The Drip, Drip, Drip of the News - Something Happened Pt. 2

Every day it's the same thing in the semi-darkness
just before dawn. Touch, but don't look.
I must save another newspaper for the day I "awake."

Each morning, as I go outside to retrieve the newspaper, I approach the rolled tube lying on the sidewalk with extreme care.

I usually get up at 5:30 a.m. and it's still dark, yet there is the porch light. This provides enough illumination to make it possible to see through the transparent plastic protective sleeve of the newspaper.

Without making out any of the specific words, I can sense that the headline on the front page has been an impressively large font size most every day this week.

Today I want to read. I want to find out what the world is, in effect, shouting about. Can't I "wake up" for just a minute or so? I swear after that I'll go back to being Van Winkled...

Then I remember my fresh vow.

My Recent Failures
In light of some recent news leaks that reminded me of the flawed nature of this project, I've decided to crank down on the news faucet. It wasn't that it was gushing. It was that I had allowed it to drip and dampen my potentially pristine ignorance.

Drip, drip, drip...little pieces of news were slipping into my life.

Here are three  items that have happened in the past few weeks that I'm not supposed to know about and how I came to come in contact with the "drips."

Could a birth certificate really be big news?

1 - President Obama "released" his birth certificate:
I learned this because one of the newspapers I'm stacking in the garage for future reference (after Sept. 11) was turned the wrong way and I glimpsed the main headline.

It only takes a second for a few key printed words to register in the brain.

Of course, this particular headline raises many questions that I assume readers know the answer to, but I don't...

How is it more than halfway into his presidency people are still talking about whether Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? What was released that wasn't released before? Why was it held back? Are the naysayers satisfied? Or has doubt gone mainstream? Is this a big news story or is it a sideshow circus?

2 - A tornado or tornadoes did major damage to Tuscaloosa, Alabama:
I know this because I was speaking to the woman who comes to clean our house. We were talking about the hail storm right here in our own town occurred on Easter afternoon. This was perfectly permissible because it's first-person local news, which is not banned by the Van Winkle Project.

But then she started telling me about her sister in Alabama and about the power plant that was destroyed and that there was no electricity for a huge swath of the state and that the president was headed there today...I couldn't stop her or stop my ears.

3 - There seems to have been a thing people call a "Royal Wedding":
Well, how was I not going to know that? For weeks there were pictures on magazines at the grocery store check-out lines. I had to assume some of them were not Global Lying Star inventions, but true. William really does love Kate! And, there was the main source of this unwanted information: people were talking about it.

And the bride wore what? I have no idea.

It should be noted that Americans sometimes have a conflict about the Brits. Should we really care about what their royals are up to?

So the conversation became, "Are you going to get up in the middle of the night to watch this wedding or do you think the whole royalty thing is a farce? I mean, the country is actually run by a parliament and the prime minister and what goes on at Buckingham Palace is sort of like the world's most expensive reality TV show that the rest of their nation pays the bill for."

That's the critique, but don't misunderstand (especially if you're from the U.K.). I'm sure England is a lovely country. It's just that between the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the U.S. some people (not all) seem to still hang on to their King George III hangover.

Know Any Good Plumbers?
The point of this post is that the news faucet continues to drip into my life. However, so far (knock on wood) it has never turned into a flood. I'm only slightly dampened (to keep pressing the metaphor to the point of screeching) with the minimal amount of knowledge. Apparently, I'm not good at this kind of "plumbing," so I have no certainty that I can ever shut it off completely.

I have to say it's much worse to know just a little than to know nothing. Even knowing that on May 1 "something major happened" destroys a chance at "blissful" ignorance.

I know, but I don't really know. And with incomplete knowledge lies the potential for worry and concern. Fear, even. What is waiting out there in the darkness? - V.W.

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Hit the Wall - Project's Over!

Let me begin by saying I'm not angry at the NYT.

I'm not going to blame the NYT. And I'm not posting this to diss the NYT.

But after what happened, I've reached my limit. I'm declaring an end to the Van Winkle Project.

I guess it's fair to say the NYT was the catalyst.

A Brief History of Times
I've always liked the Times. I read the Times when I was in college where it was dropped each morning with an emphatic slap on the hardwood entryway outside my dorm room while I still lay in bed. I groggily claimed those newspapers and leafed through their many, many pages.

Maybe Robert Redford reads the NYT,
but would Jay Gatsby?

Some people opine that the Times leans politically to the left, not in an up-with-the-proletariat fashion, but in way that represents the interests of the moneyed, ultra-educated, morally decadent elite.

If life were a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, some suspect  the self-made, romantic, sunny Reaganesque millionaire Jay Gatsby would get his news from Fox or the Wall Street Journal. The Ivy League, polo playing, adulterous Tom Buchannan would read the Times...

I don't know about that.

Frankly, my favorite part of the newspaper, at least on Sunday, has nothing to do with coverage of domestic politics. I love the Arts and Leisure, Book Review, Style, and Magazine sections. I want to read about Broadway shows, interviews with choreographers and movie directors,and learn what's turning heads in fashion. I dip into consideration of new novels and nonfiction. Such riches!

