I was having a friendly little argument last weekend with someone whose political views oppose mine.

That person sent me a link to an article and I read it. But. I also checked out some of the meta data surrounding the article. I can’t exactly remember but I THINK it was from the Wall St. Journal. I know a lot of people think of the WSJ as an alt-right rag but I have a slightly more moderate take on it, having subscribed to it for many years (my subscription is strictly online now and I usually can’t remember the password but still 🐽).

What grabbed my attention front and center in a BIG RED FLAG way was that this article was an OPINION piece. I read opinion pieces too. I’m more likely to read them from sources that align more closely to my own political views. I think we all do that. But I know them for what they are. Opinions. Facts? Sometimes / maybe but usually op-eds are light on that.

Back in the day when dead tree newspapers came to the door, there was a designated space for op-ed pieces. You knew that the actual *news* was on the front page and somewhere near the back was the op-ed / letters to the editor page. Next to that page, the WSJ had a great whaddya-call-it, arts page or whatever. They had wonderful writers (I wonder if the Marquise of Manhattan is still alive) and that is where I first learned about the late artist Christo and his surrounded islands.

Like probably a lot of people, I use Twitter as a news aggregator these days. (To be fair, I’m not sure whether my friend uses Twitter or something else.) But I think it’s difficult to scroll through everything Twitter throws out to sort out legitimate news articles from op-ed pieces, not to mention ads and just plain weird twitter folks you followed in the Twitter Dark Ages and can’t remember why. It’s overwhelming and easy to lose focus on what’s important.

A slice of my memory to end this bunch o’ blarney for now. The dead tree WSJ came early in the morning back in the day and I remember one of my beach urchins scrutinizing the paper while eating cereal before heading over to Haisley to her 2nd grade class. I asked her what she was reading about and the answer was, “Aluminum production.” Yes. Talking through cereal. I had no words then or now… … …

P.S. The photooo is from around this time last year. It’s a waning crescent. Today we have a waxing crescent two days before full and the skies are not have been cloudy all day 🎶

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2021 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.