When my sister and I returned home from grade school for lunch each day we knew we were under the “shush” rule. Mother was listening to her favorite soap opera on the radio — what she called “my story.” The same rule applied over dinner in the evenings as father listened to the nightly news.

Those fond recollections came back to me last week as my wife and I returned from a two-week tour in Europe. We did not pick-up a single English-language newspaper or even attempt to find a TV channel that broadcast news in English. It was a glorious getaway from Washington and our daily routines of reading the Washington Post each morning, watching network newscasts each evening, and the public affairs talk shows every Sunday.

On vacation, we were in sync with Wordsworth’s observation that, “the world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers….” Instead of frantically scrambling for news of the world we let ourselves be immersed in ancient histories, art and architectural wonders.

Now that we’re back, we are playing catch-up on what we may have missed in government, politics and world affairs. But it seems less important than it did before — a more trivial pursuit than before. We had just finished visiting sites in Europe where archeologists are still carefully uncovering........

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