A Real Sunday Paper

My newspaper woes have come to a comfortable resolution.  I still don't like reading the daily paper on my phone, and while it's better on my computer as Rain suggested, I can't seem to remember to bring the laptop to the table along with my oatmeal and milk.  But I've figured out enough work arounds and short cuts and have given up the comics (for now) so I'm still connected to the local news and the Letters to the Editor.

It doesn't feed my soul in the way turning newsprint links me to my parents, but it gets the job done.

On Sundays, though, I've given myself a treat - a subscription to the Sunday New York Times.  There was a deal (there's always a deal) for a year at $4 a week. 

It is impossible to determine how much the paper costs at a newsstand without actually going to one in NYC and finding out in person.  Googling was a trip down memory lane.  In 2001 the price went up fifty cents to $3 in the city.  The next update came in 2012, when the daily paper felt the same increase, and was now at $3 per issue.  The Sunday paper still cost the same - $5 in the city.

There is nothing that Google could show me which would indicate what the single paper costs on the street today.  I tried to lookin the upper right corner of the front page, but it just says account with an icon to click.  That's where the price used to be, and maybe still is, for all I know.

Anyway, I gave up trying to make myself better about spending the money and I reveled in my first edition this week.  Reveled is exactly the right word.  I smelled it when it came in the house, and I was standing in the front hallway in Oceanside, balancing bagels and lox and rolls and The Paper.

I was with my family, Daddooooo reading the obits to be sure they're all older than I am.  Sister prying the comics from underneath the local paper as Brother and I lay on the carpet and read the Sam Goody ad, wondering what records to buy with our dividends ($10 every quarter from Columbia Gas, a gift from my grandparents that I appreciated as I got older).   

That was the best part, but the rest was equally wonderful if less personal.

It took me three days to get through it all.  I went straight to the crossword puzzle (finished in a jiffy, in pen), then devoured the rest of The Magazine.  There aren't many ads (the paper says it's solvent without them), which is sad because I always liked to see what A&S and B. Altman's and Saks 5th Avenue (on 5th Avenue!!!) were selling, but then I realized that most of the stores don't exist any more.  

Without the ads to slow things down, The Magazine felt more like an assignment than a lazy break, but I pushed that thought away and made my way merrily through it all.  There was Style and Opinion and The Book Review.  This is the only Business section I read; perhaps because it's the only one I can understand?  I kept the paper on the kitchen table, announcing to TBG that it is not a pile, it is a work in progress and that's where it's staying and that's where it stayed.  

It got me through lunches and breakfasts and afternoon snacks.  It amused me while I waited for the water to boil for pasta and while the hot sandwiches were baking in the oven.  It made me smile for three days.

The price will go up in a year.  I think it won't matter to me at all.  I'm addicted all over again.  The NY Times CEO predicts the end of the newspaper in 20 years.  I'll worry about it again then.  For now, I'm going to revel.

Marc Cohn

You know the song, if you're a person of a certain age or a child of that person who listened to Bruce Hornsby's rendition .   I bet you didn't know the artist.  Neither did I.  Taos Bubbe, of course, had done her due diligence (she bought the tickets, after all) and told me who he was and confirmed my how do I not know him? by telling me that this was his one and only hit.

And so we listened to him play the keyboard and sing along with it to songs we'd never heard before, until this one.  He says it's real, plucked from his first time walking in Memphis. 

Enjoy.

 

She'll Be 73 This November

I'm convinced that balcony seats are perfect for watching a concert.  I'm a short person, so the tilt added to whatever tier-ing the architect constructed gives me more of a chance to avoid a big head dead center in my view.

Saturday night, there was a larger fellow just to the left, but otherwise it was smooth sailing all the way down to Bonnie Raitt and her friends.  We were asked to refrain from photography, but the bows at the end felt like fair game.  The set changed colors with the music, and those six white lights were sometimes filled with red or yellow squares of blinking neon.  It was minimal and it was perfect.  She didn't need anything else.

Howie from High School turned me on to her, either senior year or when we were back for our first vacations from college.  I felt quite hip when the clerk at the record store admired my taste.  I've seen her in concert over the years, and she never seems to age.  She's gracious with her thank you's - to the audience, to her support staff (the lighting guy got a huge round of applause), to the other musicians on stage, to those shouting out tunes they wanted to hear (Oh, yeah, that's a good one.)

She plays a new instrument with every song.  She sang us new songs and old songs and did a few more as an encore.  They bowed, I took a picture, and the lights went up.

