The Long Way Home 2.14.25

As you might guess when reading my short bio below, I’m a bit of a newspaper junkie. In my traveling days, I collected newspapers of all kinds. Not only did they give me the flavor of the community, news from other places, and ideas for my paper, but the headlines also gave me smiles and guffaws. You know the type-- "Something Went Wrong in Jet Plane Crash, Expert Says,” or “Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead.” Jay Leno made reading these a regular feature of the Tonight Show when he hosted. Writing headlines is a brutal assignment, often tedious, often rushed, and silly things get into print. My favorite of all time is a headline over a short story on the breakdown of an earthen berm that protects the Netherlands from encroaching seawater. Although the AP wrote it, it’s wrong for me to repeat it here. I’m culturally sensitive. Someday over a beer, maybe. I don’t see many newspapers these days. By that, I mean the ones printed on flimsy, rough paper where your fingers g...