Does anyone remember Mr. Roberts? I remembered a lot but checked Wikipedia to refresh my memory. The play, based on a collection of stories by the same name, written by Thomas Heggen and adapted by Heggen and Joshua Logan, won a Tony in 1948, starring Henry Fonda. Mr. Roberts was quartermaster of a naval supply ship during WWII, working back and forth between Tedium and Lethargy. with a crew out of its collective mind with boredom. Mr. Roberts kept applying for active service on a warship and when he finally got his change of duty and ship, was killed in a kamikaze attack while sitting in the mess having a cup of coffee. HIs best friend, the doctor on the supply ship, received news of his death and didn't tell the crew. They were so far steeped in boredom that the news would have supplied only a moment of trivial respite from their torpor.

I think that's what's happened to the mass psyche. I am not on Facebook but I get messages from friends and the news when something goes viral: whales caught in ice, a monkey in a shearling coat caught in a store desperately seeking its owner, a flash dance staged in Pushkin Square -- all momentary trivia that catch the mass attention. Frightening, really.

Kurt Vonnegut, may he rest in peace, always had an audience of one in mind when he wrote, so he told me. He said he wrote to his sister, who was killed in a car accident along with her husband, which is when Kurt took over the care of her children as well as his own. But he kept on privately addressing his books to her. I've done that, had a specific audience in mind when I write but I write so many different things that I've found it helps to write to different people, depending on what I'm writing about.. When it's surfing like this, aka blogging, my most frequent projected audience is the late Canadian writer, Jane Rule. She was tolerant, encouraging, encompassing and she had a great sense of humour. Are any of you out there (out there in Blogland) like that? If so, let me know and I will address a thought to you.