Since you are reading this column, chances are that you love newspapers. If so, you and I have something important in common.

From my earliest days I have been fascinated by publications that deliver the news of the world, whether of my immediate environs or of far-flung places.  Perhaps it was growing up in a family in which my father was a reporter and then an editor.

On occasion, he would take me to visit his office at the Boston Post and we would walk through the plant where I gaped with awe as the giant presses rolled out thousands of printed papers.

Though nowadays, like my so many of my juniors , I frequently consult the online versions of newspapers, that never satisfies me. Holding the actual newsprint in my hands and turning the pages gives me a tactile experience that I continue to relish. To me, the printed page is a work of art, at its best the product of imagination and inventiveness, and I enjoy handling it.

What prompts these reflections is a recent talk by Daniel Okrent, the so-called Public Editor of the New York Times. His job, sometimes described as the hardest in journalism, is what other newspapers call the ombudsman. He has been hired to represent the readers and to write criticism of the paper when he thinks it is called for.

The New York Times has 1200 employees in its newsroom. Though it is not America’s largest paper by circulation, it sells more than a million copies each day, though nowadays more people read it on line than on paper.

The Times prints an astounding total of a million words each week. (By contrast, Time Magazine prints only fifty thousand.)

These figures suggest the scale on which this famous newspaper operates. It is read all over the world and is renowned for being the paper of record.

Another indication of the Time’s reach is suggested by the experience of Tom Friedman, one of its leading columnists. After he began to list his email address with his column, he received 8,000 messages in three days, after which, in a gesture of self-preservation, he stopped divulging his electronic address.

Now, however, he answers every piece of snail mail he receives, honoring the trouble taken by anyone who writes a message on a piece of paper and bothers to address an envelope.

Daniel Okrent himself receives 450 pieces of mail a day, of which about a hundred require an answer. The biggest complaint he gets about the Times is “Your writing is for rich people.” People accuse the paper of catering to one social class and giving short shrift to others.

Times writers get a lot of abuse from readers. Some of the public send what Okrent calls “vile stuff” to the newspaper, especially to the women writers. The latent violence in American society finds expression in the ranting of readers who indulge in newsprint rage.

It’s also part of Okrent’s job to identify errors, of which there are inevitably a considerable number each day. The philosophy he expresses−“admitting error is a way of enhancing credibility”−motivates this fact-finding activity.

The most difficult journalistic issue that the Public Editor deals with is sourcing. Among other responsibilities, journalists must make sure that the information they report is accurate. When quoting people, they must take pains to do so correctly and see to it that the context is also established properly.

The Times continues to be “wounded” by the Jayson Blair event of last year. On that occasion, a young reporter faked stories, falsely claiming that they were eyewitness reports. It was the main factor that led the executive editor at the Times to resign, and this scandal is still used to discredit the paper.

The Public Editor did not mention one of the features that I most value– crossword puzzles. Doing the Sunday crossword, and the every-other-week double acrostic, has long been a sacred ritual in my household. Fortunately for me, my wife and I do not compete because she is much sharper than I and finishes the puzzles faster.

But the Times, fascinating as it is, could never satisfy the needs of the true newspaper addict. The local press gives evidence of hard work and journalistic skill, and touches our daily lives in important ways. The person who reads only national publications is like the one who votes only in national elections.

Sometimes the press exists on a truly micro level. Looking back to adolescence when I was editor of The Walrus, our school newspaper, I value my apprenticeship in putting news together in readable form. With our own twist, we informed our fellow students, faculty members, and everyone else in our community about what was going on.

By way of continuity, for the last dozen years I have published a paper, The Howl, for residents of my small street and adjoining parts of our neighborhood. This publication I serve as copy boy, reporter, editor, deliverer, and general factotum.

Richard Griffin

Now that the players have long since washed the last traces of champagne out of their hair and the general hysteria has cooled, perhaps this veteran Red Sox rooter can share some reflections on our unaccustomed championship.

