Why My New Hometown Paper Is Better than the Times

I got a call this morning from Lisa, who works in the circulation department (or actually may be the department) at the Register-Star, Hudson's local paper, whose weekend edition I recently subscribed to during a promotion at the Shoprite, where I also entered a raffle and got $10 off on my groceries.  Lisa called to find out if I had gotten my first issue. I told her I hadn't checked the mail yet because of the rain, and she pointed out that the postman isn't allowed to put newspapers into a mailbox. (An unexpected bit of upstate knowledge.)  She was worried it might have gotten lost and asked if I'd call her back. The mailman had kindly put my paper in a plastic bag and hung it from the mailbox.  I called Lisa back to reassure her.  What's not to like about this place? 

So, I went inside, out of the rain, poured a cup of coffee and tucked into my first R-S weekend edition.  In addition to its fabulous customer service, here is what's great about the paper itself.

The front-page headliner:  Last Tuesday, a "Hudson man", Austin Suarez, whose nickname is Porky, was arrested, escaped in his car, and while doing so ran over a cop's foot (who is ok).  The police chased him across the river into Catskill but he eluded local forces on both sides of the Hudson and went home, where they managed to nab him later on after "a struggle".  The charge: having small amounts of hydrocodone and a needle. 

Second lead story:  A tractor-trailer truck driver after being stopped by the police took off and led them on an 8-mile chase down one of our local highways until he was finally caught. His crime: using his cell-phone non-hands-free

Front-page image: Someone at a cultural workshop for kids at the local primary school demonstrating a coat? Muskrat? Sting-ray?

Other front-page stories:

•        Treated discharge from a local toxic landfill was dumped into the local kill (old Dutch word for creek). Apparently the stuff is ok but we're encouraged to sign a petition to keep it clean. I'll do that.
•        Columbia county officials held a meeting on either privatizing a nursing home, keeping it, or building a new one, none of which was clear since the reporter didn't give any background or describe the roles of the people he quoted.
•        The town may set up a conservation advisory council to protect the Hudson River from rising sea levels.  If only every town would do that.  Or country for that matter.

Second section:  Less important news about Obama visiting the Pope, the missing plane, the health care deadline, the federal budget.

Columns:

•        The Clutterbusting writer just published part 3 on organizing your things before you move.  Exactly what I need. I went online and found her column but it didn't have parts 1 and 2. Or maybe it did but the articles weren't arranged chronologically so I couldn't find them.
•       ,The writer for the food column has been to Venice and likes to punctuate her recipes with Italian words for food, but otherwise she writes without pretension and warns me to get to the local farmer's market by 10:00 or I won't get any greens. I'm going to try her frittata spumosa, which she folds over into a "loaf" and, although not on the ingredient list, adds a "blob" of goat cheese to the top. Fresh basil is listed as an ingredient, but she doesn't have any because it's still cold and uses dried oregano instead.

Culture Section. Its cover sports a raft of heart-breakingly enthusiastic teeners who are performing in the Germantown Central School's production of the Wizard of Oz. Glinda still has braces. Aunt Em is both shorter and younger looking than Dorothy, who is taller than everyone except for a pretty girl next to her in a black outfit, which could be the costume for either the scarecrow or the witch.  (The witch might also be a young person in the back row wearing aviator glasses.). A small boy in a baseball cap and jeans, squatting in the front row, is probably the lion because he's making his hands look like claws, or he's just goofing around. (I was once one of them.  Best part of my youth.  I got a little weepy.)

Columbia and Northern Duchess County are riddled with culture at a more advanced (but not necessarily more fun) level, which the R-S promotes and reviews in the weekend edition. Dancers, actors, musicians, performance artists, poets, writers, and other talent at every proficiency either live around here or take the train from New York to amuse the natives at Bard, Kaatsbann, Hudson Opera Center, Ghent Playhouse, Club Helsinki, Basilica, TSL, and various welcoming churches, book stores, and other venues.

Tonight we go to Helsinki to see Reed Waring, my friend's former handyman who has a band, Two Gun Man, which we saw a few weeks ago and became fans. Reed is a terrific singer/songwriter of "sometimes mellow and heartbreaking, sometimes boisterous and joyful" music (from this today's Register-Star.)

So, here's why I don't miss the NY Times anymore. 

•         Even if it wrote about Porky, it wouldn't give us his nickname,

•        It wouldn't give more coverage to the Wizard of Oz than to Purcell's' Dido and Aeneas (playing at the Kinderhook Church),
•        It doesn't have a police blotter or weekly calendar

•        If it covered a potential toxic event it wouldn't also provide a link to a petition that you can sign

•        It doesn’t use the word "blob" in its recipes,

•        I don't know anyone personally that it's writing about

On the other hand, I hope Reed Waring becomes famous someday and when he does I hope he gets reviewed by the Times.  I'll undoubtedly read it.  In spite of its inferiority to the R-S, it's very hard to give up the Times.