‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’

It’s like fall’s busting out all over with leaves turning and temps most agreeable and it won’t be long before smoke from piñon and spruce burning in woodstoves will be filling the air and I’ll be digging out the winter clothes.

They say the winter will be light on moisture but I’m not taking any chances; I’ll be ready for whatever comes down the proverbial pike.

Now, where did I stash those waffle-stompers?

Why am I asking you?

As perhaps a nod to Halloween upcoming, for the next three days, Macey Center will be the scene of light entertainment in the form of murder, madness, treachery, and scary witches. It’s the Socorro Community Theater’s presentation of Macbeth, another example of how good William Shakespeare was at coming up with catchphrases. Like the phantom dagger in the title above as Macbeth ruminates over dispatching Duncan. Or Lady Macbeth getting weird with “Out, damned spot! out, I say!” Or an all-time Halloween favorite, “Something wicked this way comes.” Devilish fun ensues.

Anyway, we’re getting toward the end of October and I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I kind of miss seeing piles of mail-order catalogs coming to the mailbox. Not that I’m callous about cutting down however many trees it takes; it’s just that it would be heartening to know that not everything has gone digital.

Having said that, I’m as immersed in the digital world ordering stuff as the next guy, witnessed by the fact that I just acquired my fourth tablet. The thing is, in the last couple of decades, there’s been a push to make everything and everybody paperless, from email to e-filing to e-bill paying and on and on, but man-oh-man, all you hear about now are security hacks, cyber-attacks, and identity theft.

We didn’t use to worry about all that in the paper age, at least not as much. I don’t think you can hack a piece of paper. You can steal it but can’t hack it (sans scissors). And I wonder if anyone would really want my identity, as shopworn as it is.

Speaking of the paper age, we used to get big thick catalogs from JC Penney, Spiegel and Montgomery Ward, but the Sears-Roebuck catalog was the king of them all. I also used to get the J.C. Whitney catalog back in the sixties when I was trying to soup up my 1963 Corvair.

But I’m starting to meander again.

Sometimes I think I’d like to live completely off the grid, nestled between an array of solar panels and a wind turbine. One could get by very well with a wood stove for heat, a water catchment system, a garden for veggies, and an outhouse down the hill—all the comforts of home.

I could still visit with friends over Facebook with my cell phone, but I’m not sure about Instagram, Linked In, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat or the thing formerly known as Twitter.

Look at me, rattling off these nonsensical-sounding syllables as if they all meant something in real life, or “IRL,” as they say. No, I really can’t envision myself with a TikTok account, but who knows? Shuffling headlong down this long and winding road of a world that’s been created for us, I could live at 8,000 feet out in the middle of nowhere and still be plugged into the rest of the planet.

Heck, these days you can even Skype doctor visits from your La-Z-Boy.

When it comes to social media, as a grown-up person, I am not very good at it. I have to confess, however, that I have, on a whim at one time or another, signed up with some of those sites. Trouble is, outside of Facebook, I hardly ever log back on and end up forgetting that they’re on my device until my phone chirps at me.

And even then, half the time I don’t know where that chirping is coming from.

In spite of that, I fear I am slowly becoming a DMO—a digitally modified organism.

At this point I’m reminded of an article I read about GMO food, which reasonably argues that they may not be so bad.

Couple that with purists trolling the internet saying the food you buy in the supermarket is just plain loaded with toxic chemicals.

I’m thinking, okay, I can live with that. I’ve been eating plain ol’ grocery store vittles for umpteen years, so I guess that since we are what we eat, I’m nothing but a mixed sack of chemicals walking around in the form of a human being.

But I digress.

I don’t know what Shakespeare would be writing about these days, but since he was fond of skewering the skullduggery of the ruling elite, he’d have a field day.