NaPoWriMo Poem #19 - TV Turnoff Week!

 "According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube."

    The Sourcebook for Teaching Science 
reporting from TV-Free America

Whoa.  That's a long time.

Here at The Poem Farm ('Heart Rock Farm' is our home's real name), we do not have a television.  We do not hate televisions, we are not hostile toward televisions, and sometimes we watch television when visiting family.  We occasionally watch movies on our computer, and we have no video games.  It's just a family choice, one we actually don't talk about at all because it's always been this way.  Sometimes people ask us, "How do you LIVE without a television?"

We live well.

Living without television isn't for everyone, but for one week a year, it's healthy to turn it off and see what else happens in our lives.  As with anything we spend lots of time doing, it's good to examine and understand why we do what we do and also what we might do instead.  It's not a bad idea to think about how many commercials we watch and what seeds they plant in our minds.

It is TV Turnoff Week from today until Sunday (April 19-25), and you can find many suggestions about how to turn your own TV off for the week here at the TV Turn-Off Network.  

This week's poems will answer the question, "What should I do when my TV is dark?"  Some of the ideas will come from the sites we'll link to.  Some will be fresh.  Some may come from you!

Students - if you turn off your TV off this week, please share in the comments.  You may inspire others, and you may help with a poem idea.  Heck, you might decide to write a poem each day of this week too.  

(Please click on COMMENTS below to share a thought.)