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Cars and Freedom

The collapse of General Motors this week has me reflecting on the American car culture and it’s influence in my life. Is it dead? What do cars mean to us, and how will that change? The automobile is so ubiquitous that we scarcely consider the affect it’s had beyond mere transportation. Over the past century, cars have changed where and how we live. They gave birth to suburbs and killed cities.  Physical mobility fueled social mobility, enabling the growth of a powerful middle class. And this in turn created a potent and accessible image of the American Dream. Cars altered how we relate to one-another as drive-thrus and lonely commutes isolated us. And yet cars have become a profound symbol of freedom, deeply ingrained in our sense of self. One could be forgiven in thinking the Declaration of Independence promised, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Open Roads.” Whatever the eventual fate of the automakers themselves, the fate of our relationship to cars is absolutely going to change. The new freedom will have to have bounds, which of course is a vexing oxymoron. This goes for General Motors and their short-term greed as much as it goes for people like me who have a long-standing love affair with gas-guzzlers and the great highway.

I first watched the world roll by from inside our fab ’67 Mercury station wagon. It had wood panel sides, the last vestiges of tail fins, and these cool hideaway rumble seats in the way back. This was my zone and as far back as I can remember, I was happy on the move. At ten, I’d sit for hours in my sister’s orange ’72 Volvo clunker, the garage door in front of me a movie screen of imagined landscapes. As my teen years came on, my impatience to drive grew excruciating.  At home I made a show of crossing off days on my custom-made “cruise countdown” calendar. Meanwhile I was out bombing back roads in my buddy’s ’75 Monte Carlo. By the time I got my license, I’d been driving two years and had logged all the blacktop in the known universe. I can’t say what song was playing when I lost my virginity, but I can tell you that the Romantics’ “What I Like About You” was blasting the first time I drove alone legally.

My car was a 1970 Buick Sklylark. Originally my Dad’s, it became the teenager mobile as each of us hit 16. My older brother and sister had to compete for it, but I was far enough behind to have it all to myself. When I took it over I pimped it out, 80’s redneck style. I jacked it up and put on fat mag wheels and a rumbling duel exhaust. I built a console with a stereo, cup holders, and covered it in brown shag rug. I screwed a glass beer tap handle onto the gear shifter. Yeah, dude. I was all that, rolling into the gas station every few miles with loose pocket change. For the prom I borrowed my neighbor’s ’63 Caddy. My sister’s graduation present was one week with her cherry red convertible ’69 Firebird. I sucked the nectar from every leaded-gas mile.

Have mullet, will travel. Ready for the prom.

I wasn’t alone. Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics played an important early role in validating my wanderlust. It’s been joked that he can’t sing a song without mentioning cars. But he was speaking my language. “Well the night’s busting open these two lanes will take us anywhere. We got one last chance to make it real to trade in these wings on some wheels…”

Motorhead Mentors: Springsteen, Cassady

And so it wasn’t long before I found myself in motor mecca: Los Angeles. It was the mid-80’s and classic cars were still everywhere, not yet collector’s items. I picked up another Sklylark, a ’64, from a little old lady.  Out west I found a whole new world to explore: deserts, redwoods, the Sierras, the twisting coastal highways. Wide open, made for cars. The freeways were peaceful to me in the middle of the night, flowing, never-ending, and I made a hobby of driving them till dawn. It was here, in a college lit class, where I met another guru of the gas pedal: Neil Cassady. His exploits behind the wheel were enshrined in Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road,” (and later as driver of the Merry Prankster’s bus). The fitful adventures of the Beats raised the art of driving to a mystical level for me. I ventured forth as the heir apparent of the hobo-poet church of the open road.

I’ve crisscrossed the country enough times that I’ve lost count, been through most of the lower 48 and Alaska, and slept under the stars in many of them.  I’ve had an oddball collection of vehicles, four-wheeled and two.  I feel fortunate to have done it in the era before cell phones, before debit cards, and long before GPS. But most of all, I’m glad to have experienced travel in the era before guilt.

As my consciousness of ecology has grown over the past decade, my concept of wastefulness has sharpened. I think twice about how I use things like paper, plastic, and electricity, but I also scrutinize my use of gasoline. A nagging voice has been riding shotgun for a few years now, judging every mile I drive. Hey, are we on an essential errand here or just selfishly joyriding? He reminds me that if I take the scenic route home I’m a planet-hater. For every drop of gas burned for my pleasure, there’s a drop of ice melting under a polar bear’s paw.

