I’m going off the grid for the next 10 days.
I will not answer your phone calls offering me great deals on Caribbean cruises.
I will not start each morning by scanning various web sites to take a measurement on how far we’ve fallen as a nation.
My Facebook and Twitter accounts will lie fallow, weeds sprouting between your gasps of disbelief over kitten videos and that photo of Donald Trump hugging the United States flag as if he were humping a Golden retriever.
Oh yeah, Trump doesn’t like dogs. Not exactly grounds for impeachment, but very telling in my book. I was at my doctor’s office a couple of days ago and in all honesty, if she had acted as crazy as Trump did during his CPAC speech last weekend, I would have run from the office. Two people I want to take their jobs seriously: The person who addresses my blood pressure issues, and the person who controls our country’s nuclear weapons.
And while I’m thinking about the doctor’s office, our waiting rooms need a literary update. People magazine is nothing but news of C-level celebrities and the occasional family that survived an encounter with a serial killer.
I refuse to subsist on C-level junk food. At least, for the next 10 days.
I will stop watching television for the next 10 days. Right now, as I’m typing this, I’m watching Department of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tell Congress that the Trump administration was not keeping immigrant children on our southern border in cages. No, she insists, those boxes made from wire fence with kids sleeping on concrete floors are “detention spaces that have existed for decades.”
I just need to get away. Even the arts, where I turn to for beauty and distraction, is no help. Last week, I went to the New York Times’ web site, and this was the first story I found under the heading Television:
Jussie Smollett Won’t Be on Final Episodes of ‘Empire’ Season.
And this was the first story under the heading Sports:
Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Charged in Florida Prostitution Investigation.
And this was the first story under the heading Music:
R. Kelly Charged With 10 Counts of Sexual Abuse in Chicago.
I will read two books over the next 10 days. A biography of Benjamin Franklin. And George Saunders’ novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo.”
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