First of all, let me say that I think you’re doing a wonderful thing.  You have my respect, admiration and appreciation.  My hat’s off to you.  Way to go.  Keep it up, too.

You are reading a newspaper.

Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not here to argue for the virtue of ink-stained fingers, for a well-informed populace or the intellectual superiority of reading over watching, although those cases could be made.

This is all personal.  I happen to like newspapers, or the idea of newspapers.  Also, I have a stake here.  So I just wanted to say thanks.

I’m also not here to argue for the aesthetics of dead trees, curled edges and irritating folds.  I read a lot of newspapers, and virtually all of them are electronic versions. 

I’m no more inclined to whine about technology than I am to get an earring.  I wallow in the choices I have.  My house is big enough to hold vinyl LPs and books that number well into four figures, but my clutter-frustrated soul appreciates MP3s and e-books. 

I’m a fan of anything that allows me to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom without tripping.

And then there’s the communal aspect.  One downside of a million little choices is the blurring of shared passions; the most popular television show in this country, for example, is remarkable to me for the fact that, for all the hype and magazine covers, on average nearly 300 million Americans are not watching it.

So anything that finds the common ground is fun, a good thing, and often surprising, too. 

Last week I had a nice e-mail exchange with a Canadian couple, taking a vacation and visiting our neck of the woods.  Stopping at a restaurant on their way back, they picked up a copy of this very newspaper.
 
Can you imagine?  Our little world in Snohomish County has now collided with far-off, exotic British Columbia.

Here’s a newspaper story, then, although it may not really be about newspapers.  I’m not sure what it’s about, actually, although I suspect it might mostly be about me.

Marc Abrams, age 58, died on July 21 at his home in Silver Lake, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles.  He’d practiced medicine in the area for decades, but mostly he was known as The Walking Man, and walk he did, sometimes all day, 20 miles or more, around the neighborhood when he wasn’t doing doctor stuff.

This is Los Angeles, remember, a place where sidewalks are shiny and unused because they’re mostly too narrow for cars.  So he was a familiar figure and almost an oddity, a walker.  Lean, leathery and muscular, Abrams read while he walked and mostly kept to himself, but the neighborhood got used to him.

  Children grew up and moved away, people died, politicians went to jail and still The Walking Man walked.

So when he passed away, his absence was felt.  A memorial walk was organized, a community gathering to mark the passing of a neighbor but mostly, I think, to recognize that they were, in fact, a community.
 
It was a small thing, local, and might have stayed that way if not for a little New York Times story about Silver Lake and The Walking Man. 

And then Michael Kinsley, a keen observer of all things and particularly journalism, wrote on The Atlantic’s Web site that “I think I have discovered the most boring article ever published in a newspaper,” and invited readers to offer their own candidates.  All good summer fun.

Now I’m almost positive this is about me.

Like Abrams, I’m a walker.  It started as purely functional, a way to get exercise and burn calories, being too fat to run; I also don’t trust my knees as far as I can bend them, which some days becomes a theoretical exercise.

And like a lot of chronic walkers, I transcended functionality and embraced spirituality, or maybe endorphins.  Walking became a cheap way to elevate my mood, clear my mind, work out problems. 

But it also connected me to my neighbors, in a way that made me nod at the newspaper story and take issue with Kinsley, although I remain a big fan.

“Man bites dog,” not the other way around, has been the journalistic standard for a long time.  The news that’s fit to print is just that, news, not ordinary stuff and certainly not boring stuff.

So I guess I’m arguing that a Los Angeles-area walker was news, a community gathering was news, and that The Times, in fact, has a pretty good record about making that distinction, but then I may have lost you way back there.

  Feel free to submit this column to Kinsley.

Oh.  And remember how I said Abrams used to read while he walked?
It was always a newspaper.  There’s a story right there.