The New York Times

Back when B and I first became engaged, I thought it would be nice if our wedding announcement made it in The New York Times. I didn't realize what a big deal it was to get into The New York Times Weddings/Celebrations section. Where I'm from, the paper is so desperate to fill their pages with something resembling real news they practically pay residents to get married and file a report about it.* I had no idea the high income and family name standards required to earn a mention in The New York Times, but, probably needless to say, we didn't actually get in.

However, my tiny tourist town in Washington did make it in The New York Times!

So you're probably all thinking, "Ah, how nice! The New York Times must be doing a series on nice places to travel within the United States. Casey often also tells me that her town is situated on the third deepest lake in the nation - now that surely makes for an interesting article!" No no, it's actually better than that! The City of Chelan was profiled in The New York Times because we are one of a few cities around the nation that still has wooden water pipes supplying water to our residents!

I actually had no idea that we still had wooden water pipes running through our town! The reporter came out a few weeks ago and spoke extensively with my mother's boss Dwayne, who is the man in the picture above standing with the pipes. The article was published on Sunday, and I spent a large part of that morning running around like a crazy person looking to buy five copies of The New York Times. (Hint: it turns out they sell them at the newstand. Yeah.)

Actually, the section about our pipes in Chelan is pretty small, and is really just used to introduce and conclude the article. The meat of the article is really about how infrastructure in America is aging rapidly and the funds to replace old pipes and the like must come from somewhere but taxpayers can never agree to tax hikes for these sorts of things. I mostly just skimmed that part... although as with most things tax-related I noticed that the comments were filled with nasty attacks on both political parties and both liberals and conservatives were being blamed for this problem and accused of having no brains. Of course.

Anyway, it's pretty exciting that my mother's boss was in a half-page color photograph and quoted in The New York Times! Who says that small towns don't generate any real news or excitement? Clearly ours does!

Oh, and here's the link to the article if you, you know, actually want to read it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/us/18water.html?_r=2&hp



*This is an exaggeration.