Editor's Notebook

 

January 20, 2022



Sadly, this issue contains the last Panorama column, a popular feature written by a loyal and dedicated Jewell County resident, Fawna Barrett.

I don’t know when the column first appeared in a newspaper but I suspect it originally was written for the Jewell County Republican newspaper published at Jewell.

Fawna and Karen McIntyre were responsible for gathering the news, features and advertising for the informative newspaper. Through a series of consolidations and ownership changes, they eventually both came to work for Superior Publishing Company for which I am thankful.

Both were closely associated with the Jewell and Randall areas and helped to provide coverage for southern Jewell County.

When photographs were recorded on film, we used a volunteer relay system to get the film to Superior for processing. If Fawna took a picture at an event in southern Jewell County, she couldn’t send it electronically as we now do. Instead, the film had to be delivered to Superior for processing. Generally, volunteers relayed the film but that was a slow process she often didn’t want to wait on. For example, when she had Memorial Day program photographs for the paper, she drove the film to Superior. I remember looking up from my desk one Memorial Day to find Fawna standing at the front counter. She hadn’t called ahead, she just knew from her years of newspaper experience that I would be at work and available to process her film.

With the arrival of the internet, Fawna began sending her stories and photographs electronically. This allowed us to become better acquainted as most weeks we exchanged one or more email messages about various topics of interest.

Thanks to electronic devices, even after she was hospitalized with COVID, she continued to submit her Panorama column. The previous issue of this newspaper contained her last column but not the last issue of Panorama, This week the last Panorama column is submitted by her family.

This newspaper continues to exist because of dedicated contributors like Fawna and more are needed.

Published elsewhere in this issue is a story by Kerma Crouse which reports on the creation of Jewell County’s townships.

Kerma is another of our loyal helpers and one of Fawna’s former grade school students.

Much of the information for the township story was gleaned from newspapers published in the 19th century.

Thankfully in the early years of Jewell County there were people who saw the longterm value of newspapers and made certain the papers were saved for later generations. With those papers we can get a glimpse of what was like for the early settlers.

This week we packaged copies of the papers printed in 2021 for binding into books and for shipment to a firm that will scan and convert the newspapers into a searchable digital database. But the work of preserving this newspaper doesn’t stop there. Each Wednesday we send digital copies to three places for preservation. Public notices placed in the newspaper are also posted on Kansas and Nebraska websites which are open to non-subscribers around the world.

But for the bound and scanned volumes to be useful for future generations, we must have content and that is why we need contributors. Shut away in an office, we often don’t know what is going on. We need people in every community to be our eyes and ears and reporting on their area.

If you are interested in becoming a community corespondent, please contact me. Contributions may be sent electronically to [email protected] or jcr@nckcn. If you are not comfortable with the modern electronic devices, we still accept U.S. mail, walk-ins and telephone calls.

Hopefully, you will join with me in resolving to fill each issue with local news. Doing so not only makes for interesting reading in the present, but a historical record for the future.

Gathering local news will be easier once we get the COVID pandemic behind us and are again free to gather and interact with one another.

This week I received a telephone call from a salesman. Pre-COVID, he would have personally visited me. But not now. In the fall, he, his wife and daughter all contracted COVID. He and his daughter had mild cases with no long term problems. His wife wasn’t so fortunate. She was hospitalized for two months in an ICU ward.

This week we have an employee who’s husband has been hospitalized for more than two weeks with a non-COVID issue. He needs to be transferred to a city hospital for specialized care but the hospital he needs to be in is full and not accepting new patients. So he remains in a country hospital.

Spoke to a newsprint salesman this week. The newsprint supply chain is as upset as is everything else. He said four mills are trying to supply this nation’s demand for newsprint. It now takes about 6 months from date of order to delivery and the mills are not accepting new customers.

We have a load scheduled for April 28. I would have liked to have delayed that until May or June but that isn’t possible. I was told if I asked for a delay it would be treated like a new order and not delivered until fall.

Tried to order 500 offset printing plates in late December, was told aluminum was in short supply and we got only 100.

An envelope order placed in October has yet to be filled.

Our Mankato office sewer line has been plugged and not functioning for more than a month. The plumber came when called but he hasn’t been able to solve the problem.

When I was youngster, Grandmother had what she called a Thunder Bucket. Every night the bucket was taken upstairs to serve the bedroom inhabitants. If I had access to the bucket, I would lend it to our Mankato office staff. But I don’t have the bucket. Perhaps, they can borrow one from the Jewell County Historical Society.

 

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