DURANGO, Colo. (AP) – I may have been among the last to learn of Robin Williams’ death.
I was spending a few days in the Colorado woods. No laptop. No TV. No radio. No phone. Not so much as a wrist watch. For someone like me, who, like so many others, finds his every waking (and sometimes sleeping) hour filled with emails, text alerts and old-fashioned phone calls, it was an alien but placid world.
Then, late Tuesday, I re-occupied the grid. Jarringly. As I found out.
I got my first word of Williams’ tragic suicide moments after booting up my iPhone. I got an awful surprise, but it justified my usual qualms upon resuming my digital existence, even after a couple of hours offline at a concert. Filled with that familiar trepidation, if not outright dread, I watched the back-logged email stack up and my news apps update.
It used to be, you returned from a trip wondering what mail might be waiting to ambush you at the front door – a bill for a purchase you forgot you made or, God forbid, a jury summons. You would reel through your answering-machine messages, not all of which were likely to be welcoming. You would glance at unread newspapers with their dismal headlines.