NO NEWS (DARK AGES 2)

Formerly an overly avid reader of news, I’ve basically given up the habit since last month’s national elections.  The news outside my house is so extraordinarily & uniformly bad (and has been for so long) and, acrimony mounting everywhere, I mostly stay inside and feel myself virtually imprisoned in a staccato  string section sawing away at the score of  "Psycho." 


We’re living in the Dark Ages, she told me, and I agree.  So then, No News must be Good News.

Years ago driving to Manhattan with my mother I remember listening to a radio interview program she liked, that day featuring Lawrence Durrell, the famous "Alexandria Quartet" author, who was discussing and promoting his new novel "Tunc."  He was funny, modest and natural in conversation and told great stories, including some about his brother Gerald, the author of "My Family and Other Animals."  He also related  a tale about the time he gave up reading the news for an entire year while working on a book and living on Corfu.  The punch line, which you’re probably already expecting, was the conclusion he formed on returning to London and "civilization" :  He hadn’t missed a damn thing.

My Norwegian friend Linnea (whom I’ve never met but whose observations and pictures I greatly admire) mentioned Facebook vultures the other day. I have to say that although I understand what she means, her description does those grand wheeling skybirds a disservice.  Buzzards dismember only to survive. As far as I know and can tell, they don’t dissemble or talk trash to carrions, each other, or themselves.

Proving these Dark Ages indeed exist is easy. It only requires the display of this photograph showing the surviving members of Led Zeppelin being honored at the White House the other 9% (or is it really 16+%?) national unemployment rate - 1.8 % (maybe) annual growth rate - Fiscal Cliff - You Scrooged Christmas - Incoming Armageddon (Again) - National Feeding Trough Expense Account evening.
   


How much do you think those cheesy ribbons cost? (More than Zep’s clip-on bow ties?)  The 1960s aren’t over; they never really happened.  Just ask Charles Manson.

TIME WILL TELL -- BUNNY WAILER (LINK)