wedge blog

In Great Falls, Montana it doesn’t matter if you’re on public assistance or if you own a private jet: everyone shops at the local supermarkets. Geography is the great equalizer: it’s either Smith's...or starve—even Letterman, when he visits his Montana cabin, can fly in only so much Dean & Deluca (which, come to think of it, might explain his brief visits AND the bear in the kitchen).

Though folks in Great Falls all stand in the same grocery line, it’s not as though we don’t have a pecking order, especially if your last name is ‘Weaselhead’ or ‘Runs at Night’. Sales clerks everywhere are guilty of ethnic profiling, though no one in Manhattan or Montana turns away a cash sale. This explains the indulgent, somewhat condescending smile I got today in a Persian market.

Another class symbol is less important in my hometown: the car. There are no old automobiles in Manhattan: I suspect they force them to pull over and remain in Jersey where they belong. In Great Falls, my husband drives a 1992 Dodge Spirit with a peeling hood and a Hooters sticker. It’s a Montana badge of courage to keep an old horse in power.

In New York, I count limos on the two-minute walk to Starbucks; in Great Falls, I hoof it two miles to get to our solitary Starbucks, and count cars with a right front quarter panel held on by duct tape and Bondo (less than three and my companion pays for my mocha).

Back home there are many measures of a man: where he lives, what he drives, the veracity of his ex-wives, how many times he’s seen gambling his paycheck at The Prospector. You don’t want to judge too quickly: you’re bound to run into him again, and when it happens, you might have a flat tire or need a beer. Heck, in Montana it takes ten seconds just to see if whatever you're looking at is fit to shoot for dinner. Sadly, every hunting season, mistakes are made.

In Manhattan, partner, you got two seconds to size someone up.

In the City, we are all extras in the movies of other people’s lives. Without a supporting role—or at least an actor’s union card to prove your worth in my story—you got two seconds, one chance.

Instead of rutted rural roads, here the subway pitches and yaws, ta thump, in unison with sharp glances.
The black guy with papaya fists holds the rail and stares back hard, one-two. the tiny lady in the torn red hat tucks her shopping bag tighter between her legs, one-two, as if she’s worried I might reach across and snatch whatever smells inside. The greasy kid bopping to his iPod turns his head without turning his body, horror-film style. One-two.

Back in Montana, all these folks would all merit a good stare. On the subway, instead of offending anyone, I savor my two seconds, like a crime victim who might be forced to i.d. the perp at a later date.

I adore the anonymity of The City. If I want to tease my hair, put on a PETA t-shirt and roller blade backwards in Central Park whistling Verdi, no one would care. If I did any two of those things at home, someone would call my mother…and I’m over fifty.

Because New Yorkers’ personal space is so small, details loom large. Bags, watches, hairstyles and such—any one of these might confuse another member of your tribe. Back home it’s hard to determine gender, let alone social status in our snow gear…and though we might not know a Rolex from a Timex, we know the O’Days had a big spread east of town, and the lady who sold the shoe store had a brother at the State Pen.

Some New York tribes are instantly recognizable: camel coat, wingtips, shifty glances: financial district. Three inch Manolos and printed tights, Diet Coke, student at the FIT. Long curled sideburns, black hat, glasses: not a Lost Tribe, anyway.

The grey grandeur of it all! There is something oddly reassuring about big buildings, new faces and the rolling smells of the City. Skyscrapers bestow upon me the kind of calm that I imagine a New Yorker might get from Glacier Park.

Manhattan, you are my muse.

I’ve seen those Discovery Channel mini-series where suspicious tribes accept anemic strangers to their clans in the interest of science. Is there anyone in Manhattan who’ll trade an old Dodge for a Metro pass, pour me into the native costume (black Prada), and feed me little black fish eggs while I pretend to make a face for the camera? I have a saddle back home…from what I could tell in a two second glance, it looks like it’ll sit that City ass of yours just fine.

Is this a party or a wake?

Six months ago I cancelled our daily delivery of the Great Falls Tribune. I’d been reading the Trib all my life and I’ve been the subject and author of a few stories over the years. I’m writing because, as a subscriber who has been missing for six months and an advertiser that’s been missing for three years, The Tribune never once noticed I was gone.

I understand it’s not totally the newspaper’s fault. The industry is suffering, the economy is lousy, technology is in transition, the home page on my computer is an Internet daily. It used to take me a half hour every morning to read the paper, then it took fifteen minutes, not long after that, ten. A dropped sentence at the bottom of a column became more common, catching a grammatical error used to be challenging; it became embarrassing.

The slow decline of the paper is akin to watching a loved one suffer. I remember my father losing all that weight before he passed away. The paper, though occasionally bloated with ads, is starved for content that resonates with me. In an odd parallel, I began to see the same person dying two or three times on the obituary page (Printing errors? Editorial issues? Paddles?) Sometimes in a senior moment of my own, I’d think “Do I know that guy? His name is familiar.”Then I’d realize I read the same obituary a day or two before.

