No Special Right of Access

By Fred Owens
The New York Times has no special right of access to the White House. They are not entitled to a front row seat in the press room. There are hundreds of small weeklies and small dailies around the country that deserve a chance at the Big Show.

Yet the New York Times has over 2 million paid subscribers. Are we all "enemies of the people?" I thought that was extremely harsh language coming from Trump.

You can see that I am of two minds here. I don't know any big time journalists. I only know people, like myself, who have toiled in the small towns at the weekly papers. The closest I ever came to a big urban daily was an interview with the Boston Globe in 1991.

I also had some correspondence with Alex MacLeod when he was managing editor of the Seattle Times in the 1990s. Alex loved reading my stuff, but he said it was not the kind of thing for his newspaper, so I never got published there.

And here is the resentment..... those big time news outfits never gave me a break, so why should I stick up for them now? I want a better deal.

I just don't know any of these people in the major media. They seem to inhabit a different world. The people I know are like Sandy Stokes, the editor of the LaConner Weekly News, and Elaine Kolodziej, the publisher of the Wilson County News. I would stick up for them. They are the power and strength of American journalism -- they are much closer to the ground and harder to knock over. Those are the people I can count on.

Born to Kvetch. I am on page 236 of this book by Michael Wex. The book teaches us how to complain in Yiddish, how to state your personal misery, how to resent the success of others, how to blame everybody but yourself  -- and how to do this with style. The book is very helpful.

Taking a Long Time. A friend from Dubuque  -- you know, Dubuque, in Iowa -- was thinking that the line was too long to get into the ladies room. It takes them a long time. Some people say that we should build the ladies room twice as big and then it wouldn't take so long.

This is wishful thinking. Women take longer than men and we are programmed to wait. I have not had a problem with this.

It starts early. Girls of 8 and 9 lick their ice cream cones slowly, while little boys gobble them down in seconds. When girls become women they take longer to get dressed. Would you even think of telling them to hurry up? And sex. Women take longer to get ready for sex, men are often ready sooner.

Even dying. Women take longer to die. Usually we say it the other way, that women live longer. But at a certain point a man says I guess that's all she wrote, whereas the old woman is still fussing with her hair and so lives a few years longer.

This is not a problem, that women take longer than men, so don't try to fix it.
I would welcome anyone with an urgent need into the Men's Room, but I prefer peeing in an atmosphere of masculine splendor,..... The trouble comes when women become more frequent visitors and then standards will be raised. Men are terribly sloppy at peeing, they often miss the mark. In the new gender-free regime, we can expect polite signage stating the need for accuracy and cleanliness. I am not looking forward to this.

Wash Your Hands.  Did you ever stop to think why they have the sign that says employees must wash their hands? They have the sign up because employees very often don't wash their hands. It's not like a siren goes off if they just sail out of the bathroom. The sign is a useful reminder, but the best defense against poor hygiene is a robust immune system  -- which is why we encourage small children to play in the dirt, to get them accustomed to a planet full of germs.

thank you, have a nice week,

Fred

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital