Today I read that a nice couple with eight children are divorcing. Except for the number of children this happens every day.

And except for the fact that for a while this couple has been the stars of a reality TV show chronicling their lives.

I have never watched this show but I have been reading on the news that their fans are heartbroken and taping of the show has been temporarily suspended.

This is one of several 'reality' shows that have increased station ratings. The Bachelor may have been the first, then Survivor, Big House, Fear Factor and others. Viewing takes on a voyeurism that I am not sure is healthy. In fact, I do not think these shows have much redeeming value. Perhaps though they give us insight into how others live...and yet, in reality they give us insight into how one tiny group of people live. This is not reality for most of us.

The Kardasians, wife swap, Whose Wedding is it Anyway? are other examples of my ability to live through the life experiences of someone else. The good news for many people is that living vicariously through their new 'friends' they do not have to live their own lives or deal with their own reality. Being so involved with 'tube' personalities also limits or prohibits the development of real face to face, flesh and blood relationships.

Perhaps it is escapism, like I indulge in when I pick up a novel. But week after week, water cooler chat after water cooler chat, it takes on a life of its own. And that life is not living. Manufactured around a conference table with story boards and advertisers it is reality TV aimed at getting me to buy products and raise ratings. I can see through that reality.

And that's what I think about it.

Doesn't that beat all, as my dad used to say.

Just as I was blogging, an email came through on the phone with the title "Do it, don't blog it."

Apparently that was a heedless bit of information.

Just finished Adventures in Missing the Point by Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo.

Last week I am embarrassed to write I read three, yes three, mystery novels by Sidney Sheldon.

As I sit here I see across the table from me 30, I counted them, 'new' books from a local library sale.

I am such a patsy for cheap books. Found an original novel by Winston Churchill from the 30s, written probably while he should have been paying closer attention to world events. Jim is reading that one.

Among the other titles are Tom Sawyer, Look Homeward Angel, Sons and Lovers, The Count of Monte Cristo.

The find of the day! Ta-Da! A first edition of Lady's Chatterly's Lover (I think it's a first edition). For a dollar, hard back book price at the sale, I wanted to see what all the fuss had been about when it was publishing.

In high school a friend somehow got hold of the very popular book, Peyton Place, which had been banned from the high school library. That banning really made us curious. The 'juicy' portions were so often turned to that when you laid the book on its spine the pages fell open to the only parts we really were interested in reading.

What a long way we have come...and some of it downhill. And that's what I think about it.

You probably already knew that snakes slither over backdrops (or 'under drops') of their own coloring. I mean, a cobra, green and stripped will be nearly unseen in the jungle undergrowth of grass and weeds; unseen that is until stepped on.

When I lived in California, one bright sunny morning I opened the blinds on the patio door to enjoy the sun only to discover a rattlesnake also enjoying the morning warming him/herself (who really can tell with a snake) on the patio a foot from my toes.

No surprise then to wonder if I needed a new eyeglass prescription when reading out on the porch yesterday. Peripherally I saw movement on the little rocks that line the outside of the porch. I peered directly at the stones. I squinted. I finally got out of my comfortable chair, put my book down and walked over to the edge of the porch.

Just like snakes from the beginning of time, there was one sunning him/herself (who can really ever tell with reptiles) on the rocks. We decided, the snake and I mutually, to leave one another to him/herself (one would be hard-pressed to try and determine the gender of an amphibian) and live copacetically (which is coincidentally the one word I carry-over from Semantics 101).

Went to a local 'fine chocolate' candy store to purchase a gift for a friend who begins a new job/career on Monday.

I thought she might need something to help her make friends on her first day of work.

Also, this store gives out free samples. That is the good news. The not-so-good news is that today's free sample was chocolate covered bacon.

And that's what I'm thinking about.

Attended a Jeff Dunham appearance last Sunday. Seven thousand irreverent fans waiting to hear their own biases from the mouth of a dummy...not Jeff, although he writes the stuff...but Achmed the Dead Terrorist ("Silence! I keeel you.), Peanut, Walter, Jalapeno (on a Stick) and the real live Guitar Guy.

Since Sunday I have been on YouTube revisiting their skits.

Jeff's stuff is not for the pious or easily offended. It is not for those whose ears fold up at the sound of a 'bad' word....it is just so darn much fun and laughable that for some, me and both daughters for example, it is easy to forget that we don't talk like that and we don't think like that...mostly.

And yet, one of the reasons why Jeff and Guitar Guy are so popular is that they are saying what many of us believe and are too 'politically correct' to say ourselves.

I'm thinking about that today but not too deeply.

Just finished Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai and am struck once more by what just one person with passion and persistence can do to change the world (felt the same way you remember when I read Three Cups of Tea).

Started the book yesterday, could not put it down. Sat on the porch with the book in my hand and the World Atlas on my lap tracing the events of the book through Kenya.

After finishing it, I came inside and logged on to the web site to get an update on events in the author's life.

What are you and I so passionate about that nothing: not fear, humiliation, jail, incarceration, slander or libel would keep us from forging ahead to right some injustice?

Ambrose Redmoon said it well, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

What is more important than fear to me? That's what I'm thinking about.