KASHWAK=NOFO

Stephen King

I suppose I need to explain the title. If you had read Stephen King's The Cell, like I told you to do, you would know already what is meant, and we could move along briskly. But, no. You wanted to read Picketty's weighty tome on the economic inequities and other stuff.

"Kashwak" is an area in Maine where there are no microwave towers to feed cellphones, hence, "Nofo" = "no phone". It was the signal transmitted through cellphones that brought the mighty to their knees, and left the country in mortal combat between two groups. (Hmmmm...)

Makes one misty eyed and come over all sort of  Sic Transit Gloria, eh? ...

... and renders us mindful of poems of decline and decay:

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said - 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
a stately pleasure dome decree...' "

All antique notions of foreign empires that did not punch their time cards in on that last era of recorded time...

Anyway, so I think Kashwak is sort of like old Xanadu, and Xanadu itself is a sort of TAZ. Now I know I am disclosing my age referring to a TAZ, a Temporary Autonomous Zone, but it is an idea too rich to let sit on the shelf.

A TAZ is that secret garden where we can go to escape whatever demons are pursuing us.

I think we'll need some TAZes soon, some strong Kashwaks to escape into, but where they will be...? Who knows?
As the old proverb says,

"The only thing uncertain is death (the time and place thereof) and TAZes."

--