All of which will no longer be denied to me.

The Sudden Arrival of Excessive Angst
As if my deprivation hadn't already bad enough, the NYT went and did something on Monday and I'm collateral damage. They sent me an email with this heading:

Important notice about your New York Times subscription

Well, I had to open and read this email, didn't I? Maybe I owed them money.

That's not what the email was about. Instead, I was learning that something that had been bruited about for a long while was finally coming to pass:

     As of Monday, March 28, The New York Times
     is charging for unlimited access to NYTimes.com
     and our NYTimes apps.

I understood immediately Anyone wishing to read any Times material on-line beyond the home page is going to have to "pony up" and put some coins in the change jar.  This is a very BIG deal, I realize, to much of the world. In the balance rests the future of newspapers and how can they make money. On the other side there's readers who have had the equivalent of a free lunch all these years.

But guess what. That wasn't my problem and did not lead to my ensuing crumbling resolve to remain news-less.

You see, the Times' policy shift doesn't affect me. I already subscribe to the print edition of the Times on Sundays which means under the new regime I automatically get access to all on-line content without further charge.

Lucky me!

A message from the publisher...

My actual problem arose when I followed the email's suggestion at the end:

     P.S. For more information,
     click here
     for a message from Arthur O.
     Sulzberger Jr., publisher
     of The New York Times.

So I clicked. And I read, "Blah, blah, blah, this change...necessary...blah, blah, valued, subscribers, blah, blah...

THEN THIS:

    As you have seen during this
    recent period of extraordinary global
    news, The Times is uniquely
    positioned to keep you informed.

What! What's going on? I'm Van Winkled and that means I'm asleep and I'm not supposed to know about that. You pair the words "global" and "extraordinary" and what am I supposed to think?

All this is to say, to quote B. B. King, "You upset me, baby." The NYT got me agitated. It started me wondering and worrying.

And finally? I snapped like a stale pretzel that had lost all its salt.

All the News That's Fit to Ignore?
Of course, I have confessed on this blog that there have already been news "leaks." These have come from remarks that have dropped from the mouths of people in a public situation where I couldn't cover my ears in time or gracefully walk out, e.g. church.

Now, thanks to Mr. Sulzberger's way with words, I'm thinking there's likely more that I'm missing than I realize. Paradigm shifts? New generations arising? Old ones slipping away? The very planet groaning at its moorings?

I remembered that a friend emailed me mid-February and recalling his words added fuel to my emotional fires:

     All I can say is you picked quite a year to take a nap. You will never catch up.
    You will be reading books about this year not just newspapers.

I don't know what this is all about. I've begun to feel like a sort of dim bulb who is walking around faking his life, pretending that I know why people are acting the way they are these days. They seem a little bit bothered and distracted. Or is this just my imagination?

So if you were me, could you continue to go on?

Certainly not! I quit!!! - V.W.

Wait a minute. I just checked today's date. Delete the post title and most of the above paragraphs. April Fool's!

So I'm still "in." I'll find out about this extraordinary global stuff on September 11 as planned. But I just want to say to Mr. Sulzberger that when this project ends my subscription will be money well spent. I'm going to pig out on the news, so to speak. I hope, though, I don't get a stomachache - V.W. (for real)

On Not Being a "Blog of Note"

Are the folks at Blogger watching VWP? Not likely!

When I began this blog it was a logical way of keeping track of the mental and emotional ups and downs of my project of avoiding the news. I went into it mostly ignorant of the larger world of blogging.

At the same time I was excited by the opportunity to write in perhaps a new way in a medium that allowed me to combine pictures and words. As I saw it, I would be publishing my own digital magazine articles reflecting my life and my sensibilities.

Because this "blog-zine" is solipsistic at heart, i.e., about me, I initially never expected very many people to come to it, much less read it. Hugh Hefner has Playboy, Oprah has O, and I have VWP. Come on. There's no comparison! I do not have what one might call a "competitive lifestyle" that will attract avid, loyal readers.

But early on there was a surprise.

Blogger allows one to peer behind the scenes using the almost magical "Stats" tab. I could see how often people were coming to my site hour by hour. At first traffic was slow, but I never found myself staring at an insultingly flat line.

This is where I was tempted to become grandiose. My favorite writers seem to prove over and over that if you write well enough you can make almost anything interesting. And if it's interesting, people will find it and read it. That became my goal. I would write so well that I would magnetically attract more people.

I spent hours polishing my prose. Upwards of eight hours per post. And I began dreaming of becoming a Blogger "Blog of Note". If I achieved such an honor, perhaps my pageviews would spike in an Everest-like fashion.

At that point somebody needed to slap me. I was out of my mind.

WELCOME TO REALITY, VAN WINKLE
The growth in the blog phenomenon is stunning. According to the people who have the electronic means to achieve a rough count, in  2001 there were 2 million blogs. By 2005 we were up to 50 million. In 2009, according to BlogPulse, there were126 million blogs.

Take all the bloggers in the world...
try to fit them into the UK. Ugh!

