend maybe millions on it, only to tear it down when it doesn't seem to suit our whims or current business plan? Does anyone care about the natural resources we took from the Earth to build it? Does anyone care about the impact to the natural resources when we discard it? At times I think not... Does it have anything to do with our obscession with the fantasies on TV, the time we spend coating our brains with TV waves instead of creating something we might find some pride in? Even if TV were totally educational and positive (it isn't by a long shot), the time we spend letting others do our thinking amounts to vast years that could be put to something productive... OK.. I'm getting a bit off-base.

So.... I continued on the highway until suddenly, there were no more structures. Obviously, government owned land... then my spirits started to peak again, slowly as the mountains and landscape around me started to rise in a sudden drama that brought me to thinking about the eons of time they formed without human intervention and the stark beauty that only nature can serve up. My breathing slowed, a smile started to form on my face, and I was happy again. I stopped and took a panorama of a beautiful mountain range (of which there are many). I did have to walk a bit to eliminate the power lines that caused a momentary loss of my attention to the landscape, but as I got out a few hundred yards from the lonely highway... I even screamed a bit of thanks to the land. (with apologies to any of the nearby fauna).

The mixtures of colors in the exposed sides of the eroded mountains, the varigated lines tracing the history of the slow and steady mixing of Earths surface, the rocky, treeless landscape, and expansive white (salt) covered valley makes this place a rarity among National Parks. Needless to say, the beauty of Death Valley lifted my spirits and lasted at least until I returned home at the end of the day.

Whew... these blogs are good therapy to get some things off my chest.. even if no one else ever reads them.