Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
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Editorial
Two Telling Tales: Communication IS Key

You want to hear a good story that involves hunting, a nice rack, Kerhonkson, and the smallness of today's world? Allow me to tell you about last week's cover image that accompanied a piece about hunting season, tied to last Saturday's Opening Day. It goes like this...

As often happens in this business these days, we countered a failed attempt to get some old photos from local hunters by turning to the Internet. As usual, we'd had some promises, some suggestions of entries from years past — in particular from some local rod and gun club members we'd been interviewing. But nothing came of any of it and we had to move on. We turned to the great WikiCommons portion of the web where one can search for images, with size and configuration specifications, thinking at first that we wanted something old and perhaps hand-tinted, the better to give readers a sense of the long heritage involved in deer hunting that Chris Rowley's story focused on.

Unfortunately, most of what we came across was either in faded black and white, or had so many deer that we feared the use of such an image would turn away those who feel squeamish about hunting in general.

We widened our search and started looking through large numbers of pictures, but again most weren't quite right. Some had kids, or too much blood on the carcass, or big grins on the hunters' faces that once again didn't impart the right image we wanted to portray.

Then finally we stumbled upon a photo that felt just right. Its subject was wearing red AND camo; the deer was big but not blood-stained. The surrounding forest felt familiar, like much of the Catskills or Gunks. And the hunter wasn't smiling; his gesture and expression had a complexity that seemed to speak to the bittersweet elements of this age-old sport. Even better, the image's info said it was taken in Canada but came from some Texas account originally.

So we ran with it.

The day after the papers came out and were distributed, we got a call about that same photo from one John Fitzpatrick of Kerhonkson, who identified himself as a member of the same rod and gun club to which the people we interviewed belonged. He wanted to know how we got the photo of him from several years ago... had one of his fellow hunters been the culprit?

Fitzpatrick told us how he'd gotten the deer on a trip to a camp he and other local hunters have kept for years up in New Brunswick. The reason he wasn't smiling in the photo, he added, was because it was taken late in the day he'd shot the deer, in early morning, and been trudging for hours, wet and cold.

Most importantly, he had no problem that his image had ended up on his local paper. At which point I explained our side of the story.

We both agreed that it beautifully defined how our world works these days. Information just flows; its origins are often murky. Yet in the final rounds, the results aren't as bad or conspiratorial or ill-spirited as is often portrayed. Somehow, we'd stumbled on the cool, down-home ways in which we are all better off being better connected. Or at least open to great yarns like that we stumbled into.

Moving on to an entirely different element of communication, and the movement of information, we must make note here about the protest last week designed to send a message to the U.S. Postal Service to halt their plans to eliminate services and downsize facilities by closing their Newburgh distribution center and moving its mail processing functions to Albany.

Yes, we understand Congress fascination with cutting costs everywhere it can, as well as the rise of private interests in the mail business. But we still like the postal service, damn it, and need it in our business, just as many in this area can't replace it with anything, be it email or Fed Ex/UPS delivery trucks. And we've seen what's happened already as delivery patterns have changed in the past year and more and more readers have complained about the lateness of their newspapers.

Some things are worth keeping, even when profits decline. Because they add to the fabric of life. And maybe because, too, it just doesn't seem right that the USA becomes the world's first nation to stop its mail.

Communication is everything.



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