Old News

Yesterday I had the pleasure of driving out of the rain and clouds that have recently defined my existence here in Ashland and into a sunny day in Northern California. Driving south for a doctor's appointment, I was again struck by the ruggedness of this part of the world. Mostly forgotten by the urban and more hospitable points further south, this part of the state is beautiful in a completely different way. This is no more apparent than Shasta City itself where I spent the late morning and afternoon. Shasta City sits in the shadow of Mt. Shasta a 14 thousand foot peak that rises out of the plateau of Northern California to tower over everything within 200 miles. Driving on I-5 northbound or south this mountain can be seen for hundreds miles and for a good chunk of a day's drive time. Every time I travel this road I'm amazed at the degree to the mountain commands my attention. I keep telling myself that I've seen this a hundred times but I cannot look away. This same grip compels me to take the same pictures over and over knowing they will never quite capture what I'm seeing with my eyes. The view from afar cannot prepare you for the sheer splendor of seeing the mountain from the streets of Shasta City. There is something about the perspective of this enormous mountain set against the more diminutive aspects of the city's architecture that produces this odd and sometimes alarming contrast. The mountain seems to produce the same eerie feeling I have when I feel someone is watching me. I also appreciate how you can forget for a while that it is there and then be alarmed when it again imposes its presence on you. Like yesterday when I visited a shop and walked out onto a street that afforded a particularly impressive view, I was again for a moment startled by this and paused for another look.

So it was in this context that I found myself in a small and quirky deli/grocery to have a little lunch before I made the drive back North. After ordering, I made my way to the back part of the store where a few wooden tables were set up for dining. There were a few folks sitting on their lunch breaks but I spied a table with a copy of the San Francisco Examiner. Determining that the table appeared to be unoccupied I sat down to eat and read the paper. I need to mention a few details that sound odd now but will become important shortly. First the newspaper appeared to be largely intact. That is the paper was arranged in way so that I quickly ascertained that most of the individual sections were present. The paper also appeared in good condition indicating that it had only been read once or twice. Third, the front page was on top of the pile and nothing about the main headline indicated that this was not todays or yesterdays paper. In fact the main headline said something about Israel and the Gaza Strip. When I read the first paragraph of that lead story something caught my eye when I read about Arafat. It didn't immediately register because, although he has been dead for a couple of years, I can imagine Arafat's name might still appear in a story about Israel Palestine relations. It was when I looked below the fold on the front page and saw an article about 9/11 that I became suspicious and checked the date on the paper and saw that it was from 12.4.2001. Oddly, when I looked around nothing about my surroundings offered any explanation for this. There were no other newspapers in sight, there were no other "historical" artifacts and there was, to my eye, nothing about that date or the headlines on the paper in front of me that implied that someone kept the paper as a commemorative. I found this puzzling and a bit disturbing existentially and combined with my aforementioned thoughts on the unique essence of Shasta City and the quirkiness of the grocery/deli I'd wandered into, I wondered if "things" were as they should be. After reading an old paper for 30 minutes and being immersed in the past, I walked out into that now sunny and warm day in that weird little mountain town and I found myself a bit unsettled. I wondered what had just happened and where I was and had to do a little checking to make sure that everything else was in order. It was but it put me in a strange space for the drive back and as I drove I sang to the songs on the radio just a little louder. They were old songs.