The Mountains' Premier Source for Fake News
Great scenery, bubbling streams, and Rip Van Winkle are hallmarks of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. The mountains also are home to a hilarious collection of characters featured in the pages of the Catskill Tribune, an imaginary newspaper. A Bigfoot family, aliens, Vikings, and a host of residents and tourists all find themselves in highly irregular circumstances.
A Tribune reporter conducted an in-depth investigation of the extraordinary discovery of gangster Dutch Schultz's hidden treasure cache-once rumored to be in the town of Phoenicia. The eerie fate of astrophysicist and former Fox News science reader Kathy Young is chronicled in two stories. Ms. Young likely was transmuted from a Catskill mountaintop to Kepler-62f, a planet in the constellation Lyra. Another news account records the misadventures of a pot-smoking grandmother who decides to drive her tractor to town...the hard way.
Readers will not want to miss the Tribune's coverage of the "Roxit" saga, a vote by Roxbury's residents to exit the United States and Join Great Britain. The action, afforded by a pre-Revolutionary War document penned by Queen Anne, drew less than positive attention from President Donald Trump and Fox News.
A number of individuals who moved to the Catskills to find fame and fortune receive Tribune attention. They include a flakey West Coast astrologer; a financial consultant who predicts the stock market using photos of lightning bolts; and Brooklyn cowboy Christian Potok, whose mountain path is littered with failed business investments, notably Eskimo Heaven-a Catskill fat-freezing facility-and Sodom and Gomorrah-a family-oriented arcade. The Catskill Tribune regularly features two award-winning columns: "Life and Love in the Catskills" and "Constables Corner," both of which will elicit guffaws. And don't forget the woman who files a paternity suit against Jolly Old St. Nick. The Catskill Tribune has it all!
