our opinions: CURMUDGEON MUSINGS
The Last
BY MARK BROWN
H
Word
Missing Some of the
Simple Pleasures?
ave you ever thought about things we used
to take for granted, those things that seem to
have faded away? Here are a couple of things I’ve
missed lately.
Newspapers have changed so much over the
years. Can you believe in DFW we had four news-
papers, the Dallas Morning News, and the Dallas
Times Herald. In Fort Worth, essentially, we had
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Fort Worth
Press, among others, and the Telegram had morn-
ing and evening papers in addition to the Sunday
paper, which was huge. A few years ago, one of
the things I looked forward to the most was read-
ing the paper, especially the Sunday paper.
My wife and I would spread the Sunday Star-
Telegram out on the floor in the living room, and
over coffee we would slowly read the paper. A
feature we always looked forward to was Parade
Magazine. We always read that and started with
the celebrity questions and answers inside the front
cover. Well, now there’s barely a paper, much less
a Parade Magazine. Oh, maybe there is a Parade,
but what’s left of it is worthless. So sad that those
things have to go away.
Well, that’s progress I guess.
That’s one of the reasons I take this magazine
so seriously; it’s a good read. I don’t know about
you, but I want to hang on to things that are an
important part of what used to be, and hopefully
will stay around for a long time.
I almost long for the times when we could actu-
ally throw away our canceled checks in the trash,
without fear that some lowlife crook would take
your info and ruin your whole life with it. I long
112
for a time when there was no Facebook, which
also seems to want to extract all of your personal
information and give it to the world.
How about Amazon Alexa, who evidently likes
to listen to your conservations at home and then
allow other people to have access to it, or so says
the evening news.
The worst, most egregious breech of info years
ago was someone listening to your conversation
on a party line. Actually, the party line may have
been the forerunner of Identity Theft. But it seemed
kind of innocent.
So on a lighter (no pun intended) note, about
this time of year I start getting some kind of cabin
fever — probably the wrong term for it — but I
try to tolerate it as long as I can. I try to convince
myself that it’s great to have the change of the
seasons, and it is. Although, as great as that is, it
has a downside; it starts to get dark very early, in
fact, I’m not sure if we have more than three or
four hours of daylight each day. OK, that may be
a stretch, but that’s what it seems like. So, are any
of you like me, you count the minutes, hours and
days until it starts to stay light later? I’m sitting here
at home, and it’s about 5 o’clock and the sun is
setting, it’s getting dark.
I hate doing everything in the dark. You get up
in the dark, get home in the dark… It’s awful. I
don’t want to wish my life away, but I watch the
calendar for the 23rd of December. Someone once
told me that from the 23rd on everyday gets one
minute longer, so by the end of January we will
have about 30 minutes more daylight!