Here's the latest indication of how weird I am. You know how nobody is reading newspapers anymore? (At least those actually printed, on actual newsprint.) Well, this morning I had a hard time deciding which to read first -- of the four newspapers that arrived at our house. At 5:30 this morning, waiting for me in the driveway were The New York Times, the (Newport News) Daily Press, the twice-weekly (Williamsburg) Virginia Gazette and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The Gazette is indispensible. Everyone in Williamsburg has his or her picture in that paper sometime during any calendar year, so we in our small town have to keep up with it! The Times is indispensible, because that paper covers stories that no other paper does. It's the Daily Press that's on the way out of our household -- if the Times Dispatch will get here early enough. (We tried the Times Dispatch several years ago, but it didn't arrive until 8:30 in the morning; too late for us to read in the morning. We've heard that there's a better distribution system now. And, indeed, it's arrived very early the past two mornings.)

The Times Dispatch covers Richmond, and one of the things I miss living here in Williamsburg is that I don't live in an urban area, with city problems and issues. So, by reading the paper, I can vicariously be involved in Richmond. And it covers all of Virginia. And, the Times Dispatch is extremely conservative and extremely lively, because many of the paper's readers aren't conservative. As illustration, here's my favorite letter to the editor, in its entirety, from this morning's issue:

Editor, Times-Dispatch:
I excitedly read Ross Mackenzie's assessment of Barack Obama's election, but alas, my hopes of a column free of the word Islamofascist were dashed in his wacky and paranoid conclusions.
Bill Miller, Richmond

I love it! The Daily Press is so boring in comparison.

If The New York Times is indispensible, then so is the Richmond Times-Dispatch. My father, without fail, read the Times and the (Charleston, SC) Post and Courier every morning. He said, "The Times is so liberal, and the Post and Courier is so conservative, that I read them both and figure the truth is somewhere in between."

Well, the Times-Dispatch is every bit as conservative as the Post and Courier!

Will we cancel our subscription to the Daily Press? No. We'll continue to get it on Sundays.

We need to get that TV book, you see.