A New Literary Analysis of Rip Van Winkle

Now that Phase I of the Van Winkle Project has ended--avoiding the news--I'm in the midst of Phase II. In this effort I'm  somewhat like my literary inspiration, Rip Van Winkle.

Since 12 months was long enough for me to forget all the details of Washington Irving's account, I combed the house until I found my nice little copy of Three Tales with its handsome, vintage illustrations.

I wanted to read  the ending again and make sure I had it right in my memory.

I especially wanted to revisit how Rip deals with a flood of new information (America had become an independent nation during his sleep) and how he spends his days once he's newly awakened.

It turns out that Rip wakes to a sort of personal paradise.

As I read the full account I learned that twenty years is sleeping and aging and being completley out of it brings with certan advantages.

Because Rip is old no one expects him to contribute.

In addition, his nagging wife has burst a blood vessel and died years ago. She will never again critique his behavior or nag, nag, nag.

For the first time ever, Rip can truly be himself unimpeded and enjoy life as never before.

Set Free
Have I arrived at a "happy age" like Rip Van Winkle? Well, our cases are both similar and different. I have no nagging wife. Rather than wishing her away, I am proud of the fact that my wife has been with me this entire time. She endured my project heroically, even during those early days in May when she was dieing to tell me that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

What I realize, though, is that I did have another version of a nagging wife living with me. For decades. A nagger par excellence. This other wife of mine has a name.

The news.

You see, one can read this little story as something of a parable. It breaks down like this:

There's something that bothers a person greatly in life. It hounds them. Then one day a wonderful thing happens. They accidentally escape it in an unexpected way (in Rip's case a magic nap). When they come back to their old life everything is new and better. All it takes is TIME.

Let's give this gradual de-toxing phenonomenon a name: The Rip Van Winkle Effect (RVWE)

How the RVWE Works For Me
Compared to before, my life now seems largely quiet and peaceful. The news doesn't have the hold on me that it once did.

I don't hear that nagging voice saying, "Check online and see what's happened in the last hour," or "You've got to watch the evening news every night, every minute of it" or "Read the newspaper as soon as you bring it in in the morning."

Nag, nag, nag.

And I used to obey. I was afraid I'd miss something I needed to know. But I realize the truth now. It wasn't about need. It was habit.

My news habit seems to have been burst its own blood vessel and gone away.

I realize, of course, that bad habits can return. In stressful times ex-smokers scrounge a butt and light up. Yesterday, habit returning, I said, "Hey!" to someone in the hallway after vowing weeks ago that such a low-grade greeting would never cross my lips again [See: Andy Rooney's Eyebrows: A Mini-Rant]

I'm hoping for the best this time. That I can model myself on Rip.

I especially like the bit where we're told he makes friends "among the rising generation." Whenever I have hope for the future, it almost never comes from anything I read or hear in the news. It comes from the young people, especially my students.

What else can I learn from the Rip Van Winkle Effect? That eventually all things pass. What I wring my hands over today at some point will simply be history and have an end date placed on it.

• The bad economy
• Global terrorism
• Mideast unrest
• Famines in Africa
• Assorted annoying people, both public and private
• Unfortunate musical styles and fashions

Yes, I may actually outlive the popularity of Justin Beiber, Snooki, and too many movies based on comic book heroes! However, I'm not naive. I know what any intelligent person is thinking. My list of "wish-it-weren't-so's" will be replaced by new ones. No matter how long one waits, true paradise never arrives.

Though it's no solution to try to sleep through all the bad stuff, I now believe it might not be a bad idea to take more short news naps than the nagging voice in one's head says is socially acceptable. Accrue some RVWE.  If upon waking the bad news hasn't gone away, at least it will be more distant.

It seems to have worked for me.

LAST THING: In case anyone is wondering, I don't plan to neglect the other aspect of the ending of Rip Van Winkle:

"It was some time before he...could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor."

For the foreseeable future this blog will be my "bench at the inn door." I'll lounge here and idly chat and share my reactions to old news. Not that anyone cares. I'm just an old guy who is behind the times.

Still, I figure if I'm going to live on the same planet as everyone else it might be a good idea to at least get back into "the regular track of gossip." Next time someone says "Super Committee" or "Michelle Bachmann" I'd like to know what they're talking about. - A.H.

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Glory on the Gridiron (The Day After)

I just went one year without any NFL football. No preseason, no 16-game schedule, no playoffs, no Super Bowl.  As Van Winkle, I "slept" through it all.

To some this might sound like a hardship. But here's the deal...

I'm not that monster-size football fan that almost single-handedly supports the beer companies and cable TV. You know the type. He has to know the results of all the games and he watches three games on Sunday and doesn't miss Monday or Thursday nights either.

And he is a he.

