When I was a kid, my dad had a manual typewriter that he kept in a room downstairs. This was obviously before computers and home-office electric typewriters, and it sat on his desk largely unused (as far as I could tell). There was one day, though, when I heard him clacking away at the keys, pushing back the carriage return and rolling the platen to release the paper—the first edition of a publication he had titled The Churchill Downs Bugle (after the street we lived on, not the horse race). It’s hard for me to remember, at this age, the specific headlines of that newspaper, and the issues that followed it, but I remember reading it over and over and laughing at his puns and the stories about me and my siblings. It felt special to see myself on a page—to see what my dad saw that was funny about me.
Almost four years ago, I joked with my dad that I had surpassed his output as a newspaper magnate, which was a bit unfair, as The Churchill Downs Bugle contained fully reported and written-through articles with actual jokes and was laid out (if I recall correctly) in two columns and was (absolutely) produced on a manual typewriter. By contrast, The Daily Kina is basically three headlines, a few illustrations, and several horizontal lines that suggest the existence of puns.
Nonetheless, The Daily Kina is inspired by The Churchill Downs Bugle in a way. The morning I wrote the first edition, I pulled out a sheet of pink construction paper and some of Kina’s crayons, and I wrote down the thing she had said to her mother just a few moments earlier: “YOU A CHEESE FIEND HUH”—a hilarious and extremely accurate observation. It was Friday, and it was quiet outside the house and quiet inside the house; a pandemic was raging, quietly, outside, and all the playgrounds were shuttered. We had run out of patience with Daniel Tiger (“A Grreat Show”) and I remember feeling the need to memorialize what was happening to Kina, who was only three and had no point of reference for how a reasonable Friday should feel.
I think sometimes about my own childhood and my connection to my family—and to my father, who has always cared about words and writing and pens—in its own unusual orientation, as we moved from place to place every few years. Like three-year-old Kina at the start of the pandemic, I had no idea what “normal” felt like to other kids. I had just my family to sustain me from station to station. The memories I have of The Churchill Downs Bugle are memories of our living room in Ohio, and of everybody laughing. They are memories of a reflection of myself in the people around me, and on the page, which would follow us from town to town as I grew up.
On a shelf in Kina’s room are one thousand, four hundred sixty one (1,461) editions of The Daily Kina. They represent a story about every day in her life since that day in April of 2020. They record what I love about her, and what is beautiful and ridiculous about her. They reflect her in ways she asks about most days, as she reads the headlines from her bath, in view of the cupboard I tape the paper to every single morning. They are a record of her, of the moment, of the city, of the people around her, and of me.
I cannot tell the future, but I can tell you about the last four years. They are a testament to the wonder of this child, to all of us who have sustained, and to my dad.
dad
HAIL! THE LAST THREE ANNIVERSARY EDITIONS!
The Daily Kina Is a Big Girl Now • Buttondown
Kid reflects on a year of exciting news
Two Years Of Days • Buttondown
Publisher reviews 730 past editions of The Daily Kina, is reminded of how much she has forgotten; so say we all
