#836 The Pew Cushion.

Tonight mama and I worked our little fingers to the bone making a cushion for the newly restored church pew. We used another dropcloth (they’re cheap and huge—perfect for this sort of thing), and she taught me how to tuft it by hand.

We also found out today that our town’s daily newspaper is closing its doors on Thursday. I’m feeling quite heartbroken about it. For 101 years, people have been clipping news about their family and friends, reading about who’s getting married and who passed away. They wrote an article about me playing music at Signature Coffee Shop in junior high school. I read my grandparents’ obituaries in it and felt a swell of pride reading about their lives and knowing other people who loved them would too. I found articles from the 1970s about my daddy, the first physical therapist in Laurel, Mississippi. My mama wrote her funny and sweet column several years ago that people still talk about, even though she writes for a different paper now.

I can’t imagine what the world is becoming when we lose things like one of the fundamentals of small-town society, and I worry for my cousin Lisa who works for the paper and my dear aunt Bert who’s been a continuous employee for 65 years. It’s time she retired, but I am devastated for those folks like Lisa who are being left jobless.

I just wish the world would stop changing so much. I know God has his plans and timing, so there’s some peace in that. It’s a different place than it was when I was growing up, but that’s the way life is I guess.