Eco-guilt is a subject of great fascination for me. At once it can be a positive force and a compulsive neurosis. I can walk through a mega-store and see a kaleidoscope of carbon-footprint stories swirling down each aisle until I’m dizzy.  And now guilt has gone and clouded up the sacred view out my windshield.

But as much as I lament the loss of eco-innocence, of course I have to admit the nagging voice is absolutely right. We can’t act as though we’re isolated and our actions have no ripple consequences. Human disconnect is the exception, not the norm. The garden we’re trying to get back to is one of interdependence, not dominance. A garden where there is no waste.

Maybe there’s no redemption for my gas-guzzling, muscle-car sins. Maybe the point isn’t only better fuel efficiency – what if I get 500 miles per gallon with some futuristic ride but still take the winding road less traveled? Isn’t that still harmful?  I don’t know the answer. If American car culture is defined by mindless waste, then indeed I welcome it’s death. But at the same time, if cars are reduced merely to joyless transportation pods for essential errands, then we risk killing the underlying freedom that cars enabled. No one wants to live a life of straight lines. We all need a little zig-zag in our path. We all need back roads.

Like me, the American car companies have been joyriding for decades. It’s hard to grasp just how tone-deaf they’ve been to why Japanese cars are so popular, starting with the ‘70’s oil crisis. They insisted it was a fluke. Meanwhile they foisted gas-guzzlers on us long after we knew their evils, all for short-term profits. They molded the American Dream into the macho SUV dream. They fought every attempt at regulations that would have been in their own long-term self-interest. Even the slightest suggestion of raising fuel standards brought cries of how impossible it would be to retool the plants. These are the same plants that completely retooled after Pearl Harbor, from cars to churning out planes in a matter of months. And now that we taxpayers own 60% of General Motors, let’s pray that long-term thinking may prevail. The trimmed-down companies need much higher fuel-efficiency standards. The factories that don’t make the cut need help retooling to manufacture green energy technology. And of course we need higher gas taxes to not only discourage big cars, but to discourage excess driving. Oh, but wait. That sounds a lot like I have to give up a few of my freedom miles. I suppose I can. Can you?

Empower Women, Save the Planet

While we’re all busy counting food miles and building better windmills, we seldom take a step back and look at the elephant in the green room: our staggering population problem. Quite simply, we humans are too successful and we’ve got a sick planet getting sicker. Something’s got to give, but what? How? Population issues are a cultural, political, and moral hornet’s nest. But there is one factor that can influence population above any other: Women’s Rights. Empower women, save the planet. Of course, empowerment is a natural right of its own that needs no outer cause, but the fact that we might restore Terra Mama to boot sure sweetens the deal.

Whether to have children, and how many, is of course a very touchy subject.  In underdeveloped countries the factors in these decisions tend to be immediate, whereas in developed countries we have the luxury of debating the long view.  Eco-consciousness has made the womb a battleground, with each side claiming moral superiority and accusing the other of selfishness. Adoption is an ever-important conversation that brings out the passions. Those who have children are derisively called “breeders,” and there is serious talk of forced sterilization.  There is even something called The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which hopes that humanity will stop baby-making altogether and die out none too soon.  As Orwellian or silly as these solutions may seem, they do remind us of the magnitude of our population problem. Even if we don’t adopt a China-style one-child approach, it’s clear that the days of big families need to be over. No one can argue that each new life – now with longer and longer life spans – creates a new carbon footprint.

It took tens of thousands of years for human population to reach 1 billion, around the year 1800AD. But in just 200 years since, we’ve seen the graph shoot sharply upward. It took only 130 more years to double. Then 47 years to double again. We are now adding a billion every 12 years and today our population stands at 6.6 billion. By some estimates we’re already beyond what the earth can handle. And yet population seems to be a taboo subject in the environmental debate. This is because we instinctively believe that population solutions will infringe on our most basic human rights. But a new way of looking at it sees the opposite as true: the solution will actually come from the expansion of rights, most especially for women.