Still, I dabble in football-watching the way I dabble in other things. I show up in front of the TV screen at opportune moments, hoping to be rewarded by some feat between the hash marks that suddenly shoots adrenaline to my brain, which then tells my vocal cords and tongue to go to work:

"HEY! DID YOU SEE THAT! IT WAS UN-BUH-LEEEV-ABLE!"

Which is what happened in the fourth quarter of the Oakland at Buffalo game yesterday.

I was semi-watching (okay, dabbling massively) on the couch, trying to mark a few student assignments from my Fiction Workshop. I had already seen the J-Lo Fiat commercial three times too many. This ad heralds the coming of a teeny-tiny but cool two-door car to America.

Ms. Lopez, so made-up and digitally retouched that she more resembles a polished piece of plastic than human flesh, overshadowed the whole thing. Especially when I made the mistake of turning off the mute and I heard the singing. Cue the robots, please...

'PLEASE! BACK TO FOOTBALL!"

There...that's better.

One thing I realized after no TV for a year is how eye-poppingly great HD TV looks when one is watching the action unfold on the field. Whenever there was a close-up on a player I could see the sparklies in the silver paint of the Raiders' helmet. Grass stains on pants. Fantastic detail on the tattooed biceps.

Football is eye candy.

Since I had missed 3/4 of the game I didn't know that the Raiders (8-8 last year) had blown a 21-3 halftime lead. The plucky Bills, who many said were better than last year's dismal team that lost their first 8 games before going 4-4, were on a tear with three unanswered touchdowns.

Then I woke up on the couch. This is one of those moments when all the dull penalties, the runs up the middle for no gain, the worse than useless necktie comentating, and even those interruptive J-Lo moments go away.

Buffalo has just scored minutes earlier to go ahead 31-28. The Oakland quarterback drops back and he heaves a pass 50 yards. Churning toward the goal line is rookie Denarius Moore. Mr. Moore has two Buffalo defenders on him. He gets a step on one, the other is gnawing his collar bone as he goes up and snags the ball and falls into the end zone with the defender atop him. Mr. Moore lands holding the ball.

Amazing catch! Oakland scores!

But we're not quite finished because the Bills will march down the field, helped by foolish Oakland face masking and pass interference penalties. The Bills will survive a fourth and 3 on the Oakland 24 yard line and at that point I knew they weren't going to be denied.

Sure enough they scored with 16 seconds left. There was time for three more Raider plays. The last one (6 seconds remaining) was a Hail Mary heave into the end zone. Multiple hands belonging to three Bills and one Raider grasped in the air for the ball. As they came down it appeared that both a Bill and a Raider were holding the ball? No. When they hit the ground, Buffalo had intercepted. End of game. Bills win it 38-35.

Is this a typical NFL game? Hardly. But it does represent the kind of sports drama I missed out on last season when I was Van Winkled.

Yesterday's game reminds me why I'll always watch some sports. Unlike the rest of the news, sports are reliable. If you watch enough games, something GOOD, something memorable, something that makes you for a moment feel "Yes!" always happens.

The rookie makes the impossible catch!

Maybe there are other ready-made communal spectacles that can reliably deliver this kind of thing, but right now, the morning after my Sunday "fix," this guy is having a hard time thinking of any.

Football, baseball, basketball, golf. All of them offer a peculiarly American Sunday afternoon liturgy. The people show up and watch the ritual performed over and over again. They know that at some point it's quite likely they will briefly touch the transcendent. When that happens they find themselves cheering for something beyond their smallish, seemingly insignificant lives.

I know exactly what it feels like.

And, if I partake via TV, all this comes with minimal or no cost to me, other than time invested. It seems like a pretty good deal...

That's why I'm not surprised that so many people worship in front of large screens, and the stadiums dwarf our churches. And heaven? Isn't that another name for making it into the end zone? Nothing but net from outside the arc? Home run in the bottom of the ninth? The eighteeen foot putt?

Maybe not. You see, it's all so brief. And in the end it may not work out like you expected. Ask Denarius Moore, ask the Oakland Raiders. I think those gentlemen will tell you. - A.H.

Sorry, Denarius. Even though you pointed heavenward and the score changed
seconds later to OAK 35 BUF 31, your team went on to lose.

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News of the Lowercase "m-e"

Twenty years later he awoke and went home.
"The Return of Rip Van Winkle" by John Quidor

Hello. My name is Albert Haley. I live in Abilene, Texas, where I am a writer and teacher of creative writing at a local university.

For the last year I've been de-emphasizing my identity, particularly on this blog where I once even went so far as to interview myself with a paper bag over my head. [See post.]

To all my kind readers, accidental, and otherwise, I remained Van Winkle. I signed my posts V.W.

