I have refused to look at anything resembling NEWS for about 21 months now. Since the second inauguration of that man currently inhabiting the White House, to be precise.

I just. Can’t. Take it.

Now, I have always prided myself on being an intelligently “informed” person, on a national as well as an international scale. I subscribed to the New York Times from eastern Oregon, for pete’s sake–a place which, in its desert and rural and politically-far-right climate is about as far from New York attitudes as conceivably possible. (Actually, I still have the subscription at $4 a month… but I haven’t opened the app for 21 months. I open the NYT crossword regularly, and that’s all.)

So how does a person go from insistent-on-information to complete Ignoramus Newsius (which I’m sure is the Latin term)? Well, I already hinted above: I couldn’t stand the thought of another four years’ worth of angst, of embarrassment, of anxiety about what might be done next, by a person whose moral and political leanings are so entirely repugnant to me. Every time I’ve thought, “well NOW he’s finally done”… Obviously, he hasn’t been. Here’s a man who can be convicted of felonies… and still take the White House.

I can only say: “Cult of Personality.” There’s no other explanation possible for this man’s ascension–twice!–to the most powerful post in our country that’s chosen by the country’s actual citizens.

Since I haven’t been plugged in AT ALL since his inauguration, I don’t even know if he’s decided that he can pardon himself, though all signs of his personality point toward that being a likelihood. (He has done whatever he wants, regardless of what is “allowed,” over and over and over and over. And gotten away with it.) One of my great fears is that he might manage to overturn term limits–because otherwise at least I’d only have a couple more years (plus a few months) to get through before his reign comes to an end,

I don’t know what follies or atrocities he has committed this time around, aside from one inkling provided by a guest’s chance comment while checking in, last winter, about “going to war with Iran.” Well fuck. Still, I have not looked further. I just. Can’t. Take it.

I’m not being ironic and I’m not speaking in jest when I say that it has been a matter of my Mental Health to separate myself from The News. I have made it a point, these last 21 months, to focus on my own little corner of the world–the sphere I can aid and influence, the arena in which I’m actually living out my own little life. Jon & I run an RV park with 80 resident households (as well as the passing-through visitors), and it’s somewhat akin to being mayor of a tiny town. (Combine “mayor” with “hotel manager,” and you’ve got my job in a nutshell.) Here I can impact actual people’s actual lives–for the better. On this scale I can handle even the negatives of human nature that surface: the broken glass of drug paraphernalia found in the bathroom yesterday, the person letting his off-leash dog rush another person’s pets, the people leaving trash behind when they leave, or not picking up their dog poop… This scale of human bad-ness I can handle.

What I can’t handle well anymore? Taking in a number that was cited to me this morning.

The few other inklings-of-news that have penetrated my blackout have been the notifications (for which I’m signed up) of when to lower our flags to half-mast. It’s because of this that I know Dick Cheney and Dolly Parton have died, for example–though I have no earthly idea who else in the celebrity or political or sports or entertainment worlds might have died (or married, or reproduced, or… anything!) in the last couple years.

And this morning, one of our staff forwarded an edict from our Oregon governor that the flag be lowered to half-mast to mourn and honor the victims of yesterday’s elementary-school shooting in Bend, Oregon. I let Jon know, so he could lower our flags, and told him why. “Yes,” he answered, “I read about it this morning.”

He so considerately DOESN’T mention any news-items to me, I confess I forget that he actually does still read some news in the mornings. This time, though (the first time in 21 months, I’m realizing) we talked through a news-item, and he read some of the details to me. We’re both astounded by and sympathetic toward the armed parent who stopped the shooter (literally) dead, within six minutes of the first shot being fired, and before the police even arrived. That man is going to carry nightmares the rest of his life–but he stopped a murderer in his tracks, before he could continue taking more than the four lives he did thieve.

Jon continued to read to me, citing the statistic that this would be the 25th school shooting… I expected him to finish the sentence with words like “in America’s recent history”. Instead, the sentence finished: “in 2026.”

What. The ever-living. FUCK. I may have begun my News Blackout primarily to avoid the far-reaching implications of the occupant of our Oval Office… but he’s not the only thing I can’t deal with well.

Still… having had this little glimpse of “The News” today, there’s a touch of the old quest-for-information-and-knowledge thing surfacing again… Do I dare? I’ve always planned to (subject myself? treat myself?) to a retrospective of all the news I’ve missed, at whatever time I decide to re-engage. Twenty-one months ago I would have been half-joking if I’d said I might stay disengaged through an entire presidency–but here I am nearing the halfway mark without ONCE having read a news article (if we don’t count what Jon read to me this morning). I actually might go the whole presidency (as absurd a claim as that sounds to me, even after 21 months without news). Whenever I do re-engage, I should really plan ahead and do it at the END of a year, when they have all the “what happened in 202_” stories going…

I don’t think it will be this year. Not even the slightly-awakened curiosity, nor my embarrassment at admitting publicly how ignorant I’m keeping myself… Nope, neither of those things seem to be enough to prompt me today to open the NYT news app.

Crossword it is!