In Defense of the Echo Chamber

Bah humbug! 

Growing up in the fifties and early sixties, on the Space Coast of Florida, was an exercise in Americana. All our fathers worked at Cape Canaveral, sometimes named and re-named after that dead president, Kennedy. Everyone came out of their houses to watch the moon rockets streak across the sky. And we all hated the Russians like poison.

When Sputnik sailed over our houses, the adults would come out into their yards and shake their fists at the blinking, floating satellite watching us from space—mostly they were shaking inside, worried. 

No one worried that we weren’t getting the other guy’s perspective or giving the Ruskies a fair shake. Screw the Russians; this was a race and we were going to win.

Because it was hard. That’s what President Kennedy said. We were going to the moon because it was hard and America rose to the challenge. Damn the Russians.

Our whole world was an echo chamber. My mother talked to Mrs. Christenson over the chain link fence between our row houses. They believed: in God, in their country, in public school, in being neighbors. Over the back fence, my mom talked to the Spooners, who were Catholic and had seven kids. They believed: in nice yards, sales at Piggly Wiggly, and church on Sundays.

To the left of us, lived the Dornbushes. We didn’t talk to them. They were thieves. Mrs. Dornbush would load up her mob of kids in the family VW bus, drive around town to construction sites and steal the newly planted landscaping. We weren’t allowed over there. Their garden was legendary. 

But honestly, our world hummed along quite nicely as an echo chamber until Vietnam, LSD, and the hideous failures of President Kennedy’s assassination and the shock of Kent State.

And now, that we’ve crawled out of the echo chamber to listen to . . . well not to put too fine a point on it . . . kooky talk. Sure. Sure. Boys are girls are boys are earthworms. God is dead and the Church of Satan is suing Texas over their religious ritual of abortions. All cultures are the same, even the ones who believe in digging up dead bodies and dancing with them. Drugs and alcohol are the quickest way to becoming the life of any party or a bleary eyed buffoon.

Bah humbug. 

It takes half a lifetime to figure out whether or not being an earthworm pans out in the long run. I don’t have that kind of time to . . . mull over . . . the value of earthworm culture. Thanks but I’ll stick to what I know works . . . works . . . works. 

And of course! I talk to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice.

Linda (True Believer) Zern