I’ve reached the age where I can rub my chin and say, “When I was your age, missy, we didn’t have streaming things. We had to watch summer reruns.” Soon, I will wear housedresses. But when I was growing up, there were newspaper columnists.

There was Jon Carroll, Alice Kahn, and Adair Lara. Herb Caen had his three dots. Linda Ellerbee, Ellen Goodman, and Anna Quindlen had columns. Erma Bombeck did as well and was proud that often her columns would end up on fridges across the country.

There used to be commentaries on the radio where people could get paid for short essays. Scott Simon still does these essays every Saturday morning. Marion Winik and Bailey White used to be on All Things Considered. Lynda Barry used to do commentaries on Morning Edition. Phyllis Schlafly was a commentator on CBS Radio’s Spectrum, where she once praised the idea of selling babies (I’m so not making this up), But columns and commentaries have dribbled away. I miss their voices.

Think of this Substack as a throwback to columns; Substack is the virtual fridge.

And subscribe!