Smokey Diamond was hard at work by the time I strolled into the offices of Stevieslaw this morning. As usual, she had settled on the only patch of sunshine in our basement rooms as a place to compose her stories. Smokey has decided to write a piece on the story of the year, on the last day of the year. She hopes to continue doing this for years to come. I could tell she was hard at it, as the floor was littered with what seemed like hundreds of pages of old newsprint and the room smelled of herring chips—her favorite working snack.
“There are dozens of the usual stories,” she mumbled “The wars, the terrorist attacks, the politicians, and the disasters. If you interchange the names—Iraq for Afghanistan, Isis for Al Qaeda, the stories all sound alike.”
“How about the mid-term elections,” I suggested. “It’s not often people vote for the folks that actively hate them.” “More and more,” she replied. “Also, our readership is a bit larger than the number of people who voted this year.”
“I thought about choosing the recent CDT piece in which they described the several hundred law suits that surround the Sandusky mess,” she opined. “But that’s really most effective as a sleep aid.” “Yes,” I added, “and after reading that piece I found it hard to believe that the bad guy is already in jail.”
There’s always Penn State football,” I said and we both laughed.
In the end, Smokey went with a “human” interest story. She felt that in a world where most social discourse is now prefaced with “you’re a moron,” a feel good story was just what the doctor ordered.
So without further ado, Smokey’s story of the year is “Cat sold in mattress is home,” by Steven DuBois of the Associated Press. The story, which she found in the CDT of December 30th, describes the travails of Camo the Oregon cat who went missing for ten days after the mattress and box spring were sold with him in it. Strangers and friends helped find the cat, who was lured home by sardines in oil and the scent of familiar clothing.
We should all be so lucky in finding our way home.