This is the third, and perhaps final, guest post on 11D during its creator’s Fourth of July road trip to the Buckeye State.  And this picture you see here is the creator’s niece, Julia, who turns eight months today. She’s dozing in her Pack-and-Play at the moment, sleeping off a hectic morning of standing in the Big Crib and soliloquizing in the living room.

I ran without her this morning. No sense risking a repeat of the jogging meltdown of two days ago, described in this space. The weather is perfect. This being the Fourth, I couldn’t help reflecting on the obvious as I shuffled along Broadway with the sun shining, people out strolling, glimpses of the Hudson River peeking through the trees and rich-people houses of Upper Nyack: boy, are we Americans lucky. Sure, there is poverty, crime and injustice. But there is so much affluence and peace, so little of the privation, fear and sudden death that we read about in the newspaper or watch on TV with our feet on the coffee table.

Once again, we are heading out the door soon, this time for a family gathering in Connecticut.  Coming home, I hope to get on the road before the three-day weekend travelers hit the interstates in their SUVs. I suspect the traffic tonight will make motorists caught in it wish they had never been born.

I had intended while running to develop some Big Thoughts on blogging, the mainstream media and their intersection. But instead, as I mentioned, I mostly gazed at the river mansions and felt good about life.

I did, however, devote a few moments’ thought to the decline in newspaper readership and wonder if papers will one day disappear altogether. I like the tactile feel of a newspaper, the experience of reading one with a cup of coffee in hand, rather than peering into a computer screen like some office drone to read what’s happening in the world. I guess I’ve assumed there are enough people who feel the same way that there will always be a signficant demand for "the print version," even if the Internet becomes more and more dominant.

But maybe people felt the same way about other old, antiquated technology as it slid into obsolescence. Maybe in the 1970s some music lovers, watching with dismay the ascendence of the audio cassette tape, thought to themselves that nothing could ever completely replace the good, honest 8-track tape. Maybe 10 or 20 years from now my attitude about newspapers will seem as quaint and fuddy-duddy as those of the guy with "Dark Side" and ELO on nice, chunky 8-track tapes.

Food for thought.

OK, time to mobilize. Happy Fourth.