I hope you all had a fine holiday. I had a fine one, myself.
During the holiday break I slept late (well, for me, 7AM is late). Each morning as my wife snoozed in, I’d get up, throw on my old-man schmatta, turn up the heat, start a pot of coffee, and slipper outside into the drizzling wet to retrieve my moistened newspaper. Back inside, I’d pour myself a chunk of joe, settle into my big buffalo chair, and, by the light of the early morning drear, decipher the grey-on-grey type that was smudged across my paper’s wet, see-through pages.
I took great pleasure in this. It was quiet. The only sounds were the exhalation of the furnace, the ticking of the clock, and the drip of rain in the downspout. Sometimes the cat would climb up and join me as I read. It was a lovely way to start each day.
Except for the morning of December 30.
That morning, the Seattle Times, in a massive brain-fart of editorial doofishness, turned a quarter of the op-ed page over to Gage Stowe, a newcomer to our shores, so he could complain about one of Seattle’s greatest flaws: traffic. I mean, they even gave him a lead-in on the front-page banner: “Seattle newbie: Why is traffic so bad?” (more…)
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 