Thursday, September 25, 2003
Small town life is kind of genial, friendly, in a way that the roaring metropolis of Colorado Springs was not, in lots of little ways.
Example:
This week, we got a notice in our newspaper from the city, not to park on certain streets or they'd tow us. They were resurfacing some roads (they called it "Fog sealing", a term I'd never heard before. Any insight?). It seemed kind of friendly to get this notice via the paper, like there is an assumption that everyone gets the paper, and if you don't, well, that's like not showing up to church or to the High School football game- they cock their head, and say, well... give him time. And it's not too far to walk to the impound lot to pick up your car.
In COS they'd just break out the window, release the brake and push your car down the hill. Here, it's a nice notice in the paper.
And the paper itself... well... the editorial this last week was about Home, Lisa the editor waxing rhapsodic about Home, which for her was a lot of places other than Limon, it turned out. It meant this and that about all these different places- Jamaica, Montana, so forth- being handed a chicken on a bus or something. For me to understand home apparently involves knowing a lot more about our local editor than I'd intended. Oh well.
There was a front page article about three boys who had to come to the school board meeting to apologize for some vandalism. Lots of heartbreaking stuff about how these boys had grown up here, for crying out loud. We knew their parents. How could they do this? But the actual headline? The real scandal, the money line? One of the boys had not shown up. He'd just decided he didn't need to be there. Several lines into the article, we learn he had a work scheduling conflict and had to postpone. Remember the inverted pyramid from your "Writing for the Media" class?* Shouldn't that be a little farther up in the article? But, well, let's just scan these two headlines:
TEEN SKIPS MEETING , LEAVES FRIENDS TO APOLOGIZE FOR VANDALISM ALONE
WORK CONFLICT FORCES TEEN TO RESCHEDULE APPEARANCE TO SCHOOL BOARD
I guess I know which paper I'd be more likely to pick up. You who is without sin...
*What do you mean, you never took "Writing for the Media"? It was like the easiest "A" there was! (Wait, I got a D+).
Example:
This week, we got a notice in our newspaper from the city, not to park on certain streets or they'd tow us. They were resurfacing some roads (they called it "Fog sealing", a term I'd never heard before. Any insight?). It seemed kind of friendly to get this notice via the paper, like there is an assumption that everyone gets the paper, and if you don't, well, that's like not showing up to church or to the High School football game- they cock their head, and say, well... give him time. And it's not too far to walk to the impound lot to pick up your car.
In COS they'd just break out the window, release the brake and push your car down the hill. Here, it's a nice notice in the paper.
And the paper itself... well... the editorial this last week was about Home, Lisa the editor waxing rhapsodic about Home, which for her was a lot of places other than Limon, it turned out. It meant this and that about all these different places- Jamaica, Montana, so forth- being handed a chicken on a bus or something. For me to understand home apparently involves knowing a lot more about our local editor than I'd intended. Oh well.
There was a front page article about three boys who had to come to the school board meeting to apologize for some vandalism. Lots of heartbreaking stuff about how these boys had grown up here, for crying out loud. We knew their parents. How could they do this? But the actual headline? The real scandal, the money line? One of the boys had not shown up. He'd just decided he didn't need to be there. Several lines into the article, we learn he had a work scheduling conflict and had to postpone. Remember the inverted pyramid from your "Writing for the Media" class?* Shouldn't that be a little farther up in the article? But, well, let's just scan these two headlines:
TEEN SKIPS MEETING , LEAVES FRIENDS TO APOLOGIZE FOR VANDALISM ALONE
WORK CONFLICT FORCES TEEN TO RESCHEDULE APPEARANCE TO SCHOOL BOARD
I guess I know which paper I'd be more likely to pick up. You who is without sin...
*What do you mean, you never took "Writing for the Media"? It was like the easiest "A" there was! (Wait, I got a D+).
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