Tyranny by algorithm: Facebook doesn't want you to read this

If you’re on Facebook, chances are you won’t see, let alone read what follows. Facebook’s latest algorithm will probably deposit it in the dustbin of oblivion.  

Facebook doesn’t want blogs like this cluttering up its precious feed. It wants you to watch videos. And more videos. And even more videos. It also wants to divert you from the news feed altogether so you’ll spend more time on its largely ignored “Facebook Stories” feature (an attempt to be more like Snapchat).

Hey, Facebook, if I wanted something like Snapchat, I'd use ... Snapchat. If I wanted to watch videos, I’ll turn on my TV or hop over to YouTube. At least there I can choose what I want to watch. 

This is the crux of my problem with Facebook, and I suspect others are having the same issue: Facebook is giving users less and less control over their experience on the platform and trying to force its own preferences down our throats.

Users taken for granted

This will end badly for Facebook, but it’s operating in full panic mode and isn’t interested in playing the long game. It’s obsessed with the two-front war it’s waging in the present moment. One one side, it’s on the defensive against charges that it unwittingly facilitated Russian election meddling. On the other, it’s trying to placate stockholders who are demanding continued growth – in spite of the fact that nearly 30% of the world’s population (2.23 billion) are active users of the platform.

In a world of 7.6 billion people, not all of whom are connected to the internet, there’s only so far you can grow. But you can increase engagement time, which is something videos do. So, naturally, Facebook is foisting more videos off on us. (Many newspaper websites are trying the same trick, ignoring the fact that a whole lot of people actually enjoy reading the newspaper, not “watching” it. As I mentioned, we have YouTube and cable news channels for that.)

On July 26, Facebook stock lost about one-fifth of its value, or $120 billion. No wonder the company is panicking.

But it’s so busy responding to stockholder demands and charges of Russian tampering that it’s forgotten about its users. In one sense, this is nothing new. Facebook seems to be continually tweaking its algorithm and periodically faces outcries for changes to its format. Those outcries tend to die down after a while because Facebook is by far the most widely used social media platform. It enables users to reach the most people, so users grouse, bite the bullet and keep on coming back.

Antisocial behavior

Consider this, however: The more restrictive Facebook becomes, the harder it will be to connect to so many people, and users will eventually get wise to this. Facebook recently announced it would be ending users’ ability to access custom feeds for different groups of friends on Apple devices, forcing us to rely on its main feed for everything from our iPhones.* This means it will be harder to choose whom to interact with online. We might have 3,000 friends among those 2.3 billion users, but we'll really have to work to get in touch with more than, say, a couple of hundred – and many of those not on a regular basis.

This might be good for advertisers, but it’s bad for users who want more options, not fewer. Instead of building bridges between users, Facebook is erecting walls. That's anti-social, which isn't what you're looking for on social media.

In contrast, other media platforms are boosting user choice while Facebook is restricting it. My cable TV package allows me to play shows on demand, record them to watch later and choose among hundreds of channels. I can freeze a show if I’m distracted and rewind it so I don’t miss a beat. I couldn’t even imagine doing that back in the ’80s or ’90s. But today, I have the choice.

Facebook users don’t.

Having endured criticisms from users in the past, Facebook may well be taking them for granted. That’s a dangerous game to play. Facebook has been at the top of the social media mountain for a decade now, which is an eternity in the world of social media. Remember when AOL ruled the internet? Netscape was the wave of a future that never arrived. MySpace was a two-ton gorilla for a couple of years before Facebook shot it off the Empire State Building. Google+ was the next big thing.

Offline, newspapers once seemed as integral to American life as highways and fast-food chains. Now they’re fighting for survival as they pursue a Facebookesque strategy of giving readers fewer choices (smaller sections with fewer pages and less comprehensive stories).

Not invulnerable

There are other options out there. Twitter, in trouble a couple of years ago, redesigned itself to look more like Facebook (or at least like Facebook did then). It’s possible that Trump and other celebrities’ continued use of the platform gave it enough of a reprieve to pose a challenge to Facebook in the future. Or something else may emerge.

