Sunday, June 27, 2010

Are Newspapers Necessary?

Doonesbury has had a string of great strips lately on that antiquity, the newspaper.  To many younger people who are constantly online, newspapers seem old fashioned and ridiculously cumbersome.  I’ve been trying to clarify in my own mind why it’s just the opposite for me, why I’ve been fervently grateful for newspapers most of my life.

On Sunday mornings we get The New York Times, which certainly gives a broader and better perspective for the week than the Sunday Boulder Daily Camera.  Usually, as is the case today, we fold up beloved sections like “Week in Review” and “The New York Times Book Review” and stuff them in our backpacks prior to leaving the house.  Wherever we end up for coffee after our drive or walk, we have them handy and they can be guaranteed to offer up new ideas and happenings--information we do not know we don’t know.   

Today we sit outside Starbucks on Pearl Street in the perfect June air and M points out an article about the appalling idea of implanting e-books into one’s retina.  Presumably newspapers would also be available this way.  For someone like me who is still leery of considering laser surgery to correct my astigmatism, this seems beyond the pale.

Newspapers are more versatile than computers or e-books. You can read a newspaper anywhere and anytime you like, unencumbered by details like unavailability of free wireless Internet, lack of convenient power outlets, failing batteries or electrical equipment.  If you’re on a beach you can get smears of sunscreen sprinkled with sand and seagull droppings on your newspaper and really be none the worse for wear.  After you’ve finished reading the paper you can cut clippings from it to send to children in faraway cities or to be magnetically posted on the refrigerator door.

Long ago on humid summer nights in Indiana, those with the knowhow could shape and twist newspapers into loosely formed balloons and light them on the bottom edges.  The fire balloons would then gently lift and soar aloft, rising with the heat upward and upward into the dark night sky to be transformed into sparkling gold and black lace against the stars, with only the fireflies the wiser. 

If all else fails and you have no parakeets whose cages need lining or puppies who need emergency haven, you can recycle newspapers and they will live to see another day.

You can truly focus when reading a newspaper if you like, and not be lured to other links and obligations like checking your e-mail again or peeking to see if anybody likes you on Facebook. 

I will not go so far as to say newspapers are essential to my sense of wellbeing but with some good coffee in the morning, they do contribute positively.  Is this, then, an irreconcilable generation gap as the youth reads their news on the laptop screen each morning? To my broad blog readership, especially those under 25, I pose this question:  “Are newspapers necessary?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Paper Bird

In my continuing effort to get a life outside work, we ventured down to Pearl Street for this summer’s first Bands on the Bricks event, featuring a homegrown Boulder band called Paper Bird. Paper Bird is an intriguing 7-member musical mixture with three female vocalists doing strong, tight harmonies, a banjo, a bass, a guitar – all spiced up with the occasional Dylanesque harmonica riff and a jazzy trombone. Once in awhile one of the women whips out a trumpet and blows a few bars to punctuate a song. Almost all the tunes they do are original and despite the fact that the sound mix wasn’t quite right and the vocals didn’t come through optimally, I became an instant fan, going so far as to buy both a t-shirt and their first CD, “Anything Nameless and Joybreaking.” They have a new CD coming out in July called “When the River Took Flight” that I’ll probably try out as well.

I’ve been listening to the CD in my car all week – a vintage sound and interesting lyrics (which you know I am a sucker for from my previous blogs). Example:

"If i sewed together all my illusions of youth i could make a coat that would keep me warm in December. if we laid all of our desires side by side we'd be walking on broken glass for miles.

chorus:  if i ask enough questions with no hope for reply would i understand the structure of love? i'd like to understand the structure of love."

                                              Esme Patterson, Paper Bird

It’s a satisfying combination of not-easily-categorized bluegrass, jazz, blues, folk—they were a breath of fresh air. If you haven’t heard them before, give them a whirl.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Rainy BoulderWalk


Before our walk we gaze out at the backyard, where the cold rain continues and the grass appears to have grown a full inch overnight.  As sometimes happens between couples who have been together for a long time, M and I simultaneously remember a Ray Bradbury story about a planet where it has been raining for the last seven years and the children who have never seen the sun:  All Summer in a Day.”

Colorado natives are not accustomed to multiple days of steady rain, and that’s what we’ve had.  Sunday morning we decide to break out the ponchos and risk our lives to stroll along the Boulder Creek bike patch in the epicenter of the flood plain.  We park our car on one of the upper levels in the nearby parking garage “just in case,”  and ponder whether we would hear the rush of the hundred-year-flood in enough time to climb to safety above the creek path.   

Along the wider than usual creek, the water rushes by.  Two kayakers carry their gear past us on the way up to their usual launching point.  “You’re really going to try it today?” M asks in amazement, and they chuckle nervously.  The water is high, but not as high as we’ve sometimes seen it.  The underpasses are partially dry and still walkable.  The rain lightens after awhile, then pounds down heavily, then lets up again, a pattern that repeats again and again.  The clouds throw a heavy cloak over the Flatirons and the rare deep green of the foothills.  At Eben Fine Park a group of gung ho runners soldiers ahead with their sprints and stretches and then heads up the creek trail, their coach running effortlessly alongside them uttering words of encouragement. 

Chief Niwot sits, stoic as always under the downpour, and the birds seem to thrive; the excess water does flush the worms out of their hidey holes.  It is cold for June, around forty degrees.  Last night the steam rose up from our outdoor hot tub and the rain drops made circular patterns on the surface of the   water encouraging meditation on the present moment. 
Yes, it’s a cold rain for June—but we remember the drought days and watering our thirsty flowers with gray water from the bathtub, and are grateful for life and rainfall, knowing as we do the strong connection between the two.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Inverness at South Padre Island



“If there is anything you need and don’t see, please let us know…and we will show you how to do without it.” - Sign on the bathroom wall in the Inverness condo at South Padre Island

And after a few days at Inverness I see that I have everything I need. Maybe it was the constant sound of the surf, or the sleepy heat of the beach between wind bursts, or the 11th floor balcony looking out toward the infinite ocean horizon, or the large sign under the big-screen TV that said “RELAX.” In any event I feel like I can smile easily again and have had a good rest.

I found time to do things like bend myself backward in repeated attempts to capture pictures of seagulls and pelicans in flight from my bird’s eye perch on the 11th floor. And to just sit by the ocean and listen to the waves and read and read and read and read for hours on end. And to let the heat reflected off the sand soak into me and then to finally swim in the salty cool waters, dodging the clumps of seaweed. And repeat. And also to be rested enough to be willing to get up in the middle of the night to observe the thunderstorm and light show out at sea. And again in the morning to arise and gaze down the shimmering path of light leading to the sunrise over the water.

We call it a “vacation” in the U.S. which sounds so empty and clinical. I prefer the European word for it. Believe me, they know how to take time off, and they call it “going on holiday.”