Rick Dove

Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen, The Locust Fork News-Journal Person of the Year

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

When a lone writer sits in front of the glow of a computer screen in the early morning hours when most of the world is asleep trying to figure out a way to articulate what matters, that is to say, to paint a picture of the forest while everybody else seems to be counting the trees, the easiest thing to do is Google all the year-end stories written by everybody else.

Every year about this time, the Associated Press has its top stories of the year dispatch, and this year they even included the Facebook vote. According to AP and the members of Facebook, the state of the economy and the inauguration of the first black president in U.S. history shared top honors.

But where would the mainstream media be without Michael Jackson? So his death placed third, followed by the so-called “Miracle on the Hudson,” the Swine flu epidemic and the monumental fight in Congress over trying to reform the American health care system.

Then there was also the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, the woes of the U.S. automobile industry, the upheavel in Iran, and last but not least, Sonya Sotomayor’s nomination and confirmation to join the nation’s highest court.

So who does Time magazine name as its 2009 person of the year? A nerdy guy most Americans have never heard of, Ben Bernanke, the boring head of the Federal Reserve. Why?

“He just happens to be the most powerful nerd on the planet,” Time proclaims. “He is the most important player guiding the world’s most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression…”

True, sort of, although the president should get some credit for that. All of which just goes to show that nothing matters more in capitalist America than money, and as far as the media goes, it is clearly not about readers anymore. People don’t matter. Advertisers do.

Of course no list of important stories from this year would be complete without mention of the sexual transgressions of golfer Tiger Woods, who draws more people and money than any politician or athlete ever. In spite of virtually dropping out of the game after being chased down and beaten with a golf club in Florida by his scorned wife, he was still named professional golf’s 2009 Player of the Year. Go figure.

On the local scene, and just to prove that some news outlets take seriously this idea that all news is local, when the scaled back staff at the Birmingham News is tasked with coming up with a year-end list, a fire at a Woodlawn church tops the list. Please…

Here at the global and local Locust Fork News-Journal, however, when we think of the most important stories and people of the year, there really is no contest. We have no doubt if given the opportunity to vote on it, the people of Alabama would agree with us on this at a rate of nearly 100 percent.

The University of Alabama’s first Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram is without a doubt the person of the year around here, followed closely by Saint Nick Saban, who we think should easily win Coach of the Year honors.

But of course that’s just football, and football is just a game. So there must be other stories that really matter and other people who deserve some kudos, right?

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Guest Column
by Pat Byington

There is a wonderful chapter in Aldo Leopold’s book “A Sand County Almanac” called “Good Oak,” a story about the life of a fallen oak tree. Looking down at the great big stump on his farm, Leopold counts 80 growth rings — 80 years of wood-making before the tree fell from a bolt of lightning. Mourning the loss of the tree, Leopold begins to use his saw to turn the tree into a cord of firewood.

For the next seven pages, Leopold reflects, with every bite of the saw’s blades into the rings of the tree, the Wisconsin natural history that the great tree experienced. Extinction of the passenger pigeon, dust bowls, floods, fires, the creation of Arbor Day and the local Forestry Commission. With each ring, each year of woodmaking, Leopold describes the tree’s “witness to history”: difficult, sometimes tragic times intermingled with periods of prosperity and growth.

Recently, during a walk at the Jacksonville State University Canyon Center near Little River Canyon, I saw a fallen oak. Touching the rings, I thought about Alabama’s history of woodmaking.

Counting back 80 rings, I touched 1930. It was likely that this tree, as a seedling, never witnessed a deer. It’s hard to imagine how low Alabama’s deer and wild turkey populations had dwindled. In fact, 80 years ago, deer and turkey were seen in only a handful of counties.

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