This is more than three times the entire population of the United Kingdom.

Since the Van Winkle Project has placed me more squarely on the Web than ever before, I've become aware of just how widespread blogging is. There are blogs for everyone, including companies and corporations. When I tell people about my blog, they usually mention they started one, too. If I go to their blog and click on their "About Me", I often find that they're being modest: they've started multiple blogs to reflect different interests and audiences they want to address. 

So out of this rising number of blogs that has become an ocean of language and imagery, each week the wise, innovative, and very nice folks at Blogger (no, I'm not sucking up) choose a handful to join their "Blogs of Note" and  they post the links on Blogger In Draft.

If as a blogger you seek pageviews, becoming a "Blog of Note" is the equivalent of winning the lottery or lining up five cherries on the slot machine. When it happens, your pageviews and followers will jump as if a 9.0 earthquake has rocked the sensitive needle on the graph.

As I continued to fantasize about the Van Winkle Project becoming a "Blog of Note" (because no one had yet slapped me) I saw cause for hope. My Blogger data showed where my pageviews were coming from. What was this? Slovenia? India? Singapore? Columbia? New Zealand? Wow! Van Winkle had gone global!

Blogger's helpful visual about where people who have visited this blog are located.

The wheels began to spin in my mind. If I became a B.O.N., I could put it on my curriculum vita (this is the name the university world gives a "resume"). I could tell my friends! In the midst of his own newsless project, Van Winkle would have fabricated his own news!

                      

THE TANTALUS FACTOR
After a while I began to realize how out of reach the entire fantasy was. Blogs that are truly "of note" get as many pageviews in a day as I've accumulated in six months. Why movie critic Roger Ebert had 104 million pageviews in 2010! How many per day is that? Never mind; you do the math...

This is when I thought of Tantalus. He was the son of Zeus who was given special dining privileges and could eat nectar with the gods.

But one day he offended the gods (the accounts vary as to why). Because of this, Tantalus was perpetually punished in a most devious fashion.

He was placed in a locale where every time he tried to bend down and drink from a pool of water it receded. If he reached up to a tree to pick fruit, the wind blew the luscious, juicy orbs beyond his grasp.

He would always be close but never quite able to satisfy his basic desires.

From the tragedy of Tantalus we get the verb "to tantalize." It's a verb that applies to me. Every time I think of being a "Blog of Note" I am tantalized. It's a crazy way to live.

HOW NOT TO BE A "BLOG OF NOTE"
Rather than live a life of being constant, unfulfilled craving, I've decided I do not wish to attract mass followers by becoming a Blogger "Blog of Note." Should you blog from time to time and feel inclined to follow in Van Winkle's nearly invisible footsteps, here are four sound tips on how to achieve this kind of ideal non-recognition.

1 - Simply exist.
That's right. As soon as you create your blog you virtually guarantee that no one of significance, including Blogger, will get around to visiting you. There are way too many blogs out there.

2 - Have a laissez-faire attitude about graphic images.
Every time I upload an image to a post, Blogger gives me a message that some images are copyrighted blah, blah and I should take this into account. For that reason I prefer using my own photos, but frankly that's not always possible. If I violate anyone's intellectual property rights, I will cheerfully remove the image when they request. But this is the Web. Images are strewn like confetti in a wide city street. Who can resist picked up a few pieces? So my blog is not "pure." Can I still be a "Blog of Note"? Does Miss America have to be a virgin?

3 - Write posts that are more than a few hundred words in length.
This is a great way to guarantee that even if someone lands on your blog they won't read it. When they see that it will take more than a few seconds to find out what's there, they're on to the next website. I've decided because I'm a writer, what I have to do is write. I'm not going to write more than is necessary, but I'm not going to ration my words or truncate my thoughts any more than a composer would try to alter a twenty-minute sonata for piano forte to conform to the length and format of a cell phone ring tone.

4 - Start a year-long project.
Come on., Van Winkle. This has been done! No one likely cares about a year-long project unless one's life hangs in the balance. If a person wants to attract notice, he or she is better off blogging about popular niche subjects: music, movies, food, travel, crafts, hobbies, politics, pets, and pole dancing.

AT OCEAN'S EDGE...
At the Van Winkle Project I blog because I gotta blog. Each time I post I think of it as being like building a sand castle at the beach.

As I look up and down the beach I notice nearly everyone is building their own castles. But this is not about them or the rare visitor who strolls along and compares our sand castles and says one is "of note" and, by implication, the others are not. In the great scheme of things the incoming tide of time rolls over each person's castle and he or she must build/post a new one as soon as the tide goes out again.

So why do this? Because those ephemeral castles are are a result of one's best thoughts and creativity. Within the sandy digital walls I erect, I place the essence of my hands, breath and heartbeat and I communicate, "I'm alive. I was here." - V.W.





Get yours at Toysplash.com
and start digging...

  
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Our Readers Want to Know

As we move into the new year it seems like a good time to answer some of the imaginary queries in the Van Winkle Project's invisible mail bag.

