The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Folks these days are scared. Can’t say I really blame em. The fear mongers pump the worst case scenarios on X and Facebook, Newsmax and MSNBC. The liberals are grooming their kids, the conservatives will be policing their bedrooms. We’ve divided into two warring sides and the other side is definitely Evil.

No one is left in the wide chasm that once was the middle. The center couldn’t hold. Covid taught us to fear the coming bird flu already in cattle and milk. Half of us are afraid of any potential vaccine. Might be a transmitting device. Might be poison. We don’t trust scientists, our school teachers are undermining our kids’ patriotism, the courts are witch hunts, the elections are rigged. Who ya gonna call?

Artificial Intelligence should kick the last of the foundations out. Nothing can be taken at face value, all news, all information is suspect. The internet, that promise of democratizing information, will be riddled with worms, lies, propaganda, craziness, conspiracies, bots and phony baloney as far as the eyes and ears can see and hear.

Scared? Angry? Hell yes!! The old reality is dissolving every day! The world is shape-shifting every mouse click. Nothing is as it seems and definitely not as it seemed only yesterday. We live by gizmo. Cellphone addiction, TikTok entertainment, Facebook popularity, memes, video games, internet ‘influencers’, distractions distractions and more distractions. Our attention spans have atrophied to bits and bytes, click baited, concentration rendered impossible.

From my perch on the porch of the South End, the mainland is drifting further away on tides of grievance and anxiety, almost another country no longer tethered to the rhythms here of tide and moon, seasons and song. Walking the beach today, no one else for miles, the wind blew warm and a lone whale spouted offshore. The two of us traveled together to the Head, keeping pace with each other, maybe keeping faith, definitely sharing the same world. I’m no Ahab, don’t call me when you realize reality has come unmoored. I’m staying put.

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