This might be considered a delayed Thanksgiving column.
I’ve been catching up on some reading after a busy couple of weeks. “Busy” being a relative term, of course. I needed to take some things over to our church in Decatur Tuesday noonish and ran into our old neighbor who was delivering lunch to her daughter, our church secretary.
“So, you’re a Door Dash driver now?” I asked, jokingly.
“How’d we ever have time to work?” she asked in response.
You get the picture of that digression.
As mentioned from time to time in this Saturday space, I’ve been following the saga of the Marion Record, a small daily newspaper in Kansas that experienced a constitution-shattering police raid in August in which their computers were seized. That was coupled with a search warrant of the owner’s home, a 96-year-old woman who died the next day almost certainly as a result of the stress. Those search warrants were subsequently rescinded and the computers returned, but the damage was done.
The aftermath in September and October was contentious city council meetings, the police chief that had instigated the search (and whose prior employment and dismissal from the Kansas City P.D. was at the center of the drama) resigned. The city council members on both sides of the issue sparred and parried. The mayor, who continued to defend of his chief until he didn’t, suffered a fair amount of public flogging in the council meetings.
I had logged into the the Record’s website after Nov. 7 to see that a new mayor was elected — the current mayor had apparently decided not to run again — and the vice-mayor lost her re-election bid. And … what a mess.
Several council members involved in the brouhaha lost their re-election bids. The Marion Record’s reporter was kicked out of the post-election party by the newly elected mayor. A citizen came to the next council meeting to accuse the mayor-elect and council members of holding a meeting at that post-election party that violated open-door laws.
“We did talk about city business,” (I paraphrase) the mayor-elect admitted. With several current council members present, did it constitute a quorum? Why did he expel a reporter who wanted to report the election news? To top it off, the Kansas City Star, about 150 miles away, is now covering the town’s council meetings.
So Eric Meyer, the son of the 96-year-old owner, who had returned to his hometown in retirement — after a career of teaching journalism at the University of Wisconsin and editing the Milwaukee Journal — to continue his parents’ small-town journalism legacy, wrote a Thanksgiving column titled “Being thankful for Marion’s mess.” I salute him. I need to organize a road trip that includes Kansas so I can meet him.
Be thankful for living in a community that is not a in a “Marion mess.” How much can you appreciate the local government legacy of Ted Ellis and John Whicker when you read these headlines in Marion, Kansas:
“(Marion City Council) Meeting becomes shouting match.”
“Administrator quits after tongue-lashing.”
“Officials accused of ‘conspiracy.’”
“Top city officials accused of lying.”
Indeed. Can you imagine the Indy Star sending a reporter to cover Bluffton’s latest scandal?
Normalcy is underappreciated; taken for granted; to be cherished. Give thanks.
miller@news-banner.com
