Solitude

In his book, “Creative Brooding,” Robert Raines wonders why no group of concerned citizens is lobbying for the right to brood undisturbed. He quotes author Halford Luccock as saying that in today’s televised world we are all going to have “eyes the size of cantaloupes and brains the size of split peas.”

And Russel Baker, the newspaper columnist, complains that the number of places where a person can escape entertainment becomes smaller every year. It used to be, for example, that a man could go to his dentist and count on some undisturbed suffering which would help him grasp the shortness of life and the agony of the flesh. No longer! Nowadays, while the drill bites his nerve endings, he will be entertained by an invisible orchestra performing “The March of the Wooden Soldiers” through a hole in the ceiling.