Getting a read on our current realigned reality

Here we are.

It is Monday during the era of the coronavirus and most everything is canceled or postponed and many of us are now embarking on an unplanned stay-athome vacation with our children. Social media is a mixed bag. Facebook is rife with the usual posts about the passing of people and pets.

Twitter continues to be an emporium for the worst in all of us. Tribal mud-slinging, grand condemnations and proclamations and snarky memes and schoolyard putdowns. It really is rubbish.

Television news is not much better.

On the political front, aged presidential candidates cast aspersions at the other guy while all the pundits clutch pearls and do their very best to inject us with enough anxiety to compel us to bust open the boxed wine with fervor.

News is important and that is why we are here and we will continue to bring you the information you need.

Noise, though, is not important and keeps us all on edge, and there is a lot of it out there. Maybe now is a good time to tune it all out.

Perhaps this is an occasion for friends and families to get to know each other again without the constant presence of whatever chattering little machine it is that perpetually pollutes the communion.

But what to do? Anybody have any ideas?

In cases like this it is always wise to consult the great Dr. Seuss, Massachusetts’ own Theodor Geisel.

Read a book.

As Dr Seuss said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

And he wasn’t the only one. American author Louis L’Amour knew that books were much more than collections of words on a page.

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you,” he said.

Author and humorist P.J. O’Rourke had a more pragmatic, albeit shallow approach to the recreation. “Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it,” he counseled.

Noted military man and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte knew how to pass the time while twiceexiled: With books. “Show me a family of readers,” he said. “And I will show you the people who move the world.”

Maybe comedian Groucho Marx made the best case for reading. “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend,” he said. “Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

Reading is a wonderful escape and it is suited perfectly for our extraordinary situation, so if you are going to power-up one of your meddlesome little devices, use it to read.

Perhaps this upside-down period in our lives can also be one of the most enriching.

This is new to us all but we can and should make the best of it, regardless of how bizarre the situation becomes.

As Lowell’s famous author Jack Kerouac said, “Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.”