{"id":352,"date":"2013-02-16T14:12:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T19:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wordpress\/?p=352"},"modified":"2013-02-16T14:12:11","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T19:12:11","slug":"my-saturday-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/blog\/2013\/02\/16\/my-saturday-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"My Saturday Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in Saranac Lake, New York (pop. 5,700), where we’re fortunate enough to have a daily newspaper, The Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/a>. It is a slight newspaper, but then, not all that much happens here unless there’s a water main break on a minus 10 degree day. Stuff like that.<\/p>\n

Today, however, I read through the paper, briefly smiled at the full-page “Religious Directory” and then stopped at the Food page, which was a full page of “Lent Recipes.”<\/p>\n

Pardon me for being pissed off about that, but I am.<\/p>\n

This is not a particularly religious community.\u00a0 This is the Northeast, remember: that den of filthy Jews, Muslims, and assorted other atheists.\u00a0 Surely, there are a good number of church buildings; however, they exist because of large endowments from millionaires of days past, when the Adirondack region was the playground of the rich.\u00a0 The Presbyterian Church, which gives Church Street its name, has no more than 20 people present at its one Sunday mass; the Lutheran Church, only about 10; the Methodists, about 20.\u00a0 Only the Catholics and Seventh Day Adventists create a parking problem.\u00a0 Both of those, of course, preach a subtle message of eternal damnation for missing one mass, so they have a better shot at good attendance.\u00a0 However, even in these cases, there are no more than 200 people on Christmas or Easter.\u00a0 All of which means about 90% of the town stays home as a rule on Sundays.\u00a0 So why are there two pages (out of six) devoted to religion?<\/p>\n

I’m a teacher of 7 and 8 year old children, Grade 2.\u00a0 There are 20 in my class, and of those, only 2 have ever heard of Adam and Eve.\u00a0 A few think Jesus freed the slaves.\u00a0 My point is, religion is fading away here (though perhaps not in Texas.)\u00a0 We need our media to recognize this change and stop catering to a world that no longer exists.\u00a0 But what do we put in its place?<\/p>\n

Imagine this: rather than a “Religious Directory”, we have a page devoted to places in the area where people can volunteer their time and make a positive difference in the community.\u00a0 Imagine that: spending an hour or two every week, perhaps even Sunday, making this a better town.\u00a0 Well, it won’t happen, not with religion standing in the way.\u00a0 With it, we are divided.\u00a0 Without it, we are neighbors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[31,34,35],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-newspapers-and-religion","tag-religion","tag-saranac-lake"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6sK3t-5G","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}