Monday-morning paper absence

No paper today. Second Monday in a row. Maybe the Spokesman just isn't telling us about the part where they're copying the Hagadone corporation, which hasn't sent Monday papers to readers for years.

So, unless a person has a computer, there's no news from the weekend to report to the folks in North Idaho. Except TV, and definitely not much on the radio since everything is canned music with commercials in between.

I think this no "newspaper on Monday" is the beginning of the big plot to continue the dumbing down of America. Get those folks to read their stuff online. But then there are some of those poor saps who don't have computers and don't know the heck how to turn one on, let alone surf the Web.

I've heard that some wise philanthropists are sending laptop computers to Third World Countries; I wonder if Americans with no computers will qualify for this program, since there's no news on Mondays and, for that matter, little local news in the printed papers on the other six days.

I've noticed how the Spokesman is looking for those really good Wire features to fill up the Sunday paper---just to make it look better. I've also noticed the new full-page spread on what Spokane society is doing. Why---- if they have to take columnists off from their columns and put them out there reporting the news that we don't get on Monday----does the paper come up with a society page---and a full-page one, at that?

Has there been a demand from advertisers to know what social functions people attend---just to be seen? Somehow I think news is more important, but that's cuz I'm a news junkie and want to know what's going on and I could care less who showed up in their fancy furs at some gala. This is meant as no reflection on Cheryl-Ann Millsap who does the page because I really like her work.

Speaking of which, I wonder if her column appeared in the Monday paper that we didn't get this morning. I haven't read her column for two weeks now. Of course, since I'm on my computer, I could go click on it, but I'm still an old fogey who likes to sit downstairs near the warm stove, sip on my coffee and read the paper. Silly me.

Bill suggested that it's possible that the paper might have gotten plowed into the snow bank. I think , like me, he's hoping there's no plot at hand cuz he likes reading his paper. He rarely gets to read much in the morning because his wife, the news junkie, hogs the paper cuz she likes to know before anyone else what's going on. Bill's a patient man. Maybe a paper will show up by the time he gets home today and he can read it while eating his dinner.

Bill came up with another newspaper thought yesterday after reading the features about the EWU coach who's now the WSU football coach. There's a sad story of a murdered mother and an accused father in this young coach's life history. Bill noticed that, in yesterday's feature package, a lot of the information dealing with the murder 28 years ago, was gleaned from stories PRINTED in the Sacramento Bee.

His question is one I've been considering too. When a new generation wants to know what happened back here when they started doing away with all the printed newspapers, where are they gonna find history? A lot of folks do go to museums to look in old papers to find their history.

It sounds logical that museums would be the place, but we also need to realize that museums aren't exactly the richest entities around. Many, like ours, do well to pay the monthly heating bill. When and where will they get the money for all that technology that will collect all our history into a techno vault where anyone and everyone can read it.

I think this is something that needs to be considered because I think an awareness of history is a key cog in the thinking process. If that history is not easily accessible to the masses, I do wonder about decision-making.

Maybe we just forget history and the mistakes that happened in the past or key information from past events that can help formulate those decisions. Maybe decision-making will be relegated to an elite circle of "educated" leaders cuz the rest of us are too ignorant to contribute information to the process.

Why is this starting to sound like Animal Farm or Fahrenheit 451? Gosh, I'd better take my shovel out there and dig in that snowbank and see if I really did get the Monday Spokesman on this snowy morning. I'm thinking too much.