Margotlog: Screen Time Eats Us Alive

Margotlog: Screen Time Eats Us Alive

     It's been a shattering handful of days for those of us who love order, quiet, a safe and secure future. Not only have 17 students been shot in a Tallahhassee school by a gunman with a weapon powerful enough to rain bullets, but the report from special prosecutor Mueller has identified 13 Russian inviduals as well as 3 Russian "entities" that wormed their way into U.S. "social media."

Note: a few other developments bear on this too, though not so obviously: the State of Minnesota has plans to outlaw the use of "handheld devices," aka smart phones, by anyone driving an automobile. Yes, the smarty phone can be fixed on a dashboard, but the driver's hands must rest on the wheel. This leaves unacknowledged what will happen when the driver's eyes flit to identify the latest caller. I anticipate crashes, fender benders, veering out of lanes--things already damaging the rest of us. As long as smart phones are allowed to be displayed while a driver maneuvers a car, there will still be crashes and deaths of drivers desperately keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel.

     FLASH: The one time I tried using my less-than-smart phone while I was driving, I found it so distracting that within three minutes I pulled over and shut the damn thing off.

     This country, with its hightest standard of living in the world (I'll let that pass for now) and the most advanced technology (a huge part of the problem), is slowly unraveling. I'm here to tell you that in many ways, most of us are aiding and abbetting. (Just in case you don't do much with cloth, to unravel means that the warp and woof separate, revealing NOTHING, aka, a VOID.)

      We already have evidence of VOIDIDITY in its most blatant form: Facebook has refused to bend to appeals for those hoping to protect children from becoming chained to a screen, and will soon inaugurate a FACEFULL FOR CHILDREN.

     It seems that with the recent evidence of tampering, FACEFOOL Biggies have acknowledged there simply haven't been protections enough. Just at Mueller's investigation discovered, the Russian YUCKS have been drooling all over FACEFOOL, and prejudicing viewers who can't help themselves, we will how be educating our children, not just young adults, full adults, and senesant adults to work the stupidity of FACEFOOL.

     Why, you ask, am I so against the FOOL of a FACE? Maybe six or seven years ago, my Facebook account was hacked. How did I figure this out? Some Troll posted junk that didn't originate with me. As quick as I could, I sent that FACE FALL into the dustbin of history. But there are far more dangerous infiltrations to a FACE FULL account: messages masquerading as coming from real people, messages that tilt certain truths far from what should be self-evident.

     WE ALL NEED TO BECOME MUCH, MUCH SMARTER. We need QUIET TIME to absorb what we see and hear; to think about implications and ramifications. We need NOT TO BE SO BUSY LOOKING INTO A SCREEN'S VOID.

     So now, I can ask, with a rather clear conscience, WHY do we need FACE FOOL? If we have any sense at all, we will get our news from reliable sources--like the Minneapols/St Paul Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post. One way we can tell if a local paper is rather reliable is whether it publishes wire news and commentary from the two best newspapers in the U.S.: The NY Times and the Washington Post. We can also read the local commentaries for the logic of their arguments, the kinds of sources (like Minnesota's Senator Amy Klobuchar) they cite, and the rather sensible conclusions they reach.


    

Winter Solstice - The Cathedral, a poem from my chapbook

Winter Solstice - The Cathedral

It is the year's dark, when memories
arrive, opening to swarms
of swallows above ancient fields,
vines strung among the corn, sheep
belling an ancient Roman bath.

Dry sun anoints a pear tree,
my father's last denizen
which new owners soon will fell.

It is the year's dark.

From the dome, a turquoise
eye regards us. Our famil's spire
has crumpled, heaving up
ghosts who flit here like shy bats.

There's my uncle, impish and cancer-ridden.
Our tiny aunt in blue pillbox--her daughters
soon will join her, sending spirals
of laughter to incite the higher-ups.

My mother's dog who stopped
her demented barking--
poor beast, she went gladly
to the earth, mound

of collar and bone,
reminder of the exoskeletons
we once were.

My two grandmothers, with tiny wings,
flutter eagerly toward higher warmth,
while their husbands, below, still swirl
in necessary lubricant,

becoming ready to glide
toward the celestial realm,
this haven for lost souls,
half-living, half-returned

through the shill,
darkening air.

(From The Heart Beat of Wings, copyright 2017, Red Bird Chapbooks)