Thomas Jefferson famously said in a letter to John Adams in 1815, “I cannot live without books.” (Ever the worker bee, he added, “but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”)

Neither can I. Yes, yes, I know we are supposed to read everything online, download books, and so forth, but I have a problem with that. When I use my Kindle, I turn the page and find that I have turned 40 or 80 pages, and I can’t get back to the place I left off.

But it’s more than the bother of learning a new technology that is a problem for me.

I like the feel of books in my hands. I like to mark the books I own. I underline phrases and sentences. I put asterisks next to wonderful lines. I handle my books. I like to touch them.

I like to buy new books, old books, rare books.

But there is something else I realize that I cannot live without, and that’s a dog.

I always had dogs, and for about ten years I had two dogs. I loved having two of them, walking them together on the streets of New York City. One was a Tibetan Terrier and the other was a cocker spaniel. They were both blondes. People used to ask me if they were sisters, and I would say, “Yes, but they had different parents.”

Molly, the Tibetan, died in 2010, after a long and terrible bout with lymphoma. Lady, the cocker spaniel, died in 2011 after three years of diabetes.

I thought I would not get another dog and would try to be happy with a cat. The cat is lively, and I never have to walk him. When it rains or snows or gets bitter cold, I am glad to stay indoors.

But guess what? I have a new puppy. She is a huge mutt, a mix of Newfoundland, Lab, Akita, and a few other breeds as well.

My family thought I was spending too many hours at the computer, and they conspired to make me get out.

The answer: a dog. She makes me get out and walk. A lot..

The new girl is all black with white paws. Her name is Mitzi, short for Mittens, because her paws have mittens.

She has a thick, almost waterproof coat. She is big and growing. She will one day be 60-70 pounds, maybe more.

I never had such a big dog.

The dog and the cat play together constantly, never hurting one another.

If the dog gets too rough, the cat jumps to a higher plane.

Mitzi has a gentle and calm disposition. At the moment, her job is to chew.

She chews bones and hooves and anything else that catches her eye, such as my arm and wrist.

As I said, I cannot live without books, and I cannot live without a dog.

I had half a dozen interesting posts ready to go out today, but I decided it was inappropriate to return to business as usual after the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I postponed them. So you won’t be getting another post today.

This is a time to mourn, to reflect, to be still.

It’s a time to think about the heroic staff at the school who reacted immediately to protect their students.

It’s a time to think about the principal Dawn Hochsprung and the school psychologist Mary Sherlach. When the trouble started, they ran to the shooter instead of hiding.

I saw an interview with a teacher who was distraught. A reader saw the same interview and said this: “Did you happen to catch the interview with the one teacher (one amazing wonderful woman) who shepherded her class into a bathroom and kept them all assured that they would be ok? She told them, “i want you all to know I love you.” She expressed to the interviewer that her thinking was that she was afraid they would die and she wanted to make sure that if they were that the last thing they would remember hearing was not the gunshots, but the sound of someone telling them that they were loved. “This” in this era of teacher bashing.”

Last night I got an email informing me, “you lost a follower.” That’s when I found out that Dawn Hochsprung followed me on Twitter; she followed only 70 people. I was shaken.

Mostly what I thought about was the parents. I have a six-year-old grandson, and I was heartsick for those who lost their babies. Many years ago, one of my children died of leukemia, which was horrible, but how much worse to think that your precious son or daughter was murdered. What unfathomable madness. I don’t know how you live with that terrible knowledge. The pain is unbearable.

There is no way to make sense of what happened. I ask myself why anyone is allowed to have an assault weapon. I don’t know why. I ask why and how our society has become so desensitized to violence and at the same time so addicted to it.

I think of the violent video games, the violent movies, the violent conflicts in which we engage around the world. And I think about how many seriously disturbed people see violence as a route to infamy or attention or some fantasy in which they are a super-hero/villain.

We have a lot of thinking to do.

About violence. About our reckless media. About the true heroism of our educators. About how we change our ways of thinking and acting. About how we protect our children. About why we are obsessed about being number 1 instead of spending more time repairing the serious ills of our society.

I don’t have the answers.

I just think it’s time to start asking the right questions.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Sorry about typos in last few posts.

Typing in airport on cellphone.

Auto correct took control.

Then I was in air and just landed in NYC

Sad funeral in Houston.

With school starting tomorrow (and in some districts it has already started), I know you won’t have as much time to read these posts. The typical teacher, according to the Scholastic-Gates survey, works an 11-hour day. And from your comments, I know that most of the readers of the blog are teachers. I know there are also parents, principals, superintendents, school board members, journalists, concerned citizens–and, I hope, students as well.

So I will try to restrain myself, not post as many times each day. But it will be hard. People send me articles from all over the nation, and even from other countries.

My impulse is to share.

I’ll just have to develop a huge backlog. That way, when my fall schedule of travel and lecturing begins, my blog will be on auto-pilot, posting every day even if I am on the road.

I will continue to post the great comments of readers about their own insights into the education issues of the day.

By the way, my first lecture this fall will be in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on September 18. I was invited to speak by the Benwood Foundation. If you are in the area, please try to attend.

Then I will be in Austin, Texas, on September 30 speaking at the annual convention of the TASA and TSBA, the administrators and school boards. I speak in the morning. That afternoon, I will speak to parents and teachers and anyone else who wants to show up at an Austin high school, thanks to the invitation of the Austin Independent School District. I’ll post the details when I know them. Come on over, y’all.

When this blog started, I imagined a cozy conversation among friends, which it was, in my virtual living room.

But as the weeks went on, the daily readership began to exceed 10,000, and the living room sometimes seems crowded.

I hope it continues to grow. We can move from my living room to the nearest football stadium and take turns at the microphone.

The only dark cloud, to be frank, is that a very small number of people take up a disproportionate amount of space in the comments section.

Sometimes they are angry, because they don’t like our conversation, so they jump in again and again and keep saying, “I am right and you are wrong.”

I welcome dissidence, so I welcome them too, as it keeps us on our toes.

There is room for them too in my living room.

But I remind our dissidents that this large living room has rules of courtesy.

If you become rude, if you become insulting, if you continue repeatedly  to try to dominate the discussion and shout down others, I’ll ask you to step outside.

If you don’t, I’ll eject you.

Fair enough? That’s the house rules.