Jay Cronley: Turn the page on morning power-ups
BY JAY CRONLEY World Staff Columnist
Sunday, October 21, 2012
10/21/12 at 4:26 AM
How about this for a well-rounded day, complete with mixed and mixed-up media?
All good days have to start with pages. It's not debatable. It's natural. While not quite science, it's obvious enough that pages are calming and thought provoking.
Screens are like their own little TV stations. The two key elements to any breaking news presentation are the body counts and the gossip, which sours as quickly as corpses. Nobody needs to start the day with four robbed, two shot, three homes invaded, five wrecks, a drunk sitcom star, and some hillbillies being cruel to animals.
With the news and politics and sports and columns and feature stories on paper, you are more able to ease into the morning at your own pace and in a pleasant state of mind.
There's no science here, either, but it could be almost true that good writing comes across more rhythmically and stylistically on pages as compared to the way words register on a screen.
Turning to pages in the morning is a habit. But it's a good one. Breakfast at home and screens are as incompatible as foreign flags and apple pie.
Wired minds want to know: Once away from the breakfast table, here we go - get the electronics, get the Kindle, get the tablet, get the smartphone, get the dumb phone, get the slightly above average laptop.
Get the breaking disasters, get the breaking scandals, pop what's trending on the freak sites, zap the email, see who's following and befriending whom, text somebody, anybody - hurry, faster, somebody could be gaining ground.
Work is all about bouncing from one screen to another.
Cellphones are so smart at mastering the art of the insignificant that you can take certain models and touch the screens together and transfer music collections, though why you would want somebody else's downloaded music is a mile or two beyond me.
Lunch is wired.
There's a place in table-setting etiquette for the cellphone; it goes just outside the salad fork.
Pages to soothe the soul: Then in the evening, it's back to some words on pages to settle the system.
Maybe a magazine article. Remember magazines? There are still a few around, the articles hidden between all the advertisements and fall-out subscription cards.
Maybe a good book. Good books are at the library, or they're at the bookstores that have survived the rush, in the literature section.
Check the computer before exercising, if you must, and before bed.
These pleasant times will put you ahead of most.
Original Print Headline: Turn the page on morning power-ups
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