One of the big ones, was the announcement yesterday of the Rocky Mountain News shuttering down and closing production. The announcement happened on my birthday :( The day I was born 34 years later will now go down for many reporters, photojournalists, columnists, and editors as the day they were told they were unemployed. Oddly, this news saddened me more than I initially thought it would. I found out, uniquely enough by status updates from my Denver friends on Facebook. Postings about the last edition and how they would miss started popping up towards the end of yesterday and upon clicking on the Rocky website I found out it was true. The news made me reflect even more about my life and the years that had past leading up to this year's birthday. Growing up as a kid, that was MY Newspaper. My parents always subscribed to it, and I could remember reading it with my dad on the weekends, him persuading me to read some of the columnists he read. I remember seeing the funny political cartoons that ran and while I didn't always understand why I was laughing, I laughed along with them. I remember in high school grabbing that paper the morning after a basketball game, checking the scores and postings, wanting to see my name in print. It shaped my thoughts and desires to become a journalist, and ultimately was one of the reasons I did decide to major in journalism at CU and then later at CSU when I went back to Fort Collins. I wanted to be a roving beat reporter, little notebook in hand, AP Guide at the ready, reporting for and about my city. While I never followed it, landing a job at that newspaper was always a little dream of mine.
Knowing it will not be there to open, to glance thru, to see the bright picture greet me at the newstand, as I plink in coins to buy one before breakfast on a visit back to Colorado, saddens me. The Rocky was a paper that helped remind me so much of what made my state great, and made me proud to be a Coloradan. But as a victim like so many other things in my list of past birthdays, past years growing up, it will fade into just a memory, just a longing in my heart to capture my youth, and what used to be.
As I sit and write this, another year older, maybe another year wiser (Maybe not?) and another year more sentimental, I can't help but think of all the things of my youth that no longer exist but in a trapped memory. Weekends as a kid going to Celebrity Sports Center with friends. Trips to the old Cooper theaters right next door to see movies on the HUGE screen. Birthdays that were marked with sleepovers filled with scary movies, ghost stories, Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board freak outs, and truth or dare. And later, in college, parties that involved the number of shots you could take, or the friends you had to go clubbing with to celebrate properly. All seem so far removed. Maybe that is what made yesterday so much more surreal. Maybe it was the distance being away from home that made those memories, those thoughts further from my reach than normal. Or maybe, it is just that I have hit an age where life gets more reflective, more thought provoking. Either way, I sit missing the triumphs of my youth, the beauty of my past and wonder what this next year will bring to have me reflecting on, in the year to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment