I should write something about Tom Petty here, but I can’t. The news of his death, coming on top of the news from Las Vegas, coming on top of the news from Puerto Rico, coming on top of the horrors we have to endure every day of our existence in this hideous year of 2017, has broken me.

I tried to say something, of course, because gasbags gotta gas. There’s a draft in my files from last night that is as dark and despairing a thing as I have ever written, but I have decided to keep it private. It won’t do you any more good to read it than it did me to write it, which is to say none at all.

At this time, people with nothing valuable to say need to stop talking. So I’m done for a while.