By contrast with the exultant rhapsodizings of many Boston sportswriters, allow me to indulge in some Scroogean thinking about the new status of our favorites. Being on top has its downside, I will argue, so if you are still swept away by the exploits of the Sox, you may wish to stop reading here.

My credentials for freelance musing about the Red Sox must be acknowledged as solid. Endowed with free passes from my newspaperman father, I first became accustomed to Fenway Park and the athletes who performed there in the middle 1930s. Often he would take me to Kenmore Square after my weekly piano lesson, holding out the sweetener of a game after I endured unwelcome instruction at the keyboard.

From the beginning, the Red Sox were my favorites, easily beating in my affections the other Boston team, the Bees. The Fenway sluggers−Jimmy Foxx, Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr, and later, Ted Williams−used to keep me awed with their home runs, a factor that made me forgive the team’s inconstant pitching.  

My father, however, favored the Bees, a downtrodden team that showed no promise of finishing in the first division, much less first place. In 1940, under Casey Stengel as manager, the Boston Bees finished last with a record of 65 wins and 87 losses while drawing only 241,616 fans for the whole season.

Another credential as a fan comes from my having played baseball throughout my life. Even now I perform, often ingloriously, in a weekly game of softball, the ball being hard enough to come close to the real thing.

Only rarely do I actually attend a Red Sox game nowadays, however. It has been two years since I saw my last one in person. Among other things, the games last too long for my taste. In the World Series of 1918 when the Sox beat the Cubs, every game finished in under two hours; this fall, every one lasted at least an hour longer.

And why must patriotism require spectators to listen, every last of the seventh, to some pop star rendering God Bless America, and then wait until television airs its usual ads?

Late in the season, and certainly by the playoffs, the northern United States is too cold for baseball. I do not relish sitting immobile outside while freezing.

Also, the tickets are too expensive, many for seats that test your eyesight. Every game is a sellout, which means that you have precious little space to stretch. Where have the joys of rooting for a last-place team gone?

Now, by contrast with earlier days, hype plays a major role in every part of the game. The ball players exchange high fives (or head bumpings) for ground ball outs that may have advanced a runner one base. Similarly, they will congratulate a fellow player for hitting a routine fly ball that enables someone to move from second base to third, or for successfully executing a bunt. Such actions belong to an atmosphere of exaggeration that pervades the sport.

Despite its defenders, I still regard the American League’s designated hitter rule as spoiling the game. It enables athletes with only half of baseball’s basic skills to play, and bans from full participation in the contest pitchers who are exempted from doing what every other player must do.

Specialization does not please me either. Must we regard as a full participant a pitcher who appears only in the eighth inning of a game and then retires to the bench?

That so few players remain with one team throughout their career also disgruntles me. There is nothing quite like rooting for a Yaztremski or a Jim Rice for many seasons as you watch their athletic development on your own home ground.

Of course, I am aware of the faults of the past. The players of the 1930s when I first started following baseball were chattels of the owners. And the Red Sox refusal to begin hiring players of color until 1959 still stands as disgraceful.

My principal reason from feeling less than ecstatic about the sudden leap in Red Sox status, I fear, will deserve a special award for perversity. It is because I mourn the loss of the mystique that endeared the team to so many of us fans.

Now they have become winners like all the champions that ever were. Gone is that altogether special character that came with always managing to lose, even when ultimate victory was a single pitch or ground ball away.

Must I now transfer allegiance to the Chicago Cubs in order to reclaim that precious mystique that went with my team being ultimate losers?

Richard Griffin

“It’s very sad for the world; it’s very sad for humanity; it’s frightening.” So said my next door neighbor George, as we commiserated together the morning after the election. I consider this friend a sound judge of world events. He knows from personal experience what can happen to the people of the world when unwise leaders gain power.

Had John Kerry won the presidency, I would have been astonished but happy. The actual results appall me and plunge my spirits down to a new level of pessimism about our American future.

