With the garden at rest for the winter, I find myself spending a lot more time inside the house. Actually this is good since I have some reading and writing to catch up with. But not being outside much and not seeing much of the sun has left me tired and somewhat unmotivated. The shadow of death hanging over me is more felt but that might be good because it slows me down and helps to see what is important and not in my life. However, it also makes me more susceptible to wasting of time watching endless sports and news on TV.

So the choice is my slow down and escape or slow down, read, reflect and write. Escaping is easy these days with so many means of entertainment and information.

I have been listening to an audio book, the classic science fiction book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The story is how over the “course of several decades, people embraced new media, sports, and a quickening pace of life.” We can add cell phones, tweeter, Facebook, Tablets and computers to the media and ‘quickening pace of life.’ Books became shorter and more abridged so the government took advantage of this and hires ‘firemen’ to burn books.

I do not think this will happen anytime soon and book sales seem to be up. However, the fact that I am listening to this book borrowed from the library on my cell phone makes somewhat of a comment. The ‘quickening pace of life’ might not be leading us to burning books but it does have a serious and profound effects on our human lives and communications. The many means of communication, in one sense, brings everyone in the world closer together. On the other hand, it can bring less compassion for people, suffering, ill, poor and those uprooted by war.

I read an article today by a Catholic Worker friend, Kathy, that was written about an hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan run by an Italian based charity, which has hospitals all over this worn torn country. The hospital is supported primarily by Italian families. A staff member told her “Pensioners and retirees take from that have. They believe in this work, want to be part of it.”

When Kathy learned that the total budget of the hospital was six million dollars a year she told the staff person that US now spends 2.1 million dollars per soldier, per year in Afghanistan. The U.S. spends more keeping three soldiers there than the entire hospital budget. The staff person could not help from laughing when he told her how the US built a modern hospital in another province, but because the province lacks electricity it cannot possibly function. Even if there was electricity the new US hospital would take over eight times more electricity than his hospital to operate. The fuel cost of the US hospital would be about 3. 2 million dollars, which also means it, will never open. Yet the new US hospital makes for good media coverage.

We have a lot of information from media on the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but, as a people, we are desensitized to the death, pain and suffering we are causing.

Books leave a lot to the imagination while TV and other media leave little to the imagination. War becomes another video game.

In the book ‘Fahrenheit 451’ all the government wants people to do is work and be entertained. The thinking, books may bring along, is not allowed. Maybe it is not books we are burning but are we lying waste to our imaginations and our human feelings by the ‘quickening pace of life’.

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