Saturday

For all of the popularity of Twitter, the company struggles to monetize their Internet property better, and they have been suffering a falling off of new memberships. Well, it seems that they are now forcing me into a choice. In order to do the most basic navigation of their site, you now have to be a logged on member. Which means, if I want to continue to read my little list of tweeters, I now have to join. I have been debating the question this morning. You might think it should be an easy question, since I have been flirting with jumping aboard for a long time. In fact, my very first reaction was a bit gleeful at the prospect of having little choice now but to join. However, after that first blush of enthusiasm, I feel only a dull coldness toward the idea. Without having any coterie of pals to clown around with, tweeting can only seem like a wholly meaningless enterprise. It might be objected that this doesn't seem like a problem for me when it comes to my blogging, but my blog is my journal. I could do this like the old days, with spiral notebooks and a pen. It's a good enough way to hear myself think, so to speak. There is a point behind my lonely blogging. I don't need an audience. On the other hand, there is no reason why I must tweet if I open an account. I just need access, and maybe that is all I need to do with the account. Of course, being there and being a member there, it is difficult to imagine how I would resist the temptation to try to play. ... ... Maureen Dowd: "Having seen Donald Trump act as a braggadocious but benign celebrity in New York for decades, I did not regard him as the apotheosis of evil. He seemed more like a toon, a cocky huckster swanning around Gotham with a statuesque woman on his arm and skyscrapers stamped with his brand. I certainly never would have predicted that the Trump name would be uttered in the same breath as Hitler, Mussolini ..." [Year of Voting Dangerously] ... ... The weather has warmed. No shirt, and I switched the ceiling fan to summer mode. I trust, or hope, that the weather will chill again, maybe with a couple of cold fronts. It is only the first half of February. But you never know in these years of global warming and climate change and Trump, these years of apocalypse. ... ... A Lincoln couplet from his youth: "Good boys who to their books apply/ Will make great men by & by." He also told a friend of his ambitions: "I don't always intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like." [Burlingame]