Still got my feet

I cried last week watching the third episode of “The Wire,” where the seasoned cop reporter gets offered a copy desk job or the door. He quotes Mencken. I told my students I consulted my spiritual advisor, Bruce Springsteen, who inspired me with these wise words:

Everything dies, baby that’s a fact

Maybe everything that dies some day comes back.
-Atlantic City

Then this crazy Globe story. The follow up made me feel better.

Losing the Globe is more than the shuttering of a company, readers said. It would be, they said, the loss of something essential to Massachusetts' very sense of itself - and one of the few forces for public accountability in the region. They recalled articles exposing corruption and waste in government and other institutions, and stories giving voice to those who otherwise would have no power at all.

"To someone like me who's very involved in civic life in the communities, it's unimaginable,'' said Paul S. Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, a major funder of nonprofit organizations in the state. He called the Globe the "civic glue'' that keeps the public together.

I keep telling people who smirk when they remind me of the demise of newspapers – You’re going to miss us.

I’ve already had the “newspapers are dying but news isn’t” talk with my journalism students. I guess I’ll just put some makeup on and fix my hair up pretty and help them find their way in this fog.

As my Jersey Shore home boy says:

I ain’t got much sense

But I still got my feet.

--Girls in their Summer Clothes