NEARBY NEWS
This week, I’m ruminating about the news. The news has been making a lot of news lately and the much-maligned press corps has been in the news as often as their reports of the news. But, I don’t care about that. I want to focus on local news which I think is far more entertaining.
I didn’t fully appreciate local news until I moved two thousand miles away from Utah to Pennsylvania and read, watched, or listened to the local news in my new locale. The weirdest news story happened a few weeks before I left Pennsylvania, when the county’s district attorney disappeared along with his laptop hard drive. I don’t mean to imply that I had anything to do with it. I mean, there’s no way he could’ve fit into my suitcase. Really. This happened over ten years ago, when the only local news that hit the state or national scene revolved around the university. Sadly, a few months later local news of the sordid sort exploded onto the national and worldwide news scene and the repercussions of those events are still felt in that pastoral locale surrounded by Amish farmers and craftspeople who make terrific tree houses and have horses named Scott.
I also lived in Alaska, which I have discussed before in Weekly Rumination3 as being a unique experience since, like Hawaii, it’s not physically attached to the other states in the union. It’s very Alaskan to bang on about living in Alaska, so you, dear reader, may get a bit sick of it, and so I apologize in advance.
My favorite bit of news revolved around the weather. For instance, I needed to know whether to tuck the car in with a blankie and plug it into the bulkhead outlet on the side of the house before I went to bed, if the nightly low was projected to be -20; or whether to open up the windows and crank up the ceiling fans, if the forecast was +20.
Considering most local news casts involved stones, sticks, sleds, skates, ice, brooms, and dogs, Fairbanks sports was also quite entertaining. But then, no one moves to Alaska expecting it or its news to be ordinary; so the weird, wacky, poignant, or terrible happenings that became news stories are more easily digested since one is expecting novel news.
However, Utah news is the winner; both in entertainment value and sheer weirdness. Furthermore, Utah news tends to get picked up by national and global news outlets, usually because there is a twist in an otherwise normal news story that makes it unique.
When I was growing up, I didn’t realize how idiosyncratic Utah news could be. Then, after a twenty year absence, I moved back to Utah, where state news is also local news. Even though I live over the river and through the woods, and a couple of mountain ranges and canyons from the Wasatch Front, news about the Salt Lake City metro area dominates and local newspapers and broadcasts are more of a weekly fixture.
Here are some recent examples of weird and entertaining local news that just doesn’t happen in places like Delaware, or Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and especially Manhattan – New York or Kansas.
Earlier this month, state legislators were discussing the finer points of the legality of fornication, adultery, orgies, and cohabitation. The Attorney General’s office was consulted and came to the interesting conclusion that adultery and fornication were misdemeanors in Utah, but a Supreme Court decision voided the previous statutes, so in practice, fornication, adultery and orgies are not illegal. I assume other states make stabs at adjusting laws based on sexual mores, but only in Utah is it done in an attempt to differentiate between cohabitation and bigamy.
There are also news stories concerning the possible removal of the state-mandated “Zion Curtain” which is a physical barrier that prevents restaurant patrons from watching heathen bartenders concoct alcoholic mixed drinks.
A new website in the vein of WikiLeaks, but targeting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was created a couple of months ago, called MormonLeaks. In fact, there are two different MormonLeaks websites, so double the trouble. According to news reports, Mormons are the only religion to be so honored. Take that, Catholics!
My body’s kinesthetic reaction to Utah news had been dormant for two decades, but it kicked in rather forcefully when I started reading and watching local news reports. That giddying mix of fascination, repulsion, and astonishment coursing through my veins is a familiar feeling, and it means that I am home again.
~ Emery Lamb
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