Developed, industrial countries have a lower birth rate; developing countries have a high birth rate. This is known as the Demographic Economic Paradox. It’s a paradox because it contradicts what we see in nature – the more successful a population, the more offspring they have. But with humans there are many cultural factors that flop the equation. Foremost among them: women’s lifestyles. Developed societies tend to have higher gender equality. This means more job opportunities, education, economic freedom, access to family planning. Population expert Robert Engelman of The Worldwatch Institute spent decades interviewing women around the globe. He found that the average woman would prefer to have only about 2 kids. When women are free to control their own destinies, birthrates go down. In the US, where gender equality is relatively high, the birthrate is now 2.1 children per woman. In 1950, prior to the equality movement, the rate was 3.8. The US currently ranks #126 on the list. Hong Kong is rated the most economically free, and it also happens to have the world’s lowest birthrate.

In contrast, the #1 country is Niger, whose women pop out a whopping 7.75 babies each. Africa is home to 18 of the 20 countries with the highest birth rates. It’s no coincidence, then, that Africa also has 17 of the 20 poorest countries. Women there have little opportunity to pursue their dreams. As Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, said, “Development is the best contraceptive.”

The world’s poorest women are dragging a lot of cultural baggage on the road to self-actualization. Religion plays a huge role in keeping them producing children they may not want. In one global poll of Christians, the frequency of church-going was directly proportional to the number of children a woman had.  Those who never attended had 1.67 kids, while those who went several times a week had 2.5. The Catholic Church, for all it’s recent green talk, still deems contraception a sin and advocates tax cuts for large families. Islam of course has some major gender inequality to work through. In the west, we’re horrified at the stories of female subjugation, symbolized most clearly by the burka. Indeed, in Afghanistan, where just this past week three girl’s schools were attacked with poison gas by Taliban, the female literacy rate is just 12%, the lowest in the world. Their literacy equality also ranks dead last, where less than 1 woman for every 3 men can read or write. (In some developed countries, the women have a higher literacy rate than men). Not surprisingly, of course, the birthrate in Afghanistan is 6.53, fourth highest in the world. Here again, education is fundamental to women’s empowerment.  None of this is possible so long as men continue to misinterpret scripture to perpetuate their dominance.

Politics is important. Family planning programs have played a crucial role in reducing unwanted pregnancies in developing countries. And yet, for the past four decades, US politicians have been playing ping-pong with aid policy. Under Republicans, aid organizations receiving government money are not permitted to mention abortion and are curtailed in the distribution of contraceptives or advice. After only a few days in office President Obama reversed many of those rules, and comprehensive family planning information can once again flow to the people who need it most. And when they don’t get it, women will find a way to regulate pregnancy – sometimes dangerously. Folk-remedy abortions kill tens of thousands per year and infanticide rises where women’s choices are few. There is a long history of women regulating fertility, often on the sly. Contraception is mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphics several thousand years BC.

But as we gloat over our low western birth rates, we must remember that not every child is created equal. One American child creates as much CO2 as 106 Haitian kids. Over the next four decades, Africa will add 10 times as many kids to the world as the US, but the CO2 output will be the same. So, while development and industrialization are obviously at the root of our environmental problems, they are also paradoxically the key to our solutions.  The challenge is to empower women while working to reduce the consumption footprint that comes with empowerment. Engelman says, “Government population control doesn’t work. We need to give control to women. Women naturally end the world’s population growth. They don’t want more children, they want what’s best for their children.”

Further Reading: Robert Engelman’s More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want

35 Years on a Small Organic Farm

A slice of Edible Heaven

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is this truer than on a small organic farm deep in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. On Earth Day last week I craved a reality check, so I called my friends Rusty and Sue Nuffer, who have spent most of the past four decades with their hands deep in the dirt. When I called, Sue picked up the phone out in the packing shed. She was laughing watching Rusty across the field hefting irrigation pipes high against a tree to scare out any sleeping rodents about to be drowned. Sue had been planting rows of tomatoes in a new soil cocktail they’ve cooked up.  Each year they grow an ever-changing and wide variety of exotic gourmet vegetables.  It’s been over ten years since my last visit to their little slice of edible heaven, yet the picture they painted is just as I remembered it. Meanwhile the business of organic farming has changed dramatically over the years, with many of those changes – good and bad – coming recently and rapidly on the wings of technology. Sue and Rusty took some time out from under the spring sun to talk to me about the life of a small organic farmer in 2009.