If Facebook thinks its impervious to user concerns, it needs to think again. Users will find or build a better mousetrap for themselves, with a greater variety of cheese that doesn’t clamp down quite as hard.

Then those shareholders will be really unhappy.

* Note: Facebook’s announcement says: “Starting August 9, 2018, you won't be able to use friend lists to see post from specific friends in one feed using the Facebook app for iOS devices,” but it doesn't say this is because of a problem interfacing with iOS. Instead, Facebook’s stated purpose is “to focus on improving your main News Feed experience.” This story has been updated to reflect that the change applies to the Facebook app on iOS.

Stephen H. Provost is an author, historian, former journalist and media critic. His book Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump is available on Amazon. He's on Facebook (for now), Twitter (intermittently) and Instagram, waiting impatiently for something better to come along.

Rock 'n' Roll: Casualty of the Culture Wars

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

What happened to rock ’n’ roll?

Elvis Presley and the Beatles were larger-than-life icons who created transcendent music, but a half-century after Beatles released their signature “White Album,” the genre seems anything but transcendent.

In his book Twilight of the Gods, Steven Hyden suggests that classic rock began with the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 and ended with Nine Inch Nails The Fragile in 1999. (Apparently, NIN’s previous album title, The Downward Spiral, had been prophetic.) The model makes as much since as any, although I might push the death of the genre to 2003’s American Idiot by Green Day. but regardless, the question remains: Why did a genre of music that prided itself on burning out, instead just fade away?

Jimmy Page playing with Led Zeppelin in Chicago, mid-1970s.

For a while, rock looked invincible. It survived the onslaught of disco, which dominated radio in the late 1970s only to come crashing down at the end of that decade. But disco was ill-equipped to challenge rock ’n’ roll, because it was a different kind of animal.

Disco was all about white pants suits, Studio 54, excess and hedonism. It was jet-setting on a dancefloor. Rock, at its core, had never been about any of that. It had always been about rebellion, so when disco got too popular, rock ’n’ roll was equipped to fight back with bare knuckles and no holds barred. Rockers wore “Death to Disco” T-shirts to school, and in July of 1979, thousands of disco albums were blown up on Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

It was the beginning of the end for disco, but it also showcased the limitations of rock. As time passed, the music revolution of the 1960s lost its edge. Zeppelin broke up. The Who launched a seemingly endless series of farewell tours. The hope of a Beatles reunion died on December 8, 1980. Queen ended its self-imposed ban on synthesizers. KISS took off its makeup.

The music itself became more closely associated with middle-aged, middle-class nostalgia and aging hipsters than with anything close to the cutting edge. Seattle-based grunge gave it a brief jolt in the early ’90s, but it was only a temporary reprieve. First punk (in the late ’70s and early ’80s) then rap became the music of real rebellion, and rock was left to relive past glories on the fair circuit and classic rock radio.

Even new bands are following the same old formula. The Struts sound a lot like Queen with a dash of Oasis. Greta Van Fleet sounds like Zeppelin. As good as their music might sound (and it does sound good to classic rock aficionados like yours truly), it’s following a familiar template rather than attempting to create something groundbreaking, the way NIN did with The Fragile or Green Day did with American Idiot.

James Brown, Hamburg, 1973.

That’s a fairly standard explanation for the decline of rock, but there’s something more fundamental than decaying relevance and generational change at work here. There’s musical re-segregation. Rock ’n’ roll was the product of a nation getting ready to integrate black and white cultures. Elvis’ first number one single, Heartbreak Hotel, hit the charts barely two months after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Elvis and other white artists brought black rhythm and blues into the mainstream. The British Invasion is a misnomer: The blues invaded Britain first, then was sent back to the States courtesy of the Stones, the Animals, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall, Eric Clapton and others. Soon, black performers themselves were also in the spotlight via Motown, James Brown, the Supremes, the Miracles, Chuck Berry, et. al.

But white performers didn’t just borrow – or, in many cases, steal – R&B. They fused it with country, western swing and rockabilly to form something entirely new that was a reflection of a society experimenting with integration after decades of bigotry. Jackie Robinson had integrated baseball. Kenny Washington had integrated football. Brown v. Board of Education had integrated schools.

