Spending more time than I’d like looking up things online recently, I have discovered that, for every website providing important information, there are five filled with inconsequential drivel, even outright falsehoods and they stay in my system, raising their ugly heads almost every day.

Having had information I needed sent automatically to SPAM, I have forced myself to look through my daily receipts before erasing them all.

The problem is, I don’t think they truly disappear.

Someone with an exotic-looking name advises me she has seen my page photo and loves it, so could we get together for some afternoon sex?

Well, no. To begin with, I don’t have a page, per se, unless one considers Facebook, which has included some truly funny things.

The photos don’t show a creature who attracts anything unusual. One of them brings tears. My oldest son, Rich, poses with me and the late, great Ron Ueckert. My grandson sports green hair in the background.

Every person born accumulates memories. That day was wonderful. Not long afterward, Ron died in a plane crash.

I stopped to look at my other photos and found some that really shouldn’t be there. There was nothing bad about them, they just didn’t fit.

Two recently shared and not yet archived show a man who was – is – the great love of my life. It has brought forth two days of tears, tissues, a long phone conversation about his life and death and bittersweet dreams.

I have several old newspapers which share stories of people near and dear to me. They’re in a box and yellowing with age, but I know how to find them. My picture box tells many stories.

I have been criticized for storing away photos of loved ones who have died, as if I were putting the memories away. That’s probably true. With three quarters of a century to my record, there are just too many.

I returned from my page to SPAM, which seems to occur more on YAHOO!

I find the same “person” I just deleted has returned, telling me what to eat if I want to eliminate nail fungus. From an orgy to nail fungus, she needs to review her priorities or the name she uses attempting to scam people.

I am also advised that I have yet to donate money to a political campaign taking place in New York. Why should I? When it’s time, I will offer support locally.

Nancy Pelosi rings in to advise me of “Huge News” that will be even better if I agree to have a set fee deducted monthly from my bank account.

Well, no. If Congress can’t get its act together, $1 monthly from me will make no difference.

I shut off my computer and read the newspapers. More people should do this.

There, I learn of what’s happening here at home, where I can go for clean family fun, what I can eat, who won the most recent golf tournament, run and walk -- and the legal notices.

Nowhere else do we learn of the deep workings of local government, public meetings on proposed changes in planning and zoning, vacancies on advisory boards and important commissions as well as lost water certificates, notices of stray livestock and families fighting foreclosure.

I shudder at all that being placed on line. People like myself who use computers for research would probably benefit, but what about the rural folks who don’t yet have reliable cellular service? They would be effectively disenfranchised and even Nancy Pelosi’s automatic dollar wouldn’t protect their rights.

As I read the daily newspaper, I see life as it is and want to share it with all my friends and neighbors, even the person who is working to prevent nail fungus.

What a wonderful privilege we have in the printed word.