The Anderson Valley Advertiser: One Year Gone

It’s been a year since the mighty AVA shut down the print edition and reverted to digital only, here’s how my interaction with it has changed as a reader and writer.

My M O for reading any online article is to scan the title and if it grabs me I’ll print it off and read it later at my leisure, most likely when reclining, whether it’s in the AVA, New York Times, or from anywhere else. (This is to reduce screen and sitting time and I usually accumulate at least ten in the “to read” pile, often taking days to catch up.)

In the good old days with the AVA hard copy in my hand, I usually read most of it but now much less of the online edition. When deciding what to read I never reread a previously published article, just as I’ve never reread a book or rewatched movies, with the exception of parts of The Big Labowski, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and Idiocracy.

So what do I read in the AVA now? When the print edition ended I mostly ignored the website, eventually came back to glance at the headlines and comments, and now skim the comments as well as scrolling through Mendocino County Today nearly every day looking for printable articles. I scroll, cull, and print, usually not many, maybe none or one a day, though recently many have perked my interest and made the print-and-read cut.

I never read Taibbe, Kunsler, Caitlin Jenner, Bernie and all other opinionistas, for why would I want to bore myself with others’ opinions? Then again, since I never read them maybe I’m missing something fucking amazing, my loss? Do tell. (Most “London Review of Books” articles are printed and read.)

In the paper edition I rarely read Yearsley, too intellectual for my hillmuffin brain, though when I did wade through one of his articles it was pretty damn good and he’s probably the best pure writer in the AVA stable. In the digital edition I probably have printed and read only one or two of his the whole year, more a knock on me than him.

I’ll read anything by Bruce McEwen, though his imaginative take on reality, laced with comedy few get, well at least not me, also swerves toward the Yearsley intellectual bent, though not as fun and easy reading as his court reports were, which I never missed.

Tommy Wayne is always printed and read, Ginella sometimes during the Cubbison scandal, the informative and reputable Shields is worth a glance and a deeper look sometimes. Gardner is plugging back in with some oldies, just printed and read off his Cohn/McCarthy hearings retro look, as well as a ballad that’s still in the “to read” pile a week later. Mark Scaramella’s essential county government reports are worth at least a skim, sometimes a print, but as I moved out of Mendo six years ago I’m not as connected or interested. Hilig is readable, mostly appearing just in comments these days, he had a great one recently about Dylan trying out a guitar in Bolinas. (I always enjoyed his memoirs of growing up in Southern California.) Taha’s’s travel stories are eminently printable and I always read Ruskin, though I didn’t bother to process the last one, falsely call me apathetic but protest-marches-against-Trump stories don’t appeal to me.

Though an avid sports fan I don’t read the Chronicle reprints about the Giants, 49ers, or Warriors except when the team is at or near the top and then I’ll wallow in any verbose accolades I come across, admittedly a fair weather fan.

I’ll read anything by Doug Holland except his political commentary as I’m not interested in amateur’s opinions. (Trump bad, yeah I get it.) Also, since retiring last year and kicking back on social security, he’s run out of content since he no longer has to get shitty jobs for about three weeks (the average time it took for him to hate it or them to hate him), writing about real life shit which I had found very entertaining.

(The best stuff on his blog now, or worst as Bruce would opine, are my very risque stories, poems, and dialogs I post in his weekly “Anything Goes” segment at itsdougholland.com.)

Teton report? No. Review of the variety show? Hell no, just ‘cause I’m probably envious of all those glory hogs, it coulda been me, dammit! Strangely, the Boonville water and sewage project is interesting at times. I always read Marco McClean’s letters and entertaining stories, good to see him telling some of them in the comments section, and he reads my AVA stories on his weekly KNYO radio show, including my dirty ones at 3am when he’s sure no one’s listening. (https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0641)

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How has writing in the AVA changed for me in the last year? Before, I’d send in an essay or story every week or so (most were rejected) and often it would appear on MCT, then work its way to a stand alone article in the main feed, then end up on the lower right hand list of current articles, which meant it would go into the print edition and then on to the archives.

I rarely got any response from readers in the paper edition, except when Jim Dodge wrote a long satiric critique of my home invasion story last year. There were also few responses when anything appeared online and in the last year since the print edition went away there were maybe five or ten comments reacting to my essays/stories.

I was used to that, figuring there was a probably a small audience out there reading but not commenting. (When I had my column in the now defunct “Independent” last year for twenty-nine weeks I also got no reactions except for a few “attaboys” on the street from some fans, and never got an email though I included my [email protected] address in nearly every one.)

So it was the same old question, was anyone reading? Eventually I started submitting to the online AVA and revved it up last Winter when I sent in four or five a week on successive days. It was a variety of short vignettes, including a longer one from the deeper past, new ones and time-less ones. (I did that for a few months and was on a roll until one about my misadventures, Unitarian youth group during high school days, didn’t make the cut and I went on strike. Did anyone notice?)

The reason I was sending in so many vignettes and essays was because I’d learned my lesson: Don’t hold anything back, as “The Geezer Gazette” (thanks Fred Gardner) could instantly disappear like the AVA hard copy and the vanished Independent.

When I wrote for the print edition was anyone reading? When I write for the online edition is anyone reading? Did or does it matter if I have few readers including the editors? It’s still the same process: I’m doing something I like and I’ll be back, as there’s nowhere else to go.