There is no news value in what you’re about to read. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was elevating a personal story to the rarefied air of a NewsCut topic. But it provides some background for why posting will be light here today and also closes the book on a chapter of NewsCut that occasionally surfaced here: the time I built my own airplane in my garage. Read more

The story of the child who died in the arms of Santa Claus, posted earlier this week, was so poignant and unusual that there had to be doubt whether it actually happened. But those sure looked like real tears that Eric Schmitt-Matzen — Santa — was shedding in his interview with the Knoxville News Sentinel when he was telling it. But now the paper says it might all be a fake.
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