This new concern about our electronic addiction and how we should temper the tweets, take a Facebook fast, is an idea that doesn’t take much prompting for me to friend. Of course, my generation doesn’t need as much encouragement to unplug.

I wear a watch. I read books on paper. I do love my smart phone and would like to find a way to rationalize the purchase of an iPad.  Yet, some people think I’m terribly old fashioned for holding onto my CD collection.

Still, I do understand the seduction of the little screen and how sometimes you need to break free and tune out, turn off, go find a whale.

Especially on a cold bright morning when rain is around the corner and soon to obscure the ocean. And when the word has been out for weeks that the whales are back and you’re just getting around to driving out to the beach.

Every winter just knowing that the whales are nearby makes me happy.  I imagine their huge gray graceful selves doing a dark underwater ballet as they silently slide along our coast on the way to Mexico’s warm spa.

You can go on the internet and see whales frolicking in the ocean. You can listen to the distinct clucking and squealing noises peculiar to the gray whale and the song of the humpback.  But a laptop doesn’t deliver the up-close smell of the ocean or the light touch  of the winter sun.

The wind was whipping around the rocky bluffs of Bodega Head, giving the gulls and pelicans a giddy ride as a small shivering group of hopefuls steadied our binoculars and waited.

The winter ocean is pretty thrilling when it’s bringing in a storm and the water goes from calm to churning. But were those white caps or whale spouts? Was that a shadow of a cloud or a giant’s dark back?

Our computer obsession is not good for our health we are told. Experts worry that Facebook makes people feel more alienated than connected. We need to take a break from all those beeps and alerts. I agree. How can a person daydream if they’re always plugged in?

We’ve heard these moderation lectures before. In the days before computers took over multi-taskers were encouraged to develop a healthy balance between work and play.  Remember the days of take-time-to-smell-the-flowers?

I’m kind of old school media. I read newspapers, listen to the radio. We have a landline phone in the house. I give journals to people for birthday presents. I write down dates and appointments on a calendar in the hall.

In the book The Information Diet, author Clay Johnson talks about our unhealthy habit of gobbling information and news. With just about everything you want available on the internet, he urges people to be more selective about what we take in and to employ more conscious consumption.

Certainly we all know people who are addicted to their computers. Yet just by looking at Facebook it’s apparent from all the photos of real sunsets and dreamy snowfalls that people do occasionally get away from their gadgets.

We didn’t see any whales that morning. That was okay. Last summer I saw a bunch of humpbacks in the Atlantic from a whale boat out of Gloucester Massachusetts. Those east coast whales came so close to the boat we could wink at each other.

I know our whales are out there, somewhere between us and the horizon. Moby Dick doesn’t have to be available on demand. We have our ways of interacting.

For the first time in a long time the newspaper didn’t arrive that morning. Was not waiting at the foot of the stairs. Never got spread across the kitchen table. So it seemed a cosmic fluke or unhappy coincidence that by noon that day the word was out that our newspaper had been sold.

The Press Democrat, owned for 26 years by the New York Times, had gone to an obscure media group named Halifax. My first thought was why would a bunch of Nova Scotians want a paper in Sonoma County? When Halifax was identified as a Florida group I thought uh-oh.  Florida — conservative, anti-union. Not good.

But the sad part was that our newspaper – I say “our” because I worked there before and after the Times took ownership – had grown into an important paper under the banner of the Times, the mother of all newspapers. And now mother had left us on some Halifax doorstep and disappeared.

What would happen now? Would the new owners bust the union? Turn the paper into a Tea Party bulletin, a rah-rah chamber of commerce pro-business sheet?  Or let it be what it is?

I worried about the people inside, former colleagues and friends, family really. Some with young kids. Some a few years away from retiring. Married couples dependent on one employer. Had this been happening when my husband and I still worked there and had kids at home I would have been in the ladies room throwing up.

Back in 1985 there were also rumors that the family-owned paper was going to sell. When we heard the New York Times was the new boss we hit the bar across the street and started celebrating. If you were going to be taken over by a newspaper chain this was the best.