We walked back to our cars and hugged good night.  And it was a good night.

And Now I Can Relax

American Airlines did call me back, only my phone was on silent.  I was furious with myself as I turned up the sound and dialed the number I had missed.... the number which was answered by an absolutely lovely voice, announcing herself as Victoria, and confirming my trip details.

She was nonplussed when I told her I wanted to change the return date.  That's not a problem was the last thing I expected to hear.  I was having a hard time going from anxious to delighted.

And I continued to be delighted as Victoria and I wound our way through her systems and my requests and the passengers' ability to fulfill the requirements for the (not-inexpensive-but-totally-necessary) extra leg room Emergency Exit Rows,.  I said yes, even though the B seat doesn't recline (and it's no less expensive than the reclining seat beside it).  

She found and applied the flight credit, complimenting me on getting in just before the expiration date.  We finalized a price and she typed in the credit card number as we chatted about I-can't-even-remember-what, and isn't that one of the best ways to while away the time with a friendly voice as the inanimate object before her cranks out its magic.

I remembered to ask about our Known Traveler Numbers, and she was delighted to add them to the rest of the information the airline had stored.  We agreed that our chat had been lovely and I asked if I could compliment her to her supervisor.  She blushed (I could tell) and told me about the survey at the end of our call.

We hung up smiling.  The survey and I did not get along and I never had a chance to tell anybody how wonderful she was.   

So, here it is.  May we all have a Victoria at the other end of the line when next we dial.

Anxiety

Does planning a trip stop you dead in your tracks?  Do you enjoy the thought of visiting people and places far from home but dread the work it takes to get there?  Do you like traveling but hate organizing it?  If so, welcome to the club.

It's been far too long between visits to our grandkids.  A wedding this summer complicated things.  Illness and surgeries added to the delay.  But FlapJilly has a short Fall Break next month followed the next weekend by Halloween; it is just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Getting it all together, though, has been an entirely different state of affairs.  I've had the idea for weeks.  It's taken me that long to figure it out.  I'm still not done.

There are a lot of moving pieces.  Friends to see, places to stay, transportation to be arranged.... it all became overwhelming.  I was stopped dead in my tracks, unable to do more than click through to the various airlines which can get me where I want to go, and sigh.

It's almost $900 to fly from Tucson to South Bend, with a change of planes in between.  We could drive to Mesa and fly Allegiant, but their twice a week flights don't make sense for the trip we want to take, even though the price is right and we could stay with JannyLou and Fast Eddie in their new digs close to the airport.  I love my grandkids, but $2000 is a lot of money, even with our still-restricted-by-COVID lifestyle curtailing most of our spending on fun.

Flying into O'Hare is half the price.  It's just far from where we want to be.  Rent a car?  Take public transportation?  Call a friend?  Obviously, I opted for the latter.  She was delighted to hear from me and thrilled to drive us anywhere we wanted to go, even a road trip to Indiana.  One problem solved.

FlapJilly has Friday and Monday off; her grandparents will take excellent care of her.  Giblet can miss a couple of days of pre-school; we'll keep him home and entertain him once his sister has returned to 3rd grade.  That leaves two un-filled days.  There's not much to amuse us in northern Indiana; we've been to the Studebaker Museum and Notre Dame and the South Bend Art Museum.  There's not much left to see.  It was these empty days that stumped me in planning..... we want to be there for the two weekends but what to do with the time in between?

We have friends with a house on Lake Michigan, but they will just be returning from a cruise and hosting guests might be a challenge.  I tossed and turned and mulled and considered and got nowhere.  I decided to ignore those two days and move to obsessing about the end of the trip, after Halloween on Monday.  I'm lucky to have friends who will always say YES when we want to visit; Seret and Mr. DreamyCakes will feed us and put us up and take us to the airport after we spend a day remembering why we love them so much.

So, now I wait for American Airlines to return my call.  Apparently, we each have a trip credit.  I don't remember which trip was cancelled during Pandemica, but there's documentation so it must have happened.  In order to use those credits, though, I have to speak to a human.  The robot who took my call offered the opportunity to hang up and have a real person call me back within 1 hour and 6 minutes and 1 hour and 30 minutes.

I've taken the interregnum to type this screed.  My stomach is in knots - for no reason.  My head is pounding - for no reason.  I'm perspiring.  I keep getting up and walking around and coming back to type.  

I will be so glad when the planning is over and I can just go.  There are times when being a grown up is just no fun at all.  Ridiculous, I know.  Foolish and silly and a total waste of emotional energy and yet, here I am, sweaty palms and fingers slipping off the keyboard.