Once again, Lincoln (or whoever suggested the moral) needs to be amended: You can fool most of the people most of the time

For a challenger with serious weaknesses, Kerry did remarkably well. He had the disadvantage of having supported a misbegotten war, and then, to compound his error, he foolishly stated that he would have voted the same way all over again.

In response to inquiries from friends from other parts of the country, I always told them that I did not know anyone in Massachusetts who much liked Kerry. Though he revealed new facets of his personality during the long campaign, he remains a man who does not generate much warmth, certainly not to people in vast swathes of the country.

My pessimism about the future finds grounding in the record of George W. Bush’s last four years. His leadership, so widely admired in many parts of this country, strikes me as badly flawed and dependent on propaganda to look effective. His jettisoning a policy of deterrence and containment in favor of waging war against Iraq will surely rate always as a terrible blunder.

Never did I imagine that I would enter into old age with a federal government in Washington dominated by Republicans. The prospect of at least another four years with the current ideals of their party holding sway makes me dread the future, at least as it is determined by politics.

It seems like a return to the political condition of this country at my birth. In 1928, the GOP dominated American political life. Coolidge was president, followed by Herbert Hoover, chief executives who showed themselves incapable of anticipating or, in Hoover’s instance, dealing with the Depression that was to begin in 1929.

Of course, I am not such a zealot as to disapprove of Republicans per se. The tradition that we had earlier in Massachusetts history made me appreciate many who professed allegiance to the GOP. Such fine public servants as Leverett Saltonstall, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John Volpe served the commonwealth and the nation well and deserved the many votes received from Democrats.

But so-called liberal Republicans like these leaders have given way to narrow zealots like Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and now Tom DeLay whose agendas prefer political advantage over the common good. By contrast with the men cited above, the professed ideals of these men have been often been hypocritically contradicted by their actions.

Many of the elected leaders of the current Republican party bring values to American life that I cannot identify with. Centrally, their attitudes toward wealth and poverty especially alienate me, and we will now surely witness the phenomenon of an increasing gap between rich and poor.

Ironically, however, I do identify with many of the values that endear George W. Bush to so many Americans, especially those who vote in the Red States.

Religion stands out for me too as a precious part of my life. I believe in prayer and practice it regularly. My religious life oriented toward a parish church remains vital to me, as does my association with a community of faith. Though I consider the separation of church and state a principle vital to the nation, I welcome recognition of various religious traditions in American life.

I consider abortion an evil that the nation should try to discourage. To me, efforts to support women who choose to give birth rather than to abort are important. I also feel some wariness about stem cell research, partly because my ignorance of the subject is so far reaching.

Of course, there are many other values dear to many Americans of faith that I cannot approve. Much of the opposition to gay marriage, for instance, strikes me as coming from prejudice that seems unloving. Various forms of what is called patriotism stir in me feelings of alienation. What is done to the American flag, for instance, is not deserving of a constitutional amendment. And I consider campaigns against the teaching of evolution to be downright silly.

I also feel wary about the kind of religion followed by many of Bush’s most fervent supporters.

Religious enthusiasm has a long history of causing trouble to the body politic; piety, though it seems inoffensive, can actually prove destructive if not paired with wisdom.

Many world leaders felt wary of Bush being elected president. His militancy and American Firstism had alienated them and made them apprehensive about a newly empowered president who can now impose his policies with only ineffective opposition at home.

I feel concern about our environment at the hands of a man whose first allegiance seems to be economic advantage rather than care for our natural heritage. Similarly, precious little suggests that Bush will cut our dependence on foreign oil with its potential for further violence.

Chances for a radical revision of the Medicare prescription drug benefit now seem much diminished by the Republican dominance in both the White House and the Congress. Almost surely we elders will be treated to the spectacle of the medical and insurance.

