Sunday, September 20, 1998

Antidotes to bad news and cynical views

By Sharon Randall

One day a friend and I were talking about the news: a kidnapping, a terrorist attack and yet another massacre at a school, plus the usual hate crimes, domestic violence and pit bull-mauls-toddler stories.

"I hate to be cynical," she says, "but how can you know what goes on in the world and still believe people are more good than bad?"

I hear that question a lot. I often ask it of myself. I talk about it with friends, mull it over until I find an answer I can live with, sleep on and tell my children.

It's the same answer every time. I just keep forgetting it. Yes, I turned 50 this year. The question? Oh. How can we be informed and still get out of bed in the morning?

Some people say the way to cope with the news is simply to avoid it -- don't read the newspapers, don't watch TV, don't listen to the radio or talk about it with friends.

I say bad idea. If people didn't read newspapers, I'd have to get a real job. Also, it's what my grandmother would call a coward's solution. She might call it something more colorful, but coward will suffice. She bore 12 children, buried half of them, lived through the Depression and several wars, but never shied away from the truth.

Was what it was

News to her was neither good nor bad, it simply was what it was -- an essential part of life. She followed it closely, argued it fiercely and kept it in a perspective of family and community.

Whatever Cronkite said on the evening news, tomorrow she'd have mouths to feed, cows to milk, neighbors to help, chrysanthemums to grow. To her, it was all connected, a package she passed on to me.

The mouths at my house feed themselves now. My neighbors are fairly self-reliant. I buy milk and mums at the market. A lot has changed, some of which I'd rather not know about.

Thing is, I am hopelessly nosy. And it's hard to know one thing and not another.

News is a package, a whole picture, not just good or bad, but both. I need it all to give context to any part. So I take what I get from the media (no, that does not include Jerry Springer) and flesh it out with family and community.

I spend time with real people -- ordinary folks who care about the things I care about, earning a living, paying taxes, keeping families together, leaving the world a little better place, maybe.

I hear from such people everyday through the mail, at the market, in churches and schools, wherever they hang out, I hang out, too. If I didn't, I can't imagine how the world would look to me. I doubt I'd want to live in it.

Last weekend, after sifting through papers and watching CNN, I went to the Seaside Jazz Art Show and heard the Monterey High Jazz Band sounding so good it was probably illegal.

Sunday after church, I called my stepfather to talk about his tomato patch. Then I went to see my 10-year-old neighbor steal the show as the cat in "Pinocchio."

It's hard to be cynical with a high school jazz band, talk of tomatoes and a child playing a cat in your life.

Such things may not often make the news. But they surely make the news more bearable.

Sharon Randall is a winner of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and the Best of the West commentary awards.

Scripps Howard News Service