Never Mined.

I live, when I'm on the Gingham Coast, in the world's noisiest "quiet" neighborhood. Some nights ago, while in the clutches of Dame Insomnia, I thought about all the beds I've ever slept in for more than one night. I've never slept farther from a traffic light than I am today sleeping from a traffic light.

However, for all the purported quiet of my surroundings, I live amid selfish cacophony. There's always a loud motorcycle horde driving by. Or twelve  or seventeen leaf-blowers, lawn-mowers, weed whackers noise polluting our area so our blue-green lawns can carbon-deplete our world. (But don't dare lawn-bash. You'll be quickly excoriated.) Worse of all are the ever-barking dogs in fenced-in yards who feel fenced in like a cowboy singing a western lament. 

Cora, a large and fierce jet-black German Shepherd five houses down majors in throaty-incessance. She's the only dog that's really ever given me intimations of Elvira Gulch, Dorothy Gale's neighbor who wanted to off little Toto.

This morning, early for a Saturday, I was up in the fives to a symphony of howls. It sounded like one of those barking dog novelty records from the 1960s, where different pitches of dog barks would bark out "Jingle Bells," to the amusement of absolutely no one.

Fortunately, I stumbled downstairs to read and write, as I do most mornings. Writing is my stock-in-trade and reading is how I find what (and how) to write. At just after five or so, I found this short tale of mortality--a tale of death and life--on the New York Times. I leave it to you to find the finger-scroll to read it. 

But if you're in advertising, I leave you with something ontological. 

Why can't we in advertising tell stories like journalists? Why are they better, warmer, craftier, more inventive and empathic.

Why do we allow our power to be confined to commercial pods with ten other spots and a mere thirty, fifteen, or more and more often, just six seconds. We can do better. If we allow ourselves to think.

Oh.

We're not scoped for any of that.