A View of the Valley

by Linda Schwanke This issue is coming out on the 10th anniversary of my becoming editor of the Home News. When I accepted the job, stepping down from being publisher with hubby Jim, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what being editor of a community newspaper meant. I’d had years of experience supervising and covering for vacationing editors. I quickly learned that doing the job full time was and is an eye opener.  Among the unexpected parts of being editor was that I was trained to always dress up for work and wore dresses and heels almost all the time. That proved to be pretty impractical when I had to report on stories that were down by the river, in a flooding area or had to climb hills to get the picture I wanted. Minor, true, but something of a surprise and a clue that while I knew what I was doing, there was a learning curve I didn’t anticipate. I’ve gotten to know you, the people in my community, better than ever before. Your stories, hopes, dreams, often secrets that will never appear in this paper, the day and day out of life in our very special corner of the world. It’s rewarding in countless ways.  Writing this column, A View of the Valley, week after week, has been interesting, too. Like all my coverage of the Valley, it’s local. To some extent it’s also personal because unlike the news stories I write, I can take sides and express my opinion. Which is maybe why, I think, you all have so often complimented me and I really appreciate it. It’s often fun to write this column. With a nod to today being Groundhog Day here is a column I wrote in December, 2016, which I received a lot of positive comments on. It’s also one of my favorites of the 520 A View of the Valley’s I’ve written. “My sister Leah was lamenting the lack of chat with an old, old friend of our dad who she ran into at a ‘big city’ store. She was there picking up something for her daughter, he was there picking up something for himself. They didn’t know each other at first but got to talking, as strangers rarely do in cities, and ended up spending an hour together. Both Leah and Rollie Frank (who is apparently related to nearly everyone in Plain, which I didn’t know when he and dad were friends) are small town people who moved to bigger communities and find themselves missing the fact that people in cities don’t visit the way that people in villages do.  “I had to laugh when Leah told me about it. I had just spent the day chatting my way from one end of the Valley to another, doing my job, running errands and running into people I know. I think we out here in the hinterlands take it for granted that going anywhere will almost always take longer than it should because there is always someone to say hi to. Apparently, if you move into larger communities, you miss it. I told Leah to visit us here more and hopefully she will. If you see her on her next foray into the wilds of the Valley, be sure to stop and say hi to her. She’ll appreciate it. “In a completely separate conversation, a friend was telling me how happy she is that the holidays are here. She’s looking forward to seeing people and getting caught up on their lives as they shop and celebrate all the fun stuff going on here.  “There are threads of conversation that seem to continue, seemingly unrelated, from person to person, and town to town and that isn’t the only time that it’s happened recently. A lot of my friends have been talking winter or the lack of it.  “During the course of one such conversation, I remembered one thing I really like about winter - I have pockets! As daughter Gwen was putting on her down vest (it used to belong to her father, which he pointed out, but it is now always and forever hers) and stuffing the pockets full of keys, wallet, tissues, phone and more, I was reminded of the joys of wearing a winter coat – pockets. “Pockets are an amazing invention.  Instead of having to carry handfuls of this and that, we can jam stuff in our winter coat pockets, leaving our hands free grab more stuff or maybe throw a snowball or two. Even having a purse filled with stuff doesn’t take away from the fun of having a coat full of pockets. It means I can just grab keys, phone and wallet and go without lugging a purse with me. Yay! “It’s kind of a fun adventure to put on a winter coat for the first time each year. What did I leave in the pockets last year? I used to find doggy-do bags but sadly, since our Norwegian Elkhound Freya died this past summer, that won’t happen anymore. There are almost always tissues and those gloves I was looking for. On rare occasions I find money – that’s the best! “Going through mom’s pockets after she died, my sisters and I found tissues and rosaries. We found tissues in our grandma’s pockets, too. I helped a friend of mine go through her mom’s things after she died and we found tissue in her pockets, too. I’ve never found them in hubby Jim or son Bill’s pockets. Why is that? Guys blow their noses as often women. It’s a mystery. “I’m not sure why I find joy in winter coat pockets. There are, after all, pockets in nearly everything we wear the rest of the year: jeans, shorts, dresses, bathrobes, even pj’s. The internet is filled with pictures of people with kitties, puppies and critters of all shapes and sizes in their pockets of clothing of all sorts. Somehow, winter coat pockets are special and with snow in the forecast at last, we’ll all be hauling out our winter coats and finding lost treasures in our pockets. Hope you have a much fun with it as I do.” Thank you for your support for all these years, both when I was publisher and now as editor. I’m looking forward to many more. I hope you are, too. Stay in touch. My phone number is (608) 574-3159 – call or text me anytime. You can also email me at homenewseditor@newspubinc.com or write to me at the Home News, P.O. Box 39, Spring Green WI 53588.  Visit our website at homenewsrv.com Get in touch with Gwen for sports or features at homenewssports@newspubinc.com. If you need a display ad, Dave Pronold can be reached at homenewssales@newspubinc.com or by calling him on his cell at 588-4777. Display ads, or ads that are in boxes, are due by 1 p.m. on Wednesdays. Call the NewsPub central office at (608) 767-3655 for classifieds, subscriptions and all other information Monday through Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon, although afternoon hours can vary. Closed Fridays.