Stranger Days, Still

I don’t know that there’s merit to employing the beast – the internet – to disturb having grown accustomed to the beast.

It wasn’t eight years ago that city people would come to the School here on the farm and look at me concernedly when they found out the hard way that I, as it is said, ‘had no service’. Two weeks ago the Bell guy was up a pole on the lane at the behest of an erstwhile air b/b landlord, to install – I would say ‘impose’ – some kind of higher speed version of the beast, to make this rural area attractive to people who want to get away from it all. There’s bound to be a pretty stout demand for well appointed places to get away from it all in the wake of all this distancing.

Maybe this virus is a disturbance in the Fentanyl supply. Maybe the internet is the slickest methadone yet, keeping hale and hearty the mania for empty engagement, for the vacant calories of content.

I won’t claim that there’s loads of requests for more from me, on this or any other subject. There isn’t.

I’ve never been on the other personal devices, or platforms, or anything else. Don’t know how to activate them.

This is as compromised a move as I seem capable of, social media wise. Not very sophisticated, but earnest.

Here’s an ad hoc meeting of the farm crew, issuing proof of what they’re mindful of while forking hay and picking out the poison ivy roots and milking the ewes.
I did my best on short notice. We’d like something here to be useful to your ruminations, before the horn blows and your rumination time is cut short.

Bless. Work. Repeat. That’s what we’re up to.

Good fortune to your door.
-Stephen Jenkinson