To make the process as personal as possible, Van Winkle sat down and responded to each question which was presented to him by a Friendly Interlocutor (FI).

FI: Well, it's nice to finally meet you in person, but we have to say that we're a bit disappointed. You seem to prefer to remain anonymous as possible.

Oh, the bag? You want to know about the bag?

VW: Excuse me. Was there a question in there?

FI: We don't want to be rude or anything, but we can't help noticing you're wearing a paper bag over your head. We assume there's a reason you're obscuring your identity?

VW: It's a visual representation of the fact that the Van Winkle Project is about testing a concept. It's not about focusing on the quirks and the minutiae of a particular person.

FI: How so?

VW: To be Van Winkled, as we've been defining it at this blog, means to cut back on opportunities we're offered for taking in information about the world beyond our own immediate personal sphere. The goal is to  see if there are losses and if there are also gains. My point is: Any person could do this.

FI: All right, but how's it working out for you in particular?

I almost decided to stop this entire thing...

VW: A few days ago I almost decided to stop this entire thing.

FI: Really? Why?

VW:  Frankly, it sometimes feels like I'm not doing anything except inconveniencing my family. Several times a week I have to warn them not to talk about certain topics. Over the holidays I was at my father's house and, like a lot of older folks, he had the TV on much of the time. I found myself hanging back from him in case I might overhear something that constituted "news" on the TV. I should have been spending time with him.

FI: Are there other problems?

VW: Yes. I've invoked all these extreme precautions, but  I have a sense that so far I've only avoided news that was not of earth shaking or historical importance. It could be that I'm going to all this trouble and all that's happened since I went to "sleep" is that the other Bush daughter (what's her name?) has gotten engaged and the Obama girls and their mom harvested pumpkins from the White House organic garden.

FI: What makes you think that nothing "earth shattering" or "historical" has happened since you began this project on Sept. 11, 2010?

I don't see aliens in our midst.

VW: Well, we're all still here. I don't see aliens in our midst. The sky is very much in place rather than falling on us. Cars are going down the roads and obediently stopping at the red lights. The main thing is that Wal-mart has way more people in its parking lot than you'd ever suspect for a place with such an ill chosen name and Denny's is open 24/7 every day of the year. That's how I tell if America is breathing normally. I drive past Wal-mart and Denny's.

FI: So you'll continue the project? Why?

VW: I keep thinking that if I can make it until my cut-off date of Sept. 11, 2011, I'll be able to learn all kinds of cool stuff all at once. For starters I have a stack of newspapers and magazines that are growing out in the garage. Thinking of that sustains me like a person on a diet lives for the promise that when the diet finally ends he can celebrate by pigging out for a few days on mountains of food.

FI: A lot of the people we're pretending write to the VWP want to ask you this: Of all the varieties of news, weather, entertainment, and cultural events you've given up, what do you miss most?

VW: I miss my Sunday newspapers. I used to really look forward to paging through them. They're so thick and I loved looking at the ads that swell them up. I could curl up in a chair and spend a lot of time swimming in text and images.

FI: What do you miss second most?

I do miss the NFL games...

VW:  The NFL season. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I've discovered that there's something about seeing a green field with stripes on it and big men colliding with one another that defines part of the year for me. Take it away and the world seems a bit too quiet and empty. I miss the quarterback going back to throw the long bomb and the ball coming down toward the receiver's outstretched fingers. Such an unusual moment of grace in the midst of brutal violence! To not get to see that is like being told you can't go to museums and look at the Rembrandts and Vermeers.

FI: Hmm. We doubt the NFL Marketing Department has ever thought of it that way. Let's move on to a question near the top of the invisible mail bag: What's the biggest surprise of the project?

VW: That people I'm around hardly ever have to be warned not to say something that will prove to be a "spoiler." It's not just out of consideration for me and what I'm doing. It seems that people simply aren't discussing the news as much as I expected. Of course, this is one of the pieces of evidence that has led me to suspect that not much has happened since I went to "sleep." Of course, I could be wrong. Am I wrong?

FI: We won't answer that, but it does occur to us to bring up the subject of temptation.

VW: Do you want to know if I try to get little hints about the news from people?

FI: More. One reader is asking that if it's possible that when no one is looking you go out to the garage and read your saved newspapers or if you listen to news radio when you're alone in your car. Therefore you actually might be faking your newsless state to draw attention to yourself?

VW: Of course I could be doing that. Scripting my own reality show. But I'm not. That would require a whole layer of unnecessary of complication and I don't like complicating tasks more than necessary. It would also be perverse. I'm not a perverse person. In fact, I used to have a T-shirt that said that: I'M NOT PERVERSE.

FI: You did?

I know this is going to sound very egocentric...

VW: No. But it would make a wonderful T-shirt. Only problem is I consider T-shirts, to be a rather perverse way of communicating with society at large.

FI: You could wear the T-shirt and it could be ironic?

VW: Hey, you're right! Are people still doing irony?

FI: Sorry. We can't reveal that. Besides, I think we're getting off-topic. Let's return to the invisible mail bag. One reader is wondering if you could guess what is the most important thing happening in the world as we straddle the line between 2010 and 2011?

