I’m working out of Diamond’s offices this week — publishing deadlines. I happened to walk through the lobby area yesterday, and what did I find?
![Christmas tree in Diamond's lobby, January 2021](http://www.allyngibson.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/20210104_134306-1200x1200.jpg)
A Christmas tree.
Even though there’s only a small staff — less than twenty most days — on site, even though almost no one would see it, they still put up a Christmas tree.
It was gone today.
Alas.
It might be hard to tell, but there’s a large passenger jet in the upper right quadrant of the photo below. Looks a bit like a smudge.
![Airplane over Yoe, Pennsylvania, lost in the gray clouds](http://www.allyngibson.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/20210105_082746-1200x800.jpg)
I stopped at the mailbox to pick up my mail before I left for work. It was a murky morning — overcast, a light, chilly rain — and I decided to take photos of the watchtower on the far hill.
Then I heard the plane.
It was flying quite low. I imagine it was on its descent to Harrisburg International, about twenty miles away.
I tried taking a couple of pictures, but most were blurry.
In the mail, besides my electric bill, I had a newspaper.
![Final issues of the Community Courier](http://www.allyngibson.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/20210105_092336-1200x1200.jpg)
There’s a free, local, weekly newspaper that comes by mail, the Community Courier. It’s not an especially interesting newspaper — most of the articles are about local church services — and their headline writers uses a vastly different definition of “slated” that I do. (They mean it as “scheduled.” I read it as “criticized sharply.” Thus, a headline like “Church Pot Luck Slated” reads to me like it was really bad, while they mean it’s something coming up.)
This, the Christmas Week issue, which arrived a week and a half after Christmas, was the final issue. Due to COVID and various economic uncertainly, they were ceasing their publications in York County after forty-five years, while similar papers in Lancaster and Chester Counties would continue.
I can’t say I’ll miss it, but it’s still something worthy a momentary twinge of sadness.
At least I won’t have to read about really bad church pot lucks again.