Now it was music’s turn. Rock ’n’ roll was to music what Brown was to legal precedent: It upended everything. But today, it barely survives.

The emergence of rap/hip-hop didn’t stop it, initially at least. Blondie recorded Rapture in 1980, Run-DMC covered Aerosmith’s Walk This Way five years later (with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry guesting on the track). Kid Rock’s Devil Without a Cause in 1998 was an amalgam of good ol’ boy country music and inner-city rap that worked to the tune of 14 million in sales. Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory in 2000 has sold 30 million copies and remains the best-selling rock album of the new millennium.

The late Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, performing in 2014.

But as the music industry became fragmented, the segregation of the pre-Elvis era began to reassert itself. As rock went into decline, listeners turned to either hip-hop or rejuvenated (and more electrified) country music. Some hip-hop artists incorporated or sampled elements of rock, and some country artists did the same, but these days, rock tends to be the seasoning rather than the main ingredient. Most country fans have no use for hip-hop, and most hip-hop fans disdain country.

This new musical segregation reflects the nation at large. It’s not just about race. More fundamentally, the growing musical dichotomy reflects the widening cultural and political gap between urban and rural realities, a growing mutual isolation (and distrust) fed by an increased boutique approach to the arts.

Just as access to specialized news outlets has furthered the divide between liberals and conservatives, the same development has widened the gap between rural and urban artistic expression. The more easily we can get our ears on something we like, the more likely we are to ignore or disparage something that sounds foreign, and that’s just what’s happening in the second decade of the 21st century.

Rock ’n’ roll was built, in part, on something that would today be classified as “cultural appropriation.” But as exploitative and abusive as the process often was, it could also be collaborative and inspirational. Without it, we would never have had Elvis or the Stones or thousands of other acts that enriched our listening and our culture over the second half of the 20th century. The result was greater cultural appreciation. In retreating to our respective political and artistic corners, we’re losing that appreciation, and with it our empathy for those who aren’t like us.

This isn’t about being “colorblind.” Just the opposite: It’s about being open to hearing the many voices that are spoken, rapped or sung in a rich tapestry of American tradition that belongs to all of us, not just those on the streets of the Motor City or the rural routes outside our mythical Mayberry.

Rock ’n’ roll was revolutionary, but it also brought us together, however imperfectly and however fleetingly. Music can do that, which is why the death of rock ’n’ roll as a cultural force in America is something we all should mourn.

The Big Move: Waking up from the California Dream

California, it's been nice to know ya!

I’ve lived in the Golden State for almost 54 of my 55 years, and I’ve written three books on its history, but it’s time to say farewell to sunny California.

I do so with mixed feelings. The past few years have dealt me one change after another, each one seemingly intent on prying loose another one of my anchors and setting me adrift on a new course.

Seven years ago, I lost my job at The Fresno Bee when my position was eliminated, but I was fortunate enough to find a new job less than 200 miles away in San Luis Obispo. After a brief detour into substitute teaching, it meant a return to my chosen field. I’d earned my degree in journalism and had spent the previous quarter-century in newspapers, and I was perfectly happy to stay there.

Except the industry had other ideas. In May, after more than six years, I lost my job in SLO County when my position was eliminated (starting to sound like a broken record)? In between those two layoffs, my father died in Fresno. I’ve still got a few friends there, and I’ve made some here on the Central Coast, as well, but there was no way I could afford to continue living here without a job. Heck, I was struggling to afford the cost of living even with a job.

With circumstances conspiring against me like the James Gang plotting a train robbery, I decided not to fight it. This train has already left the station – it started rolling down the track May 4 when I lost my job – and I’m determined not to be held up at gunpoint by California’s exorbitant cost of living any longer. So, this month, we’re packing everything up (we have a lot to pack) and moving east, embarking on a great new adventure.

SUCH SWEET SORROW

There’s a lot I’ll miss about California. I’ll miss traveling the highways I’ve written two books about, asking, “What used to be here? What was it like driving these roads a century ago?” And then doing the research to find out.

I’ll miss exploring the rolling hills, marveling at the giant redwoods, braving the Tule fog and basking in the sunshine – not the 100-degree days of the Central Valley, though; I definitely won’t miss those.

