Yup, it’s cold.  It’s January folks, and to the best of my knowledge it’s cold and snowy in January – at least where I come from.  We have had some wintry weather for the past couple of weeks but if you watch the news you would think this was apocalyptic.  You would think that no one had ever dealt with frozen pipes and huge heating bills.  DEAR GOD and what about all those potholes!  The leading story I heard on the news this morning was that Justin Bieber was arrested overnight for DUI and drag racing a Lamborghini. Seriously?

I have friends in Thailand that keep me up to date on their current fight to overthrow their corrupt government.  They share information so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of what is going on.  The only news source that I have heard even a few seconds of news about this is Al Jazeera America.

Did you know that there are deadly protests going on in Ukraine? There’s a severe drought going on out west that will probably cause food prices to soar in the next few weeks (although the good news in that was people are starting to become more aware of eating organics). How about the fact that tar sands oil started flowing through that pipeline yesterday?  Hmmm, now the terrorist threats to the Sochi Olympics are getting a little traction but are we hearing anything about the discontinuation of unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of people?  That happened a couple of weeks ago. Watch the markets take off when the new unemployment numbers come out showing that we are at the lowest unemployment rate in years.  You know why?  They only count the people who are collecting.  Yup, you won’t hear about that.

The news has become nothing but a distraction.  It tells us nothing. It’s gossip at best, fear mongering at its worst.  It amazes me that people buy into it.  Predict a snowstorm that never materializes and business drops off to nothing (unless you own a grocery store).  I may be showing my age but when I was going to school the six years that I rode on a bus (an hour trip one way) through the hilltowns of the Berkshires we had school cancelled very few days.  I do remember taking a couple of very scary rides.

What I see happening is the news is causing so many people to live their lives in fear. They stay in their homes and worry about the killer that’s going to break into their house.  They stock up on bread and milk at the hint of a storm.  I’m all for being prepared but the last thing I will be doing is spending a crazy hour shopping for things I should already have in my kitchen.

I will continue to get my news from sources other than the main stream media and I will look at the weather maps available and make my own forecasts.  I could do with a lot less hype in my life.  For me it builds my anxiety level and I’d like to keep my blood pressure down.  I think I’ll go take walk in the bracing cold in a quiet field with my dogs.