Short week yields larger news crop

On several levels, the news business is very much like farming.

Some weeks you end up with a bumper crop of interesting stories while other weeks, try as one might dig, you end up with very little of substance to show for all of the effort expended.

An abundance of interesting news has certainly been the case this week, which was also shortened by 24 hours due to the Memorial Day holiday celebrated May 25.

Part of my attention lately has been diverted to happenings in South Korea, where my best friend and life partner, Kim Chamberlain, is exploring her native homeland. She is accompanied by her 24-year-old granddaughter, Meghan Hnath, among others.

I finally heard from Kim on Sunday morning and everything about the trip is going fine for them although one of their tour members, an 80-something Korean War veteran from Kansas, fell and fatally hit his head on something. The tour hosts have been wonderful, however, and have flown the man's son and daughter to South Korea at no charge and are making all the necessary arrangements to air ship his remains home with them when they return.

Enjoying even a brief long-distance phone call helped alleviate my worry brought on by constant mentions on nationally televised news programs and written accounts of problems in that part of the world.

In case you have had your thoughts drawn elsewhere, North Korea recently tested several nuclear weapons and also fired a rocket or two, indicating to the rest of the world that it could successfully deliver and detonate a weapon of mass destruction.

When the international community, led by the United States, Japan and South Korea, protested such a development and threatened to start searching every ship heading to or away from North Korea for evidence of such weapons or materials needed to build and produce such weaponry, North Korea's leadership threatened yet again to invade neighboring South Korea.

Back here at home, things aren't quite as exciting as all that, although there are still plenty of topics with which to deal.

The investigation of Anderson's fire chief, Joe Piccinini, is entering its third week with no official word of whether anything of substance has yet been found.

Meanwhile, Piccinini's supporters have launched a letter-writing campaign that has filled two mailboxes used by Keith Webster, who chairs the Anderson Fire Protection District's board of directors. He has turned those over to investigator Neil Purcell, Jr.

Anderson City Manager Scott Morgan and his family went to Florida during the Memorial Day week and word quickly filtered back that he had been interviewed and offered the position of city manager in West Melbourne, along central Florida's east coast, not far from Cape Canaveral and Nancy Morgan's elderly parents, who live in Winter Park, a community next door to Orlando.

We are sorry to hear that news as Scott and Nancy, along with their offspring William and Adeline, have certainly been a big part of the Anderson community for nearly a dozen years now. But we know it is what they believe is best for their family and so we sincerely wish them well on this new chapter in their lives.

On top of all that, graduation time is rapidly upon us and work is progressing nicely on a number of civic projects in Anderson's historic downtown, along North Street and on McMurray Drive, where a new Rite Aid pharmacy and store is nearing completion.

Several new businesses have cropped up in and around Anderson while several others have changed their names, locations or altered their menus substantially.

And from the looks of our weather, it's anybody's guess whether the fire season will arrive this year before the Shasta District Fair even opens its admission gates to let the crowds stream in.

Let's hope Mother Nature treats us more kindly than it did last year when Cal-Fire crews occupied the fairgrounds for 5 weeks.

So enjoy the oversized bumper crop of local news contained in this week's Valley Post and don't forget to give us a call or drop us an e-mail in case you hear, see, smell or step into something that you think might be considered newsworthy enough to share.