Do you still read the paper? I mean, do you trundle past the front door and actually open it to stoop and retrieve a bundle of newsprint to scan while pouring scalding coffee down your gullet? It used to be normal.

It has been a journey. Decades ago, I was a New York Times subscriber, Sunday edition, and sometimes it was delivered not by a trusty local kid but by a gray Navy cargo plane that would swoop from the sky and land with a controlled crash on the deck of our ship. That was dramatic, but unpredictable. Living in a house was a little easier. In suburban Virginia, the Washington Post appeared on the porch in the morning, regular as clockwork. Remember clocks?

Down in the country, there was a bit of a fight with the local paper about tradition and technology. They insisted on delivering not to the house but to the general vicinity of the mailbox, not quite a football-field away. With the predictable pile of disintegrating bundles of pulp disintegrating inside plastic bags that assisted thieves in identifying who was not home, and whose property was available for pillage. So, a major disadvantage in home delivery, but with digital delivery and a convenient geo-stationary satellite, there at least was news.

We have shared a helluva year for that. Most places seem to be emerging from “emergency rule,” justified on the “public health emergency.” It was an emergency, after all. Except we found out about a bunch of other emergencies. At the moment, just about everything is being touted as justifications for more emergency rule. Guns. The Weather. Crime. Oh, hell you know the litany, if you read the paper. Even if it isn’t on paper.

Catching up after immediate panic for longer-term emergencies has been fun, since the local paper is actually quite good. They write about shootings and vehicle crashes that are right here. Small emergencies, maybe, but ones between Refuge Farm and the grocery store. And some other stuff, like what was being taught in the public schools. That was part of the emergency that had not been intended to be revealed.

It was only moderately surprising that Loudoun County, Virginia, was recently newsworthy. I have lived in the northern part of this state, on and off, for 35 years, so I have seen the creep. Some of our old home(s) were in Fairfax, a jurisdiction once slightly resistant to the vagaries of the Capitol Region. It changed not from Red, but rather “Pink” to “Blue” abruptly. As property owners up there, our lot had a pleasant if cautionary view of a large park-like cemetery. We were sucked into a fight about whether the owner could add a funeral home and a crematory facility to the property. In so doing, our little community association had an opportunity to acquaint ourselves with how dramatic the changes had been over time. Our neighborhood had been agricultural within living memory, and even vaguely industrial in the sense that crops and goods were moved by rail through the green fields. Reading the history and living the imperative was interesting, seated in the vast and majestic then-new Fairfax County Government building.

So, what is happening now in Loudoun is nothing new. It was more than twenty years ago that my wife, easing back into the paycheck world, was approached by other teachers in our local school- the one our children attended- to provide “the true history of the Vietnam War.” We marveled at it at the time, since we had a fair idea of what that might be, and it was something different than what the taxpayers of the Fairfax County schools thought they were paying for.

We didn’t make a fuss about it at the time, thinking it might be a local issue. It wasn’t. Loudoun County demonstrates how it works. And the paper here in Culpeper demonstrates it is happening here as well. We will have to go into that matter tomorrow. It isn’t an emergency yet, after all. I sure we can expect one, though. It will be in the news. More on that tomorrow, unless there is an emergency.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com