Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.4.
Every once in a while you hit a “slow news week,” where there’s nothing to report on but Presidential scandals, and the Post won’t write about that, which makes the week slower. Isn’t this an election year? Isn’t the public supposed to be busily sending their local paper letters about how wonderful this or that candidate is? The Post may not endorse anyone, but you certainly can. There are, after all, only four weeks until the election for you to say something. So say something! Mail, e-mail or fax it to the Post.
…Frances Reis mentioned in the last issue that she’d like Kaiser Permanente to open a clinic nearby. I said I’d see what I could do. Some people accused me of being snotty, but no really, I did see what I could do—I called Kaiser. They don’t have any plans to move to the area in the next three years, but they reassess these plans regularly, and if they can get enough customers in the area (remember, they’re a business) they might move in. So if everyone in the community asks for a Kaiser plan, we might convince them. Their number is (800) 464-4000.
…Jill wanted me to mention that the Post runs pictures too—if there’s something interesting that you or your family has done, and you have pictures, the Post offers to run them. There’s even an ad about it in here somewhere.
Something else I thought about… the Post has this answering machine, and some people have these things they’d like to get published but for whatever reason they’re afraid to write. (Even though I’m a really good editor.) If you won’t mind saying it into the Post’s answering machine, it’s available after hours and on weekends. Just don’t use up the whole tape in one shot.
Finally, remember that picture we ran in issue 1.2 on page 2 saying, “What is this?” Turns out it’s a sundial of sorts. Brits used to use such things in the Middle Ages to figure out what time prayer was. Thanks to the wristwatch, people don’t carry them around as often, so you can imagine the wild speculation as to what its significance was.
As always, if you’ve got something interesting and publishable, give me a ring at 268-3420.
—Kent Leslie, managing editor
Update, 9/3/2010: Once Countryside Post had a Living Room, we began to attract groupies. Reporters know exactly what I’m talking about—the community gadflies who have an axe to grind; the curiosity-seekers who want to hear the latest news first and figure the newspaper is the place to hear it; the socialites who want to make sure they’ve made friends with the local newspaper editor (and of course want everyone else to know it); the people who have a billion questions about this, that, and the other thing, and figure reporters would know (or could find out) the answers; and the retirees who don’t have anything else to do and find the news biz just so exciting. We collected all these types and then some. Some of them I like. Some not so much.
One of the groupies was a collector. He mainly collected coins, but he collected all sorts of antiquities. He once brought in a 19th century box that would “medicinally” electrocute you—if it had still worked—which we kept in the Living Room for a few months.
He also brought by this odd-shaped item which neither he nor we could identify, so we photographed it and ran it in the Post under the headline, “What is this?” I figured there’d be at least one reader who knew what it is. There turned out to be several: It was a Saxon pocket sundial from the 10th century—or a pretty good facsimile of one. The collector was thrilled, and from that point on, whenever he couldn’t identify something, he brought it to us. Admittedly it wasn’t news, but it was history, and history is old news.
Strangely enough, we didn’t get too many of the political types. I’m not sure why. I certainly ran into them all the time. Rural areas contain all political stripes—from the far-left couple who babysat Jill’s kids to the far-right nutjob who lived down her street. (He posted large wooden signs in front of his driveway to publicize his political views about anything and everything. For fun, I once took a photo of his driveway and made it the background image for our front page Countryside Post banner. No one seemed to notice.) I suppose once people began to notice that the Post was only interested in local issues, and left all the state and federal politics to the area’s daily papers, they sent their political stuff elsewhere.
Frances Reis wasn’t one of the groupies, nor one of the political types, but she had sent a letter to the Post asking about the possibility of her
The comment about the answering machine was ’cause we were already getting long, rambling answering machine messages that could have been excellent letters if the callers had bothered to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). I figured after reading my column, one of them might just say, “Oh by the way—could you put this in the next issue?” But none of them ever did.
The local political stuff started pouring in around the end of October ’98, and I’ll get to that when the columns get to it.