Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 2019)
A4 • Friday, February 22, 2019 | Cannon Beach Gazette | CannonBeachGazette.com Views from the Rock Bird poop on the window VIEW FROM THE PORCH EVE MARX What’s a typewriter, grandpa? I woke up this morning to brilliant sun, a gift from the angels who look out on the Left Edge. It had been raining for days, a cold, piercing, rain, the kind that leaks into your collar, sending cold rivulets down your neck. Luckily my hair is long enough to function as a cloak or cowl; still, it’s unpleasant getting drenched. So the gift of morning sun was extra glorious — until I noticed the bird poop. A great robin red breast has been visit- ing of late. By “great” I mean large. This big boy has taken up residence in my front yard. I like robins. They’re cheerful as can be, and the sight of that great red breast staring in my front window is heartening. The robin prefers to perch on a branch of one of our two apple trees. As I’m work- ing at my desk, I feel his beady bird eyes on me. When I was a child, my parents forced me to take piano lessons. I wasn’t very good. The teacher was a lady named Mrs. Mehich who lived on our street. She had three pianos in her house and a Siamese cat named Mu Chi Chi Chi Meow Meow Meow who hunted birds. One day he got a robin. Mrs. Mechich, who bore more than a passing resemblance to a crane or a fl a- mingo herself, swooped in before he killed it, and for some weeks nursed it back to health. She kept it in a cage in the same room she gave piano lessons. It was an imperious, proud thing, but she acted like it was a pet. When we fi rst moved to this area, I soon learned how obsessed people are with their windows which must be sparkly and smear free. I remarked on this fi xation to our land- lord, Grant, when we were renting in Gear- hart. He built that house and also a house in Cannon Beach. He seemed confused. “People don’t clean their windows in New York?” he asked. Writing this, I’m thinking my day will be marred if I don’t get busy with the Windex and some newspaper and get rid of the bird excrement. I wonder if it’s my pet robin that did this, and if this is his way of telling me my yard belongs to him. UIOPASDF GHJKLZXC V BNMQWE KLZXCVBN MQWERTUI OPASDFGH QWERTUIO J PASDFGHJ KLZXCVBN SDFGHJKL MQWE ZXCVBNMQ WERTUIOP CVBNMQWE ASDFGHJ RTUIOPAS DFGHJKLZ IOPASDFG X CVBNMQW HJKLZXCV BNMQWERT KLZXCVBN UIOPASDF MQWERTUI OPASDFGH WERTUIOP J ASDFGHJK LZXCVBNM PUBLIC MEETINGS DFGHJKLZ QWE XCVBNMQW ERTUIOPA VBNMQWER SDFGHJ TUIOPASD FGHJKLZX IOPASDFG C V B N M Q HJ COMES, WHEN 2069 THOSE OF US STILL ALIVE W E K L Z X C V B NMQWERTU LZXCVBN MAY M SAY, ‘I REMEMBER THE INTERNET.’ IOPASDF QWERTUIO PASDFGHJ ERTUIOPA SDFGHJKL ZXCVBNMQ FGHJKLZX WE CVBNMQWE RTUIOPAS BNMQWERT DFGHJ UIOPASDF GHJKLZXC OPASDFGH VBNMQWE JKLZXCVB NMQWERTU LZXCVBNM IOPASDFG QWERTUIO P ASDFGHJ RTUIOPAS DFGHJ I had something of a jarring journalis- tic moment the other day. A woman called — on the tele- phone — and said, “I want to drop off a letter.” I said, can you email it? She said I don’t have a computer. I told her that we didn’t have the offi ce staff to re-input a typed or handwritten letter. Letters need to be submitted via email, verifi ed and adhere to a number of principles. Fifty years ago someone at the front desk would have welcomed the letter writer into the offi ce, taken the handwritten sheets and typed it before delivering to the man- aging editor, who would pass it to the edi- tor, who would have then passed it to the assistant editor who would type the doc- ument and then sent it to the copy editor before going back to the editor. Ah the good old days. Reader’s Digest founder and publisher DeWitt Wallace sent employees anywhere they wanted to go once a year, on the thought that they would become better, more well-rounded human beings as a result. Digest commuters from throughout the New York Metro area could ride to work on company buses to the bucolic offi ces in Pleasantville. Even though the offi ce was technically in the town of Chappaqua, Wal- lace preferred the soporifi c “Pleasantville” postal address. Each May, Fridays became holidays, so workers could tend to their gardens. Type a letter? There were 25 bod- ies waiting with carbon paper to make a correction. CANNON SHOTS R.J. MARX When Spencer Tracy and Robert Red- ford portrayed real journalists, they inhab- ited small cities. So there was an awkward pause on the phone. Here was a woman looking to express herself to put pen to