VW: Right now?

FI: This very moment.

VW: I know this is going to sound very egocentric, but I'm getting concerned about how hot it's become beneath this paper bag.

FI: Oh, the issue of global warming?

VW: No, the issue of Van Winkle warming.

FI: If you don't mind we have one Barbara Walters' style question we'd like to end with.

VW:  Is Barbara still alive and well?

FI: We're not at liberty to divulge that either.

VW: Shucks.

FI: So, if Barbara Walters were here, she might want to know: Supposing Van Winkle were a potato chip, what kind would he be? Sour cream, barbecued, ridged, or plain?

VW: Tell Barbara that Van Winkle is the potato chip that fell on the floor. It doesn't matter what kind of chip he is, only that he's still around after the party is over. Happy New Year. See you in 2011!

My First 100 Days

Several times a week I'm asked by people who know of the Van Winkle Project a general question: "So how's it going?"

I appreciate the interest, but it's a difficult question to field. Even at this major milestone in the project as I glance to the right and look at my "Time Remaining Before I Awake" counter and notice that it's fallen below 265.

Hurray! I've just put in my first 100 days.

Feeling Presidential
Ever since FDR took office in 1933 and followed with a quick whirlwind of economic moves designed to keep the nation from sinking deeper into the Great Depression, the first 100 days have been scrutinized whenever a new president assumes office. The thought is that if some remarkable achievements are made during that time, it bodes well for the remainder of the 4-year term. Conversely, failures in the first 100 days could doom the presidency.

The historical record doesn't necessarily bear out such simplistic sentiments.

There's a website that tallies significant presidential 100-day accomplishments, starting with FDR up through George W. Bush. Below is a partial snapshot of the wonderful graphic: you'll find there

When I look at the complete chart I notice presidents who began inauspiciously, ugly, or even with a near disaster, but then they had later successes, and often they were re-elected:

• John Kennedy presides over the Bay of Pigs debacle, the failed U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba.
• Richard Nixon orders the bombing of Cambodia.
• Ronald Reagan is shot by John Hinckley on Day 70.

Then there were presidents who generated 100-day excitement and later circumstances thwarted their agendas or damaged their reputations: 

• Gerald Ford declares war on inflation.
• Jimmy Carter makes moves to address the U.S. energy problem.
• George W. Bush places large tax cuts before Congress which will soon pass, even though the experts say he lacks this the needed political power since he is the winner of an election that had to be decided by the Supreme Court.

In reality, presidential 100 days are a lot like the NFL preseason. A team can lose most of those games (which don't count) and still end up in the Super Bowl. Or they can win them all and stumble once the regular season begins.

Of course, the Van Winkle Project isn't really about doing, so much as it's about not doing (i.e., refusing access to information about what's going on in the world politically, economically, and culturally). This makes it hard to offer up my own sort of 100-day accomplishment report.

  

Van Winkle Accomplishes Nothing
When I judge the success of my first 100 days (and try to answer that pesky opening question), I realize that the standard of looking at what I haven't done casts everything in an unusual light. A successful 100 days of "sleep" for me means that I've truly kept myself in the slackest intellectual state imaginable. To do this, I have to daily pare back my natural curiosity with the equivalent of a sharp knife.

For the most part I have succeeded. There have been a few leaks that I didn't step out of the way of in time, and a couple of times I was weak, put down my knife, and gave into temptation and read a newspaper headline or glanced up at a scroll on a screen tuned to the news in a public place.



Don't get between Van Winkle and his knife!

On the other hand, I really have no idea who is going to make the NFL playoffs, what movies are in theaters, what President Obama's approval rating is, what the Republican-Democratic make-up of Congress will be for the next two years as a result of the mid-term elections, what the unemployment rate is, whether there have been any hurricanes, or if any famous people have died. And there's probably more that's happened that I can't even imagine, right? Wait. I'm picking up my knife. Don't tell me.

So to convince myself, as much as anyone, that my first 100 days have proceeded pretty much according to plan, I prepared a chart.

Mandatory essentially meaningless graphic

 My 100 Day Failures
As the above chart shows, I had some moments when the news leaked through or I weakened and brought some of it into my life.

1 - I found out about the rescue of the Chilean miners because I was reading our son's school newsletter and there was a headline about it. I was shocked. The last I heard was that the miners would be out "sometime before Christmas." I still have no idea how they were rescued so relatively quickly.

2 - After the mid-term elections, I really started itching for political news. I'd see headlines with the word "Obama" in it and then another with the word "tax." I eventually pieced together that the president was working, with difficulty, to get Congress to pass a tax bill before they adjourned.

3 - I went to get a haircut last week at Sports Clips. What could I do. The place has "sports" in its name because it's thought that a good way to get men to patronize anything is to offer them sports. So every screen, even on a Monday morning, is tuned to ESPN. I sat in my chair and I closed my eyes, but I still heard the post-Sunday analysis of the end of Brett Favre's "streak" of playing in 297 consecutive games. I know now that his shoulder hurts and his throwing hand is still numb and that he's never taken that bad of a hit in all his years of playing. It's likely the end of the road for the 41-year-old who, in football terms, played just about forever.