I’ll miss being able to drive down the coast to see a Dodgers or Rams game on a whim. Or over to Fresno to visit my old haunts and high school friends. I missed Fresno so much I wrote a book about it, and I’ll always have those memories. I didn’t live in Cambria nearly as long, but I’ll fondly remember the misty mornings and the Monterey Pines; the elephant seals and the scarecrows and Pinedorado; reading at open-mic nights seeing familiar faces during a stroll down Main Street.

I’ll miss Cal Poly basketball games and Fresno State football.

I’ll miss eating at La Terraza in Cambria and DiCicco’s in Fresno. And I’ll definitely miss Me-N-Ed’s Pizza. That may be the biggest sacrifice of all.

I’m sorry I won’t get another chance to provide guest commentary on KTEA’s broadcasts of Coast Union baseball games. I did it once with John FitzRandolph, and it was a kick.

Of course, I’ll miss writing stories and taking photos for The Cambrian newspaper. I love telling stories, and there were some great stories to tell during my time in Cambria – from the closure of Highway 1 to the Cambria Christmas Market. I’m a sucker for Christmas lights, so that was always a highlight of my year.

Now there will be other stories, as an author, as a journalist or both, and I look forward to telling them. They’ll be different, but that’s what will make them interesting.

I’ll miss working in the historic home they’d converted into an office for The Cambrian newspaper. How many people get to work in a place with such character? That office is gone now, though, yet another sign that my time here is truly done. 

The friends I’ve made over the years, I’ll miss them, too, though not nearly as much as I would have if I’d made this move 20 years ago. We’ll keep in touch on Facebook, which is where we see each other most often now anyway. (I will miss shooting the breeze with Art Van Rhyn on Mondays, when he would arrive at The Cambrian office to submit his weekly cartoon; he’s not on Facebook, but I’m sure we’ll keep in touch.)

AN ADVENTURE AHEAD

With all that, there’s much to look forward to. I’ll miss the history of California, but there’s even more history where we’re going. And everything’s closer together there, so I’ll be able to explore more easily. I’ll miss the Monterey pines, but there are more trees where I’m going: dogwood and cypress and oak and pine and maple. I’ll still be able to catch the Dodgers and Rams on the road, and it will be fun to see them play in different venues.

We’ll get to eat at Cracker Barrel and pay $1 a gallon less for gas. There won’t be majestic mountains, but there will be rolling hills that stay green all year long instead of staying brown for half the year or more. We won’t miss droughts or wildfires or earthquakes, and a little snow never hurt anyone (we hope!)

Best of all, we found a sweet house in a quiet neighborhood that has something in common with Fresno’s old Fig Garden. There’s a forest behind the house and a lake within walking distance. The home itself is a 3-bedroom, 2-bath two-story with a finished cellar complete with a wet bar. We don’t drink much, so this room will be our library (it’s big, but trust me, we have enough books to fill it).

There are three balconies, a fireplace and dual-pane windows, all in nearly 2,000 square feet on two-thirds of an acre. Compare that to the place we’ve been renting for the past two years, which is slightly more than 1,100 square feet. And cost? If we paid 3 years and 9 months more in rent, we’d have spent what it costs to buy the new place.

One thing I’m not looking forward to is the move itself. We’ve got 100 cardboard boxes on the way, and we’re trying to figure out the safest-cheapest-best way to move. Packing up all our stuff, driving more than 2,500 miles in five days with our animals, then getting everything unloaded and hooked up on the other end is not my idea of fun. When I was 25, I loved the idea of driving 10 hours in a day; at 55, it’s not nearly as appealing.

Wherever I end up, though, I’ll have what’s most important: my family, my cats and my writing. And I’ll always have my memories. Ask my imaginary friend Minerva how important those are. She’s the hero of my Memortality series. Is that a shameless plug for my books? Damn right. I’ll still be writing them and, I hope, you’ll still be buying them.

See you on the other side (of the country)!

What it's like to be a perfectionist

What does it mean to be a perfectionist?

It means second-guessing yourself. Continually.

