Paper chase
May 17—When I was in first grade, my teacher created a colorful construction-paper caterpillar that she taped up over the chalkboard. (Back then we learned by chalk and not whiteboards, kids!) Each caterpillar segment had a student's name on it. After you finished reading a book, the teacher would add a little black dot on your segment. Each five-dot grouping got a circle.
In grade school, I wasn't great at sports — unless you count the second-place ribbon I earned in the 50-yard dash in the sixth grade track meet or the ability I possessed to pull myself up with impossibly scrawny arms for some flips on the monkey bars — so my competitive nature was fed by such challenges as dot-filled caterpillar bodies that represented the number of books I'd consumed.
I wanted — no, needed — my caterpillar part to be the dottiest, so I'd race to the classroom's carpet squares during reading time to grab every book I could get my hands on at the first-grade level and race through them to earn that coveted dot: The Pokey Little Puppy, The Cat in the Hat, picture books, Disney comics, Snoopy books ... It didn't matter, and I'm pretty sure I didn't absorb much of the content, since my goal was laser-focused on dot collecting.
These days, the reading pace has slowed a bit. In fact, I'm still trying to finish a book I started from last year's Santa Fe International Literary Festival. The lure under the bedtime reading lamp to mindlessly scroll through doomsday posts about politics and the climate or wacky cats and makeup tutorials often overwhelms my lust for dots.
That's why I'm so glad Santa Fe has a renowned and now three-year-old literary festival (stories about which fill many of the pages this issue) to remind me of my dot-chasing days and what those dots represent: stories about love and loss and fires and violence and wars and poetry and other planets and immigrants and Captain Cook and barbecue recipes. And you can have all that with a side of chocolate or lavender-infused gin.
If you would, pay particular attention this issue to "(Don't) stop the presses" by New Mexico writer and book lover Ania Hull. I'm mortified that in addition to forgetting to read books on paper, I often take for granted the venerable institution in which I operate under and alongside a crew of top-notch reporters and editors and photojournalists at The Santa Fe New Mexican. Despite my roots as a print journalist, I often got my news from websites and social media snippets in a space that curated my headlines via a soulless algorithm.
A physical honest-to-god broadsheet, ink-splotted newspaper might feel like an inconvenience when you're trying to eat a scone and manage a latte on a rickety coffeehouse table, but it's a critical component to democracy and accountability and documentation of what's happening in your town, your state, your country, and your planet. It's all there, and guess what: You get to decide which headlines and stories you want to read, not the 'bot that knows you consume way too much news about Harry Styles' dating habits.
My dream is that community and big-city newspapers will continue to experience a resurgence and maintain a stronghold, much like vinyl records and mid-century modern architecture have.
This feels a bit self-serving, but do me a favor this week and bug your local stores that have newsstand racks but aren't carrying community newspapers. (Sprouts, I'm talking to you.)
And then we can all get back to earning those dots.
