Category Archives: newspaper

newspaper, opinion, weather

Moody Monday

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Today was one of a sequence of odd weather days here on the plains. It was close to 60 degrees today and is forecast to be 70+ degrees tomorrow. This is happening during a time of the year when it typically reaches a high of -10 for the day. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to the anomalous warmth. At least not if the wind would die down a little. Today the wind was gusting to 60 mph and stayed windy all day. It is almost like the Santa Ana winds from when we lived in LA. The negative ions in the air make everyone a bit testy and the continuous howling keeps things (and dogs like Molly) on edge. Oh well, give it a week and it’ll probably become more seasonable and I’ll be complaining about the cold.

One of the local newspapers emailed me over the weekend to get my opinion for their weekly opinion piece. You know, one of those “the roving reporter asked these people X and are their one liner responses with a bad picture of their heads” type of piece. The paper must be planning a special piece connected to their inaugural reporting. So anyway, the question was “What issue should the new President first address? (and why)”

This question is one which could take literally days and 100’s of pages to fully explore. In fact, I am sure that Mr. Obama and his transition team have been doing exactly that. He is probably forced to read a couple of hundred pages of position papers from the team every day. But since this is a one liner type of reportage (the twitter of news?), I have  to be brief and concise. And I don’t have to consult with my transition team either.

So what did I answer? I was short and sweet:

The economy should be addressed first. If people are working, housed, and fed then the other problems can be handled on a more timely schedule.

How’s that for a typical politician’s waffle fest? In this case it happens to the the truth from where I sit. I suspect there are other views and positions, but to me it seems clear that the biggest problem preventing considered action on the myriad of other problems *is* the economy. People are running in fear. Those who have already lost their jobs are facing  homelessness and hunger. Those who haven’t are scared of being put in those situations. People who are scared and running in fear tend to be neither able nor amenable to solving problems

So how would you have answered the question?

campy, newspaper

Town in the News

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As I have noted, I am the mayor of a small town in the rural plains of Colorado. This weekend there was a nice story in the New York Times about one of our denizens and a bit about the town. On page 19 of the New York Times Sunday edition was the story Sterling Journal. Note that I am not sure if the link will work if you don’t have an account with the Times. Some do and some don’t.
The story was nice because it concentrated on one of the long term residents of the area and his history. Campy has been a well known icon in the community since the days of my youth. He was originally a WWII prisoner of war who was captured and interned here. He eventually married and settled in the region after the war. Now at 87 he still works regularly doing what he loves best (repairing engines).
It’s nice to see the normally overlooked people get their moment of fame in the big time papers! There was a strong element of chance in the whole story happening, as you would expect. The reporter, Kirk Johnson, was on a journey this summer and had engine trouble near here. His problem was fixed and along the way he met Campy and some of the other people mentioned in the story. So when he got back from his journey, he pitched it as a story to his editors and then returned to the area for follow up last week. You can’t make up that sort of coincidence!
fall, newspaper, rain, rumination

Meandering ruminations

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While I pondered weak and weary …
My apologies to Poe, but those words really sum up what the day has been like here today. It poured rain off and on last night and today has been wet and drizzly all day. What more could you ask for to herald the arrival of fall. Nothing like a wet, drizzly, overcast, cool day to bring home the arrival of that precursor to winter.
One thing that really irks me about this weather is that the paper delivery guy always throws the paper down on the front sidewalk where all the water flows. Thus, even though he bags the papers, the plastic bag just fills with water and the result is a soggy mess.  His predecessor was wonderful – he always put the papers on the front porch.  Not so with the new guy. You can tell when the old guy subs for the new guy because all of a sudden the paper starts appearing on the front porch. I guess I shouldn’t complain – at least the paper gets here. Does your delivery person do any better?
It occurs to me that perhaps I should ask a different question first: do you even subscribe to papers in the physical form? I find that I use both online and paper versions. The preferred form  depends on why I read that particular paper and how often I read it.  I find that online versions of papers work OK except for crosswords and comics. Crosswords because I am not a fan of the electronic entry forms I have used. It is more acceptable to me to print the puzzle and then fill it in with pen. Then I don’t to have to be tied to a computer to fill it in. Crossword puzzling is a time as available thing for me and the opportunities tend to be hit and miss, with more misses if I have do it on the computer. I like my comics in print because I tend to be a clipper. I like to cut out and pin on my bulletin board any comic which strikes my fancy. It just isn’t the same to me when printed on the laser and then clipped and pinned.
In any case, it was late this afternoon before the papers got dry enough to get to my beloved crossword puzzles. I always try to do the New York Times crossword every day. I then do others if the opportunity presents itself. I find that the NYT crossword is always interesting and I like the ebb and flow in difficulty that matches the week. Monday is usually trivial and then it gets harder and harder, culminating in the Saturday beast. But then Sunday comes and the puzzle can be easy or hard, but always fun.  You can probably tell I’m an addict.
Well, I’m off to my now dry NYT crossword!