paper and share her thoughts. She wanted her ideas shared with the world, but was rendered mute without a computer. Why she didn’t have a computer — access? money? choice? — didn’t really matter. Think about it: Shakespeare scribed; our Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln and everyone until Mark Twain decided to turn to the typewriter, He called it “the newfan- gled typing machine” after he saw a Rem- ington in a Boston store window — in the 1870s. Twain’s 1883 book, “Life on the Missis- sippi,” was the fi rst literary work to be com- pleted on the machine, Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post reported last spring. In small towns, journalism was a fam- ily affair. I was down at the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum on Friday as they kindly opened their archives to me, old newspaper predecessors to the Gazette. The Cannon was the fi rst on record, published by Jack and Jim Dennon in the late 1940s when a few hundred folks lived in town and street lights were a big issue. The Cannon started as a Cannon Beach stu- dent newspaper — this was before Can- non Beach merged with the Seaside School District — with mimeographed headlines in cursive script. In the 1990s The Upper Left Edge, under the supervision of “Editor/Publisher/ Janitor The Beloved Reverend Billy Lloyd Hults” was an exquisite work of art. Head- lines read: “Put your good where it will do the most,” and “Jerry Brown for President.” It is the physical appearance and tactile experience that makes print so seductive. Ironic that it would take America’s greatest writer Mark Twain to alter technol- ogy inexorably. Typewriter gave way to teletype and fax machines and telexes and bits and bytes, PCs, iMacs, iPhones and apps. Talk about a tsunami, but these took place every gen- eration, then every decade, every year, every second. I gave up my own beloved Hermes 3000 typewriter — so iconic that author William Kotzwinkle wrote a book with the same title — for good in the early ’80s when I got my fi rst personal computer, an AT&T 6300 with dual 5 ¼” fl oppy disk drives. It’s probably worth something — at a museum. Public works employees recently dug up at 50-year-old time capsule buried under- ground at the Tolovana Arts Colony. A new capsule was boxed and stored at Whale Park at a celebration on Feb. 14. History goes by quickly. When 2069 comes, those of us still alive may say, “I remember the Internet.” Their descendants will say: “There you go again, grandpa.” National Park Service American robin (turdus migratorius). FRIDAY, Feb. 22 Emergency Preparedness Committee, 9 a.m., 163 E. Gower St. TUESDAY, March 5 Cannon Beach City Council, 7 p.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. WEDNESDAY, March 6 Cannon Beach City Council, 5:30 p.m., work ses- sion, Chamber of Commerce and Escape Lodg- ing RV Park, 163 E. Gower St. MONDAY, March 11 Cannon Beach Rural Fire Protection District Board of Directors, 6 p.m., 188 E. Sunset Blvd. TUESDAY, March 12 Cannon Beach City Council, 5:30 p.m., work ses- sion, City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. WEDNESDAY, March 13 Cannon Beach City Council, budget preliminary discussions, City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. MONDAY, March 18 Ecola Creek Watershed Council, 4:30 p.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower, Cannon Beach. TUESDAY, March 19 R.J. Marx Wikimedia Commons Publisher Kari Borgen Editor R.J. Marx Circulation Manager Jeremy Feldman Production Manager John D. Bruijn Advertising Sales Holly Larkins Staff writer Brenna Visser Contributing writers Joseph Bernt Eve Marx Bob Dietsche Nancy McCarthy Dave Fisher Cara Mico Rita Goldfarb Rain Jordan CANNON BEACH GAZETTE The Cannon Beach Gazette is published every other week by EO Media Group. 1555 N. Roosevelt, Seaside, Oregon 97138 503-738-5561 • Fax 503-738- 9285 A letter to the editor. Now what do we do? CannonBeachgazette.com • email: editor@cannonbeachgazette.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Annually: $40.50 in county, $58.00 in and out of county. Postage Paid at: Cannon Beach, OR 97110 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Cannon Beach Gazette, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103 Copyright 2019 © Cannon Beach Gazette. Nothing can be reprinted or copied without consent of the owners. Cannon Beach Public Works Committee, 9 a.m., City Hall, 163 E. Gower St. THE NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING
