We Americans put a lot of stock in our news, you know. For most thinking people, news is a significant part of the daily routine, and a big chunk of our collective memory. For those who are not into news, other media devour mega megs in our national psyche.

 Back in the day, some studio in Hollywood made a movie, and I remember Dolly sang a song that went something like this: "Working nine to five, what a way to make a living..." I don't remember much about the flick, but I do remember the song. Funny how some things stick with you while others don't. We have those jangly little memory bits, and we have the really big ones too.

You probably remember where you were when President Kennedy was shot, or when Martin Luther King, Jr. caught the assassin's bullet. Those were dark days, times of nationally-shared tragedy.

 For my parents' generation, the big event must have been  the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor.  Four years of blood and sacrifice eventually paid off with the defeat of a lethally potent,  triaxial  fascism, and then two brighter, if not quite so memorable commendations--Victory in Europe (May 8, 1945) day and, Victory in Japan (August 15, 1945) day.

 As for my generation, we have a cloudy, mixed-emotions memory of Peace with Honor in Vietnam. Sadly, the most vivid image in my mind from the final stages of that struggle was a picture of evacuees being helicoptered from the American embassy in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.

 In our present situation, I'm wondering just how the VI and the VA days will play out.

Be that as it may, I'd like to point out that we do we have, you know, a collective psyche about these cataclysmic events.

 You can probably tell me where you were when 911 hit. I was doing some remodeling work for a friend. He rolled his wheelchair out of the basement door of his house and said that a plane had hit the world trade center.  My first mental image was a kind of comic book picture of a Cessna hitting the skyscraper.  But of course that first image proved to be quite an understatement. In the ensuing hours, I found out, as most of America did, differently. As the old Buffalo Springfield song says: "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear..."

Here it is eight years later and it's still not clear exactly what happened, or why. As for the why and how of what is happening now goes, that's not clear either.

 But even before that, I remember  the stock market crash of '87. I recall the mountaintop development where I was working with a carpentry crew to construct a home. At the end of a typical day, I was driving down that mountain when I heard on the radio that the Dow had dropped more than 500 points. The stark financial news that happened to fall on that sunlit afternoon is still  vivid. . . and yet, I didn't even have any investments.  Just a few days or weeks before that, the owner of the home (being built) had said: "Greenspan will be good for business."

He was right about that. Alan served up a pretty lavish punchbowl. But it seems the long party fizzled out last fall when Hank Paulson pulled a fire alarm, and all the guests went scampering for the exits. 

That memory is quite clear too, and it's something like this:  7:55 am, just before undertaking a new day in the nine-to-five routine, sitting in the car in a school parking lot, and Kai Rysdall's voice  on the radio.  In this case, the memory isn't fixed to a single day, but a series of days in the same place, at the same time, hearing the incredible story of  our financial demise as events unfolded over several weeks.

Here it is a year later and it's still not clear exactly what happened, or why. As for the why and how of what is happening now goes, that's not clear either.

One remainder is obvious though:  Times are hard; now it's like pulling teeth to try to make a living.

The exponential curves of change that  recently commandeered our course have confounded even the most prosperous  among us.  Even the Wall Street Journal people, for cryin' out loud,  are trying to figure out  how to squeeze a few profits out of people's new info-gathering habits.

Punchbowls are a lot of fun while they last. The one we're drinking from now--this internet thing--is quite a stimulant for the ole neurons. We've all become accustomed to this free online punchbowl, and we're wondering just how the freebie will inevitably evolve into something that actually costs us.  Because. . . yes Virginia, it's too good to be true.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant online. But what can you believe? As they said back in the last depression, there's no free lunch; most likely, when it comes to reliable content, there's no free punchbowl either. We'll learn that soberizing lesson one of these days soon when we wake up and realize that unbiased, objective reporting of factual events in the world doesn't just happen. 

 There are real journalists out there somewhere who deliver verifiably accurate reports of what is going on in the world--not  just opinionated, bloggated jabber like what your're reading here.  This challenge of keeping those reporters functional and reliable is one we'll have to work out collectively, and everybody will have to pull their share of the load.  It's a little like public radio with their pledge drives, or maybe like the WSJ with its paywall between free content and premium content, or some combination thereof.  We shall see.

If you're ever in Honolulu, ask the local folks about the "Punchbowl." They may direct you to a  volcanic site where you'll understand just what dear price our freedoms require of us.  In this life, there's really no free punch, except the one that hurts.

Carey Rowland, author Glass half-Full