Jeff Genung

• My flow of front page news typically slows down during this week every year as the threat of our Progress deadline looms for the reporting staff (5 p.m. Friday, in case you’re reading this, kids). But today, an accident and a fire took over the front page. Who says nothing ever happens around here?

• Check out more of Brian Golden’s awesome photos of that medical rescue helicopter on our Facebook page today.

• Speaking of Facebook, I got word today of a community page set up to benefit Kurt Beyer Pool, whose closure has been such a hot topic of late. Visit the page here. And stay tuned … I know that at least one local charitable foundation has stepped up to the plate (or the diving board) to help the cause. We’ll have a story on that soon, too.

Jeff Genung

• No city pool this summer? Well you’d think … wait a minute, I already did that one. And so did every Tom, Dick and Harry on ‘30 Seconds.’ Next!

• As if Progress time at The Evening Sun weren’t bad enough (see 347 previous references), we’ve done lost our photographer – at least temporarily. Well, we know where he is – Frank’s at home recuperating from a minor procedure. All will be well, but we’re without his trusty trigger finger for about two weeks. Luckily, the reporters know how to point and shoot. Still, here’s wishing you a speedy recovery, Chico!

• It’s Primary Day in New Hampshire! I try as much as possible to leave my personal politics out of the newspaper (I’ve been “outed” as a Democrat, Republican, and Nazi over the years — but no Green Party, yet), I must say I breathe a little sigh of relief now that Michelle Bachmann (and by extension, her Ghost of Elections Past doppleganger Sarah Palin) is out of the race. Phew! Missed it by thatmuch.

• On to more important matters, I have to say I’m a little unhealthily obsessed with “Downton Abbey,” which began its second season on PBS Sunday night. I came across it rather serendipitously on Netflix the day after Christmas, and binged on season one for seven hours. If you’re into the whole period drama thing, this one’s for you.

• Got a great call this afternoon from a reader who preferred to remain anonymous, saying he had a great story tip for us. And you know what? He did! Sometimes I cringe when I hear those words, as the caller/writer usually follows it with an accusatory tone, or a “story” which doesn’t qualify as such. Sure, not all tips pan out, but for those that do — we’re extremely grateful. And always willing to listen! Soooo much more credence is given to those who contact us directly rather than relying on the aforementioned ‘30 Seconds.’ Although I have to say, needle in a haystack wise, we have garnered a few choice tidbits from that as well over the years.

Jeff Genung

• I know if March comes in like a lamb, it goes out like a lion. But what about January? Didn’t even need a jacket today.

• And so we begin the annual spate of columns, blogs and tweets bemoaning our upcoming Progress edition. I’ll try to lay off it as much as possible, knowing you’ll be digesting a lot of it from my trusty reporting staff. They’re entering the home stretch, with a story deadline of next Friday. And that’s when my fun begins. Saturday, actually, and for the next 14 or so grueling days. I’m really excited to see what this year’s Progress Chenango (coming to a newsstand near you Jan. 23-27) will bring, but like so many things, it will feel sooo good when it’s over.

• See that ad in the upper right corner for a Front Desk Receptionist? That’s a job opening right here at The Evening Sun (and a little bit of the Pennysaver). The ad does a pretty good job spelling out the requirements, but what it doesn’t tell you is that my dear, departing (perhaps ‘retiring’ is a better word) Jan Rowe is completely and utterly irreplaceable. So yeah, Candidate X, good luck with that.

• No Kurt Beyer pool? Again this summer? While I can’t say I’ve ever (or would ever) swim in a community pool, I do recognize what a tremendous loss this is for the city’s kids – and many of their parents. With all the things we can seem to find funding for, it seems like pretty shoddy planning on the part of the city that they haven’t found (or saved) any money to fix it. The pool wasn’t hit by a meteor; it deteriorated over time – time that city officials should have been planning to fund its maintenance and repair. Many have chimed in about private enterprise stepping up to the plate like they did with the downtown parks – and that may well happen – but pretty soon we’ll consider nothing part of the city’s proprietary infrastructure. I refuse to help advertise a bake sale to help pay for repaving Mitchell Street.

• If you’re not, you should be following me on Twitter … @evesunjeff. It’s 2012 people; get with the times.

Jeff Genung

• Must be that time of year … no, not Christmas (that’s been going on since October). It’s Progress time! We here at The Evening Sun are getting ready for our annual ‘yearbook’ business review that comes out over five days during the last week in January. It’s a gargantuan undertaking (80 pages!) for the editorial and advertising staffs, so I just gave my trusty reporters their story assignments this afternoon. Given that two out of my four reporters have never done this before (and both sales people are brand new, too!), it should be an interesting year. Prediction: My hair will be entirely white by Jan. 27. Great Caesar’s Ghost, indeed.

• Got your letters to Santa in? No? Well it’s too late; the deadline was Friday. Santa has made his list, and checked it twice. Replies from the North Pole will go out to everyone who wrote in later this week; the letters themselves will be published in our ‘Holiday Big Book’ special section this Friday.

