A cold drizzle had started which suited the morning’s bad news, that 10 more people were losing their jobs at the local newspaper. My newspaper. Our newspaper. A friend and I stood in the park under umbrellas and grieved. It was a surprise, but no shock. This story of layoffs, cutbacks and general shrinkage throughout the industry keeps rewriting itself.

My friend teaches a college course on the media. He used to require his students to read a daily newspaper, not just to study the craft but to stimulate discussion of the news. The need to stay informed was a given. He was sad that morning and wondered who will write the final obituary for newspapers.

But then, only a few days later, newspapers rose from their deathbed and became the hottest thing on the street. Newspaper boxes were cleaned out. It was not “new” news. We’d known what happened since we went to bed the night before. Deadline-wise it was old news, but it was what people rushed to read in their newspapers. Maybe for some it made the election more real. Maybe they just couldn’t get enough of the words: President-Elect Obama.

It was a verification, to see it in print. To have and to hold the history-making proof. With a historic photo and historic headline, officially validated by a newspaper publication date – Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Maybe to frame. Certainly to keep as a souvenir , for children and grandchildren. It was made even better when you saw the front pages of newspapers from around the world. Same news, same face, all languages.

Newspapers help make us part of the whole.

We have a group of photos and prints on our living room wall that is a kind of homage to newspapers. There’s one of a newspaper kiosk in San Francisco that’s part of a mural at Coit Tower. There’s a man framed in a window reading a paper, painted by Sausalito artist Joe Jaqua. We have a sketch from a street artist in France that shows two men, one in a suit, one in a beret, sharing a newspaper on a bench. There’s a man in a green sweater with his newspaper in Pamplona, Spain. One of my favorites is a postcard print from Prague of a woman reading a paper in striped pajamas and smoking a cigarette.

We have them because my husband and I were both in the biz. But I also like the body language of someone engaged with their newspaper, whisked away by some story that has taken them out of their private world.

Newspapers help make us part of the whole. You can get that on the internet, too, but people do a lot more select reading on the web. You go to your favorite sites to talk about your favorite subject and there’s not as much chance that your eyes will unexpectedly be drawn to a totally different subject on the same page.

The media took a lot of hits in this last election season – print and every other kind. Those who didn’t like what was said about them complained about the media elite. If the media were really elite, wouldn’t newspapers be getting a bail-out? Most members of the media are commoners. They do it not for money, but for love of the profession. I find myself defending them a lot lately as they struggle heroically to put out a good, strong product, working long days with dwindling budgets, fewer staff, disappearing ad revenue and doomsday critics saying newspapers are dead.

But, not so fast. They could live again. As newspaper readers on Nov. 5, 2008 can attest, miracles do happen.

Image Courtesy of The Press Democrat

Quit chasing after Sarah Palin. Let the woman go. I say this as part of the pack that resented her, ridiculed her and obsessed over her for two months.

For many of us there was much not to like about Sarah Palin. She shrugged off global warming and considered the Iraq war an act of God. She thought Alaska women should pay for their own rape kits. She hunted animals from a helicopter and leaned on a city librarian to test her loyalty.

On top of that the Republican Party tried to package her as a new style feminist and offer her as their default Hillary Clinton. Oh, no. Sarah Palin didn’t speak for Hillary Clinton. She didn’t speak for me. I didn’t want her making history on my behalf.

I was in Denver during the Democratic convention, staying with a friend, who like me had started off a Clinton supporter. We’d been saying that it would be smart if the Republicans named a woman as John McCain’s running mate. Maybe Olympia Snow, Kay Bailey Hutchison or Susan Collins. Someone with a name and credentials who could be a serious challenge.

That Friday morning my friend turned on the TV and called out, “He did it. It’s the one from Alaska with the pony tail.” No threat there, we laughed.

Seemingly overnight she became a rock star with her face on every magazine. Rush Limbaugh called her a babe. Even intelligent male pundits made dreamy comments about her. She didn’t snooker everybody. “She’s the girl in high school who got by with a short skirt and a wink to the fat old history professor,” said one of my friends.

Let the woman go.

As she whipped up her adoring crowds with dangerous, reckless accusations about Barack Obama, I declared her the new Queen of Mean and said she deserved every negative review. I played the game and lapped up every cutting remark made by Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. Joined the Tina Fey fan club.