It means procrastinating for fear that you’ll “get it wrong” and (worse) that someone might see you get it wrong. It means criticisms are evidence you’ve already gotten it wrong and that someone has seen it. It means that, because of this, you hate people looking over your shoulder or viewing your work until you’re sure it’s “done” or “ready.” Sometimes, it never is.

Perfectionism makes you snap at people when they interrupt you during a task, because you need to focus to ensure you don’t make a mistake. One that people might see; one that will give them an excuse to ridicule you.

It means being an introvert because you don’t trust others. But you don’t trust yourself, either.

It means thinking before you speak. And thinking. And thinking. Until your thoughts tie themselves up in knots that wrap themselves around your tongue.

It hinders decision-making and can leave you paralyzed.

It means expecting the worst because, at least that way, you won’t be disappointed.

It’s believing you’ll never be able to live up to your parents’ or peers’ or employer’s or partner’s perceived expectations of you, and it means adopting those expectations as your own.

It’s a reaction to believing you’re unlovable. Inherently so. But you can’t control that, so the only remedy is to control what you can by earning people’s respect and substituting it for the love you’ve convinced yourself is unattainable.

Yes, it’s controlling. It’s a desperate attempt to control a world that seems chaotic, hostile and overwhelming, but mostly it’s an attempt to control the one thing you think you can (or should be able to) control: yourself. Because of this, it controls you, and you hate that.

It means seeing everything as your fault because, at least that way, you can control it by “doing better the next time.”

It means you seek approval. But you shun it when it’s offered for things you don’t think you deserve ... and sulk when you don’t receive it after working very hard on something you’re very proud to have accomplished.

It means having a very, very hard time with the reality that life isn’t fair, because it feels like fairness is the only thing standing between you and despair.

It means taking breakups hard and layoffs even harder. At least you can rationalize breakups because they’re based on love, not respect. Love is unpredictable. Respect isn’t supposed to be. If you do a good job, you’re supposed to be rewarded. When it doesn’t work out that way, you feel cast adrift, deprived of the life raft you’ve been clinging to: your hard work and ability.

When you lose a job, you blame yourself for taking that job in the first place, because (of course) you should have known better.

It means Woudla, Coulda, Shoulda and What If are couch surfing on your medial temporal lobe. Regret and foreboding team up in an unending tag-team match against your reason and your serenity.

You feel the need to look in the rear-view mirror, peer under the hood and keep your eyes on the road, all at the same time. You have to be on top of everything. Otherwise, the unthinkable will happen. You’ll fail. And people will see it. And they’ll never let you live it down.

It means sleepless nights lost to anxiety and fitful sleep haunted by nightmares.

It means high blood pressure and low self-esteem.

It means you’re constantly asking yourself, “What have you done for me lately?”

It means playing the diplomat and getting slammed from both sides.

It means avoiding conflict and trying to please everyone.

It means thinking you’re never good enough.

It means loving spellcheck for saving your ass and hating it for making you look the fool.

It means always having to say you’re sorry: repeatedly apologizing for things that are your fault, and for things that aren’t.

Failure is the enemy. When you fail, you beat yourself up for it publicly in the hope that self-castigation will keep your critics at bay. But it doesn’t. They revile and ridicule you anyway, so you get beaten up twice over.

It’s being governed by worry and a continual readiness to shift into fight-or-flight mode ... if you don’t live there already. It’s a gateway to defensiveness, cynicism and, if you’re not careful, superstition and paranoia. But because you are careful — to a fault — you’re less likely to get there. At least that’s something.

It means you seldom stop to smell the roses, and you miss out on a lot of life’s beauty. That’s a mistake, too, and you beat yourself up over that. Another regret.

That’s what it means to be a perfectionist. At least part of it. Of course, this list isn't perfect ...

Trump's arrogance will be his downfall, and it could be ours

“If you try to tell me what to do, I’ll do the opposite.” You’ve probably heard a friend or acquaintance say that, or something like it. It’s sounds defiant. It’s feels gutsy. And it’s ultimately self-destructive.

Yes, it’s rude for someone to try to order you around, and it’s healthy to stand up for yourself. But automatically doing the opposite as a knee-jerk reaction is pretty damned stupid.