“When we first started out, our goal was just self-sufficiency,” Rusty said. “We wanted to get out of the cities, live close to the earth.” Like so many others, they were burned-out on the 60’s and wanted to get off the grid, disengage from the system. “We were disgusted trying to do social change.” The back-to-land movement was happening all over the country and Rusty and Sue, from Michigan and Ohio, were part of a group that found cheap land in the remote Ozarks. “I paid ten grand for an old 80-acre hill farm that had been unused for years.” Rusty said.  The beautiful spot is surrounded by State Forest and to this day is still 20 miles from the nearest blacktop. Sue and her family were on another farm a few miles away. “We all became expert in gardening because we were growing our own food. It was instinctual,” said Sue, “we didn’t think to grow to sell. Everything was barter.”

Over the next decade, some of the homesteaders drifted back to the ‘burbs, leaving devoted earthies like Rusty and Sue to hang in for the long haul. Famous back-to-land pioneers Helen and Scott Nearing once told them the two simple rules to succeed: Find good land and find a good partner. You can’t do it alone. Each previously married with kids, Rusty and Sue were a perfect match. “We’re so fortunate we work together so well.” And work they do: for much of the year, it’s sun up to sundown, 6 or 7 days a week. “Bug infestation on the potatoes. No rain. Broken machine. It’s always something and you never get ahead of it.” Sue adds: “It’s like having 10,000 children and they all want attention.”

Making a Living

Their first taste of wide distribution came with Sue’s blueberries. “At that time, if you had an organic product, you could sell it – as long as you could get it shipped,” she said.  It was the early 80’s and organic distribution was still a quaint affair. “We organized 20 farms to sell together so we could get a truck to stop through Arkansas from one of the big national buyers.”

Then sometime in the late 80’s things began to change. The big boys saw mega green in their futures and started moving into organics. These corporate growers pushed for weak certification laws.  In California, for example, a farmer at the time only needed to stop spraying chemicals for a single year in order to be certified organic. “One year we’re getting $18 for a box of green peppers. The next year they’re coming out of California at $6.” Said Rusty. “The box alone cost us a dollar! All the big growers were selling below cost to knock out all us small producers.” The little fish continued to struggle under the price-war tsunami throughout the nineties. Many went belly up. “That’s when we started going to the farmers market.”

By the late nineties, organics had tipped into the mainstream. A feedback loop escalated between public interest and business, with Whole Foods leading the way. The company was on a Pac-Man roll, gobbling up Mom&Pop stores across the country. But many of the most devoted customers missed the intimacy and transparency of the old ways. Farmers Markets sprang up across the country so people could shake their farmer’s hand.  And for growers like Rusty and Sue, Farmers Markets became popular just in time.  Most Saturdays for about ten years they got up at 3am and drove two hours to the River Market in Little Rock. “It was like a rock and roll tour. Except our curtain went up at sunrise,” says Rusty. “We kicked butt down there.”  They hired extra help to deal with the crowds three and four deep at their long tables. “We had colors of things no one had ever seen. Five colors of carrots. People would take pictures” The duo became famous as ‘the potato people’ because of their exotic spuds – one year they grew 28 varieties. Some of the top restaurants in the area became devoted customers. They both speak fondly of their years at the market, and it’s about much more than money. “The people were just fantastic. We met so many good friends there. It was so satisfying to get the personal reaction when people love your food.”

But eventually the brutal schedule took a toll and Rusty and Sue had to fold up the tables and tent for good. “We weren’t much good on sundays, and we can’t afford to be dragging. We started burning out.”

Virtual Farmers Markets

In the handful of years since giving up the Farmer’s Markets, Rusty and Sue have had to innovate once again to reach customers. “We’re at a real disadvantage being so remote,” says Sue, “we’ve never been able to ship directly to customer and we can’t do the CSA thing.” Community Supported Agriculture is a big trend now. Customers are like shareholders. Paying a flat annual fee entitles them to drop by their farm each week and pick up a box of whatever happens to be harvesting. Despite their popularity, they aren’t ideal for consumer choice.