• Saw a spectacular Christmas show at the Arts Council Saturday … the violin madness that is Barrage. I know, I know … if you think string instruments, you think stuffy, tuxedoed snoozefest. Anything but that with Barrage – never seen so much energy on that stage! And the Christmas selections they played would get even the Grinchiest of Grinches into the spirit of the holidays. Bravo!

Jeff Genung

• And it’s December. NOW you can put up the Christmas decorations, turn on the lights and play the carols. Anything prior to this was premature holidaculation.

• Good timing, because tonight’s the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Norwich, 6:30 p.m. Always nice to hear the Perry Browne kids sing their little hearts out.

• Speaking of singing (and piano-ing), congratulations to NHS musicians Dillan Smith and Jason Handy, who are headed to NYSSMA’s winter conference this weekend. Good luck!

• So the DEC has extended the comment period on proposed gas drilling regulations, again. Again? I’m all for having your ducks in a row, but it seems like there’s been more than enough time allotted – and people on both sides of the issue have certainly had ample time to get their two cents in. Sounds like typical New York State bureaucracy to me. Let’s set a deadline and stick to it for a change.

• The ‘30 Seconds’ crew has been consumed lately with trying to figure out who’s who. As in how to differentiate among the “Man from Norwich,” “Woman from Sherburne” and “Man from Greene” contingents, or how many posters are changing their towns and sexes at will in order to agree with their own messages, or stir their own controversies. Let me clue you in on a little secret, dear readers: I don’t really care! “30 Seconds” is probably the least of our priorities here at The Evening Sun. While it’s true that our website does give the IP addresses of ‘30 Seconds’ posters, we rarely pay attention to it. Frankly, if your idea of fun is to post all day under multiple towns and sexes, have at it! The same rules apply – no libel, no profanity, no naming names, no bashing local businesses, etc. The same goes for the “voting” system – it’s all fun and games. Or, as my friend William Shakespeare put it, “It is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Jeff Genung

• Happy Last Day of November! Twenty-five more days of Christmas shopping to go … or, rather, twenty-four to think about doing it, regret not having done it and planning to do it again, and one to actually get it done. In my case, Dec. 24.

• Kudos to our own Mike McCormack on his first year organizing our “Parade of Lights” through downtown Norwich Saturday … and thank you to all the many generous businesses, individuals and community organizations who helped us pull it off! (There’s a proper thank you ad in tomorrow’s paper).

• I’d be remiss in not thanking my own staff here – Brian Golden, Julian Kappel and Shawn Magrath – for pulling off yet another spectacular “Delivering Christmas” float for The Evening Sun. No matter who’s on board, I’m always fearful as parade day approaches that we’ll end up embarrassing ourselves publicly. And yet, somehow, through the miracles of Bacardi and duct tape, we always manage to make a good showing. It’s a great team-building exercise, to be sure – I’m forever amazed at what we manage to do when we set our minds to it. Good job, boys.

• Of course it helped that this was also the first year ever in which we were able to build said float outside with nary a jacket, scarf, hat or gloves on. Last year, frostbite; this year, sweat. Thanks, global warming!

• Even though it’s not really beginning to look a lot like Christmas, yet, the City of Norwich and the Business Improvement District will host their annual tree lighting ceremony at 6:30 Thursday night in West Park. Come down to see the Perry Browne kids sing Christmas carols and get into the holiday spirit!

• Speaking of … The Evening Sun is partnering with The North Pole once again to make sure that Santa has the chance to hear from every child in Chenango County. Santa Claus has graciously agreed to allow The Evening Sun to publish some of the letters he receives from local children this year, which we’ll do on Friday, Dec. 16. In order to be published, Letters to Santa must be received no later than Monday, Dec. 12. Letters can be mailed to Santa in care of The Evening Sun, PO Box 151, Norwich NY 13815. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope, and Santa will send a personalized reply to each child! Don’t waste a stamp – Santa’s online at The Evening Sun, too! Letters can be e-mailed to santa@evesun.com.

Jeff Genung

• Looking forward to the first show of the Art Council’s 2011-12 season tonight, the Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats. Haven’t seen something like that on the local stage in a long, long time. Looks like a great show!

• While Chobani seems to get all the glory, Frontier in Sherburne (and Norwich) is another company that’s growing by leaps and bounds. Although its corporate parentage lies outside Chenango County, it’s still a company with deep local roots and a long history. My late mother, for instance, had her first job as a switchboard operator in the 1950s for the old C&U Telephone Company, one of Frontier’s many forebears. While the company has seen a fluctuation in its local workforce over the years, they’re certainly on an upswing. Congratulations to Jim Currie (and a shoutout to my old Leadership Chenango classmate) and crew on the continued good news.

• A Sherburne-Earlville graduate is the mayor of Ithaca! And he’s only 24. Pretty impressive.

