I have a vested interest in people’s ability to read—I’m a writer, for God’s sake! And while the model of books and publishing has been turned on it’s head by digital technology, print still offers us a route to the future, I think (at least, I hope it does).

A week ago Saturday, I drove into Portland for a book event. Author Steve Almond was in town at Longfellow Books. He was slated to be paired with local writing star, Ron Currie Jr. It promised to be an evening worth leaving the house for during a season when it felt (at least a week ago) that spring’s been detained somewhere else..

Unfortunately, Currie had a personal matter that kept him from facilitating the discussion, but a rising Maine legislative star, Ryan Fecteau, was pressed into action on short notice. He performed admirably. All this to say that Almond’s new book and provocative discussion around the idea that we’re telling each other the wrong or “bad stories” has been on my mind since.

People who once occupied prominent space in my life recognized the importance of stories and maybe better—reading. My son, Mark, comes immediately to mind. But unlike others who have dropped out of my orbit (by choice), he walked his talk. I’ll always remember the years we spent a fall Saturday in Copley Square at yet another Boston Book Festival, and the year he ended the day toting two overflowing canvas grocery bags that must have weighed about 75 pounds each, overflowing with books. We have a bookshelf in our house that’s filled with books he had at his Providence house. Mark had “de-cluttered” his life in a Marie Kondo-esque manner, but he still kept books. I’d say that 3/4 of the things we carted back to Maine when we emptied his room after he was killed were books. I still marvel at his reading lists.

Weekend reading.

I miss having a “real” Sunday newspaper. The Maine Sunday Telegram is a shadow of its former self. In Maine that’s all there is if you want Sunday morning news with your coffee. Yes, you can pick up the Boston Globe, but distribution is spotty and even the Globe isn’t what it once was. With print being hollowed out by Facebook and the decision by many to not keep up subscriptions any longer, this isn’t particularly surprising. Papers require advertising and advertisers expect eyeballs and a return on their investment.

Over the past few months, I’ve gone against that trend. An interest in New York magazine got me to subscribe. I miss The New Yorker, so I’ll probably add that to my list of publications arriving at the house. My newfound enjoyment of museums and an interest in knowing more about what makes for “good” art found me reading ARTNews at my local library. I found each “letter” from the publication’s editor, Sarah Douglas, fascinating and informative. So much so that I went through all the back issues on the shelf and read them. Realizing that a publication that’s well-written, informative about a topic I’m interested in, not to mention a pedigree dating back to 1902 is worth supporting—well you guessed it—another publication coming to me via the USPS.

But my Sunday mornings haven’t been the same for awhile. Maybe finding my way back to the paper—a real paper with actual news not the assorted crumbs from the press wire—would revive a former practice I’ve missed.

In this corner of New England, many older, literate residents (as well as the summer crowd) are known to subscribe to (or drive into town) for the Sunday New York Times, the gold-standard for Sunday morning paper-reading.

Opting for a weekend subscription (which gets dropped at the end of my driveway, too), I’m now in week two of receiving the New England version of “The Gray Lady” of newspapers. I’m enjoying being a print subscriber (I have a digital subscription included in the deal).

Two days of reading through the various sections about books, politics, The New York Times Magazine, and even sports while sitting out on the deck greeting Spring’s return was a tonic to my soul. I enjoyed reading an investigative piece on Scott Pruitt’s corruption, an OpEd by Maureen Dowd on Barbara Bush, and an article in sports on the son’s of three former big leaguers: Dante Bichette, Craig Biggio, and Vladimir Guerrero—all playing for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats in the Eastern League. I still have more reading to get through, too.

Almond talked about settling for stories that come up short, or “bad” ones in his parlance. What if we don’t know the difference because we lack the ability to discern?

In an article written last year in, you guessed it, The New York Times, Daniel Willingham, the author of The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to How the Cognitive Mind Reads wrote that our ignorance as Americans stems from comes from “poor reading.”

Don’t malign publications as “fake news” if you’ve never spent any timne reading them from front-to-back. Doing so puts you in the same class as our orange leader, Donald Trump who doesn’t read, yet proudly flaunts his ignorance for all to see. As this article in Der Spiegle spells out, reports about the “Old Gray Lady’s” demise might be premature, especially thanks to Der Trumpster.