I may just go and look at pricing private jets.

Back in Grandma's Garden

After more than two years of benign neglect (I maintained the irrigation while ignoring everything else), Grandma's Garden was in need of a serious overhaul.  I spent a morning or two pulling weeds, finding a carrot, and swatting small flies.  This was clearly a job for my young gardeners.

The little kids had fun weeding. They didn't make much progress, but they did require a lot of help.  There was no time for photos.  The bigger kids were more adept (they avoided disengaging the irrigation tubing) 

and were stronger.  It took two then three then four of them to extricate the carrot.

They dug around it with a plastic trowel, they pulled,  they grunted, then one intrepid soul got down and dirty and pulled it out.  

I'd have taken a photo but they were too excited to hold it still.   From the other raised bed, came these gardeners with something vaguely cucurbita....  a squash or a melon.... 

We cut it lengthwise and smelled the insides, which were sweet, with a thin round of white flesh between the shell and the juicy seeds.  We broke it up into sections and planted it in a variety of containers and spaces.

As always, there were bugs.  We put this fellow into the garden and watched him maneuver around a leaf.

 

It was a productive few hours.  We have proof :

He's 4

Little Cuter called.  Giblet had something to share with us.  Were we available for a video conference with our 4 year old?

It took a while to turn on my phone and figure out how to make the call include our faces but I got there eventually and we tuned in to see a very happy little boy and a very soft and round panda bear, Bob the Bear, to be precise.

Everyone will get a chance to take Bob home and document their adventures.  What adventures could Bob look forward to tonight?

I'm going to read this book to him   

Apparently, talking to grandparents is also an adventure, and Little Cuter snapped a photo

to include on the pages that Giblet would contribute to the journal which accompanies Bob the Bear.  We were privileged to view it.  

Here's Avery's picture.... here's Lucia's picture..... This is Thomas (interjection from Little Cuter - Thomas the friend at school, not the dog at home).... this is Leo's...

And so it went, each page carefully turned and thoughtfully attributed and described.  We were appropriately appreciative of each student's contribution until there weren't any more pages to turn and he closed the book, leaned into the screen, reached out his pointer finger for the red button and said, Okay, bye!

Apparently the conversation was over.  

He had shared what needed to be shared and he was done.  

We were giggling uncontrollably as Little Cuter grabbed the phone so that FlapJilly could make silly faces at us.  Giblet continued trying to hang up.  He was done.  Time to move on, people. 

We all agreed.  He's 4.

It's The End of the World As We Know It

and I feel fine!

The sunset really did look like the end of the world.

That's rain.

The desert is amazing.

How It's Going

It's nice to know I'm not alone.

Except for Dkzody, the comments shared all the feelings.  It's so hard to move to a newer way of life, and despite Latane Barton's reminders (and she's 88 years old so has wisdom beyond mine) that it's just a new adventure I don't like it any more than I did last week.  

The 2nd day, I woke up and turned off the alarm and opened the front door before I remembered that I wasn't getting a daily paper delivered any more.  I frowned.  I tried to read the comics on my phone, because, like Kathy G , they are very important to me.   But they were even smaller in pixels than they were in print.  I gave up and opened a book.

I played with the various ways of getting the news on my phone.  I followed The Star and Tim Steller on Instagram and Twitter.  I downloaded The Star's app and hit all the icons to see what happened.  It took me a while, but I figured it out.

The screen looks just like the print edition.  The words are too small for me to read, but the headlines are bold enough to prompt me to highlight and click on anything I want to read and, as if by magic (but probably because of a setting I installed but who remembers?), the content appears in readable form on my screen.  

And I get the whole article without having to find where it's continued on A6.  This was not immediately intuitive, but I got there.

I can click through to a different section.  That was the exciting result of pressing one of the icons.  I pretended I was 5 and clicked through a dozen times or so, marveling at the technology and being forced to agree with Latane that it was fun.

But I still can't read the comics.  

Like Linda Reeder,  I enjoyed reading the paper over a leisurely meal (hers is lunch).  It was my quiet time, without the distractions that come with being connected on line.  Like Carol with all the numbers,

there are parts of the printed paper that I find are irreplaceable.  Hers are the tv listings.  Mine are the crossword puzzles.

It's a new world and I'm cranky about having to keep up.  That's all this is.  Thanks to all the denizens whose words I used to fill out this rant.  I've linked to their blogs (if they have 'em) in case you want to read more.

