Sometimes too much or not enough information

In today’s world Americans are constantly bombarded second by second with a tsunami of information. The sources are endless, the bombardment incessant and at times brainnumbing. This excessive overload is usually more than the normal person can digest and meaningfully process.

This simple country man and his beautiful wife Lois feel gloriously blessed to be mostly immune to this carpet bombing of information for over 33 years. Living “off the grid,” our primary source of information is several small battery operated radios that we primarily tune to classical music and NPR news coverage. Our lives have been deeply and actively immersed in the seasonal majesty of our remote forested location deep in the hills of Central New York state.

We have managed to accomplish this in primitive living conditions largely foreign to 21st century Americans who are wired and connected to each other into our split second rapidly changing global world.

We can glean from our unconnectedness that going along with this informational glut are many so-called experts or specialists. Men and women with allegedly higher degrees of expertise and rather narrow bands of interest. Their pontifications are viewed reverentially by those who are less informed. This simple country couple isn’t awed.

They, like us common people, are mere infallible mortals. This self-confessed simple country man makes lots of “bad calls” almost daily. Thankfully they are only seen by my adorable and amazingly forgiving wife and our cats.

As an early retired college history professor, I’ve occasion- ally come across examples of predictions that have proven to be classical boners in retrospect. They include:

“By 1980 we will be self-sufficient and will not need to rely on foreign enemies...energy,” Richard Nixon

“FDR will be a one-term president,” Mark Sullivan, 1935

“Democracy is finished in England,” Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, 1940

“My uncle [Adolph Hitler] is a peaceful man. He thinks war is not worth the candle,” Willie Hitler, 1937

“A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a strategic impossibility,” author and military science writer George Eliot

“Castro and Cuba will be overthrown within months,” Kiplinger letter, 1961

“Gentlemen, you have come 60 days too late. The Depression is over,” Herbert Hoover, 1930

“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad,” Horace Rackham, 1903

“Man will not fly for 50 years,” Wilbur Wright, 1903

“The radio craze will die out in time,” Thomas Alva Edison, 1922

“Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine,” Rex Lambert, 1936

“By 1980 all electrical power is likely to be virtually costless,” Henry Luce, 1956

“I don’t need body guards,” James Hoffa

“The Army is the Indians’ best friend,” Gen. George Armstrong Custer, 1870

“If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer it seems to be a minor one,” Dr. W. C. Heuper, 1954

Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words and suffer noble sorrows. I like these encouraging words, don’t you?