Today I am not going to suddenly open up and invoke a cult of personality, but I will cease to remain in the awkward stance of an anonymous person engaged in an odd (and difficult) project of trying to avoid all news, sports, entertainment, and weather.

The person who thought it would be interesting to try to become a modern-day Rip Van Winkle has awakened. Albert Haley is now roughly like everyone else.

Except I'm starting to wonder after what I've done to myself if I really am.

Hangovers and Pummelings
Although it was a relief for my project to finally end last Sunday, Sept. 11, and thus be able to abandon the daily vigilance required to make sure I didn't overhear or glimpse news, it was the oddest thing to dive back into current events.

I found myself faced with the first newspapers I'd looked at in one year. [See: Sleeping Professor Wakes, Slowly Wades Back into the News]

I began with a weary sounding and downbeat headline story about the U.S.'s latest trillion dollar deficit and what must be done to trim federal spending.

It was clear from both the tone and content of the story that many people have been discussing this for some time. But I don't remember debt reduction being a front-burner issue when I went to "sleep" one year ago.

I thought then of how when Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle closed his eyes in the famous story there were union jacks waving in the breeze. He awoke to find a piece of red, white and blue cloth with stars on it raised in their place. "How did that happen?" he wondered.

I have a similar reaction after being debriefed  by family and friends and learning of Arab revolutions, terrible disasters, partisan vitriol, Congressional paralysis of action, and an economy that seems to be on life support. In addition, I gather that America has gone from having the equivalent of a neutral expression of patience on Uncle Sam's face to a full-blown frown that borders on "Holy Moley, what am I going to do now?"

Intellectually, as I continue "back reading" from my pile of saved newspapers and Newsweeks stored in the garage I can understand the current gray mood. A lot of tough stuff is buried in those pages in the garage.

Still, I don't feel any of this strongly myself. I think it's because my emotions haven't been run through the news ringer of having actually lived through any of it and (here's the big thing) I refuse to force feed myself 365 days of mostly bad news all at once.

Someone in the news business wrote to me the other day warning me what that might be like:

How I'm Actually Doing

While managing to avoid the sad, depressed, anxious state my correspondent described, a new "m-e" seems to be emerging.

    -He reads the morning newspaper in about half the time he used to.

   -He listens to NPR for about 4 minutes on the way to work in the

    morning, that's all, an espresso shot of news instead of a grande.

    -During the day at work he's no longer in the habit of checking the home

      page of the NY Times every hour or two.

    -He only watches the lead story, maybe a couple of more on the evening

     network TV news. Sometimes he skips the show altogether and

     concentrates on cooking dinner.

    -He's in no rush to find out every detail of all the big news events of 2011

     that he missed.

In many ways I'm still enjoying the sort of lifestyle that I forced myself into over the last year. Could it be that I'll never again be a news junkie? That I can now take news in moderation?

There are "social drinkers." They drink just enough to fit in with everyone else and be convivial company at parties and occasions. Maybe I've become a social imbiber of the news?

Maybe. But I'm still working it out. I worry that I'm taking up the mantle of the less informed and therefore, by my  own standards, I am becoming a less intelligent person who has little or no basis for critical thinking about life and the world.

And what do I say to all the journalists out there who are dedicated to working hard, most of them for mediocre wages, to bring us so much news because they believe it can not only offer truth, but it can yield valuable clues and lessons about how all of us should behave in the future? Do I tell them, "You're spoiling my party, so buzz off?"

                      

Excuse me, but to work this out, I think I'm to have to revisit something I did at the beginning of this project. I have a sudden urge to re-read the story of Rip Van Winkle, concentrating especially on the ending.

I'll find how Rip lived the remainder of his life after awakening with the world around him changed. After that I'll check back in with you. - A.H.

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Then I Woke Up...

...and I had pancakes.

After all, the big day had arrived on a Sunday, a day that's always crowded with activity. Getting ready for church, going to church, coming home and fixing our traditional Sunday brunch.

I decided I'd waited this long to learn the news. What did it matter if it took a few more hours?

I left the newspapers lying unretrieved out on the front lawn, put on my apron, and got busy.

One of my accomplishments during my newsless, entertainmentless, sportsless, weatherless year was to develop to maturity my Sunday brunch pancake and waffle recipe. This is of major signficance because for me these delicious hot griddled versions of bread are an occasion for absorbing satisfying quantities of 100% maple syrup.

What I discovered was that I could take a product that is fairly average in quality and, with the right embellishments, turn it into something that knocked my brunch guests (wife and son) out of their chairs. This saved time and it also proved that the potential for greatness can lurk in something as common as Aunt Jemima mix.

Fat makes all the difference, starting with the butter.

Supposedly the AJ mix contains its own rising ingredient and dehydrated eggs, but you have to "egg" this mix on in order to get it to do what it should, i.e., rise with an airy insouciance that clearly intimates that these light cakes are going to dance rambunctiously in your mouth before they dissolve on the tongue.

