I am a Luddite–a fine-boned little hermit in love with rosemary-infused oils and walk-up apartments that boast thick, sturdy walls. I was born 70-100 years after the time I should have arrived and thus quite naturally hold a mounting suspicion of modem (why doesn’t it make this sound anymore? This holy, plinking sound of things starting up?) my “phone” (it is good, I have found, to periodically erase everything on it and start over. Mourning nothing, I relish the clean slate) and I believe in the life-affirming qualities of salt.

Consider the goiter. I once knew a woman who came down with goiters for real and though she was brave and gallant and once fine looking and likely would be again, it can’t have been easy. Yet just look at what a stone cold fox her husband is! And a dear one for sticking through the whole episode and playing, when the mood struck, a strumful of tunes on his oversized guitar and later zither. He took it in stride and musically, as we all should.

People are wonderful. To stay at maximum wonderfulness, we need iodine in our salt. Goiters, be gone!

Yes. I am a Luddite, you see, and I am not interested in bitcoin. I am interested in the original sound of the Internet and yet more in the original sound of the ocean and in erasing more than I retain and I am interested in salt.

The Luddite: a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, esp. in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed a threat to their jobs (1811–16). ORIGIN: named after Ned Ludd, a participant in the destruction of machinery. The man smashed a knitting frame.

Now I am on my kitchen floor (a suspicion of furniture) and so deeply behind on my lesson plans (a suspicion of time) and having written not one but six failed novels, completed yet mere attempts, all of them, by my side, and a ready, warding stash of salt and even– best of all–a plan to stop by a comedy show alone this evening, as comedy is best viewed very late at night and in the company of strangers. It is here that I received an invitation from “Papa Bungard” to “join Twitter!”

Papa Bungard? You appear advanced in your age, sea worthy and with beard growth. Perhaps, during a more nautical time in your life touring the watery part of the world, you acquired that not unstylish hat. I will share a pipe with you and compare the starch of our collars anytime. Far sooner, indeed, will I do that than tweet with you. Or at you. Or just tweet in general. Papa Bungard! You know more and better of this Twittering world than I ever will or care to. Ganbei! I salute you.

And so, with the gravity due the moment and ceremony, I politely decline your kind invitation to “join Twitter!” With low bow while dressed in kimono and silk scarf, arms akimbo, I report plans in less than an hour to meet a dear friend for tea and our own tales of the high seas. We will read jasmine leaves, contemplate the pipe if we can find one and we won’t tweet a word about any of it to anyone.

Will the world be okay in our non-communicative absence? I can only hope, stooping to light a candle. Will I then look for more and better ways to infuse the world with goiter-ridding iodine? Yes!

Papa Bungard, please help us! Please bring back some salt water from your tours of the high seas. Ahhhhhhh Papa Bungard!