No news would be good news

 

The other night, the theoretical became all too real.  An older friend & I were dining in her senior residence's informal dining room, a cozy, intimate space, with about ten or so tables scattered around the long, narrow room - and three large-screen television monitors, two flanking the bar, the third in the middle of the room, set into a framed alcove.

 

What was being beamed into the dining room - news reports on the Germanwings crash.  And my dear, tender-hearted older friend was totally engaged in the gruesome details.  She actually asked the person sitting opposite her to move so she could more closely follow the story.

 

To me, telecasting that sort of horrific story during the dining hour on monitors that are virtually impossible to ignore is tantamount to malpractice in a residence that is, one would expect, committed to the well-being of its older & elderly residents.

 

I'm fine with the monitors.  Have them on classic movies, on music channels, on Jeopardy! & Wheel of Fortune, even local news shows.  But not news networks that play the same horrific stories over & over within an hour.  Ever.  Anywhere.

 

These can't convey what my older friend saw & read the other night.  I chose not to include the most unspeakable photos & information she watched unfold before her - the 16 Germans students returning to their hometown after an exchange visit to Spain; the unsuspecting captain who announced on take-off to the passengers, "I will bring you safely from Düsseldorf to Barcelona. You can count on it, because I want to sit with my family at the dinner table today.”   My older friend might not remember the horrors she watched, read (thanks to lurid graphics & feed), but feelings linger.  

 

Pardon the language, but get rid of the damn monitors or turn them to something else!  NO news would be good news!