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Odd reality

We walked in for lunch at a San Francisco cafe. While we were waiting for them to set up our table, I spied a pile of newspapers left behind by a diner. The headline was so very odd to see -- I instinctively assumed the headline was referring to the previous Shuttle disaster. So I kept trying to look for the name/picture of the teacher who'd been on board that flight. But she didn't seem to be there.

The strangest aspect was that there was no timeline on the front page...I kept scanning the different stories trying to make sense of the SF Chronicle coverage and could not place the accident. It was the worst reporting I've seen in that there was all this "color" commentary (debris landing near a chicken coop, and what have you) about the disaster but no facts about when (what time, what day) it had happend. That was buried inside.

As my friend commented, strange that one didn't even know that there was a Shuttle coming back to earth. We've gotten so blase about it. Space travel? Oh yeah, even that NSync goofball's about to go for it! And even stranger, he commented, was the fact that we spent all day yesterday...at brunch with friends, walking around Union Square, and eating dinner at Home Restaurant, and we saw many TV screens, their sound turned off, their pictures tuned to sports and music videos et al, but no mention of this breaking news.

Very, very odd that in this day of over-connectedness we could miss news like this for 36 hours while being out and about in a major metropolitan city.

posted by Mihail on February 2, 2003 at 8:30 PM | link to this | reply

Nice article

I purposely did not write about the tradegy yesterday thinking the network would be full of reflections.  Instead, I see very little. 

Your comments are by far the best written.  Kudos and thank you for sharing. 

posted by Whim on February 2, 2003 at 6:32 PM | link to this | reply

Such a Loss

16 years ago, I was in Haight Ashbury when I saw a newspaper's headlines screaming about the Challenger disaster. My mind couldn't process the information... I thought it had to be a joke. It wasn't until I turned on the news that evening that I realized it was true. So sorry that it has happened again.

posted by Freedom on February 1, 2003 at 8:33 PM | link to this | reply