The Water Cooler Is Gone

There’s no water cooler anymore.

Other than maybe the Super Bowl (and a couple of other sports events), there’s very little that knits us together these days.

I’m reminded of this often.

A few weeks back, we went to see The Avett Brothers at Hard Rock Live, a wonderful venue attached to a smoke-filled casino in Hollywood.

The venue looked sold out, a testament to the musical excellence of The Avett Brothers and truth be told the show was as good as any we’d ever seen. And at this point in my concert going life, we’ve seen them all. Or most of them anyway.

But when I shared my experience, I was greeted with a series of blank stares.  Very few people knew the Avetts, despite their long and critically acclaimed career, despite a canon of music as good as any you can find, and despite a show that would make any rock/country/Americana fan proud.

There’s no common jukebox anymore.

Some of you may know that I’ve been studying playwriting recently. I’ve been listening to a  podcast hosted by Lauren Gunderson. It’s been a huge help. Ms. Gunderson may be America’s most produced living playwright.

But when I mention her name, I get blank stares.

There’s no Neil Simon anymore.

When I turn on the TV, there are hundreds of stations; not the handful there were back in the 70s.

When I turn to Netflix, I’m greeted by thousands of selections. In many ways, it’s a bounty. A wonderful, diverse bounty. And yet, so much gets lost. So much goes undiscovered.

Like the documentary “Print it Black” which is the story of the local newspaper in Uvalde, Texas in the wake of the terrible 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School.

The documentary on Hulu is astonishingly good.  But I wonder how many will see it.

If I didn’t happen to glimpse a mention of the doc in a book review, I would have missed it.

The documentary talks about “news deserts,” noting that half of the counties in our country don’t have a newspaper. There’s nobody there to chronicle graduations, Little League games, high school sports, weddings, deaths and the decisions of City Councils.

Local news is dying.

And that’s a shame because as they say in the documentary, how does a community function without somebody holding a mirror up to it? Who will write the first draft of history? Who will hold the government accountable? Who celebrates success?

There’s no water cooler anymore.

I’m an ardent Spotify listener. The streaming service is where I discover artists and podcasts. I’m a captive of the algorithm– that’s both good and bad.

Anyway, some time back, Spotify fed me an artist named Rob Jones & The Restless Dream. He’s great.

Rob was a high school English teacher in Manchester, England who felt stuck. He had a dream, an obsession really to write great songs. So, he’s going for it. He’s living his dream.

Rob is a major talent struggling to “break out.”

Because I love his music, I reached out to him, and we correspond now. Now, by all rights, Rob should be too big to go back and forth with little old me. But because we live in a noisy world where the path to success is muddled, he has time to answer my questions about his music. He’s even solicited recommendations on what he should be listening to. I recently told him about The Avett Brothers. He’s digging them.

In a just world, The Avett Brothers and Rob Jones would be known and loved by all who value well-crafted songs, Lauren Gunderson’s plays would be taught in English classes coast to coast, and every town would have a news outlet as good as the Uvalde Leader-News.

Oh my friends, the Uvalde Leader-News will break your heart.

The paper is led by a publisher who is deeply connected to his work and his community. He’s a dream boss who worries about his staff, especially a young reporter whose daughter is murdered at Robb Elementary.

In the documentary, we meet the staff of the paper. They are devoted to covering the news fairly and accurately. We watch with aching hearts as they step up during a tragic time, putting their personal feelings aside to serve a city they love. They are there to support their newsroom colleague who is devastated by the loss of her little girl. Lexi Rubio was 10 years old when she was murdered in her classroom. Think about that sentence. In what world can this be possible? And yet it happens over and over and over again.

But Uvalde has a water cooler…it’s leaking but it’s there.

Thankfully.  Because it helps. Maybe not a lot, but in ways that matter.

The documentary title, “Print it Black” refers to the black front page the paper published, a day after the shooting. It was a decision by the staff which reflected their feelings in the rawness of the moment.

When things go well, we don’t notice the things that make our communities hum.

The things that bind us.

Whether it’s an underrated band whose music touches us, an obscure but important documentary or a playwright who should be a household name, commonality matters. Familiarity binds us together. The opposite puts us into tribes.

Truth be told, Uvalde is a complicated story. The school shooting divided the community. Hard to believe but true.

And its water cooler is running dry. The Leader-News—which has been publishing since the 1870s– is on the ropes. Like most print newspapers the business model is broken. It’s now publishing only once a week.

If it dies, a lot will die with it.

Another point of connection will be lost. A lot of history won’t be written or remembered and that matters. It matters a lot.

I urge you to watch this documentary somehow, someway.

Listen to the Avett Brothers too and if you can, catch a Gunderson play. Oh, and don’t miss Rob Jones & The Restless Dream.

I’m not sure how this all ties together. But somehow it feels like it does. Somehow it feels like we need to get to know each other again. This piece is a meditation on connection – how we find it, lose it, and why it matters.

Thanks for reading.