When someone learns where I work, they sometimes will fix me a sympathetic look and coo, “How is the paper doing?” Nodding with anticipation, they clearly expect me to share some tale of woe. Ready, it seems, to pat my hand sympathetically, if not give me a supportive hug after I burst out weeping.
And not without reason. We are still in the age of the Great Newspaper Die-Off, where journalistic brachiosauruses regularly roll their eyes and collapse to the ground with a thundering crash.
So it surprises them when I reply that the paper is doing great, really getting my back into that word, Tony the Tiger fashion: “grrreat!” Their faces betray disbelief and perhaps a little disappointment, the way you would react to news that Nana, 96, has checked herself out of hospice and gone on a Carnival Cruise to Antigua.
But it’s true. The Chicago Newspaper Guild recently signed a three-year contract that, unlike past contracts, is not a full-face slap. There are raises. I can’t speak for anyone else on our burgeoning staff — they’re also hiring — but for me, it’s like being about to surrender to the icy chop, closing my salt-crusted eyes for the last time upon this storm-tossed world, only to open them later to find myself blinking in a bright stateroom, being dried off with fluffy towels as hot broth is spooned into my mouth.
There’s also new equipment. The tech folks told me to come get my new laptop, even though the old Apple, circa 2012, still works. I almost argued. The long-established rule at the paper is, you can’t get a fresh pencil until you turn in the stub of the old one.
First, I was instructed to go over the old laptop, removing my files. The laptop, with me from Tokyo to Tierra del Fuego, had thousands of photos. Instead of just transferring them, I saw a chance to cull.
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They all belong to a cult that has them as enthralled to a corrupt & insane leader like all those poor fools in Jonestown, who were then murdered on the leader's orders. T**** is just a two bit clone of Hitler, with the mannerisms of Mussolini & the insane desire to be dictator of the US & then pass that position down to one of his genuinely half witted children.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem is that with all that money his KKK father left him, he's been able to buy himself out of the consequences of his corrupt dealings for 50 years up til now, but he finally crossed the line on Jan 6, 2021 & ran into people determined to make him pay for his crimes, for the first time in his rotten corrupt life.
Even when he finally goes to prison, the cult members will never give up on him, blaming his numerous enemies.
We won't be rid of him until he dies in prison & even then, the cult won't die with him, then he'll become their martyr!
The horror is that Jim Jones had a few hundred followers - Trump has 70 million. Our country has gone mad.
DeleteRepublicans have perfected the art of doing the same lame thing over and over and over expecting a different result; hence, Trump and his lemmings think 2024 will give him a different result than what occurred in 2020.
ReplyDeleteThe longer I looked at that image, of the young man you met on the train, the more sorrow and pity I felt. That poor kid. Drank the orange Kool-Aid at such a young age.Not ashamed to walk through Tower City and Public Square while wearing a crudely hand-lettered white T-shirt, with stickers on it, about an election that was four months away, and that would never be "stolen" at all, except in the mind of his cult's Dear Leader.
ReplyDeleteSomething just looks "off" about him. Like he's not completely "all there"...maybe it's way he looks so thin and even emaciated. But perhaps those aren't unusually skinny legs at all...just the baggy shorts that are in fashion now. Or perhaps his parental units couldn't afford to feed him enough, and were angry about their poverty and their plight, and were looking to their new Orange God for hope and salvation. So the kid guzzled the Kool-Aid, too. There's still a lot of that going around, especially in the white suburbs of places like Chicago and Cleveland.
That was seven years ago. Wow. Time flies. Gotta wonder...what is he thinking...and doing...now? Hopefully, he's moved on to a better job..and better shirts. And maybe he's put on a few pounds and grown a bit...into a skinny little Proud Boy from Cleveland, Ohio...with his very own AR-15.