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.

When I flew from Boston to San Francisco I was the only one reading a newspaper in my row. At least I could wrestle it into fold-able parts without competing for elbow room, but I was disappointed because I had seen many people buying papers in the terminal. And it was an early morning flight, the traditional newspaper reading and coffee drinking hour.

I’m always on the look-out for other newspaper readers. Those who still get their news from print. Hard core types. Purists, we might call ourselves, those who consume news the way God and Gutenberg intended.

A lot of people are prematurely nostalgic for newspapers.  “I used to read newspapers all the time,” people of my generation will say, with the sentimental reverence you might attach to an old Chevy or a Mounds bar.

But then I’ll run into someone much younger who is, as we say, on the same page.   Writer Anne Zimmerman, in her 30s and of that generation that generally leans online, said she actually prefers print.    Zimmerman, author of a delicious new biography of M.F.K. Fisher’s early years, An Extravagant Hunger, compared reading on the web to reading a newspaper in print.

“When I’m reading on the web I skim. My attention jumps around and it’s more of a fact-finding mission than a real enjoyable learning experience.”

Actually, it turns out that print people may have an advantage.  New research by the University of Oregon concluded that people who read in print remember news stories better and in greater detail than those who gulp their news online.

My whole writing career has been in print so I have a personal and professional loyalty to words in black and white that you can hold in your hands. My best argument for reading an actual newspaper is the unintended information you get from a random sighting. You’re reading about the latest political bloodbath or checking to see if the Giants are out of their slump and your eyes slide over to a story you never knew you needed or wanted to know about. And there it is – a little gift.

I had a pile of papers waiting for me after vacation, including two dailies, the Sunday edition of a third paper and two weeklies which could not go into the recycle bin until I went through them. Otherwise I would have missed a new report on migraines, a review of a new BBC series and a story quoting poet Mary Oliver on the need for solitude. I surely would have missed the story about my local librarian opening a Brazilian wax business.

It’s not whopping big news that having friends is good for your health, but it’s nice to have scientific support for flying off with your girlfriends once a year.

Last week we went to San Diego where the three of us first met, not as surfer girls, but as young married career women, reporters on the same evening newspaper. We are no longer married to those same husbands and our careers have morphed widely, although we all still know how to write a headline and a lead sentence. The newspaper merged with the morning paper. The building itself, which was downtown, is gone. A mall is in its place. The newspaper moved out to the shopping center. Everything’s changed except for our annual need to get together, this time on a beach in San Diego.

Two live in California and one in Indiana, but we prefer meeting at a neutral location like Savannah, Chicago, Key West or Phoenix. When my husband and I moved to Germany, my two friends flew over so we could have our getaway in Strasbourg and Heidelberg.

Our vacation routine is the same. We get up and hit the streets in pajama tops and sweatpants, seeking coffee and newspapers. This time we scored papers at a liquor store up the beach, next door to a coffee house with a patient barista. One of us is known for her complicated espresso orders.

We don’t play tennis or golf. Well, two don’t, but we try to exercise. This time, there were walks on the sand and bicycles on the boardwalk. The fittest of the three brought her exercise bands. For activities, we eat, we shop and search out art museums, sometimes a play. This time we cruised beach towns to hunt up our old addresses in one time funky places showing off new wine bars and garden art stores.

We agree on Kevin Spacey and the need for dogs.

Driving is always amusing. Two prefer to be in the driver’s seat, which leaves the other controlling personality to bark directional changes and the third to sit gratefully in the back.

At night we usually watch movies, lament the state of newspapers, tell other sad stories and have cocktails. One wine, one scotch, one brandy.

We’ve been friends for 40 years, although one still tells people she’s only 48 and that would mean we met in grade school. To be honest, she does have the youngest face, which we can attest is her own.

In many ways we don’t match and if we lived next door to each other we might not have remained as close as we have miles apart. We have vastly different lifestyles, sometimes heatedly different politics and opposite tastes in everything from pre-roasted grocery store chicken to why Meryl Streep did “Mama Mia.” Only one uses “Facebook.” Only one reads with a Kindle. Two wear pepto pink and canary yellow. One prefers black.

We agree on Kevin Spacey and the need for dogs.

A recent health story in the New York Times said that having friends prolongs life, boosts brain health and aids in recovery from illness. Friends make us feel protected. They give us confidence. They keep our stress levels down.

In our case I think we know so much basic history about each other – parents, ex-husbands, kids, health scares and idiosyncrasies, that we cushion each other like family. We have enjoyed different levels of professional, marital and financial success but we’ve never competed. If one said “help,” the other two would be there tomorrow. Oh sure, we’ll tell one that she snores and one that she’s bossy and one that she’s told the same story twice already.

Still, if friends do keep you healthy we’re pretty good insurance for each other.