A Waiter's Reflections on Bears, Newspapers, and Media

PREFATORY REMARKS: CHOICES ABOUT TELEVISION

If you have not done so, I encourage you to read an article about screen media's effects upon young children. "The Waldorf View of Television" by Jennifer Saleem offers the added benefit of going back to Waldorf Education's founder, Rudolf Steiner, and speaks a bit of the wellness the education tries to promote.

Part 1 of the article: http://www.tvfreeliving.com/the-effects-of-tv-articlesmenu-43/74-the-waldorf-view-of-television

Part 2: http://www.tvfreeliving.com/the-effects-of-tv-articlesmenu-43/77-the-waldorf-view-of-television-part-two


PREFATORY REMARKS 2: FAULKNER'S ABSALOM, ABSALOM!

While I am looking at a screen as I type this, over the past years I have watched almost no videos or movies (with more efficient use of computer technology so I spend less time staring at words on screens as well). It seems my ability to create mental images in my head is improving. Pictures in my head seem more vivid. Last week I was meeting with teachers in the Butterfly Room. Lights were out. The sun went behind a cloud for the meeting, and it was darker than one might want for a meeting. Soporific. At the conclusion of the meeting (which I promise I stayed present for), I had a wonderful appreciation of the initial scene from Faulkner's fairly abstruse masterpiece--Absalom, Absalom!--in which Quentin Compson (before he would go to Harvard and tell what he learned to his roommate and then unravel in The Sound and the Fury) sits in a crepuscular office about to hear of the legacy of the Sutpen and Coldfield families. I read this book once, 22 years ago. I appreciated its vigor and complexity then. I know I did not create mental images of the scenes from the book as vividly back then as I do now. That I watched movies such as Caddyshack and Die Hard with my roommates to unwind (rather than retelling chilling and Gothic tales of southern families) rather than meditating and walking in nature to unwind as I do may have nothing to with my ability to create these pictures. It is just something to explore.


THE HEART OF WHAT I INTENDED TO WRITE: BEARS AND NEWSPAPERS AND SMART PHONES

"Only Connect" -- E.M. Forster

I love technology when it frees us, connects us. I love listening to literature in audio format. I loved to read in college and grad school, and the physical act of reading--still, head in an awkward position--took a toll on my body.

All this is to say I am biased to be a defender of smart phones and the like, so I find myself becoming defensive when a fellow educator or parent associates the decline of the modern family with the smart phone or other gadget.

In many older children's books I read with my sons, a father--whether bear or badger or human--often seems to be reading a newspaper at the breakfast table, often having no connection with his children or spouse. An occasional badger is perhaps just bashful, and uses the newspaper to hide the glory of love and wisdom within him, and he is able to dispense loving wisdom to his daughter. But some of these other dads seem to drift in and out of the narrative, never really connecting with the family at all. I think of adults I've known addicted to CNN, or NPR, or talk shows, or the Price is Right, or Dickens (O, that's me).

In the restaurant I see many families in which children are playing video games the entire meal (and perhaps having a tantrum or becoming sullen when asked to shut the game for a moment) and young adults are checking out by checking in on Facebook and dads can't stop playing words with friends or solitaire or searching for a new poem at the Poetry Foundation app (OK, that's me again, and I try not to do this while dining out with my boys).

I also see families with no gadgets having miserable times, with all sorts of out of alignment emotions and moods and pushing against one another.

And then there are many families with no gadgets who are there to have fun, who expect to find good things in each other and in their environment and so attract this to them, who remind you that eating out can actually be pleasant (with not a few other families I marvel that I think I am having a much better time than the diners are; I also expect waiting tables to be a pleasant experience, good for my body and mental and emotional capacities).

And from time to time I see families using gadgets together to plan their next adventure that afternoon in perhaps their first visit to Seattle or other mutual plans. One mother, father, and son stand out for me. The dad seems to always have a laptop (he may be on call); the preteen son often has a book or an ipad. The mom has a smart phone. They somehow seem to be really connected despite or almost because of this; they share information with one another; they clearly value and love one another; they like the restaurant; they are pleasant to their waiter; they expect good things to come. They remain present and open to life's wonders around them even with their books and gadgets.

If this thin excuse to justify my listening to Bleak House via bluetooth on my ipad has any sort of conclusion or next direction, it would be to encourage us to think of Eckhart Tolle or others who remind us of the value of the present moment, of being present in the present moment, of allowing, of celebrating the present moment. TVs and computers and smart phones can pull us out of the present moment. So can books, newspapers, racing thoughts, grudges that we could allow to float away, and the like. And we can connect no matter what is there.

Katrina Kenison, editor and write, describes some of this in "Dailiness" from Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry. Her book is helpful (and available from our school library when it reopens in the fall). Here is an excerpt: http://www.ofspirit.com/tw-mittenstringsforgod.htm.