Who Says Small Town Life Has to Be Dull?
Slightly interesting (?) matter here.
There's a man in town who for at least the last couple years has been writing hateful letters to the editor of the local weekly about one person and another by name. A lot of people in town are starting to consider him downright unbalanced, as do I. He responded to one of my political letters that had nothing to do with him by a jolly little piece he titled "SCREAMING HYENAS OF SOCIALISM!" Plus a lot of other incredibly ugly things, down to and including describing me as "little". Well, I am but not the way he meant it.
He hurt so many people's feelings that I finally sent a letter advising others to follow my example of checking signatures before reading letters in order to know which ones to avoid - the ones from the (unnamed) 'town bully' who falsely imagines himself a satirist. After all, I said, there's no sharper stick you can poke in his eye.
Well, it's a miracle nobody's sued him or the paper or come to blows, it's been that bad. I don't get my feelings hurt as they do because I don't give a tinker's damn what he says about me. One guy, however, wrote in complaining that his wife had dissolved in tears. So it's not a question of if but when the lid blows somewhere.
Today I accidentally broke my promise, though, by not checking before I read what looked like an ad framed as a Western Union telegram. By the time I guessed who must've written it, I'd already gone too far to stop. Not that I'll let anyone here know I read it, especially not him.
So here for your amusement is the short text involved. No, he doesn't dare use my name anymore but he saves his special 'socialist hyena' tag just for me so everyone knows who he means. I guess after years of vomiting bile he didn't appreciate being referred to sideways as a town bully who should be ignored!
The text of his faux-telegram:
"PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - URGENT - SITED (sic) IN (name of town) VICINITY - BULLIED, JACKASS KICKED, SKUNKBIT SOCIALIST HYENA! SERIOUSLY PISSED; POSSIBLE CAUSE - RECENT ELECTION RESULTS! BE ON THE LOOKOUT - DANGEROUS AND MEAN. CAN BE OBSERVED CONTINUOUSLY SPITTING INTO THE WIND! IF SPOTTED, APPROACH WITH CAUTION! SIGNED, PUBLIC SERVANT / HIS NAME." (paid advertisement)
So I guess the editor/publisher of the paper finally refused to print a letter, and he's infamous for printing ANYTHING. Not that he should've taken the ad either, but that's beside the point. Nothing good will ever come of letting that nut run roughshod over half the town. If I had Irish relatives anywhere around, Mr. Bully Nut would've been taken behind the woodshed long ago. The editor/publisher has already said he's been threatened with arson.
I think I'll resist writing any more letters for a few weeks to let this play itself out absent my participation. At worst in a month or so I might write a little piece about teabagger mentality, backing it up with quotes from scientific journals, and noting that one of their most notable characteristics is poor spelling, such as using 'sited' (a non-word btw) instead of 'sighted'. If I ended with the expression "Morans!" they wouldn't catch the full meaning. But they would know to whom I referred, and so would he.
= new reply since forum marked as read
- It's not the country, it's the people in the country......
~Sherlock Holmes, in "The Copper Beeches"
My wife and her mom and aunts love to gossip, and between that, Facebook, and a scanner they've got everyone in this town pegged. My mother-in-law defends herself by saying that they don't say anything that isn't true. 
It sounds like you've got gossip being played out in your local paper.
I'm not originally from a small town. I moved here when I met my wife four years ago as this is her home town. It sometimes seems like there are two kinds of people living here: those who do stuff and those who talk about those who do stuff. My mother-in-law, for example, would never do anything to get herself gossiped about but will talk endlessly about what everyone else is doing.
makes my small town nutcase look almost sane in comparison!
Where I live the weekly news publication covers a group of towns (The Hilltowns) in Western Mass.
There's been a longtime fight between one lady and a guy (via letters) that gets somewhat weird, but not as crazy as yours.
It's always either politics or religion with these two. Sometimes both at the same time.
Also, there's another town where a group of witches had started a small business some years ago that's taken off and become quite a booming enterprise.
http://www.beltanehill.com/
Some residents embrace the witch culture
Some don't, but they're not real vocal about it in public for fear that the witches will retaliate in some way (by putting spells on them? turning them into toads? who knows...)
anyway, yeah, living in a small town (about 1300 in mine) definitely isn't boring, and people find out a lot about each other through the grapevine that is the Town Dump. Wednesdays and Saturdays are social events here. 
But that's just me. We could have a friendly English Majors squabble about it over a nice cuppa tea someday if you'd like. 
Though I suspect you have better things to do.
I like your idea about the bulletin board. There's one at the tiny little food market in town. Only everyone's probably already seen it since the paper does sell like hotcakes due to the excesses on the letters page. Didja know that LTE's are the most read section of any newspaper, even more so than sports?
Drafting and Graphic Design, but because I changed majors several times (as well as schools), I had to take the basic college English class at least three times! I could do 5-paragraph themes in my sleep 
I just have a renewed love for etymology, ever since that site came online 
Didn't know that about newspapers, but it makes sense. It's what I usually look for in those offices where the newspaper is spread out in the break room (invariably, I have to dig for it because the sports and business sections are usually what's left on top of the pile.)
and I have been known to pick up small town papers just to see if there was anything interesting.
Kind of off-topic, but related. You know how every now and then we read of "free/low-cost wifi for all" either through local municipalities or even from the federal government? Well, I've had this idea in my head, developed over the years ever since I learned about telecommuting (always for others; never for me.) That if we ever did have such access to broadband/wifi the way other parts of the world do, that we just might see a revitalization of small towns. That's dependent, too, on businesses getting over their micromanaging fears and letting their office workers be virtual.
Such an outcome could see the strength of the teabaggers "watered down" in their own backyards 
Did I do that? Most of the time I'm a world-class proofreader, especially of my own work; but sometimes - such as when I've been w/o running water for almost 3 weeks - stress and exhaustion get the better of me. Rest assured I actually DO know the difference, so hold your horses, mate; I'll fix that in a minute.
Everyone flubs now and then, even copy editors.
You would've loved the time I bragged on my dearest female acquaintance, calling her the world's best fiend. What a difference that little 'r' makes. Fortunately she had a sense of humor. Unless we're in Europe, where we'd spell that 'humour'.
In Bully Nut's first diatribe against me, I was a 'SCREAMING HYENA OF SOCIALISM". Now I'm a 'jackass kicked, skunkbit socialist".
Have I moved up or down in the world?
