No. 100

It's my 100th blog post.

Whoop-de-doo.

But in really good news, I got it today -- my Mercier. It's not exactly a Red Ryder BB gun (I'd shoot my eye out!) but it looks pretty sweet. The picture below doesn't exactly do it justice; it's currently sitting on my porch, awaiting some air in the tires.



I'll fill the tires tomorrow and give it a spin.

Woke up this morning and headed east for the weekly CSA pickup:

Scallions
Snow peas
Basil (pesto, change-o!)
Parsley
Carrots
Cucumbers
Mesclun
Broccoli

Stopped by the co-op in Brattleboro for pine nuts, olive oil and miscellany. Got home and worked like a fiend until 7p or so. Stopped to make another grocery run for some kid stuff.

Interesting story today in Slate on the shrinking American newspaper. Jack Shafer says that papers today aren't all that much worse off than papers in the early 1970s. I think he might be omitting a few major issues:

(a) There were more family-owned papers in the 1970s. True, many of them sucked. But there was less external pressure on most papers to hit quarterly profit targets.

(b) Newspapers were a lot blander in the early 1970s. No color, few graphics and no multimedia. Meant there were a lot more jobs devoted to pure newsgathering, but a lot fewer jobs devoted to reader-friendly news. There were some fantastic reporters and some great storytellers, but they didn't have tools like journalists have today.

(c) Shafer's benchmark year, 1972, was at the start of Watergate, which is generally romanticized to a fare-thee-well. It was great journalism. But people forget that a ton of newspapers, including some of the best in the country, either ignored Watergate or jumped on it late.

(d) The real golden days of newspapers occurred (in my humble estimation, as a mere consumer of news) from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. Bartlett and Steele, anyone? Computer geeks churning up fantastic databases? Yes, news organizations missed some huge stories (Iran-Contra, HUD, the savings and loan debacle) but got a lot right, and not just at the national level. I think a comparison of staffing between now and, say, 1995, would be much more fair.

(e) Finally, a very high percentage of newspapers just sucked in the 1970s. Sorry. They did. And their editors and/or publishers would tell you that. Reluctantly. But they would.

Will knit and cook tonight, hit the road tomorrow.