Dear friends,

If you are scouring your brain trying to think of what to give me for Christmas, forget about it. I don’t need anything, and I don’t want anything. I have too much stuff.

My sock drawer is filled with cute socks I never wear. I have sweaters light, heavy, soft, and scratchy. I have drawers filled with golf shirts, and I have not swung a club in two years.

I have jeans, khakis, and cords a-plenty, in several sizes.

Let me tell you a secret. Like a lot of folks, especially those of us with sparse grey hair, I have more than enough stuff to last me for the rest of my days.

But if you are looking for a unique and worthwhile gift for your friends and relatives, here is my suggestion. Grab your checkbook and buy a subscription to your local newspaper. Buy one for yourself, for your kids, and friends from away. If you are a summer resident, be sure you take the local paper year-round.

No matter if it is a big-city daily, or a national powerhouse, or a local weekly, like my favorites, the Boothbay Register, the Wiscasset Newspaper, and our sister website, the Pen Bay Pilot. We all need the paper.

In communities like ours, reporters and editors write about our neighbors’ weddings and wakes, awards and victories. They also write about it when your favorite local team wins and, sometimes, loses.

Do you know what is going on with your local government? What about the local schools? Don’t care? Sure, you do. Local officials are spending your tax money to pave and plow the roads, dispose of your trash, treat your sewage, and bring you clean drinking water.

They are spending millions to school your kids, your grandkids, and even the kids down the street. In today’s work hi-tech environment, the schools must teach more than readin’, writin’ and ’rtihmetic, to make sure their students have a chance at success.

Are you worried about crime? Who’s not?

We hire local police, sheriff’s deputies, and state troopers to keep us safe. It costs a lot of money to put a cop on the street. The national average is upwards of $100,000 per year, including equipment, wages, benefits and supervision. We are blessed to have excellent local volunteer fire services, but they cost taxpayers, too.

In most cases, your local paper is the only source of information on the activities of your local public safety community.

We love and depend upon our favorite civic clubs, like the Rotary, lodges, and ad hoc groups who add to the cultural life of our communities. These folks come to the local papers to announce their activities and ask us for support. We rarely refuse. That goes for church groups, too. Who doesn’t like to find a local church supper where the pie is sweet, and the company is welcoming?

Local merchants quickly find out their business is better when they advertise in the local paper, and the cost is not too bad, either.

Want to sell your house? Or find a new one? The local paper is the place where the local real estate broker goes to market a property. And, when our friends from away think about visiting our communities and maybe renting or buying a home, many start with the local paper to check out the real estate ads.

Looking for a good place to eat? Check out the restaurant ads. Want to see the latest movie on the big screen? In both cases, the local paper is the place to get the best, up-to-date information.

You won’t find local government and school news on TV news shows unless someone does something idiotic, or there is a significant foul-up. Then, if it is covered at all, it is told in a 30-second spot squeezed between ads for things you probably don’t need.

The other day, I talked to a guy who said he didn’t need the local paper. He got his news online and liked the gobs of goofy stuff he found there.

But he wondered how do you find out what is real and what is fake? I told him the local papers have a secret weapon called an editor.

Just cruise the internet, and you will find posts filled with strange stories claiming to give you the inside story. You know, stories that claim Bigfoot, President Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton are holding secret meetings with the Wicked Witch of the West on a flying saucer hovering over Penobscot Bay.

If a local newspaper reporter turned in a fanciful story like that, he would find himself answering to an editor who would ask: “How do we know this? What is the proof? Who said it?”

Enough said.