The storms that ripped through Chatham-Kent last week brought out the best in our readers and online followers.
Thanks to friends of the Voice we had photos galore on our Facebook and web pages that evening. We had the first local news video on the big blow and follow up videos courtesy of Harvey McKay and Nate McPherson.
For their outstanding efforts, they’ve earned Chatham Voice T-Shirts for making the World Wide Web a more interesting place.
The heat wave that preceded the storm had the potential to send people over the edge, but for the most part, Chathamites were wilted, but not warlike. When an aging van suffered the vehicular version of heat stroke on Grand Ave., not one, not two but three motorists pulled up to help him within a couple of minutes. It was nice to see.
It was scary-movie-like interesting to watch water along the shorelines of Lake Erie and St. Clair turn a putrid green during the heat-inspired algae bloom. It was even more surprising to see people swimming in the potentially toxic soup the day before officials decided to close the beaches.
Call me old-fashioned, but useful green liquids fall into two categories – draft beer on St. Patrick’s Day or pea soup, neither of which I’d swim in.
Switching gears, when I heard that one of the jurors in the George Zimmerman murder trial signed a deal with a literary agent after the verdict, it briefly made me nauseous. The idea of enriching yourself unfairly through this type of public service isn’t something we allow in Canada.
That’s what we have a Senate for.
One of the most heart-warming things about The Voice is the number of stories people are asking us to tell. Keep it coming. We’ll get to as many as we can and we always appreciate your faith in us.
• Jim Blake is the general manager of The Chatham Voice. Contact the writer at jim@chathamvoice.com.