Richard Griffin

Walking by a neighbor’s house late Tuesday afternoon last week, I came across a group of lively older women just emerging. What they had been in Yvonne’s home I guessed: they were the people who meet every week in order to write letters to public of-ficials, newspapers, and other agencies.

They’ve been doing it since 1983, sixteen straight years of public-spirited action. From the beginning they had the good sense to keep a record of their proceedings. Some of their minutes have been donated to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe.

How have they managed to keep going for so long? “We have a good time,” says Yvonne Pappenheim. Of the other members, she says, “They all feel it’s their thing.”   They are not intimates, yet they feel a strong sense of camaraderie and they trust one another.

By now, they are eight in number, and range from 70 to 93 years of age. In an-swer to my question about what they had done that afternoon, one of their number told me they were writing about campaign finance reform.

Members of the group currently include the following: Evelyn Brew, Margaret Brown, Mildred Allen Reis, Marion Billings, Nancy Delaiti, Yvonne Pappenheim, Helen Grumman and Ruth Weizenbaum. Of these, the first six live in Cambridge, while Ms. Grummen is a resident of Newton and Ms. Weizenbaum comes from Concord.

Two members are legally blind but they stay well-informed through listening to the radio. The group follows the same routine each week. At three on Tuesday afternoon they gather and sit in the hostess’s living room discussing the issues for about an hour. Then, after coffee and cookies, they sit around the dining room table and prepare to write.  

Each person writes whatever she chooses. On occasion they will all sign one common letter. Most of the time, however, they write as individuals. It also happens sometimes that nothing gets written.

Their convener and usually the hostess, Yvonne Pappenheim, explains: “Some-times things get confusing and we don’t write anything.” But this seems not to discourage them; they simply wait till the next time.

I admire them, however far their effectiveness extends. That they do it at all stirs my respect. They resist the temptation to plead age as an excuse for doing nothing.  To them, concern for the common good remains a basic part of their self-definition as they grow older.

“All  have the usual ailments of growing older,” Yvonne  says, “but we never talk about it.”  “We laugh a lot,” she adds, “It  helps to forget your age – we are very lively as a group; it’s a matter of life over death.”

The issues they pursue – federal, state, and local – include a wide range. The test ban treaty, the School of the Americas, minimum wage, housing, the death penalty, come up frequently.  

Ms. Pappenheim expresses the group rationale: “It’s important to take a stand; otherwise nothing will ever change.”

But sometimes the letters do not press for action. Instead, they are intended simp-ly to thank officials for taking action.

These determined women are remarkably patient. About some issues, they say, “We’ve been writing about this for years.” And occasionally, “By the time we get an an-swer, you can’t remember what in the world you wrote about.”  

They recognize that one of the advantages of age, perhaps a wisdom that comes with it, is the realization that societal change inevitably takes time. “You have to keep hacking away,” says the convenor, “It’s the only ways things happen.”

Some victories do come their way. The women took heart recently when they dis-covered that funds for the School of the Americas were cut back.

I asked Ms. Pappenheim if, before writing, she ever gets angry. “The angrier you are, the better you write,” she answered. “Sometimes you have to get upset.”

Clearly, these enterprising women have not bought into the notion that age is simply a time for pulling back from concern for the world. They presumably do not see later life as a kind of natural monastery. The classical Hindu notion of retirement years as a stage when one takes to the forest and lives cut off from the larger world seems not to appeal to them.  

I think it does members of this letter-writing group credit that they do not push only for legislation that favors older people. Instead, they feel concern for all of society, young people as well as old. This was also the genius of Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, who saw that advocates of a certain age commend their own cause better if they show concern about their juniors too.

They also show me that a link is possible between caring about society and paying attention to the good of one’s own soul. The spiritual ideal of combining action and con-templation may be within range after all.