Enter the internet. Until last month, Armstead Mountain Farm was tethered to the brave new world by a raggedy dial-up connection that worked sporadically at best. They used it mostly to email their grown kids scattered across the globe. The Nuffers are not exactly techies anyway. Until a few years ago, Rusty loved plowing with his prized draft horses, even as a tractor sat nearby. They’d rather have the glow of sun on their faces than a flickering screen. But even this down-to-earth duo has found salvation in the web. They splurged on a satellite dish last month and it’s opened up a new world for their business.

Several years ago, a farmer and techno geek in Athens, Georgia put up a community site called locallygrown.net to help farmers and customers connect. In a short time it has grown to over serve 800 growers in 50 networks nationwide, with many more coming online this season. Last year Rusty and Sue gave it a try and helped create their local network. They also joined two other smaller online networks.  “We love it. It’s perfect for us,” says Sue. “On Sunday night we post what we’ll have for the week.  Buyers log on Monday through Wednesday and place orders.” Late in the week, they drive their orders to drop-off points manned by volunteers. “We pay a 10% fee to help maintain the network, but compared to the cost of gas and renting the booth at the real Farmer’s Market, it’s a bargain.” One familiar casualty of this virtual market, however, is the personal touch. “We really do miss the one-on-one connection. We get feedback through the volunteers, but it’s not the same as seeing the smile on their face.” Rusty and Sue feel better knowing that their carbon footprint has been drastically reduced now that they’re not driving all the way to Little Rock.

Staying Alive

I asked if it’s easier or harder to get into this game now compared to when they started.  Rusty said, “It was actually much more possible in the early days because things were cheap. Nowadays about the only way for young people to get started is to inherit some land.” While Rusty and Sue are too busy to follow every detail of the politics and policy of food, they do stay well-informed and activist.  They use the internet more and more to stay up to date. “The upcoming regulations are a little scary. It depends how it’s enforced,” says Rusty, “the most important thing to keep in mind is scalability.”  Indeed, what works for the little guy is not the same as what works for the big guy, and small farmers are carefully watching the legislation for signs of big-business power.

After the USDA took over the organic certification process, many small farmers, including Rusty and Sue, just couldn’t afford to use the label. “You have to keep so many records for every crop. That’s fine for the guy with one crop on two hundred acres. It’s a killer for us with fifty crops on four acres.” Of the dozen or so farmers in their locallygrown.net network, only one carries the USDA Organic seal – even though Rusty and Sue have actually always far surpassed the standards. “It didn’t make a bit of difference at the Farmer’s Market because everyone knew us. Now, with the online thing, it would probably help to get certified again.”

There are other roadblocks. The Whole Foods in Little Rock won’t buy from local farmers unless they have a one million dollar liability insurance policy. “I guess that’s in case somebody chokes on our carrot,” said Sue.  And so, not surprisingly, big trucks with California license plates dominate the store’s loading docks.

But despite the challenges, Rusty and Sue remain optimistic. “It depends which pages of the newspaper you read. There’s plenty of good news in between plenty of bad news.” They’re very encouraged to see so many people interested in their way of life and the role of food in caring about the planet. The Obama’s vegetable garden was something they never thought they’d see, and Sue was delighted that the White House involved local school kids. “Right now the average age for a farmer is 51.” But she’s seeing a whole new wave of enthusiastic, idealistic young people that reminds her of their early days all over again. Rusty’s daughter Rose is following in his footsteps, working on farms across England for an organization called WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.

Rusty and Sue have been living sustainably since long before terms like carbon footprint, localvore, and slow food became bandwagon buzzwords. But they’re not the least bit tempted to gloat now that the rest of the world has caught up on the path they’ve blazed by gut intuition for years.  In an era when green-washing threatens to consumerize and water down the movement, the simplicity and beauty of the Nuffer’s daily lives are a rich reality check. “This year we’re excited about a new potato we’re trying. It’s called ‘purple majesty’ and it tests higher than any other food ever for one important anti-oxidant,” says Sue. Their world centers around the soil. They’re forever experimenting with new methods to enrich and re-mineralize mother earth. Lately Rusty’s been exploring an ancient Amazonian technique known as Terra Preta, where high-potency charcoal is carefully introduced over many years.

