Opinion

Over the last year or two, we have slowly but surely moved into a new era, an era of diminished funding and reduced services. If folks want a particular service, they increasingly have to “pay” for it, either with money or by volunteering.

Want an assistant museum director? Help pay for part of his salary. The Plumas County Museum Association has done just that. Want to keep libraries open and stocked with current titles? The Friends of the Library has done just that. Numerous civic groups continue to donate to our schools to keep sports, music and art programs alive.

Humbling as it was, I consider myself very fortunate to have had the experience of spending nine days in Plumas District Hospital in late August and early September, preceded by three consecutive visits to PDH’s emergency room.

Now, before you write me off as a complete whacko, wondering who in their right mind would consider it special to spend any amount of time in a hospital, I can explain. Oh, I’m also a newly ordained poster-child for following the doctor’s orders, but we’ll get to that.

Ghosts, goblins and other seasonal decorations are popping up around Plumas County, a sure sign that we’re preparing for Halloween. Thanks to our chambers and other groups, trick-or-treating has become a relatively safe affair for our kids. But a few words of caution still seem appropriate.

An estimated 40 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 could hit the trick-or-treat trails this Halloween, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The nation’s emergency physicians want all of them to enjoy holiday traditions safely and not experience any Halloween horrors that would include spending time in the emergency department.

The Plumas County Visitors Bureau has once again proved its worth, this time with a feature about the county’s fall foliage on the front page of the Sacramento Bee’s Sunday Living Here section. The coverage included a huge color picture and two smaller color pictures, and another color picture and map on a jump page. The Bee also included the story in its electronic daily news update.

You can’t buy that kind of exposure. What do we mean by that? The most powerful real estate in a newspaper is its front page, followed by the front page of each subsequent section. With a few (misguided, in our opinion) exceptions, you can’t buy advertising on a front page. Inclusion in news coverage, as opposed to advertising, tells the reader that the editorial staff found the information newsworthy; placement on the front page tells the reader it’s the most newsworthy information in the whole section.