You have to understand this was a big deal to newspaper people in Santa Rosa California. It allowed the hometown paper to think bigger, shed its provincial image and take on a more sophisticated world view. There was more investigative journalism of local issues. Reporters and photographers went out of town to explore national and global subjects.  I had a great time. The new publisher invited me to write a twice weekly column and said I could write about whatever I wanted.  The Times news service put my column on their wire and I was getting letters from readers in Chicago and Seattle.

Our business cards came with the prestigious NYT logo. We were not the New York Times of 43^rd Street, more like a second cousin to the Gray Lady, but we were a New York Times paper. That meant status not only for journalists but the community as well to have the local paper connected to the Times.

Not that it wasn’t mutually satisfying. The Press Democrat was a good investment.  Sonoma County wasn’t just a nice place for Times execs to come visit and sample the wine, the paper made them proud (winning the Pulitzer among other awards) and we made them lots of money.

And when tough times hit the newspaper business and advertising revenue started to decline the Press Democrat made sacrifices, freezing salaries, squeezing staff, nudging retirees.

And now, in a move to presumably save the mother ship, the Times decided to cut off the distant cousins.  Business-wise that probably makes sense and wasn’t a shock but the cold and quick way it came down was. News of the sale was leaked to an online media blogger which hurried the official announcement. Employees were told by New York via email that Halifax would be deciding their futures. The staff, the paper, its readers and the community were unceremoniously dumped.

The New York Times was a good company to work for. It’s still a great paper to read. Same for the Press Democrat. Both almost always hit our front steps every morning. But I still feel jilted.

The day’s Ceres menu included sole with spinach, shitakes and goat cheese. And lentil soup with beets and coconut milk. Food designed to lift the spirit as much as provide healthy nutrients to bodies that need some special tending.

The meals that went out that night and every week, delivered to homes throughout Sonoma County, were created by volunteer teenagers in white smocks, guided by volunteer professional Wine Country chefs. Hopefully the kids also get hooked on eating local and organic and understand why slow food trumps fast food.  Then there’s the bonus of being part of a community doing something nice for others.

Those being people who have cancer or other serious illness, who need to eat as healthy as possible but whose palate may be off from strange new meds and whose families have other priorities than creating something enticing in the kitchen.

This is the Ceres Community project, which teaches young people to cook nutritious  inspired meals for sick people and which is becoming a national model for food  programs around the country.  The Ceres kitchen is in my neighborhood, housed in a bright new building painted spinach green with carrot colored trim. But I never got inside the operation until the other night when I accompanied my husband, who started driving for Ceres after a sick friend joined the list of clients.

It was one of those cold inky black nights when you’re glad for a car with a good heater and a radio with a strong classical music station. Lovely aromas came from the back seat. I guessed it was the soup.  Ceres operates year round but given the season it felt like the best thing to be doing, taking very fine food to very important regular people who are not out doing the eat, drink and be merry thing. Someone had also donated fresh wreaths with red ribbons to be included with some deliveries.

We drove down the highway against the commute traffic, remarking on how many years we had been part of that string of slow moving impatient drivers.  With our gift bags of food we crept through unfamiliar neighborhoods twinkling with reindeer and Santas,  trying to read obscure street numbers.

They were waiting. One woman introduced her grandson and we talked about the charm of two-year-olds. Another, her smiling face framed by a knit cap, seemed as thrilled to see the wreath as the meals.   She hadn’t done much decorating, she explained. This was her chemo week.

You can’t help but wonder how you would be if everything changed and you were trying to keep the holiday spirit, do the tree, wrap presents and imagining what the new year might deliver. Is it harder to be sick at Christmas? Does it feel like a milestone to reach another holiday?

I never did much volunteering when I was working full time. People who do say that it provides a sense of satisfaction and purpose and helps balance your karma. It’s a reminder that even if you can’t solve global problems or what’s going on in Washington you can do one more thing for your community. And trust that when you need a kindness, a neighbor will knock at your door.

We drove home with the empty containers from last week’s delivery. My gloves smelled like Doug fir. We took the back country route and some forest creature – maybe a fox or a coyote – darted across our headlights. I took it as a sign of grace.