What's That On The Table?

There’s a stack of paper on my dining room table today. Actually, it’s three stacks, and it didn’t all get there Sunday morning when I walked down to the end of my driveway and picked up my New York Times.

There were already two smaller stacks on the same table - parts of the Friday and Saturday Times I still hadn’t gotten around to reading, some pages from the weekly section of the Washington Post, and some magazines that have been hanging around for weeks.

You see, I never get to finish reading the Times. In truth, I don’t know anyone who actually reads the whole thing. There is just too much in it, and that’s actually the way I like it.

Do I want to read about the economic problems of truck drivers who voted for Trump in hopes their lives would get better, or do I want to read about what happens when you can’t afford to provide an adequate education to high school students?

Some of the stories of how people met and decided to marry are really amazing, and the problems and remarkable accomplishments of sports teams I don’t normally follow - out of state women’s basketball or upstate college lacrosse - are certainly worth reading as well.

And I can argue with myself about why they didn’t write more about some facts in a story, or whether the graphics are really doing their job. Fun, fun, fun.

But my desk is just a few feet away from that dining room table, and while I read some of the paper over breakfast - assuming some cat doesn’t attack the page or some dog doesn’t keep telling me it’s time to be let out - there is always more to read than I can ever get to.

Blame it on Google. Blame it on a back yard which is overly nasty to grass seed, or just blame it on the internet, television news, a strange desire to watch Fox and MSNBC every day - but no matter what the cause, those papers and magazines just keep coming, and I keep trying to get through them.

Think of it as a Greek tragedy - the story about what happens to someone when the gods curse them by giving the everything they want, kind of King Midas without the gold.

Now my wife keeps saying that if I didn’t read something for three weeks, I will probably never get to it. We compromise some - the magazines go into the magazine rack in the bathroom, and can live there for months - but sooner or later everything leaves, read or unread.

We’re all like that, of course. Everyone has a basement full of tools or a closet full of clothes or a junk drawer in the kitchen with all those things that do just one thing very well. Things accumulate, and things go away.

For me, those newspapers are a mirror, reflecting questions big and small that I may never get an answer to, or maybe just get part of an answer or - sometimes - learn everything I want to.

 I will probably never learn just how much a corporate CEO should make compared to an average worker. Or how many deals our President can break before people stop making deals with him.

Still, it makes me wonder. A lot of journalism in the United States is really good. There are still a lot of newspapers, big and small, that have the money to let some reporters work a long time to get the facts they need to do a really good story or even a series on subjects big and small.

So, why aren’t we all reading it?

Now nobody reads all the papers in our nation, and not every local newspaper does a good and comprehensive job. But, some of them do.

Those piles of paper on my dining room table are a testament to what is out there. Piles of facts, piles of reasoned opinions, piles of entertainment, all for the picking.

So, how many of those stories can I get to before I plant some asparagus, or clean up the mess in the basement or watch a ball game?

The same question every day. Still, it’s worth taking a moment or two to appreciate what we can all have by just walking down the driveway.