Science fiction author Michael Casher dusts the cobwebs off previously unused sections of his brain.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

100% Rag

A year ago I wrote a letter to The Centre Daily Times, which is the only newspaper serving my area. I wasn't asking them for a review of my science fiction novels because I know they don't review self-published books. I was just making them aware of my authorship and Internet presence. There aren't many authors of any kind in my neighborhood and probably not a whole lot of authors in this area have written six science fiction thrillers. But I never even heard from The Centre Daily Times regarding my letter.

If I had been a former housewife (and especially a happily divorced woman writing her first POD book) or a member of Penn State's GLBT "community" or a physically-challenged and perhaps transgendered first-time author, I would have recieved a full-page splash in the CDT local section, regardless of what I wrote about or how it got published.

And this is not intended to disparage these minorities because I support everyone's own lifestyle choices as their personal right to their own lives, whether or not their choices coincide with mine. This is what freedom is all about. What I'm suggesting is that, because I was a 54-year-old divorced white man from Snow Shoe, I was immediately on their "we couldn't care less list".

No wonder The Centre Daily Times didn't cover the Grand Reunion 2000 of Snow Shoe High School, a huge and monumental event in the history of the entire Mountaintop Region of Centre County. A once-in-a-lifetime event that they were notified about by the Grand Reunion 2000 Committee. Maybe it's Snow Shoe the CDT doesn't like, who can say? If it's just plain snobbery, then it's catching, because WTAJ-TV Channel 10 from Altoona didn't want to cover it either. Neither did WJAC-TV Channel 6 from Johnstown. I should know. I was on the Grand Reunion 2000 Committee and I called those television stations myself.

Oh, well, I digress. This posting is really about The Centre Daily Times. As it were, the editor I wrote to didn't even have the common decency to respond. No wonder I don't subscribe to The Centre Daily Times. It should be called The Happy Valley Times or else The Penn State Times.

But that's all water under the bridge now. I just wanted to post a little history here for that day when the great and powerful Centre Daily Times asks me for an interview and I flatly decline.

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