“We’re just pretty dang lucky, that’s all,” says Rusty. It’s their favorite thing to say when you praise them too much. “The perks are that you work in the freshest restaurant in the world!” Sue said, “and just being close to nature all the time – taking care of the planet is spiritual.”

So before I went back to my keyboard and they to their dirt, I asked what they did for Earth Day. They nearly forgot the date. “Every day is Earth Day,” said Rusty, “Earth Month. Earth Year…. It’s an Earth Life, I guess. That’s what it needs to be. Keep that awareness all the time.”

Further Reading:
Locally Grown.net
WWOOF
Helen and Scott Nearing
Terra Preta
Sue’s recommended gardening book:
John Jeavons’ How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine

News World Order

When I was a kid I had a paper route. It was a pretty good gig: after school my dog Tyrone and I would cruise the neighborhood stuffing the Pittsburgh Press into mailboxes or screen doors. On Sundays I’d pull my brother’s old go-cart then bomb it empty down the steep hill home. I’d read the papers as I went, learning about my town and the world beyond. This little Norman-Rockwell-in-bell-bottoms-scene didn’t last long, however. Within a few years of my passing the baton to the next punk, paperboys were gone – killed off by a greasy old creep from somewhere else driving my route – and many others – in his rusty Cordoba. The mercenaries had wiped us out. My first lesson that news is business.

There’s a lot of news about the news these days. The internet has caught the old guard off guard. Newspapers, in particular, have had a hard time adapting and are in a dire free-fall. Major city papers across the country, having bled money for years, are finally going belly up. Seattle, Denver, San Francisco. Small local papers are dropping like flies. This week monoliths like The New York Times and The Washington Post announced major layoffs as their stock prices keep falling. Politicians are talking about media bailouts. Are we witnessing the death of the newspaper?

Then again, so what? Polls show a majority of Americans don’t really care if their local paper folds. After all, long before the internet, they began leaving newspapers in favor of the sirens-and-fires coverage on the local TV news. Each era must ride changes in technology – the town crier once lost his job to the printing press. But that’s assuming news is news. It is not. Newspapers are very good at in-depth investigative journalism. Whether it’s blockbuster stuff like Watergate and whistleblowers or small time stuff like your town council jerk taking grease for a building permit, journalism matters in our lives. There’s no substitute for a snooping reporter to keep it all real and honest. Can our new modes of information carry the torch? After years of doom and gloom, we’re starting to see the News World Order take shape in a positive way, led by President Obama.

What’s the News World Order look like? On Thursday, the President held the first-ever internet town hall meeting. 100,000 people submitted questions – some of them video – and more than 3,000,000 people voted on their favorites. Obama answered the winning questions, streaming live on the White House website. His campaign for the presidency is legendary for bringing politics into the 21st century by harnessing the power of the internet. One of the founders of Facebook ran his online community campaign, which created a foot soldier army never before seen. It’s been fascinating and encouraging to watch him, now that he’s President, transform the White House website into an interactive hub that includes hipster stuff like blogs and videos. In his press conferences, too, he’s shaken things up by calling on reporters from websites – Huffington Post and Politico – which is hugely symbolic of the shift towards the power of new media. Now, I view all this democratic flash and sparkle with a healthy dose of Orwellian skepticism. But if delivered even partially as promised, it’s a brave new era of populist power.

By the way, I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert and I don’t view them, as many do, as the death of civilization. I think that in between the jokes, they often have very important things to say that the corporate media is too afraid to tackle. I’m not really worried that the youngins are keeping up with the world through these guys.

But while comedy news and sites like the Huffington Post have been heralded as the model of the future, people seem to forget that they mostly gather and mash other people’s news. It’s symbiotic. Somebody’s still got to pay the original reporters. Huff’s staff and budget are a tiny fraction of the New York Times. This is beginning to change. Huffington is doing a great job expanding into original reporting. Bloggers are beginning to gain the clout and access necessary to serve an important role in the post-newspaper world. And this means less power to the corporate giants, which is always a good thing. We just have to keep our eye on the ball. We have to demand real reporting and reward those who perform it. And here is where, to my wife Kris’ amusement, I insert a few quotes from my main man Thomas Jefferson: “The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being”, “No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.”

The paperboy days are gone. How will our kids learn about the world? How do you get your news?