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Local papers report on parallel universes
While it’s unclear who first said, “No matter where you go, there you are,” (I thought it was Yogi Berra, but Google lists lots of references and no author), it certainly seems to fit what I’ve discovered as a newspaper contest judge.
During the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading stories crafted by community journalists in Pennsylvania, and I can testify to the common themes running through their newspapers and ours.
What I’m supposed to be doing is ranking the entries in the Keystone State’s press association contest. What I’m actually doing, however, is re-experiencing Jackson County history – both public and personal – through similar stories cut out of northern newspapers.
One of the first clippings I picked up described a new program launched at Shippensburg Area Senior High School as chronicled by the Shippensburg Sentinel. Called “Baby Think It Over,” the initiative pairs realistic dolls that mimic the needs of infants with students in the school’s health education classes.
It’s the same learning opportunity that Smoky Mountain High School students – including all three of my kids – participated in for close to a decade.
Reading the Sentinel’s account of how the teenaged “parents” related to the needs of a newborn reminded me of my Elizabeth’s panic when her “baby” wouldn’t stop crying no matter what she tried. She was afraid the doll’s recording device would brand her an unfit mother because she couldn’t fit the “key” into the slot fast enough. When it was Ellen’s and Scott’s turn to be “parents,” I was drafted to be the baby-sitter during Saturday band competitions and soccer games.
While the SMHS “baby” program has been suspended due to a lack of grant funding (health education teacher Yvonne Robinson said she hopes to reinstate it soon), Shippensburg’s is in high gear and even includes a student-run day care operated by the school’s juniors and seniors.
Trying to shake the nostalgia and move along with the judging, I picked up another school-related story that dealt with a recently-instituted dress code.
We’ve had that one in The Herald’s pages too. And while it was interesting to read of another school board that had reached the same conclusion with regard to student attire as did our local readers, that one got disqualified because it seemed more of a news story and it was entered in a features category.
Moving through the stacks, I discovered stories that related to last fall’s flooding, which was apparently bad in Pennsylvania as well. One of the photos that accompanied a report looked almost identical to one we took of N.C. 107 after Hurricane Ivan roared through our mountains.
A category called Ongoing News Coverage yielded more accounts of events that seemed familiar. Just as The Herald has reported on zoning and annexation controversies and religious discord, so did the Pennsylvania papers. Taking it one step farther, one newspaper’s entry had a zoning controversy that centered around a church.
The feature stories had a familiar ring as well. There was the woman with the prize-winning garden, which called to mind Rose’s local photos of luscious purple grapes and big tomatoes.
There were stories of interesting people in their golden years – a 75-plus grandmother planning to compete on her bicycle in that state’s senior games and an 80-something who still went to work at the local hardware store. Reading those accounts reminded me of Herald stories about the late Bert Moses, who was active in Senior Games into his 90s and 80-plus-year-old Sylva musician Bill Henigbaum who still plays violin and conducts the Western Carolina Civic Orchestra.
While reading newspapers from towns and cities geographically distant from Sylva, it was the similarities, not the differences, I noticed.
All the writers whose work I’ve been reading are doing the same thing we are: sharing their community’s news and writing its day-by-day history.
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