I loved to read the Sunday comics, and the daily's

They are talking about the extinction of the daily newspaper across the country and I look at my own life with and without the newspaper. Being young and limber once, I knelt with my two big front teeth resting on my bare knee and went through all the Sunday, in color, comic strips - to the point of impressing them into the flesh, I hadn't moved anything except my eyes over the pages my hands had turned. Lil' Abner, Terry and the Pirates, Gordo, Blondie, and many others I may have forgotten. Red Rider? Little King?

I did find the other sections of the newspaper finally, my dad talked about them, I got interesting in the stock market, letters to the editor were always a favorite, and then the want ads - where what I wanted was always there although the money may not have been in my pocket. I did find my first motorcycle in the newspaper, I have looked for jobs in the newspaper and found them. Look where that has gotten me.

I still look at the comic strips, but only on the Internet, I still read letters to the editor - although they seem to be the comments to the blogger's current post, since I stopped getting newspapers delivered to my home years ago. To me, newspapers became too heavy and costly and slower than I wanted my information. Just like television is becoming. They are concerned about selling ad space - this is where they think their money is - and they could be correct, but if I don't buy the paper and read it who will buy ad space in a medium that doesn't reach me? Not that I am important to anyone except me. So the papers are folding, the magazines are wobbling, the big networks News tries to be local, the local network news tries to be "breaking and world reaching" and their advertisers bore me away with drumbeats of commercial enterprise. I do doubt that I read any ads on any blogger's page - but I do object to the load time since I am only DSL not super high speed instant transmission - how much delay at light speed is the Moon from Tacoma? Don't add video, and giga-bytes of bits and I will get there soon enough. Does my mind work faster than light speed, or have the powers that be loaded the message to the point of my not picking it up to read?

I was wandering the Revolutionary War, for stories to tell, and found a book my mother had given me in 1975, The Boys of '76 by Charles Carleton Coffin, my copy by Grosset & Dunlap, with illustrations and drawings by Wallis Sturtevant, copyright 1876, 1904, 1918, 1924. Except for the idea of Liberty, Freedom and heroic effort there are no commercial messages. Save for the message from my mother "To Earl, Christmas 1975, Mom" I was in California about to go to Oklahoma to serve as a Drill Sergeant. Don't see that much information and entertainment being given in Kindle, the first kind or the second, but then I am a stick in the mud and don't jump on all the new technology - I have seen it break down when really needed.

Well, the weather men weren't correct, my home is much lower than 1,000 feet and that is snow on the roofs, and those are clear blue skies, no rain today... we know so very little about anything that we should always be in complete awe of what we see.