An age of wonder

I like to say that I know the exact day I became old, because I remember the awards dinner Suzy and I attended in Dallas 11 years and two days ago. I remember the first sniffles and sneezes of an infection that weekend that marked the beginning of my life with Crohn’s, putting me in intensive care a few weeks later.

Mixed signals

Ah, for the days of energy and discipline, when I could sit down and pop off an essay, a tall tale or just a journal entry in a few short minutes. Not only could I do it, but I insisted on doing it, because words are my favorite toys and thoughts are my favorite games. An examined life is the only life, and sharing the results of the examinations is a kind of bursting forth in song.

And now the news

They say to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. In “A study in contradictions,” I wrote that I thought newspapers were dying of blandness, parroting falsehoods from spin machines and no longer doing the hard digging and taking a strong stand for truth. A couple of comments on the piece require followup.

A study in contradictions

Rest in peace, Rocky Mountain News. Fare well on your Web-only way, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All hail, absent friends, though we hardly knew ye.

The tough times and declining readership of the newspaper industry grow ever worse. Many folks cling to the hope that Joe Average will always want something to hold in his hands to read in the bathroom, but I think the handwriting (and the hypertext) is on the wall. The day is coming when your wall or your phone or a microphone or earpiece will feed you the news even as you put the plumbing to use.

I need a shrug

Snap out of it, a wise friend advises over the phone. He read “On not writing well” and encourages me by agreeing that “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” is the correct response.

The trick is not in knowing the answer, but in acting on it.

On not writing well

I have become an expert on not writing, at least at not writing for publication.

Controlling my density

I’ve been disappointed with my writing lately. Neither the process nor the output are what they should be. That wastes your time and mine.

What’s left

Invoking the “left-wing media” is a diversionary tactic used by pitchmen who don’t believe their own ideas have the coherence to carry the day in honest debate. Yet if a unitary and powerful “left-wing media” has no more reality than a unicorn, the actual mass media does have at least as much reality as some kind of horse, and its characteristics are a worthy topic of reflective self-study.

It is fair to wonder, as I did at the end of Yo left, yo right, whether newsrooms that surveys indicate are full of left-leaning thinkers can fairly present the world to a more diverse audience. The question has different answers, depending on where emphasis is placed.

Yo left, yo right

Read my words and tremble, for I am part of a dangerous cabal. Well, at least I would be if I weren’t sick.

You see, until disability took me out of the work force, I was part of that supposedly vast conspiracy purportedly dominating American discourse: the “left-wing media.” (Sometimes we’re more neutrally tagged merely “mainstream media,” but generally, even when we’re perceived as destroying left-of-center reputations with undue relentlessness, we’re still taken to be left-biased.)

Time on my hands

Sorry to have been gone so long. I have been writing a little, in comments and an opinion piece at the Dogtown Wire community blog, and there hasn’t been enough of me to go around to post here as well.