A farewell -- of sorts

A funny thing, the internet.

Last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a fixture in this city for 146 years, printed its last newspaper. There were a ton of people who bemoaned the loss but I wasn't one of them.

Not that I didn't care for the newspaper, usually referred to as the P-I. In fact, I much preferred it to its competition, The Seattle Times. It's just that for me and tens of thousands other readers, the P-I hasn't gone away.

As a former newspaper reporter, I probably shouldn't admit this; in fact, some of my former co-workers at The Times-Reporter, in New Philadelphia, Ohio, and The Canton Repository, in Canton, Ohio, might just harbor notions of stringing me up by my thumbs. But here it is; I haven't read a print newspaper in almost ten years.

I get my daily dose of news via the internet, have read seattlepi.com since April 2007, when we first began to consider a move to the West Coast, and while the P-I may be dead and gone, seattlepi.com is still very much alive.

There are some differences, of course.

Some of the old standbys of print newspapers are gone, as are a few smaller items of local note, and a couple of the columnists have departed. But coverage of major news, international, national and local, is still available, as is movie and book coverage, the want ads, David Horsey's editorial cartoons and the one comic strip I still read -- Funky Winkerbean.

The Hearst Company, owners of the now defunct P-I, also own its online version and it's still available at no cost to readers.

All of that may change, of course. The Hearst people may decide to initiate a subscription to read seattlepi.com. That has happened for the online versions of a number of national newspapers; if it happens here, I probably will pay it. They may decide the online news site isn't paying for itself and scrap it, too.

But I'm not going into mourning yet.

A Bojangles day

He danced for those at minstrel shows and county fairs
throughout the south
He spoke through tears of 15 years how his dog and him
traveled about
The dog up and died, he up and died
And after 20 years he still grieves

-- Mr. Bojangles by Jerry Jeff Walker

My son called last night from Ohio. There were tears hiding at the edges of his voice, but they stayed there; he doesn't like for me to hear him cry.

"I had to put Schatzie to sleep," he said. "The vet said she was just old, that there wasn't any more he could do for her."

In our family, "put to sleep" is a euphemism for euthanasia. Schatzie was a German Shepard that has been an important part of my son's life since high school. He was thirty this year.

And then, this morning, my daughter called to talk about it. She said her brother took it hard, but she was more concerned about my grandson, Dylan, who is nine and has never known a moment when Schatzie wasn't there. It is the first time he has had to deal with the death of a loved one.

I know there are people who will say, "It was just a dog." But I come from a family of dog lovers; I can't remember a time, growing up (and then growing older), when there wasn't a dog lolling around the house somewhere and they have always been as much a part of the family as anyone else.

As we grow older, we become, if not used to the idea, at least inured to the thought of the loss of a pet. My mother used to say that folks get hard-hearted; maybe so, until we have to witness such a loss through the eyes of a child.

So I cried this morning, and said a prayer for Dylan, may he never grow so hard-hearted that a death like this means nothing to him. And I prayed for Schatzie, too. She was a boon companion; may she rest in peace.

Bye, George

Al Sleet has offered his last weather forecast.

George Carlin, comedian extraordinaire, creator and alter ego of the hippy-dippy weatherman; the man who gave us the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television, died Sunday night in Santa Monica of heart failure. He was seventy-one.

Carlin’s sharp tongue, four-letter words and sarcasm may not have suited everyone’s taste, but for those of us who enjoy our comedy with an edge, he will be missed.