Ye tankard of ale, ye hunk of bread and all the news that’s fit to talk about

Madeline Tabler, a San Diego fiction writer, has found what she thinks is an answer to our anxieties about our loss of short-term memory--the failure to remember names; the embarrassment of not remembering what it is we have just walked into a room for.

She quotes from a book called “Mind Magic” by Bill Harvey.

“The world was very different 600 years ago. We estimate that about seven weeks’ worth of sensory ‘question-producing’ stimuli 600 years ago is what we now get in a day--about 50 times the pressure to learn and adapt.”

Tabler adds: “So it isn’t that we’re losing our memory when we wind up in the middle of the kitchen wondering why we’re there. It’s just that our poor brains are so overloaded that we’ve lost that particular message for the moment . . . .”

Much is being learned about memory and the brain, but I have an idea that much is to be said for Tabler’s theory.

It is staggering to consider the amount of stimuli that we urban human beings receive each day from the time the alarm wakes us in the morning until we finally get to sleep at night.

If you have a clock radio, and listen to the news before you get up, you have probably learned more about what’s happening out there in your world, in 10 minutes, than a citizen of, say, York, England, one Geoffrey Farmer, could have learned about his in a month in 1385.

Farmer, awakened by the roosters, most likely, might hear a hammering on the still air and realize that they were at work on the cathedral. Not much news in that. It had been building all his lifetime, and all his father’s lifetime, and would be building all through the lifetimes of his children and grandchildren.

What else was new.

The king’s men might be riding through the town again to demand more taxes for the army fighting that interminable war in France. Would it never end?

There was no newspaper at his door. Not that it would have done him much good. He couldn’t read. All the news he got was down at the tavern, from travelers coming through, and it wasn’t always to be believed.

What did he do with his day? He had to milk the cow and gather the eggs and do some plowing, and then it was off to the tavern for a tankard of ale, a hunk of bread and cheese, and an exchange of gossip.

Nothing new, except Alfred’s wife was ailing, and they all crossed themselves and prayed it wasn’t the plague come back to decimate the town again. Wilcoxon’s wife had had the baby, a girl it was, which wouldn’t be much help on the farm. Will’s oldest son had got hold of a book of poems by that fellow Chaucer, and was learning to read. Better have a daughter than a son who buried his nose in books.

No one had the slightest idea what was happening in London, or in France, where England had been at war since the beginning of the century.

Geoffrey didn’t know anything, except a little animal husbandry passed down to him through the generations. He knew nothing of physics, chemistry, biology--except what he could infer from watching the birds and the bees--or of mathematics, except for the simplest accounting; he knew nothing of history, except the old legends, told over ale at night by the fireplace; he knew not how wide the world was, nor anything that was in books.

What did he have to remember ?

At night when it grew dark he went to bed, for there was nothing to keep him awake.

He might go out and look at the stars. What might he think? He knew nothing of the nature of stars, or their distances. It would be yet another century before Copernicus would propose his theory that the Earth revolved about the sun, instead of the opposite; not that Geoffrey would believe it.

He fell asleep out of fatigue and boredom--the infinite capacity of his brain almost untouched--and awakened the next day when the roosters crowed.

Why would he ever wonder why he had walked from one room to another?

Can you imagine how many stimuli I would receive in the same day?

Even before I get out of bed I have heard enough news from around the world to entertain, enlighten, encourage or dismay me; then on to my shower and my coffee and the newspaper.

In an hour with my newspaper I must read 25,000 or 30,000 words. Each one of those words has sent a message to my message center and found the niche in which it is defined and understood; instantly.

All of this information must be pondered, considered from a standpoint of ethics, morals, humor, history. How does it relate to me? Some of it must be discussed with my wife.

Throughout the day, brief encounters with others who have also read the news, or heard something you haven’t; or have seen a movie or read a book they want to tell you about.

Signs and symbols to be dealt with at every turn. Parking 1 hour. Sundays and holidays excepted. Stop. No U turn. Speed limit 35 m.p.h. Walk. In case of fire use stairway.

In the evening, dinner conversation, reviewing the stimuli of the day; and afterwards, either a book or TV.

So if I can’t remember your name, just remember, I’m probably overloaded; my circuits are busy.

Please hang up and place your call again.