Reporter's Reflections Archive

During our weekly staff meetings, we look forward into the next four weeks to plans for upcoming issues and events. Often, I list the topics of future weeks in a matter-of-fact, almost bland tone, seeing a simple, paved plan of approach on my notepad in front of me.

“Town council meeting, county commission meeting, back to school, Ox Roast . . . town council meeting, county commission meeting, Molasses Festival . . .” You get the idea.

 Also included each week for upcoming issues are the columns and articles we include every week--specifically the ones I’m responsible for: worthless checks, Around Calhoun County, This Week in History, Reporter’s Reflections, etc.

All this is written in my big notebook, so I can check things off as I go. Again, this way, I have some kind of plan and schedule for the future, and can see what I have already done.

I update this list every Thursday morning before staff meeting, because it is usually covered by scribbles and extra notes within a week or two and becomes a cluttered mess.

 I like my planning paper to be orderly and neat, but there are issues for which no one can plan.

For example, who knew a new principal could make the front page (and part of page six) for two weeks in a row? Who knew two kids would wreck a tractor-trailer on Main Street? Who could foresee that five meetings, two annual events, letters from two men who are currently incarcerated, and our monthly crossword puzzle could all land within a single week?

 Not only does my planning paper get cluttered, so does my desk, my office, my car, my house, my head. New names to remember, facts to learn, papers to read, people to see . . . Sometimes my head feels like it’s spinning.

 These are the times it is hard to write the inevitably last item on the weekly list--this column.

 When I can’t think of what to write--too many choices, too few, too much input, too much of the head spinning--I just sit and think, “How do you feel about current issues in general?”

 I feel worn, and sad. I feel worn because it has been pretty busy lately. Worn because there’s been a lot of heavy issues weighing in on our brains. I feel worn because I’ve been so frustrated--feeling there are no solutions. I feel worn because, overall, recent issues in the community have been distasteful, like some kind of acid rain falling on me from a cloud which, by fluke, passed over the desert.

 I’ve lost a little faith in the goodness of the world around me.

 Add the squeeze we have all been feeling at the gas pumps, and you begin to feel like a dry-rotted rag, tattered and blowing across the colorless sand of an endless drought.

But then, it will happen.

 I’ll be sitting at the Veteran’s Appreciation Dinner chewing on cheesecake or see a photo of three generations maintaining a roasting tradition nearly half-a-century old, and I am touched. Relieved of my weight. Nourished.

 I love to see elders laugh, kids roll in the grass, and family and community members working together. I am proud of our veterans, our community volunteers, and I love to listen to stories of “days gone by” when people not only knew who their neighbors were, but also helped them put up their hay or corn.

 I love all these things because they renew my faith in people.

The annual Ox Roast and upcoming Molasses Festival intrigue me because they both open a window to a better time in Calhoun County. Because both annual events have such history, such tradition and there are still some around and involved who were there at the beginning, the point really can hit home--before them, there was nothing.

 No park grounds, no playground, no community building. No molasses, no barbecue, no federal or Budget Digest funds.

 Before them, there was nothing.

 When you realize you are looking at the very hands that hammered the rusted nails on the wall behind you, that welded the molasses pan . . . or you are honoring aged men who, in their prime, were on foreign soil fighting for rights and freedoms we now take for granted . . . or are talking to someone who was there when all that surrounds you was just a dream . . .

 Well, let’s just say it reminds you that there is goodness in the world.