In the old days I would have gotten telephone calls, but in our modern age I received texts that Dixie Otis had passed. The news is everything that happens, isn’t it? Beginnings, endings, life, death, the pulse of the community, the good, the bad, the sad.

Technology changes but the need to share and connect is a constant in humanity. The tools we use to stitch ourselves to each other are different from our parents’, but the need to be woven together is the same.

The evening before, Saturday, the line to Santa was still long at 6 p.m., though that was the end of his shift. How did people hear...