As well as a love for reading, another thing I am incredibly grateful for having in my life is the love of travelling. Seeing different places and experiencing their culture(s) is just an amazing thing. Thanks to being in a military family, I was well used to travelling to different places and I was lucky enough to keep doing that when I started earning money.

I’ve been to the States three times. First time was to NYC (stayed at The New Yorker Hotel and it was most ossum,) I discovered some things I never knew. First I discovered, on getting to my room on the 34th floor, how to instantly develop vertigo. I dumped my cases, checked out the room and went to look out the window. As I did this I leaned on the air conditioning unit, not realising that these machines are not fixed into place. When I looked and leaned the damn thing shifted and I suddenly felt like I was about to crash out of the window… Then later in the holiday me and the ever awesome Sarah Watford (with whom I went) reinforced this new fear by going up the Empire State Building. Holy crap. The beautiful thing about the New Yorker of course is that it is a wonderful statement of Art Deco.

One other memory I have is seeing Salt n Pepa arrive there too. Heh.

Second time I went to the US was a two week trip to San Diego (which is where the point of this post comes in (you’ll be glad to hear!)), I stayed with a friend in Front Street. Had a great time pootling about in Old Town and just wandering around. In the middle weekend I took a trip to Tijuana and was gobsmacked at the local crafts, the leather and metal craftshops (and the cheap prices!) were absolutely gorgeous.

I was also slightly amused at the fact I needed my passport so I could get back into the states… (the appalling poverty that attends the incredibly long queues to leave the Mexican border is something I won’t ever forget I think…)

Anyhoo, I took to reading The San Diego Union Tribune. I am a sucker for broadsheet papers anyway but the quality of journalism was really high, compared to our local papers was like chalk and cheese. Our papers have all of the depth that goes with reporting about coffee mornings and funny shaped vegetables, whereas the UTSD journo’s actually wrote about what was happening in a much more in-depth way on a local, national and global way.

The last time I went to the States was a two week driving holiday. I have many stories about that but driving around California & Nevada was terrific for picking up local papers and, again, the quality was great.

Of course, when Jali was living in Atlanta I took to reading The Atlanta Journal & Constitution website.

I haven’t checked out Delaware papers yet but I will. The reason I am waffling about all this is due to the aftershock of the awful events in Charleston. The major media outlets are doing what they do in their insensitive and downright ugly way. But the local paper is knocking them out of the park.

Under its masthead, the Post & Courier proudly states that it has won the Pulitzer Prize. I am not at all surprised. Even a mis-step (like the unfortunate blunder of a gun ad sticker appearing on the front page on the day the shooting was reported) was immediately apologised for which is how it ought to be. Mistakes happen unfortunately, the trick is, own up, do what you can to make it not happen again.

Have a look at the site and read the proper background to what happened and the people affected.