Monday, April 21st through Sunday April 27th is National Turn Your Television OFF! Week.
I’m going to take it a step further and refrain from computer use aside from necessary email communication and work-related time.
This means NO BLOGGING people. No new posts. No reading other blogs. I may get the shakes, but somehow I think I’ll get through it. (I think.)
I will read more, get my weather from the newspaper, and DVR all of the new episodes that are finally airing this week. Pitter and I don’t watch television together, so the main challenge will be post-Pitter bedtime, which only consists of an hour of tv anyway, before Sweet Cheeks and I fall asleep on the couch. Oh yes. Our lives are that glamorous.
I challenge you to try this Turn it Off! week yourself. If not tv + computer, just tv. If not for a whole week, 3 days. If not for that long, try 1 day.
To make my lack of posts up to you, I will award one of you lucky peeps a brand new copy of:
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
I just read this book with my book group, and we all agreed that it is one the most meaningful and important books we’ve read in recent years. It provides insight into the lives of the common people of Afghanistan and Pakistan without focusing on politics,and tells the story of an American whose life mission has become helping people who need help, regardless of where they live or how dangerous their surroundings.
From the back cover:
In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants’ kindness, he promised to return and build a school…[this] is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools–especially for girls–in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban.
Image courtesy Greg Mortenson, Central Asia Institute
“Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.” -Tom Brokaw
If you respond to this post with an interest in reading this book BY MAY FIRST, I will put you in the running to win a free copy, which I will mail to you. I feel strongly about passing this story along.
Good luck with your own version of free-the-brains-from-the-boxes this week. And happy reading.
6 Comments
April 20, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I just finished reading this book a few days ago, and I agree: It is one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in a long time. Not only was this individual man’s life soo amazing, but it just felt great to realize that, even though our government might be effing things up over there, there are some Americans who really do see the whole picture and are doing things to change it. Plus, wow, I can’t even imagine living like that.
April 22, 2008 at 11:44 am
I’d like to read that! I was just about to check the library…
April 22, 2008 at 12:13 pm
[...] don’t know, I’m kind of tempted to try it myself. In fact, one of my favorite bloggers is doing just that: Inspired by National Turn Your Television OFF week, she has decided to turn it all off. I look [...]
April 23, 2008 at 2:54 pm
It sounds like an interesting book. . . As for television, we don’t watch much of it, but (as you can see) I’m still checking e-mail, reading blogs, etc.
April 29, 2008 at 7:49 am
[...] I am shocked at how few of you are interested in entering a drawing for a free book about a region of the world with which the U.S. is tightly entwined. [...]
May 16, 2008 at 8:58 am
[...] yeah…I drew a winner for this fabulous book a few days after the May 1 contest deadline, but kind of forgot to announce it. Blame pregnancy brain, will [...]