It hurts, bro.

How Do You Spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S?

Another measure of success beyond the quantitative (how successfully I avoided any kind of news information) is the qualitative. I think when people ask me, "How's it going?" this is what they're getting at. They want to know how I'm feeling--and holding up.

Here's a list of feelings I've experienced. They run the gamut as at different times I've felt:.

• Lonely
• Free
• Weird
• Fake (like I'm not really missing anything)
• Pretentious
• Relaxed
• Anxious (what's going on out there!)

For the most part there have been benefits to this project, some of them unexpected. I'm thankful for that because, otherwise, it would be difficult to face the fact that I'm still less than a third of the way done with my newsless regimen.

• I have a bit more time each day.
• I have no opportunities to think hyper-critically about current events or the cultural landscape or to get up on my soap box and rant about them.
• I've written 38 posts which is excellent practice at what amounts to a whole new genre of writing, blogging, which I now know has its own needs and demands.
• I've had a chance to exercise my sense of humor when I write.
• I now have a better idea of what others are doing in the blogosphere, which is humbling because there's SO MUCH out there, and the blogs that are good manage to be shockingly original in the midst of the overall blog glut.
• Close to home, where most of my "news" now takes place, I've noticed more than ever before what I can only call "everyday wonders."

Thrilling Conclusion

I'm going to hang in there even though I'd really like to flip on the TV and catch some NFL or NCAA heroics before the seasons end or I'd love to go to a new movie or read a review of a book that just came out. Oh well. I'll try to accentuate the positive. If I get a tax cut when I go to fill out my taxes in 2011, it will be like a second Christmas. I won't know about it until Turbotax tells me. Still, I wonder how much it might be? A few hundred dollars? Five hundred? A thousand? Oh, someone help me! - V.W.

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Pass the TV and the Cranberry Sauce

Rabbit ears...they're so 20th century!

For the second time since I began this project I left town.  (see Review of Room 202 post for first instance).

This time my wife, son, and I drove four hours to reach an idyllic country-side setting for the Thanksgiving hoiday. Both of these experiences tempted me to be exposed to all sorts of news, weather, sports and entertainment in the most powerful way. The accommodations offered cable/satellite TV.

Back home we remain an over-the-air, rabbit ear TV-type family. It's almost like being electronically Amish. After all, according to statistics, somewhere between 70-90% of TV watching households have cable these days. Never mind. Being in the minority doesn't bother me most of the time. We are already so little inclined to watch TV that it's hard to imagine how more channels would improve things. Still, whenever I travel and I come across a cable source, I like to channel surf and see what I might be missing.

So I watched some TV...go ahead, sue me!

This time, with the Van Winkle Project hanging in the balance, it was more risky.

First came episodes of Mythbusters. That was okay, I guess, because you can't tell which are new episodes and which not, and none of it told me anything that updated what has come to pass in the world since I became Van Winkled on Sept. 11. The main thing was that the show was enjoyable. How can you not want to know what happens when Jamie and Adam ignite one million matchheads?

A rerun of The Incredibles, was fine, too. An old movie, already saw it. But I have to say that when no one was around I did something a little more dicey.

I got busy with the remote.

"...incentives!"

Within a few minutes I saw Sarah Palin's now familiar bespectacled, lipsticked image in front of an Alaskan backdrop. My nostalgia for my days living in the 49th State or something must have kicked in and I stopped. I listened to her for thirty seconds.

The former half-term governor said that what made America "great" was "incentives." She said the current administration was "deincentivizing" everyone. Okay, did I learn anything newsworthy from Ms. Palin and violate the terms of the Van Winkle Project? Not so much. I moved on, still feeling almost as pure as the fresh fallen Alaskan snow.



Don't worry. The air force jet is NOT cleared for take-off.

 More danger lay ahead, though. On a Fox channel Bill O'Reilly was interviewing our most recent former president whom I remembered had a memoir scheduled to come out after I went to "sleep."

I listened to O'Reilly's question, something about the Iraq surge being the correct strategy...

I clicked the remote. Safe again!

Surfing, I saw a lot of Nikon ads
starring you know who...

Of course, E! was dangerous, but ten seconds of listening to it and I realized my celebrity IQ is so low I don't even recognize most of the names. I'm still stuck back in time when Demi Moore is the world's most sought after actress, Bruce Willis has hair (and  a wife named "Demi"), and a kid named Ashton Kutcher is wearing diapers.

After I got past those channels I was pretty much a free man. I forwarded myself through a blur of football games without even being able to identify who was on the field.

I did notice from commercials that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and a movie called Love and Other Addictions are coming to a theater near you, but that's all I know about them.

In the end I emerged from my cable spree with my window on the world still fairly tightly shut. I don't even know how the Black Friday sales went other than the first-hand evidence when we went into the nearby town in the afternoon and rubbed elbows with the crowds happily rubbing elbows as they wound through the little gift shops and fingered jam jars and enough Christmas paraphernalia to celebrate the holiday into the next millenium.

