These Times

These Times: Behind the scenes

Kirk Ericson | Oct 24, 20240

Oct. 19, 2024, marked my seventh anniversary filling this space in the Shelton-Mason County Journal, so let’s take time for me, shall we? That is, after all, what birthdays are for.

Let’s start with a story.

On Jan. 25th of this year, I published a column about stretching for seven straight hours. I wrote it up, decided it needed a little more, so I interviewed a yoga teacher I’ve taken classes from. I got a quote from her, included it toward the end of the column, and later dropped off a copy of the Journal after the column published.

Soon afterward, I got an email from her.

“I found your writing to be quite entertaining and interesting. Excluding the part where you offered ‘A few words of caution.’ IMO, I’d add a side note in an upcoming Journal and edit the seven glasses of wine theory and seven hours of stretching as being humerus [sic] and fictitious. Obviously, not good advice for everyone or probably anyone. Also, your advice that ‘It’s hard to overdo stretching.’ Maybe I’m missing something and your readers get your humor, or..? Holy [expletive deleted], maybe this is your truth and you’re serious!?”

Her primary objection to the column was this paragraph: “One positive benefit of this experiment, I figured, would be if you can stretch for seven hours, you should feel seven times better than stretching for one hour. … It’s the same theory as having one glass of red wine: If one glass a day is good, seven glasses a day should be seven times better.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone would take that bit about drinking seven glasses of wine literally. It seemed textbook absurd. But her email did pain me. It hadn’t occurred to me that she wouldn’t want to be included in a column that contained such a flip comment. I misread her sensibilities and that was nobody’s fault but my own. I wrote back to apologize, and I promised myself that I would learn from this.

I’ve also avoided ever running into her again.

I don’t know how other columnists work, but I have a constant thought hovering over my other thoughts while I’m writing: How will this land on readers? Will it offend someone I know and don’t want to hurt? Will it irritate people who I’m not intending to irritate? One has to offend and irritate to some extent in this coliseum, but it should be precisely and consciously targeted. It’s the difference between a sniper’s bullet and a 2,000-pound bomb.

One must heed the advice of Mark Twain in these matters: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

One realization I’ve gained from writing 362 columns is that I am an optimist. I’ve grown less critical of others. I’ve discovered the joy in reporting the smaller elements in life, the boy seeing the ripples on the river water, the child covered in strawberry goo staring me down, the moon moving over a blueberry field, the two slugs I found in my pants pocket, the notes found in books at the used book store, the hen that became a rooster, the two teenagers watching “Blazing Saddles” for the first time, the intricate life cycle of mason bees, the man who had a signal jammer in his truck, the vanity of a Persian cat, the stories my grandmother’s cookbook told.

I hope my stories can interrupt the obsession many people have with matters largely beyond their control while ignoring matters largely within their control. For many, it’s a fever that makes them vulnerable to other illnesses, especially the illness of not being able to see the wonders of existence.

I was talking to a woman who’s a Trump supporter this summer when she told me, “It’s all driving me crazy.”

“Stop letting it drive you crazy,” I suggested.

I’m fortunate to work for this newspaper. I’ve never had more freedom as a writer. Not once over these seven years have I been told I couldn’t write something, or that I should write something. That’s a rare thing in this business. I’m fortunate to have an editor like Justin Johnson, a publisher like John Lester and an owner like Tom Mullen. I hope you all appreciate how rare it is for a small town to have such a financially healthy newspaper.

Reporter Gordon Weeks and I often refer to the Journal as “the paper that time forgot.” As a refugee from corporate-owned daily newspapers, I am grateful for family ownership. And I’m also grateful to you because you’ve accepted me.

I ran into Linda Woytowich the other day at a grocery store. She’s the widow of Mark Woytowich, who wrote the outdoors column for the Journal for many years. I can’t remember what prompted the comment, but she offered the following observation toward the end of our conversation:

“The future is friendly.”

Yes.