Local News and a "Wasted Life"

A letter shared on Bluesky prompted some thoughts

Mar 13, 2025

I wasn’t planning on writing today, but then Peter Sagal (of Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!) shared this letter on Bluesky. I had some thoughts. The writer, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, grieves what he calls a “wasted life.”

Here’s the letter, which was published earlier this week and has been verified as authentic:

My thoughts:

I didn’t serve in the military, but I hope I served our country by teaching American history, upholding ideals of equality and justice, promoting civic engagement, and supporting teachers in doing the same. I, too, grieve.
Had we met during the Vietnam War, I’d most likely have held him in contempt. I’m not proud of this. It was another polarized time, and opposition to the Vietnam War shaped my political formation. Later, I saw that veterans weren’t the problem only when I noticed how many joined the protests. And when, in college, I briefly dated an ex-paratrooper-turned-hippie.
The late-20th-century look of the letter led me to question its authenticity and currency. Complaints about K Street, partisan politics, and pay-to-play could have been written anytime in the past 50 years. But the gripe about “anonymous, juvenile tech bros led by a ketamine-fueled immigrant …” placed it firmly in the year 2025.
Verification efforts led me to the website of the Bloomsburg PA Press Enterprise, a daily newspaper that is not only still printed (it’s an actual broadsheet) but whose online edition features PDFs of the paper for subscribers to download. The 22 pages of today’s edition featured dozens of local news stories, four pages of local sports, an entire page devoted to a local theater production of “Anything Goes,” a page of color comics, and a full page of classified ads. The biggest story on page one? “Danville Borough Sells Barn.” Is Bloomsburg in a time warp?
Don’t mistake my tone. I am not laughing. The people living in the central Pennsylvania counties served by the Press Enterprise have something the majority of Americans no longer enjoy: easy access to local news. Some live in news deserts, counties with no local news outlet. More than half the counties in the United States have either no or only one news outlet. Since 2005, Americans have lost over 3,200 print newspapers.1
That ⬆ is one of the reasons people rely on, um, unreliable sources of information, and a contributing factor to the dissolution of social capital.
I doubt Lt. Col. Schappert, USAF (Ret) expected his letter would be read by more than a few thousand people who subscribe to the Press Enterprise. I hope it’s ready by tens of thousands. Even if it isn’t, if it’s only seen by the people in his area, it means something. He’s spoken up and out, from his personal experience. He knows that silence can’t shine light.
When I read his closing, “A wasted life. I grieve.” I thought of a line from Moonstruck:

Colonel Schappert, your life was not wasted.

Maureen Costello: Up to Us

Discussion about this post