“Instead of focusing on the voters they were losing, Biden and the Democrats kept focusing on the voters they were winning.” Ezra Klein’s comment reinforces my sense that I should continue trying to draw with willow charcoal. It’s for me an uncongenial medium and I’m not winning it over to my side, which argues for continuing the struggle. Stay the course, says my bitter angel. I call my ham-fisted sketch “Page Killer,” a bit of jargon resurrected from my newspaper advertising days. A page killer was an ad big enough to crowd any other ad off the page. Room was left for a smidgin of editorial matter. An advertiser could spend less than the cost of a full page and still get the benefit of having no competition for eyeballs. An ad spanning two full pages was called a “double truck.” Merchants pestered us to guarantee placement of their ad on a lefthand page in section A, but we salespeople were tasked with holding the line, our mantra being, “We do NOT sell position!” Our newspaper had the greatest penetration of any in the region, which gave us leverage. My department, Display Advertising, was its beating heart. The ads were the content; the news was just filler.
“We were never anywhere other than where we were.”
(Ben Tarnoff)
Now and then I let the me called self remain unsure of something when I know full well I could resolve doubt with a peek at the internet known today as “research.” There’s something delicious in giving the mind rein to rusticate in all manner of sweet conjecture, or simply to set the matter aside as not worth pursuing. Will learning how the Stutz-Bearcat got its name improve my life?
Frank Bruni’s feature “For the Love of Sentences” has a quotation which suggests that the suspension of certainty could look a lot like what’s now called “living in the moment.” Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?
“I belong to the last generation of Americans who grew up without the internet in our pocket. We went online, but also, miraculously, we went offline… We got lost a lot. We were frequently bored. Factual disputes could not be resolved by consulting Wikipedia on our phones; people remained wrong for hours, even days. But our lives also had a certain specificity. Stoned on a city bus, stumbling through a forest, swaying in a crowded punk club, we were never anywhere other than where we were.” ([Quote submitted by] Janice Aubrey, Brooklyn, N.Y.)
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Very nice – I too resist the allure of checking things on the web constantly.
I do like the charcoal too!
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Thank you, Sue! I experience existential loneliness in a group each member of which is immersed in their/her/his/+ phone. Oh for an instant of eye contact! 🙂
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I like the Aubrey quote, but isn’t she forgetting that books existed/exist? This morning I was in c11th Japan with Genji and god knows where you have been reading poetry!
Impactful sketch. He’s definately killed something in his hard life.
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Whoa! Good point, OA. The whole scenario rather leaves books in the lurch, doesn’t it? The printed word made portable and affordable was an early version of the internet. Also considered dangerous from the outset, given how many books have been banned and burned down to the present day. Re the sketch, it’s a tentative step in self-sketching via the mirror with artist’s charcoal I’ve inherited. What landed on paper is a lamentably tough customer who looks ready to punch a face. May as well be mine! 🙂
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