My ignorance more or less intact, I felt like an alchoholic that had strolled into a bar and made it out without doing any more than inhale the fumes. I had proved just how resolved I was to remain Van Winkled.

Disincentivized by Cable TV

My holiday cable browsing showed me something else. I was reminded once again why cable and I never got together on permanent basis.

I remember the days when cable was a new product and touted as 1) offering perfect reception and 2) being commercial free. We know how Number 1 turned out. A joke. In fact, in 1996 a movie could be made, The Cable Guy, and everyone immediately knew just from the title that it was a comedy. As for being commercial free, that visual Eden didn't last long before there came the Fall courtesy of Madison Avenue.

Still, cable was a place where initially one could watch movies that had appeared in the theaters. This was good if you missed them when they came out or wanted to see them again. Thus we had HBO and Cinemax as raisons d'etres. Then along came the VCR. Cable lost another advantage.

Ted Turner was one of the saviors of cable. He came up with the idea of around the clock news and CNN was born. The arrival of MTV in the 1980s gave cable another distinctive.

Eventually cable would discover that it could succeed by offering niche programming. Cable, unlike network TV which tried to have something to appeal to most everyone in the room,  would be almost like a place where you could shop for the television equivalent of a magazine devoted to your special interest. Entire channels for people who were into home decor and remodeling, channels about food, channels about history, channels about animals, channels about fashion and celebrities, not to mention channels for kids and sports fans.

They could also spend big bucks and produce original series and movies the same as the networks or Hollywood. Shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Madmen, and others have led some critics to assert that cable have given us a "new golden age of TV." And perhaps they have a point. Such shows take on mature themes, enough money is spent that the production and design are on the level of a major film release, and the series format allows for character development on par with what we find in great novels.

Isn't it about time
I got one of these, i.e., TV on Viagra?

So finally there ought to be enough reason for me to sign up for Dish or Satellite Network and get one of those cool looking devices ornamenting the brow of my roof? Even the commercials ought not to hold me back. Another innovation, called the digital video recorder, takes care of that. I can record shows and fast forward past the commercials.


But I still don't feel compelled to join the majority. The whole subscription thing feels wasteful and time consuming like being forced to buy an entire store's inventory when you actually only want a handful of items. Or it's like having to own the whole library when you're only interested in certain books in certain sections of the library. I think I await the day when all TV content arrives from the Internet and everything is on demand. I want to see what I want to see at a given moment and I don't even want to catch a glimpse of the dross, which for me and Bruce Springsteen ("57 Channels and Nothin' On" 1992) is about 98%.

I'm honest enough to admit, however, that there is a down side.

I will continue to miss serendipitous moments where I press the channel advance and hit the high crest of a video cable surf moment that can tell me so much about the state of American culture such as...

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may
have a "situation" on his hands...

- Snooki and The Situation and the cast of Jersey Shore preparing to ring the New York Stock Exchange opening bell (here) while great economic minds wonder whether this will send a signal to the global markets to rise, fall, or belch.

- Finding out whether Adam Richman on Man vs. Food can really eat the flame-throwing Bushido's SpicyTuna Roll without smoke coming out his ears or (more likely) going to the emergency room.



You call it "little," I call it "giant"!

 - Watching a guy named Hal Wing on an infomercial for the multi-functional Little Giant stepladder showing me how to set up the ladder to hang a painting over the mantel while simultaneously drawing a blank on the name for a fireplace hearth and, adeptly, last second, like a a true pro, calling it "that elevated area in front of your fireplace." (I have to say the Little Giant looked like a pretty great invention, especially if I were to have go way up high on my roof to fix a shingle and change a light bulb in the living room all on the same day.)

Oh, yes. I don't mind doing this kind of labor intensive watching for an hour at a time, twice a year when I'm on vacation. It's only afterwards that I become troubled. Who is really asleep? Van Winkle? Or is it the version of me reclined on the couch, staring at a screen, making thumb twitches in the direction of the remote every couple of minutes? I'm all the way up to Channel 99 and I'm still trying to decide if this much TV is good or bad. 

I do know one thing, though. A Little Giant could sure make decorating the Christmas tree next week a breeze... - V.W.


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Van Winkle Goes Wild

Well, I made it this far. I have crossed the big "3-0-0 days to go" signpost, as you can see from the counter on the right.

At this point I have to report that honestly this project is becoming harder every day. I'm starting to have two to three second lapses when I allow myself to read a headline here or there.This is bad because it just makes me want to know more.

The latest instance happened when the newspaper was lying open on the kitchen counter and my eyes fell upon...
  

I swear I only read the headline!

 
I thought, "You know, it wouldn't really hurt to read Will's column to get a very brief summary of how the mid-term elections went. And then he'll go on to predict what will happen in the wake of the elections and that's not really news, it's just speculation."

I started building a case for George Will. He's not so much an ideologically-driven conservative as just a very skeptical thinker whose worldview centers upon the belief that almost anything humans attempt to do they will muck up; therefore, they should be discouraged from organizing and attempting grandiose reforms or projects, especially when it comes to that large entity we call "government."

