Don't gimme dem bad news blues

    A friend called yesterday, wondering where I was since I hadn't posted on BG for quite a while. I told her I had been busy following a children's book writing conference I attended last weekend. That was true. I've been tweaking my 20-year-old manuscript to fit the 32-page picture book formula (which is more stringent than I previously thought) to submit to the agents and editors I met at the event.
   I've also been sick with a self-diagnosed disorder I call "Bad News Blues."  First, it was the government shutdown which forced me to keep the television and internet viewing to a bare minimum for several days. In fact, when the volunteer coordinator at Audio Reader (where I read newspaper ads to the blind) called last week needing someone to read live news in the morning, I said 'no'.  I just couldn't do it. It was too depressing and crazy-making. Sometimes, I told her, it felt like the flu.
   Yesterday, I ventured back onto my favorite news sites and read that our local paper was shutting down its press operations at the end of the year, laying off another 33 people from my former company. Seems it's more economical to farm the daily printing to the big city paper 40 miles away. ("How is a 30-year pressman supposed to find another job in this new world," I worried.) This spawned more depressing discussion among my former co-workers on Facebook, where we have formed a support group, of sorts. We will reach out to the 33 guys who will be unemployed a week after Christmas. The venting helps, of course, and one can find strength in numbers. But, from now into the foreseeable future, my blinders are on to anything but rainbows, unicorns and the delicious root vegetables of fall.