But then last Tuesday happened and she was no longer a worry. Had it turned out differently I would be sick to my stomach thinking of what might happen if John McCain slipped in his Jacuzzi. I feared Sarah Palin a whole lot more than I feared John McCain.

Now we discover that some anonymous McCain insiders did too, and the Republican brain trust has dropped her like a wet bath towel. Using her as scapegoat for losing the election, they began a turncoat attack that almost makes me feel sorry for her.

The Republicans anointed her, made her over, turned her into their hate-monger and forgot to give her a map of the world. When she didn’t deliver, they went after her with longer knives than the smug, eyebrow-cocking media that gloated every time she failed a trivia test. That same smirking media is back to rubbing their hands with glee.

Let her go. Get onto the important stuff. We’ve got our houses and jobs and two wars to deal with. And a president-elect setting a new model for behavior with his admonition on Tuesday night “to let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”

In that spirit I’m willing to give up my hostility and forget the wink, the “say it ain’t so, Joe,” the “drill, baby, drill.” Give her one Valentino to wear with her Uggs and leave her to Alaska.

This commentary first appeared in the Santa Rosa (Ca.) Press Democrat in a “Close to Home” column.

There were signs. Four hot air balloons hanging in the blue sky one early afternoon. Two mornings in a row, I cracked open an egg with a double yolk. Then there was Eric Bibb at a concert singing, “Spread your arms and hold your breath and always trust your cape.”

You can see, I was going for any positive message I could get. You’re thinking, but that was back then. That was when we had nervous stomachs and were afraid about getting too excited. That was back when we still didn’t know.

Maybe years from now we’ll be asking, “Remember where you were when we finally got to exhale?”

When “Yes, we can” became “Yes, we absolutely flipping did.”

We had a small family election night gathering at our house. One TV, a couple of laptops and cell phones to connect us to the daughter in Texas and other loyalists from afar. I was in the kitchen around 4:30 pm. when I heard the first expletive uttered from the living room. “What happened?” I yelled out. “Kentucky’s gone,” he said. But we all knew that Kentucky would go for the other guy, right? Kentucky, schmucky. So maybe that was just a non-sign?

The first bottle of wine was uncorked a few minutes before 5 p.m. I rationalized that we had been dabbling in different time zones all day and someone was drinking somewhere. Austin reported they’d already started.

The first election night I can remember was in Meadville, PA. My boyfriend’s father was a union leader and union people, I had learned, partied more than management. It was a small local election but celebrated in a big way with pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. Cold night Pennsylvania comfort food. Plus lots of bourbon.

On Tuesday I made a high carb cheesy concoction known in our family as Courthouse Noodles, a recipe that came from a friend of my husband’s who worked at the Sonoma County courthouse. It’s un-fancy food that appeals to two-year-olds on up and won’t slide off the plate when you dash from the kitchen to the TV.

Giddiness started to erupt early. At 6:40 p.m. my daughter the lawyer who had been working election protection online all day and was now giving reports from her laptop, declared, “It’s a done deal.” The Austin daughter, who had been making get-out-the-vote calls to swing states, whooped with equal certitude. My other daughter, the teacher, was holding back. I too, was worried about premature exhileration. Every time someone sung out high numbers in the blue column I asked, “What does Jim Lehrer say?”

I would believe it when the concession speech came from Phoenix. And when it did I went out on the front porch and hooted and hollered at the neighbors. It would have been thrilling to be with all those joyful tear stained people in Chicago. Or swarming outside the White House. Or dancing in Kenya. But you didn’t need to be holding hands to feel the connection. I thought about Deddrick Battle, a movie theater janitor interviewed in a New York Times story about black voters. At age 55 he had registered to vote for the first time. “This is huge,” he said. “This is bigger than life itself.”

Mr. Battle was right. It will be some time before we can really appreciate the enormity of this week. But for starters, there’s fresh air coming to the White House. My daughter, who never got over the loss of Jed Bartlett – you know Martin Sheen’s TV president – grinned as she was packing up the baby to go home and said: “Hey, the West Wing is back.”

Photo Courtesy of Ohio University Post