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Editorial
Turn Off the TV
And Clean Up the Trash
Rappahannock citizens are getting a lot of unsolicited advice these days.
National TV-TumofF Week overlaps with Countywide Cleanup Week.
The schools’ artist-in-residence, Sharon Wyrrick, is encouraging participation in the TV-TumofF program. Organizers have rounded up a variety of prizes for those who manage an entire week without TV. At the high school the most popular prize seems to be a chance to be principal for a day. There are also opportunities to win cash through essay and art contests.
Local merchants are collecting testaments from those who manage the TV-less week.
There is plenty of evidence that watching a lot of television is mind numbing. A constant barrage of ads urging watchers to spend and consume, gratuitous violence and sexual innuendo and not so innuendo fill the airwaves. Young children are prone to develop short attention spans from television viewing; teenagers are exposed to horrifying role models, and adults can suddenly discover that hours have slipped away with nothing accomplished.
Not all the trash is on television. Hours spent “surfing the internet,” or playing computer games can be as wasted as hours spent before a television, although these activities are slightly more interactive. And, of course, there is plenty of trash to read.
But the trash that comes to mind most readily is along the county’s highways and stream beds.
Hunt Harris of the Ragged Mountain Resource Center is coordinating the countywide cleanup, supplying bags and checking to see which group or individual qualifies'Tor the $100 prize.
VDOT will ensure that the bags of trash find their way to the .landfill. ! The week will culminate with a cleanup at the county park this, [Saturday and a major effort to remove decades of trash from one of [the headwaters of the Rappahannock River in Chester Gap next ! Saturday. ; Once all of that has been accomplished, we can feel self right[eous and go back to frying our. brains in front of the TV set.
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