This is National Turn Off TV Week. You wouldn't have learned that by watching television. The industry thinks it's good for you or even educational. I seriously doubt that my daughter would have been admitted to Columbia if we were a TV watching family. When would she have done her homework? How would she have done her homework if my wife and I had maintained such a distracting and disturbing family habit? And what kind of role models would we have been?

Oh, of course a little TV never hurt anyone. Right? But if as I mentioned in my last post, everything matters, and everything adds up, the question remains, why would we subject ourselves and our planet to such a waste. Commercial television is supported by "your advertising dollars," and advertising is the ram-rod that drives our successful economy, right? Convincing us to buy things we would never in our right minds need or want that within months add to the increasing burden on our landfills. The whole process puts the "gross" in Gross National Product.

Now, for National Turn Off TV Week which started Monday and lasts until the 29th, do something fun and productive instead. Cook, garden, sew, whittle, weave, shape clay, or talk with your spouse and your kids. Plan your summer. Get out the maps. Study a map of the constellations and go outdoors to see the night sky. Or read. Not fiction, this time, but real how-to... something that leads you to buy tools instead of electronics and enables you to fix something. Plan ahead. Go to the library. And have fun... But first pull the plug. If you pull just a bit too hard it might come off and need fixing. That would be fun, but let it go. You might find your life to be much richer without it.

Tomorrow I take my daughter Lucy to Little Rock for the high school girls state soccer championships. She plays defender. It won't be on TV.