Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you enjoyed last week’s Year in Review feature. 

It seems like every newspaper I’ve ever worked for has done some sort of variation on that story for its last edition of the year. In part, that’s because the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s are traditionally slow ones in the news business. Lots of people take time off for the holidays, including public employees, who are typically our most important sources to interview for news stories. So these Year in Review stories, in that sense, are an easy way to fill space during a slow news week.

But they also serve a greater purpose: They provide an opportunity to reflect on the past year through the lens of the news. Every time I work on one of these annual news summaries, I’m surprised by some of the stories that have faded from my memory in the press of day-to-day events.

Did you remember we had a junior high teacher who directed her students to investigate a “funny number” that parents did not find the least bit amusing? I didn’t, until I started thumbing through all of last year’s back issues of the Blue Mountain Eagle. 

Other half-remembered stories that were brought vividly to mind as my reporters and I were putting together our Year in Review included the expungement of Kim Kimball’s conviction for stealing more than $70,000 from the Prairie City School District, a troubling shortage of volunteer firefighters, the fire that gutted a building in downtown John Day, the passing of Ruth Harris, the marble hunting craze that swept Grant County, the Grant Union/Prairie City softball team’s state title win, the plea deal in the Brogan McKrola sex crimes case, the retrial set for a sex abuser who was imprisoned in part on the basis of non-unanimous jury convictions, a rash of wolf depredations, the county’s first tornado in more than a century and, of course, the steady drumbeat of stories chronicling a tumultuous year for John Day government culminating in the impending mayoral recall election.

In case you missed it, last week’s paper also included stories about the return of a community Christmas dinner, a pair of award-winning Prairie City bull breeders, the county’s most recent wolf depredations and a signature victory by the Grant Union boys basketball team.

Coming up in this week’s paper, we’ll have two more year-end features you won’t want to miss: the Year in Sports and our Photos of the Year. We hope you enjoy them.

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If you’ve downloaded the latest version of the Blue Mountain Eagle app, you may have noticed a few glitches: Some parts of the app have been displaying outdated stories. We think we have the problem fixed now (thanks to alert reader Greg Whipple for pointing it out!), so the app should be populating with current stories now. And if you prefer a more traditional newspaper experience on your phone, just swipe left to read our e-Edition.

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If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment to register your subscription for digital access to the Blue Mountain Eagle. Call 800-781-3214 to talk to one of our customer service staff, who will be happy to walk you through the process. It’s easy, takes just a few moments to get set up and allows you to take advantage of our e-edition, app and website delivery along with your print subscription.

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As always, if you have comments or questions about the Eagle, or want to pass along a story idea, send me an email at this address: editor@bmeagle.com.

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Finally, if you’d like to help support our independent local journalism, please consider subscribing to the newspaper. And if you’re already a subscriber, please accept our heartfelt thanks — we can’t do this work without you!

— Bennett Hall, Editor