• Check out tomorrow’s Evening Sun for two pages of advertisements from local businesses and readers saluting Veterans Day. And speaking of, be sure, if you’re off work tomorrow (which most of the world seems to be except me), to head down to the parks in downtown Norwich at 11 a.m. for the annual Veterans Day parade and ceremony.

Jeff Genung

• The fog has lifted in The Evening Sun newsroom … Election 2011 is finally over. It’s quite a process for the reporters, as I’ve mentioned before, tracking down candidates (some of whom, amazingly, don’t want to be interviewed) and getting quotes for our myriad preview stories. When those weeks of hunting and chasing and writing are over, it’s Election Day, and much of the reporters’ hard work is over.

• And then it’s Election Night. Back in the day, Election Night was an all hands on deck news event, with each reporter positioned strategically throughout the county as the results slowly trickled in. Before the advent of the Digital Age, the results were hand-written (usually by Garth Grey) on a giant toteboard in the supervisors’ chambers at the county office building. If you wanted to know who won what, that’s where you had to be. And people came. Not just reporters, but the politicians, their friends and families. And busybodies. Lots of busybodies. I learned everything I know about local politics during Election Night side chatter in that board room. And there used to be actual campaign headquarters for each party – and boozy get-togethers at the Ontario or other local bars. Sure, we’d stay up until the wee hours of the morning tabulating results and getting punch-drunk (Great Googly-Moogly!), but there was something electric about Election Night. It was an Event.

• Now, of course, we’re much more civilized. The Board of Elections has long since gone digital, delivering results as they come in via their website (although last night was realllly slow). All one needs to do is log on, from the comfort of their own home. I still come in to the office, just to make it at least feel like I’m working. The reporters still work – but we communicate via text message and they call their respective candidates (also usually alone, at home) via cellphone. Far more efficient, but the romance is gone.

Jeff Genung

• Gotta leave work early today so I can get to my second gig as a waiter up at the Canasawacta Country Club. OK, so my “second gig” is only once a year – but still it’s pretty important. For the past I don’t even know how many years, I’ve been proud to serve as one of Donna Wood-Craig’s “celebrity waiters” at the annual dinner for Hospice and Palliative Care of Chenango County. It’s an easy gig, really (Tim won’t let us handle the actual dinner plates), but we work hard for our tips – all handed back over to Hospice, of course. Always a good time, even if I do end up with “She Works Hard for the Money” going through my head all night.

• Election season is upon us in full force, and my reporters have been busy tracking down town board, clerk and highway superintendent candidates in the hinterlands of Chenango County – not an easy task, I assure you. Wrong phone numbers, no phone number at all, works night shift, no voicemail, unreturned calls – I’ve heard the moans and groans from my staff repeatedly over the past couple weeks. Makes you wonder – if a candidate for public office is this inaccessible to the news media offering to promote their campaign, how reachable will they be to their constituents?

• The folks at the SPCA (Sue Reymers, to be exact) contacted me recently about resurrecting the “Pet of the Week” feature in The Evening Sun – pictures of a dog and cat available for adoption at the Norwich shelter. It has been a while since we did that on a regular basis, so I jumped at the offer – especially since I know that back when we did do it, the adoption rate was 100 percent on the animals we featured. So if you’re looking for a furry friend, check out today’s Page 12. There’ll be more each week, on varying days.

Jeff Genung

• Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, I seem to have survived another round of our “Ghastly Ghost Stories” contest relatively unscathed. We had a healthy (numerically, not mentally) amount of entries for this year’s Halloween-inspired writing contest, and you’ll get to read the best of the best in a special section in Thursday’s Evening Sun called “The Pumpkin Vine.” In addition to the spine-tingling tales from readers both young and old, you’ll also find a complete guide to this weekend’s Norwich Pumpkin Festival.

• Which, of course, means it will rain on Saturday.

• Guernsey’s wondering what to do with an unexpected $600,000 bequest – bet you a lot of non-profits in town are jealous of that quandary! Kindles for everyone? Umm, probably not.

• Today marked the beginning of a new monthly feature – an article on Chenango’s Civil War past written by a member of the recently-formed Chenango County Civil War Commemoration Project Team. This month’s feature is by Nancy Bromley of the Greene Historical Society, which you can read here. Julian and I met with Nancy and Oxford’s Vicky House a few weeks ago to discuss their ideas for this series (which will go on until 2015), and let me tell you, this group really has its act together. I know how much my Evening Sun readers love stories about local history, so this series should be a real winner.

• I loathe those Charmin commercials in which the curiously red cartoon bears have issues with toilet paper stuck to their behinds. I’m usually not easily offended, but really? That’s neither here nor there, of course, but I’d just like to state it for the record.

• In completely unrelated news, I assure you, I just got a brand new washer and dryer from our friends at S&S Appliances in Norwich. Good quality, good service – stimulating the local economy, yes; patronizing a loyal newspaper advertiser, always.