Silly Little Thing

I make the walk every Sunday morning. Out the door and down the walkway to the driveway where I find the Sunday morning paper, whereupon I reverse my course. Total time, maybe two minutes. It's my routine and I enjoy it. I dress for the walk, too. Usually I'm dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt, class don't 'ya know.

If the morning is exceptional the time outdoors is delayed with deep breaths of clean air, a long look at the river as bird song and leaf color are cataloged.

Sunday is special, both the day and the almost extinct print edition of our nation's newspapers.

Here's the silly little thing about my Sunday mornings. After the two page comic section has been read I determine if it's worth saving for my Little Bit - today's copy made the grade. It's Super Bowl Sunday and Ground Hog Day. The section is folded, just so, and with ink I inscribe, to her, a note along the top of the page. I write; for Little Bit from Papa. I note the occasion why I've chosen this particular edition of the comics then end with, love.

There isn't a doubt in my mind newspapers, by the time she is an adult, will have long since taken the path of dinosaurs and ten cent loaves of bread. She turns nine this month. I want her to know and experience what she'll have missed. Like this:

I know, silly isn't it. Yet I feel it's the least I can do.

p.s., sorry it won't enlarge, deal with it.


Stephen
 

Our Newspapers

Are fast disappearing. I find this disturbing news, sad. My daily paper had a short story in the money section with the news the old Times-Picayune has laid off two hundred workers. The paper will only publish three times a week. What a shame.


My morning routine as always consisted of a good cup of coffee and a print edition of our local paper. To read the paper on-line just isn't the same. I like the feel of paper, the sweet smell of ink. Though our paper is as thin as a human hair I still enjoy news I can set aside and return to after a few minutes out on the floor of the shop. I even take the comics home to my wife.

I guess it bugs me because its another piece of our history and childhood slowly fading into the mist of time. Newspapers have been a part of my life. It wasn't all that long ago I read three different papers a day, then Sweet Wife put her foot down and said enough, cost, you know. I still sneak a Wall Street Journal home time to time.

I feel sorry for New Orleans.

Stephen