I THINK IT WAS Garfield who said, “Vacation is a state of mind.” Or maybe it was Ziggy. Either way, it’s demonstrably true: Vacation is what happens when you abandon the things that dominate your life. When you’re a journalist, that means getting away from the news. Last August I took a vacation and went to Maine. Not the Bushie, coastal part, but the western mountains, which have all the glamour of Canada. The town I stayed in, Byron, has a population of 115. I loved the hills and the sound of water rushing through the canyon next to my cabin. I loved the fact that my cell phone didn’t work. But more than anything else, I loved Maine’s newsless newspapers. In a moment of weakness one afternoon I drove a couple towns over to pick up a copy of the local paper, the Rumford Falls Times. It’s a gem. A large headline on the front page proclaims, “Mexico taking steps to improve the greenery in the downtown.” Page 2 leads with the story “Spaghetti supper benefit for Ben Ellis on August 18.” Ellis, a 17-year-old kid from Mexico, Maine, had been a promising Golden Gloves boxer until he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May. As of August, it didn’t look good for him. In the middle of the story, the reporter writes, “I realize that over the past several months, there have been a lot of benefits for people that really need our help, but I’m asking you to please join us one more time and help us help the Ellis family through the hardest time in their life.” Take that, Dave Westin. The op-ed page carries a column by Dot Sanchas, who gives a recipe for Raspberry Rice Elegance. One letter to the editor helpfully suggests, apropos of nothing, that “rap music keeps the deer out of the garden”; in another, a mother thanks her son’s Little League coach for being such a good role model. The police blotter has a surprisingly long list of crimes. “Someone pulled out several flowers from the garden boxes along Bangor Savings Bank on Congress Street Sunday,” one report reads. Another says: “A man was spotted by police attempting to throw a pair of sneakers over a telephone wire. . . . The man was also holding a beer bottle and was issued a summons for drinking alcohol in public.” My favorite is the account of the “Phantom doorknob wiggler on Waldo Street.” “A woman on Waldo Street reported hearing someone wiggle the doorknob to her residence August 2. A boot mark was also noticed at the bottom of the door that the woman said had not been there earlier.” Most of the reports conclude by saying that “Officer Doug Maifeld is investigating.” I take a lot of comfort in my August 8 edition of the Rumford Falls Times because there’s absolutely no news in it. No George W. Bush, no Congress, not even a stray reference to the Red Sox. I’ve read every inch of type at least twice; I come back to some of the stories over and over again. I wonder what became of poor Ben Ellis, and how many people showed up to his spaghetti benefit. Tonight I will sit down to Thanksgiving dinner in New Jersey with my family. Like a lot of families, we’ll have an empty chair this year. The holiday will feel like anything but a vacation, since the news sits heavily with us these days. I like to imagine that the Falls Times never once mentioned what happened last September. Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