And the buttermilk! The instructions on the box say use water or milk, but you wouldn't believe the difference buttermilk makes in flavor and everything else. Remember what television was like before the HD version arrived a few years ago? Those were your old pancakes. Blurry, jittery, ghosting pancakes. Bring on the buttermilk and you have high definition taste. You can even see the difference in these thick, lucious golden beauties.

Yesterday I ate pancakes with great enjoyment and then I went and got the newspapers and brought them into the house.

With the maple syrup sweetness still soaking my molars, I sat down on the couch. As planned my wife and son made a 30-minute presentation (with visual aids) concerning the events of the last year. A photographer/writer from the local newspaper took pictures and took notes for a story that would run on Monday.

I asked questions. Then some more. Not that I'm finished. I'm still thinking of additional questions that must be asked.

- "How many people died in the Japan earthquake?"

- "Tell me the dimensions of this thing people are calling 'the Arab Spring.' What countries are we talking about besides the leaks I heard about Egypt and Libya?"

- "How long did it take the Navy SEALS to finish off Bin Laden?"

- "Okay, a film called The King's English won the best picture Oscar, but what else was nominated?"

- "I know Greenbay beat Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. Was it a good game?"

- "Is anyone starting to think the US economy is like Humpty Dumpty? All the irresponsible mortgage bankers and derivatives brokers and bond rating agencies and Fed chiefs let him slip off the wall and no one can put him together again?"

- "Is anyone saying that with this summer's record heat we could enter another Dust Bowl era?"

And the questions go on and on at the same time I'm trying to digest, along with my comforting pancakes, all the things my family told me--plus what was in yesterday's newspapers.

Will anyone feel insulted if I say that it felt like a LOT of bad news to imbibe in such a short time? That's why I need to take a day or two to decompress. I'll continue going through my newspapers, magazines, and ohter sources. Then I'll be back. - A.H. (formerly V.W.)

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And Only Hours to Go (Before I Awake)

Honestly, it used to feel like the day was never going to arrive. Then at about the six or eight-month mark the days began to pass more quickly. So quickly that I haven't really given much thought to what it will be like to return to the opportunity to resume what I used to take for granted.

Knowing lots of stuff about what's going on everywhere.

I've thought of an analogy, though.

Back at Christmas we were at my father's house. We always stay in the upstairs bedroom where there are some old family furniture pieces. A trunk that belonged to my great grandfather. A chest of drawers that were used by my grandparents.

And our old family Magnavox console hi-fi in a cherry wood cabinet purchased by my father in Denver, Colorado, in 1958. He wanted his three sons to be exposed to history, art and culture in the form of 12" long playing records.

Typically I pay little attention these days to the hi-fi with its gold laced grill front, even though it once meant much to me. I used to lift the lid and stack up to 6 records on the turntable spindle (I can still smell that distinct black vinyl odor). Magic followed in the form of swelling, passionate classical music by the world's greatest composers as it vibrated through the living room for hours.

Crank up the Rite Of Spring past the middle setting on the rotary dial and a little kid could shake the walls...

Decades later the hi-fi has become a level surface during family visits where I empty my pockets of change, receipts, and keys. But at Christmas I had a new idea.

Let's lift the lid. Poke around.

What if I turn on the power switch?

Amazing! After 60 years the tubes are glowing... There are no records to play, but I spin the dial until I hear distant voices, that's all, because most of the A.M. radio band is obscured by static.

That's when I start to imagine that tomorrow morning, Sept. 11, 2011, I'm going to be a bit like that old hi-fi. My tubes will glow warmly and I'll remember that I can still pull in a signal and make the outside world come into my house.

News, entertainment, sports, and weather. I'll spin my mental dial, listening to my wife and son as they de-brief me, fingering the old newspapers and news magazines stored out in the garage. During that time of reengagement what is already past tense to everyone else will become my temporary present.

I'll turn on the TV again, too. Even though we don't have a cable or satellite feed, there should be plenty to glean. I've ordered a new amplified antenna in lieu of the inadequate rabbit ears I've used in the past. I'll be able to pick up a few missing on-air channels. The Sunday NFL games will come back to me!

How long will it take for me to get caught up? And what will be my reaction to what I missed? Have I learned any lessons, made any discoveries in the midst of mass media deprivation?

I'll be working out the answers to these questions. That's what the rest of this project and my posts from here on out will be about.

And one more thing. I'm going to stop signing off as V.W.

Awakened to the whole range of life with all its charms and disappointments, human heroism and fleshly frailties, accomplishments and tragedies, I intend to once again put on my true identity. But for now, and those remaining hours, minutes, seconds until the counter turns over to 0-0-0, I remain as ever, your faithful dozing servant. - V.W.

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