You won’t always know the right answer; sometimes, another person will. If you tune that person out because you think you’re the ultimate expert on everything – and no one else has anything of value to offer – eventually, you’ll fall flat on your face. And when you do, who’ll be there to pick you up? Certainly not the people whose advice you shunned.

This tendency is more likely than anything else to be Donald Trump’s downfall. He has a penchant for ignoring advice and doing things his own way because he believes he, and he alone, knows best. The stronger the pushback against his ideas, the more likely he is to try to implement them.

Don’t antagonize your allies, they say? He’ll do it. Don’t cozy up to dictators with a history of bad behavior? He’ll do that, too – and praise them as great leaders.

Stop tweeting? He’ll tweet more. Don’t separate kids from their parents? Let’s do that! Tariffs will drag down a strong economy? He’ll impose them anyway. He’ll hire people who are unqualified or potentially corrupt because he feels like it, without checking their references (or ignoring them if they run counter to his “instincts”).

It's still the economy, stupid

At some point, those instincts will fail him, and one of his ideas will go so far wrong that a lot of people will get hurt. Those people will turn on him, and he’ll be left politically isolated. That hasn’t happened yet, but the economy – the number one concern of Republicans, not to mention voters in general – has been strong. If it tanks, do you really think they’ll stand by him? Ask the previous Republican darling, George W. Bush, how that worked out.

That’s why Trump’s beloved tariffs are a bigger threat to his presidency than any of the other bonehead go-it-alone moves mentioned above. People will look the other way when it comes to foreign affairs (“too far away”), government corruption (“they all do it”) or even the welfare of children (“they ain’t my kids”). But hit them in the pocketbook, threaten their livelihoods – or, for corporate shareholders, their profits – and it will be another story.

Trump’s supporters will hold their collective noses and go along with the tariffs unless and until the economy starts to head south. Then, they’ll desert him. But by that point, it will be too late. Again, ask George W how this works, and ask Republicans who have distanced themselves from that administration because they lost the White House for the next eight years.

The problem with Trump’s go-it-along contrarianism is that he’s not really going it alone: He’s dragging the rest of the country along with him. No one roots for a president to fail, but if he’s going to fail – as Trump seems prone to doing (six bankruptcies, a failed “university”, a gutted spring football league) – isn’t it best that he do so before the damage is so great that the rest of the nation fails along with him?

Unfortunately, that may not be possible. Trump has convinced Republican lawmakers that it’s in their political interest to go along with him, even against their long-held principles. It’s no longer a conservative party. It’s Trump’s party, conservative or otherwise. Because Republicans control Congress, they control the nation, and so, like dominoes, Trump’s arrogance could well be the first domino to fall in a line of devastation that trickles down – or flash-floods its way – through the GOP and on to the nation as a whole.

Trump has failed before. Repeatedly. But his selective memory only sees his successes and glosses over, hides (tax returns, anyone?) or lies about his failures. He’s convinced his supporters to do the same, rewriting history in a way that would owes more to Stalin’s Soviet propaganda machine than it does to any American tradition

But if the economy starts to fail, even that won’t protect him.

The housing bubble that led to the Great Recession might turn out to be nothing next to Trump’s overinflated ego. I hope I’m wrong about that. No one wants a president to fail. But no one wants to stay aboard a train that’s rushing toward a washed-out bridge over the Grand Canyon at 100 mph, either. Someone needs to apply the brakes now. Republicans in Congress. Voters in November. Anyone. Before it’s too damned late.

For more commentary on the Trump presidency and the media’s coverage of it, check out my book Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump, available on Amazon in paperback or ebook.

Age brings more reminders of what we've lost

It’s a well-known phenomenon. You hear that song on the radio, and it takes you back to your senior prom, your first concert, summer camp or some other event relegated to memory. It activates that memory and makes it new again. You know you can never go back there again, but in that moment, you remember what it was like to be there.

You smile a little smile, and maybe you get choked up a little, too. It’s the essence of “bittersweet.”

Because music is such a potent reminder of the past, it hurts to realize it’s going to stay there. That’s what happened a couple of years ago, when a large number of famed musicians from my childhood all left us: David Bowie, Glen Frey of the Eagles, Prince, George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of ELP, Leon Russell.