Richard Griffin

You have to admire a guy who, nearly age 70, decides to run for public office for the first time. Even when you know he has zero chance of getting elected and you do not agree with most of his positions, still his taking the plunge demands respect. That’s what I feel for my friend David Slavitt, Republican nominee for the 26th Middlesex District of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Before tossing his beret into the bull ring, David consulted me about the wisdom of running. Yes, do run, I advised him, but only if you keep two principles firmly in mind.

First, remember that you have absolutely no chance of winning. And second, you owe it to yourself to have fun while running.

Regretfully, I must report that, as to my first counsel, David has proved inconstant. Like almost every other candidate I have ever known, he sometimes allows himself to fantasize about sitting among the elected representatives of the people. He lapses into the impossible dream that he can upset a Democratic incumbent of eleven years’ standing.

Admittedly, that incumbent, Tim Toomey, eked out a surprisingly narrow victory in last month’s primary over a novice challenger who was not nearly so well known in the district. Clearly David Slavitt has allowed this near miss to encourage fantasies of knocking off the Democratic nominee. But he is also clearly having fun.

Out for entertainment, I attended a debate last week between Toomey and Slavitt. Not being a resident of their district, I felt no personal stake in their contest and could be present in a lighthearted spirit. But I did look forward to hearing some of what I have come to call Slavittisms. David did not disappoint.

As a nonbeliever in political correctness, he can always be relied on to favor wit over tact.  

Until recently, this political nouveau venu would have been lambasting Tom Finneran, the erstwhile Speaker of the House. Even now, however, he takes a swipe at the man. Of the former Speaker, Slavitt does not shrink from charging that he “lied to a panel of federal judges.”

By now, however, the position of speaker has devolved to Sal DiMasi whose policies may be similar to Finneran’s. So Slavitt has turned his rhetorical guns on the new speaker, calling him “Finneran’s Rottweiler.”

Like others, I laughed at this characterization, but as a non-dog person I had to look up the term. I learned that these pets are named for a German city. Tall and powerful and mean looking, they often serve as guard dogs. They bite.

Asked what he thinks of the presidential race, David does not hide his own educational pedigree. Speaking of the candidates and himself, he acknowledges: “All three of us are Yalies.” Of Kerry, he says: “I was for him before I was against him.”

Is he in favor of extending the Green Line into Somerville at the risk of furthering gentrification? To this question from Toomey, his challenger replies: “I think gentrification is generally a good thing.”  He also makes fun of the station at Lechmere which has been “temporary for the last 80 years.”

Toomey goes after my friend for calling Somerville a suburb of Cambridge. David holds to this position, one that seems hardly attractive to voters from the part of Somerville that falls within the 26th district. Without Harvard and MIT, he believes, Cambridge would offer little more than its neighboring city.  

One of Slavitt’s favorite issues is the abuse that he perceives happening under the so-called Quinn Bill. That 1970 legislation provides promotions and other benefits for police officers and firefighters who take courses in public colleges and universities. David complains that “the cops are taking worthless courses.” Worse still is the double- dipping that they practice: “The cops become crooks,” he charges.

About Toomey’s opposition to rolling back the state income tax, David asks the incumbent: “Are you going along with your leadership or are you in economic error entirely on your own?”

Even Representative Toomey smiles at thrusts like this one. He knows that his opponent is enjoying himself and so, no doubt is he. But the incumbent does not appear to underestimate the perils of being challenged by the author of some 80 books.

In a fine frenzy of rhetoric, Slavitt concludes the debate by characterizing what he calls the Democrat Party as “corrupt, complacent, self-congratulatory, and overbearing in its stranglehold on public life in the Commonwealth.”

Early in his campaign Slavitt attended a Republican rally at which Mitt Romney, the current governor, addressed his party’s aspirants for state office. David took inspiration from Romney’s reflections on the meaning behind electoral politics. “You are all going to die,” Romney said, much to David’s astonishment.

With this quixotic saying, Romney was suggesting that one should take risks in a lifetime that does not last forever. Sticking your neck out is worth doing, even when you end up tilting at windmills.

Richard Griffin