I miss the Sunday paper. A massive ball of newsprint, featuring the comics (all in color), a big sports section recapping Saturday’s games, Parade magazine (a national publication), and an entertainment section talking about movies, music and books. The Houston Chronicle’s entertainment vehicle was Zest magazine. I loved walking out on Sunday morning, picking up the paper, then parceling out the sections to my wife and myself. 

Of course, I suppose I could subscribe to a paper from either San Antonio or Austin, but neither of them cover sports teams or local news I care about. And music, books, and art are a staple of the internet, my always on source of information. Which I suppose means the Sunday paper is simply an artifact of my past that I miss, one more thing from my youth that is gone, gone, gone, and it doesn’t help that I live in the country, a long way from anywhere. So, as with all things, that was then, and this is now. 

It makes me wonder, however, if the polarization we feel today isn’t partly a result of the loss of the daily paper and the Sunday paper where we all laughed at Garfield or Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes and knew the names of the local movie critics, or read the daily columns and felt some sense of community. Nowadays we all seem to live in digital closets consuming only the information we want to eat regardless of its nutritional value. I hope that changes over time, but there is so much information flowing at us, that I think most of us, at this point, simply want to duck and hide. I hope the younger generation has better luck figuring it out, they at least seem to know how it works.