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Speaker 1: A story in the New York Times reporting that college

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students in a writing course do better when they go

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offline for a month makes perfect sense to me, same

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as if you say a writer does better at a

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laptop in the public library than schnockered on a sailboat

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in a storm. But the idea of persuading students to

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go offline strikes me as quixotic, like Amish evangelism or

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banning the use of chairs. The Internet is here, and

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we're all caught up in it. I was in my

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fifties when the World Wide Web came in, and its

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advent was not a big event to me. I was

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still working on a manual underwood typewriter. I have a

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clearer memory of seeing Albert Wolsoon, the last living Civil

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War veteran, in a parade in downtown Minneapolis. I remember

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my uncle Jim farming with horses and fibromaghee and Molly

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on the radio. And I remember boredom, which has mostly

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disappeared in America, except perhaps among lighthouse keepers or attendants

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in parking ramps or felons in solitary confinement. And maybe

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imprisonment offline would be considered cruel and inhumane in a

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court of law. Now, growing up pre google in a

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small Midwestern town among taciturn people, I experienced boredom intensely,

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and it led to reading, and in due course to writing.

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I took up writing haiku three blackbirds shrieking as my

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old black cat calmly squats in the sandpile. This was

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enough to amuse me way back then. And because I

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could write a seventeen syllable haiku and I had good handwriting,

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and I spoke in complete sentences, I was considered gifted.

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I considered becoming a poet, but I wanted to earn

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money and not live up over my parents' garage, so

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I went into public radio instead, where, thank goodness, the

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audience was made up of reference librarians, caregivers, bird watchers,

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organic gardeners, people who were spiritual but not religious, people

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who enjoyed the enigmatic more than actual entertainment. I shouldn't brag,

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but I can be more enigmatic than anybody I know.

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I got a reputation as an artistic storyteller, which, believe me,

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there is no such thing. Storytelling is not an art.

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It's a craft like plumbing, and either the water comes

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out of the tap or it does not. But back

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in the boring eighties, enigma was more appreciated. And now

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there's the smartphone offering endless entertainment videos, YouTube GPS telling

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you exactly where you are on Earth and how far

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to the nearest comedy club or yoga studio or liquor store.

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Not just any old liquor store, but one that offers

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designer beers with floral notes of marigold sprinkled with saffron,

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playing off earthy vanilla finish. We didn't have that back

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in my time. We just had cold beer. I tried

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to explain this to young people, the fact that we

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didn't have soft butter back then. Butter air raided to

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make it spreadable, just little hard bricks of butter that

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when you tried to spread it on toast you tore

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the toast apart, or else you scrape shavings of butter off,

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and by the time the toast was buttered, it was cold. Now,

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back in the day before google became a verb, we

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had to memorize information it wasn't easily available, such as

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verb tenses, or state capitals or the nine planets. My

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very educated mother just served us nine pizzas Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,

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Jupiter Center, and Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and a boy named

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Ralph Kraus liked to ask mister Jensen or science teacher,

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how big is Uranus? Is there life on Uranus? It

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was a high point of our science class, in which

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high points were few and far between. I grew up

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under the heavy burden of boy Scouts, which I believe

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has mostly disappeared, done in by social media. We had

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cruel scout masters who took us winter camping in the

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north Woods, believing adversities stimulates intelligence. I'm not so sure

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I associate intelligence with staying warm. Now I look at politics,

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the regressive maga right working hard to horrify the genteel left,

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which has elected nihilists and golf pants who exercise their

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whimsical powers to serve three percent of the people seventy

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five percent of the time. And it's easy to despair.

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But if you go offline and wander through crowds of shoppers,

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your sense the spirit of kindness and gaiety of our people.

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Old men dozing off at the switch need to be

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shoveled into the Home for the Hopeless and let the

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young and conscientious come in to repair the damage, and

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I hope it happens in my lifetime.