AN ABJECT APOLOGY

To all my relatives, former students, former colleagues, and others kind enough to express friendship for me, I apologize most humbly, but I do not do FaceBook.  To be sure, I am on FaceBook.  I was strong-armed into joining it by a wonderful former student who still cannot get over the fact that I do not text.  Periodically, when FaceBook emails me to tell me that I have seventeen friend requests, five pokes, and I do not know what else, I navigate to the site and page down, accepting the friendship requests from people I know who would, I fear, be offended if I did not.

But I do not do FaceBook.  I do not post breathless reports of my trip to the supermarket, nor do I share with the world my latest haircut.  As readers of this blog are aware, I find it hard to so much as clear my throat in fewer than five hundred words.  Call it, if you will, the failing of a culturally conservative anarchist, or simply the crustiness of a codger who tomorrow turns seventy-nine.   If you email me, I will respond immediately.  But I do not do FaceBook.