Instead of opening the paper, I began to check headlines and obituaries online. I’m not even conscious of the sneaky Netflix ad anymore, and I understand the obituary links don’t raise the dead, but they do raise a little revenue for the Tribune.

As the Tribune’s content became less relevant, my internal equation began to weigh in favor of saving trees. I began to feel guilty, even knowing that newspapers use a high percentage of recycled waste. The Sunday New York Times:worth the trees. The Tuesday Great Falls Tribune: well, maybe not.

I have friends and acquaintances who work for newspapers. They are all more talented and experienced than I am: we knew this day would come, but I didn’t realize how much the Tribune…didn’t care.

My husband’s team loyalties and investment strategies are broad. The Tribune’s sports and financial sections are weak (unless you cheer for Dutton or the Bison). Last summer I watched my man read an editorial page, shake the paper and then shake his head. “Why do we get the paper?” he asked sadly.

To cancel, I dialed a toll-free phone number and spoke to a stranger. She never asked why, didn’t offer us a Sunday-only delivery (I suggested it), and never mentioned the Tribune online.

It’s not just the content—it’s the delivery.

Over the years we’ve hoped the neighbors didn’t notice us tiptoeing from our covered porch to the sidewalk to retrieve a snowy or soggy paper ten feet from our door, and there have been times (understandably) when news was literally scattered to the wind. Sometimes the Trib would be hidden totally under our grimy sisal doormat, or it would arrive too late for early risers.

Occasionally the Tribune would not arrive at all, and we’d have to call Gannett instead of calling our friends a few blocks away. “Please press TWO…”

As a former advertiser, I’ve wondered why, after years of buying big ads, when my latest ad rep quit, no one bothered to call. I liked my old rep. Whenever I asked him how he was, he’d reply, “Fine as frog’s hair.” Ironically, as far as I know, there’s no hair on frogs.

In the last thirty months or so, I’ve learned my demographic isn’t reading the paper anyway. As a jeweler, most of my locals are young engaged couples who get their news online. Precious metals investors seem to find me, and after 17 years in business, referral is booming. Ironically, the slower economy has created more comparison shoppers, which is great for my business model.

Out of continuity, fear of lost revenue, and loyalty to the ‘frog’s hair fellow’, I’d have spent thousands with the Trib. Now it’s just too late.

I log on to the free online paper, get the Sunday edition and I read the rest at the Peak. I hit the gym often, I don’t miss much. It takes five to ten minutes most days, and I never wrest a copy from anyone under fifty.

At forums about the future of media, no one under 35 is wringing his hands: these fellows are too busy downloading, uploading and texting. The guys at Gannett have one fist fumbling with digital media, while the other looks like it’s throwing in the towel on the Great Falls Tribune.

There’s a small-print-short-blurb in this week’s New Yorker about a middle aged artist I never heard of, some guy celebrating a retrospective in a swank gallery in the West Village.

As a person with a creative temperament, it’s disappointing to see someone celebrating a retro while I still seek a spective.

I wear butt lifting pantyhose and dime-store reading glasses. My creative output is limited to a few pithy editorials and a smattering of fluff features in regional and trade magazines.

I don’t bother to read the rest of that New Yorker review, instead I flip the page noisily, landing on a sidebar about someone with more mainstream recognition—Marianne Faithful. The singer’s voice, according to this Oracle of All Things Artsy, is “entirely busted”—another peer whose potential has been played out.

Why bother hashing out conflict on canvas or computer when the other golden oldies are exhibiting their laurels or rolling joints with them?

This question was meant to evoke pity, not a rational response. The shirttail relative I was talking at didn’t miss a bite. Ham sandwich in hand, he pulled out a slim green paperback called The Thirty Six Dramatic Situations and flopped it onto his kitchen table.

So it’s either been said, it’s too late to say it, or it’s boring.

A lot of fruit rots, overripe and uneaten, falling to rejoin the mush of the collective unconscious, and annoyingly enough, sometimes a stranger picks up the seed that was allowed to whither, plants it in his own shit, and it smells good!

I figured sooner or later my true talent would reveal itself, like a shiny new car behind a curtain in a game show. To this point, no one has even yelled “Come on down!”

At least the curse of perpetual potential has kept me looking about a decade younger than my peers: perhaps compensation for lack of a body of work is a good body.

An early journallist filled his mouth with red fruit, pressed his hand against the cave and spat out the juice. When he took away his stained hand, his story remained. Centuries later, four fingers, opposing thumb, cave wall, story told.

In the next ten weeks I am going to force some juice from drying fruit. Roll, squeeze, and spit. Don’t be alarmed if you see middle aged Montanan wandering the City with one hand in her pocket and a little red goo at the corners of her mouth.