It wasn’t just the year the music died, it was a year a part of us died, because with their deaths, we knew they’d never be making new music again. We’d never get another chance to see them in concert. Even if their bands had broken up, there had always been a chance they’d get back together, at least for a reunion show. No more. I remember thinking about that when John Lennon died. There would never be a Beatles reunion. Maybe there wouldn’t have been one, anyway, but there had always been that hope.

Hope is about the future; memories are about the past. They work best in tandem, and when we lose one part of that equation, we’re a little worse off for it.

We didn’t just lose musicians in 2016. My childhood sitcoms were decimated by the deaths of Florence Henderson (The Brady Bunch), William Christopher (M*A*S*H), Abe Vigoda and Ron Glass (Barney Miller), Alan Thicke (Growing Pains) and Garry Marshall (creator of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Mork & Mindy).

They live on in reruns, but in some ways, that’s just as hard, because whenever you see them, there’s a chance you’ll be reminded that they’re no longer with us.

This happens to me a lot, with music, TV shows, landmarks, mementos, old photographs.

I see movies starring Alan Rickman or Robin Williams, and I can’t help but be reminded how much I valued their talents … and now, they’re no longer here.

TAKEN FOR GRANTED

You take things for granted when you’re young, at least I did. When I first became aware of things, I assumed they’d always been that way and that they always would be. I think the first time I realized they wouldn’t was when I moved back to my hometown, Fresno, at age 15, after six years away. The radio station formats had changed. The big discount department store called White Front, where everyone had shopped, was gone. The Lesterburger fast food chain, which had been ubiquitous in the 1960s, had gone out of business, too. It all seemed surreal, impossible even.

Three more years passed, and there was a new freeway and a new football stadium. Both were big improvements, but I still remember sitting on the splintery wooden seats at the old stadium and watching Fresno State’s football team rout Los Angeles State (back when it had a football team). The splinters aren’t a pleasant memory, but the game itself is, and they’re tied together in my soon-to-be-55-year-old mind.

Going south on a trip to San Diego last weekend on U.S. 101, I passed through the area where I lived for six years as a child and young teenager: Woodland Hills. I was reminded of riding in my parents’ Buick LeSabre down that same Ventura Freeway to see the Dodgers play every summer in the 1970s. People mention Bill Buckner’s error on his gimpy leg for the Red Sox in the 1986 series, and it triggers memories of when he was my next-door neighbor in Southern California, making circus catches in the outfield for the Dodgers before that leg slowed him down.

When I went back to Fresno as an adult a year or two ago, I went back to eat at the first Me-N-Ed’s pizza parlor on Blackstone, where my folks introduced me to my favorite pizza (cheese and black olives) when I was 5 or 6. Yes, it’s still there, and that’s comforting. But it also reminds me that my parents aren’t, and that will never stop hurting.

When I see high school football games, I remember when I used to cover them as a reporter for the Tulare Advance-Register. When I drive by my old office, I remember when I used to work there.

"BACK IN MY DAY"

Then there’s the music.

Whenever I hear the Eagles’ Best of My Love, I remember sitting by the radio in my room, listening to the week’s top 40 countdown and wondering what would be No. 1 that week.

When I hear Have You Never Been Mellow? by Olivia Newton John, I think of riding to summer school at A.E. Wright Middle School, the ride so much longer than it needed to be because of all the stops they made in the canyons and foothills west of the San Fernando Valley. And me, sitting there, my legs cramped and hurting because, even at that age, I was far too tall to fit comfortably in bus seats designed for third-graders.

Maybe it’s because I’ve done so much historical writing that these memories hit me so often, but I think it’s the other way around: The feeling that the past is somehow slipping away has prompted me to keep some portion of it alive, if only in recorded memory. I suspect it happens to a lot of people like this, even if they don’t write any of it down, and that’s why our elders reminisce so often about the way things used to be “back in my day.”

My dad did that, and now I’m doing it, too.

It’s bittersweet to remember the things that are gone, but the alternative, forgetting them, is far worse.