And I've always appreciated that Will has a formidable vocabulary and knows his history and when it comes down to it the only thing he really believes offers redemptive value for humanity is baseball.

So I should check out what George Will has to say...

No way. I can't!

But I already did, or at least I had read three words, and now I couldn't get them out of my head. The transformative election. The political landscape had changed while I was "asleep." My own speculation was ready to start up like a rusty machine thrown into gear and and dying to clank back into action.

Further Symptoms of Personal Regression

The other sign that I'm not handling my news deprivation well is that I try to quiz people in a sneaky fashion in order to peck at a pathetic news crumb here or there.

The other night my wife and son came to the dinner table beaming because they had seen quote unquote "one of the best pieces that has ever been broadcast on the evening news." It was on CBS, they said and it was almost like a mini-documentary. It was at least twice as long as the usual evening news segment.

They were wondering if they could at least tell me what it was about because most of it was centered on the past, i.e., history. Then they remembered there was one current event aspect to it. They whispered to each other. Tell him or not? Conference conclusion: Not.

I went nuts! Tell me, tell me!

They refused. Likewise I couldn't pry any information loose when our son began talking about a TV commercial for something that he said might be "a game changer."

"What is it?" I demanded. "A piece of new technology? Improved laundry detergent? You should at least tell me the category. I mean, game changer is not a word to be thrown around lightly."

"Sorry, Dad."

Sorry indeed. This is when a fantasy occurred to me.

Van Winkle Goes Wild

I get myself a mask and a cape and...I become the News Peeper.

In the early morning, before the sun rises, I go out onto the lawns and slip newspapers out of plastic sleeves and read them. Then I put them back so no one knows.

During the day I'm passing by offices and leaning in doorways to see if I can overhear a radio or TV or YouTube video playing.

At dinnertime I'm edging along the neighbors' flowerbeds until I find an open window through which I can glimpse...the evening news!

Later that night I'm seen standing outside the cineplex, reading all the film titles and looking at the movie posters, jotting down information.

My sickness is such that I won't admit to myself what I'm doing. I'm cheating on my project. I might as well go all the way and turn on the TV at home, read my own newspaper, surf the Internet all I wish.

Instead, I creep, I peep. If you see me out there, someone please get me some professional help. But please don't unmask me. I don't want the neighbors to know... - V.W.

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I Swear It Was An...

If for some reason it’s been important to you that the news and you remain total strangers for about a month, here’s a spoiler alert.


Don’t read further. You’re about to find out what I just learned.

Notes From Under Ground

Really, I was trying to be a good parent. Our son’s school sent us an electronic school newspaper. The email note to which the PDF version of the publication was attached said it was a pretty big deal for the kids because it had been some years since the school had a venue for students to practice journalistic skills.

So I thought okay and I finally got around to downloading the thing. I felt unconflicted as far as the Van Winkle Project went. From the beginning local news has been declared “legal” for me whenever it is delivered from first-hand witnesses. So I'm thinking there should be no problem in letting the students tell me about what’s been going on at their school, right? It will be good for me to know what’s happening on campus.

I was just scanning the document, bumping up against and bumping beyond a bevy of headlines about football, volleyball, new additions to the art room, comparing and contrasting social networks (yawn), and then I reached page three. Wait a minute! I was suddenly staring at the blatantly verboten. A headline about world news. I was stunned. A publication for a school of 300 was for some reason deeming it apt to report on events in a foreign country nearly 5000 miles away. There it was in hard, cold print:

Chilean Miners Rescued 

In a Miner Key

That’s all I read. But the damage was done. I had planned to blog about the miners still being underground since the rescuers weren’t supposed to have a way out prepared until around Christmas. Last I had heard on Sept. 11 before I went to “sleep was that they were okay, but it was important that they exercise. Also, some of them might have to lose weight to be pulled up the narrow hole that was being drilled through a half mile of rock. I thought I’d offer some suppositions about how they might be passing the time.

- Card games, including Chilean Hold 'Em?

- Watching Three's Company reruns on small TV lowered down to them?

- Finally time enough to read Proust's Au Recherche de Temps Perdu?

- Writing screenplay about their adventure, Big Misters No Sunshine?
- Sweatin' to the Oldies?

And I’d wonder too if it might be possible to get wi-fi half a mile beneath the surface of the earth. (Preliminary answer to my own question: Probably not or Starbucks would have already opened in mines.)

I recognize that’s all a lost opportunity, but at least I learned a lesson from this. Assume nothing. Stay away from all publications. I don’t even trust the church bulletin or the KFC coupons that come in the mail.

And I’m left to wonder. How did they get the miners out so fast? It must have been exciting, right? Were BP execs there taking notes on how to deal quickly and efficiently with the aftermath of a disaster and do it way ahead of schedule? Inquiring minds want to know these things. But don’t tell me. I’ll find out the details in about, let’s see, nine months. Oh my. Anyone seen my deck of cards? - V.W.

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