As the craziness of the past month has hit me, and as the insanity of the upcoming months looms ahead, I am thankful for the few quiet moments I have. John and I like to watch TV at night to relax, but today's TV programming leaves few moments for relaxation between bleeped-out swearing, immorality and volume.
Because there is little of any quality to watch on TV during the summer, our family of late has resorted to some creativity when we sit down to watch TV. While at Interlochen, the girls and I would watch reruns of "Gilligan's Island" over lunch. As a child, this was probably my favorite television show. I'm sure that I laughed much more this time, watching the show, then I did as a child. Although the girls would watch it with me, it was definitely slow.
Upon our return home, I convinced the girls that it would be worth our time to watch "Star Trek: Voyager". Glo had already watched the first three seasons several years ago, and I didn't want to relive the Kazon episodes, so we began with Season 4 and the introduction of "Seven of Nine".
Watching a 40-minute episode per day (as our TV time together), and having watched Gilligan's Island through the summer, I have come to appreciate how much TV has changed over just the past 15 years. In watching the various reruns, there is no swearing. None at all. And there is never a scene that makes us uncomfortable as a family, or something that we must fast-forward over. In fact, most of the Voyager shows have some morality theme behind them, and if nothing else, my girls are seeing a female character who is strong, well-spoken, and confident. It's been a joy to slow down a bit and find ourselves fully immersed in an episode (without my finger on an edit button on the remote).
Taking that further, Johannah needed to critique a movie for her Speech & Debate class at school. She thought of several recent movies, but I challenged her to watch an "oldie". One of my favorite movies from when I was a teenager was "Out of Africa" starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. It won seven Academy awards for goodness sake, so it couldn't be all bad. We started watching it yesterday, and I worried that she would be completely bored with it, because it's such a slow-moving, beautiful movie with nary a CGI or sound effect. We were forced to concentrate on intelligent conversation, and we were swept away with a glorious soundtrack. You can't imagine how pleased I was when she was disappointed that we had to pause it until tomorrow (it is about three hours in length).
I've especially found this loss of pace with music and dance. Music nowadays needs to be loud, fast and exciting to be popular, and yet there is so much beauty in quiet. You can't imagine how happy I was to be watching a popular dance show this past week and see this exemplified. Most of the dancers who advance dance hip hop, or crazy contemporary pieces, and in the final, this contestant didn't win, probably because this piece was slow. However, I watched it probably five times, because it was just so different...and lovely.
The immorality of our culture has slowly crept up on us, and it took me taking a step back to appreciate that. I mean, I've always known it's there, but the contrast of late has been dramatic. With all of our technology and "advancement", it's easier to capture beauty in some ways--photographs with a camera that fits in our pocket (and doubles as our phone), hand-held recorders for music--but that technology also causes a loss of appreciating the simple things and just thinking. Slowing down. Breathing.
Because there is little of any quality to watch on TV during the summer, our family of late has resorted to some creativity when we sit down to watch TV. While at Interlochen, the girls and I would watch reruns of "Gilligan's Island" over lunch. As a child, this was probably my favorite television show. I'm sure that I laughed much more this time, watching the show, then I did as a child. Although the girls would watch it with me, it was definitely slow.
Upon our return home, I convinced the girls that it would be worth our time to watch "Star Trek: Voyager". Glo had already watched the first three seasons several years ago, and I didn't want to relive the Kazon episodes, so we began with Season 4 and the introduction of "Seven of Nine".
Watching a 40-minute episode per day (as our TV time together), and having watched Gilligan's Island through the summer, I have come to appreciate how much TV has changed over just the past 15 years. In watching the various reruns, there is no swearing. None at all. And there is never a scene that makes us uncomfortable as a family, or something that we must fast-forward over. In fact, most of the Voyager shows have some morality theme behind them, and if nothing else, my girls are seeing a female character who is strong, well-spoken, and confident. It's been a joy to slow down a bit and find ourselves fully immersed in an episode (without my finger on an edit button on the remote).
Taking that further, Johannah needed to critique a movie for her Speech & Debate class at school. She thought of several recent movies, but I challenged her to watch an "oldie". One of my favorite movies from when I was a teenager was "Out of Africa" starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. It won seven Academy awards for goodness sake, so it couldn't be all bad. We started watching it yesterday, and I worried that she would be completely bored with it, because it's such a slow-moving, beautiful movie with nary a CGI or sound effect. We were forced to concentrate on intelligent conversation, and we were swept away with a glorious soundtrack. You can't imagine how pleased I was when she was disappointed that we had to pause it until tomorrow (it is about three hours in length).
I've especially found this loss of pace with music and dance. Music nowadays needs to be loud, fast and exciting to be popular, and yet there is so much beauty in quiet. You can't imagine how happy I was to be watching a popular dance show this past week and see this exemplified. Most of the dancers who advance dance hip hop, or crazy contemporary pieces, and in the final, this contestant didn't win, probably because this piece was slow. However, I watched it probably five times, because it was just so different...and lovely.
The immorality of our culture has slowly crept up on us, and it took me taking a step back to appreciate that. I mean, I've always known it's there, but the contrast of late has been dramatic. With all of our technology and "advancement", it's easier to capture beauty in some ways--photographs with a camera that fits in our pocket (and doubles as our phone), hand-held recorders for music--but that technology also causes a loss of appreciating the simple things and just thinking. Slowing down. Breathing.
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