A Thoughtful Accomodation

I had my mammogram this week.  The protocol includes foregoing lotions, creams, sprays, and goo of any kinds on the day of the procedure.  

I showered right before the appointment.  Muscle memory took my hand to the CeraVe before my brain kicked in.  I didn't open the drawer with the deodorant.

I drove over, changed into a shirt length gown with the opening in the front, and walked down the hall for some squishing.  

The technician was delightful, the experience completely pleasant, and I smiled my way back to the small dressing room where I put my used gown in the basket near the shelves and I saw this:

No smelly patients leave their establishment, that's for sure.

It was truly a thoughtful accomodation.

A First

For the first time in my life,  I will not be receiving a print copy of the local newspaper.  I'm joining those of you who read The Burrow and The New York Times on-line with your morning refreshments.  

No longer will I unfold newsprint with my orange juice.  Nevermore will the Opinion Page accompany my oatmeal.  I cancelled my subscription to the print edition of The Arizona Daily Star.

Owned by Lee Enterprises, The Star still has editorial cartoons, unlike many other papers.  It runs a full page of Letters to the Editor.  Their Solutions Journalism long form projects really do contribute to making Tucson a better place.  I can access all of that very comfortably on-line.

The comics are another story entirely.

Used to be, there were two full pages of comics and puzzles at the back of the Tucson & Region section.  I'd get there after reading the local news and the opinions and staying up to date on the UofA in the sports pages.  The last of my oatmeal and glass of milk went very well with the lives of fictional characters drawn by artists I've followed for decades.  

All of that was taken away this week.  The comics now occupy one quarter of one page.  They are fewer and, infuriatingly and foolishly, they are smaller.  I mean really smaller.   I have to squint to read them.  This is not conducive to a calm digestion.  

And it costs $85 each month. 

And so, reluctantly and with great regret, I called Subscription Services and changed to digital access only.  

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.  I miss my old life already.

Creatures in the Garden

I spent the morning at Prince, on the playground and in the garden.  I tied shoes.  I pulled weeds.  I counted 3-2-1 and never got to GO for races across the concrete.  I pulled carrots that demonstrated their root vegetable-ness by sprouting roots from the carrot itself.  

Strangely, I encountered no wildlife in the garden itself.  I had to step out onto the grassy area to be confronted with the first creatures.  

To me, they looked like small berries.... like the small berries on the Solanum americanum I'd pulled out five minutes before.... a plant that self-seeded in Grandma's Garden.... a plant whose little berries give little kids tummy aches if ingested and therefore has no place in a school garden.  

But the girls insisted they were little lady bugs and in no danger of being eaten.  They spent some time showing me the wings and the dots and by the time they were finished I was convinced.

There was a crowd of kids waiting for my attention.  I have a lizard, a baby lizard said the person with these impossibly tiny hands.  

  

And, in fact, there was a tiny lizard at the top of the heart in her hand.

It was fascinating to all of us.

lower case letters

I'll resist the urge to go all E. E. Cummings in this post, despite the content screaming for it.  You can thank me later.

I spent the morning with magnetic lower case letters and rotating groups of kindergarteners.  The teacher divided them by ability; what we did with the tiles varied accordingly.  Not that I was given instructions.  Use your imagination was all the direction the teacher felt I needed.  

It's nice to be trusted.

The first group had no trouble with anything except the b and the d.  I told them that I had the same problem in school, too, until I realized that the b carried his belly in front.  We had some fun tracing b's on ourselves - starting with the stick at our heads down to our big bellies - while I considered all the parts of the b and the d, marveling that kids who barely understand that the letters in a word or a sentence have specific, meaningful places are able to remember which letter goes which way.  

The next groups needed a little more help.  We went more slowly, concentrating on the individual letters before sounding out c-a-t.  

Not c-a-f.  

Nope, even though the t and the f look pretty much the same if one of them is upside down. Put the j in the mix and only the dot saves the day.  The fact that the i has a dot, too, is just unfair.

And don't get us started on the u and the n.  I finally realized that the vowels were pink and the consonants were yellow, but up until then I was as flummoxed as they were.  

By the time the last group arrived, we were all a little tired.  One scholar has no English, one's gaze was focused somewhere beyond the drawn window shades, and two were eager if unable.  We matched the tiles to their counterparts on the magnetic board, taking special delight in the beautiful g.

Cleaning up was easy and efficient.  They went to run around at recess before returning to work on math.  I drove home and took a nap.