News. Rarely new.

... and usually bad.

I woke this morning thinking of news items I'd seen in recent blogs:

• Jenn's story about the man who was beheaded and videotaped.
• Terri's post about the Brit, caged and tortured in the Middle East (?)
• Gemmak's bit about STD's among our young people.
• That horrible thing in Russia where school children were killed.
• And of course, George Bush's ongoing campaign of death, mayhem and dismemberment in Iraq.

I quit reading the newspaper about four years ago. I had just been expelled from a marriage and my heart was shattered. I really felt then that I couldn't bear to read about any more sadness, so I stopped looking at the newspaper. I don't watch television news either. And I rarely listen to the radio, prefering instead my collection of CD's. If there's something really cataclysmic going on - that is, if it's going to affect me personally or those I love - I'm certain someone will let me know. Otherwise, I'd rather remain ignorant.

"This is the information age," I'm told. "You have to stay current or you'll be left behind."

Then leave me. Go on without me. I'll be back here, sitting quietly on the grass under a tree in the park, watching the children play and wishing they'd invite me to join them.

I see newspapers every morning left on the train. The other guys all scramble to recover the sports section or the front page and squabble over who found it first or offer to trade one paper for another. I shake my head bemusedly.

I'm so tired of reading about all the pain and suffering in the world. I don't want to hear about it. Ignorance is indeed, bliss. I've made my choice. And I choose bliss.

It's not even "news" for goodness sake. It's the same stories, endlessly repeated. The names and locations change daily, but the stories are essentially the same.

A while back, I read "Walden" by H.D. Thoreau. Although it was written in the 19th century, it remains a classic because the issues he describes are still relevant. Here's what Henry David Thoreau had to say on the topic of newspapers:

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip.

News junkies. Even back then.

No, thank you, Ms Journal. I know there's suffering in this world. Another wife beaten by her husband. Another child left alone while its mother goes off in search of drugs. More communities destroyed by bombs, or by natural disasters. I know people are hurting, starving, dying. I'll do what I can to help. But I don't need to be reminded of it daily.