After a week in which the sad demise of Michael Jackson pushed even President Obama's efforts to cut nuclear weapons arsenals out of the limelight, we were left wondering about the limelight itself.

The term, by the way, is a survival from the days of music halls and vaudeville, when the brightest light in the house was made by burning a cylinder of calcium oxide, aka "lime."

President Obama was talking about important stuff, trying to eliminate the risk of another kind of burning light — the flash of H-Bombs — from ever getting on stage again. But the media circus was all Jacko, all the time.

And so it goes, right down to local government. Governance, in all its forms, just can't compete for our eyeballs in an era of sizzling TV and internet. All we seem to see is sizzle, not the steak.

Just say "zoning" and try not to fall asleep. It lacks Hollywood Production Values. Compared to World of Warcraft, or televised housewives — real or desperate, take your pick — it's dull. And zoning stays dull, until…

Wow — what's that noise? And you step outside and discover that the field across the road is being converted into a commercial warehouse the size of nine football fields. Or, the kid next door, who's still living with his parents, has been doing so well with his landscaping business that all of a sudden he's got six trucks and three trailers parked in their front yard and there are vehicles beeping and rumbling day and night as they swoop in and out on missions to tame unruly lawns from here to Monticello.

At that point, zoning suddenly becomes incredibly important, and we want to know how it happened. How did that kid get permission to have a small industry running next door? And how did the field across the road get zoned to be a giant depot for bathroom fixtures?

That's when we head off to the next meeting of the planning board, filled with ire plus a good shot of angst, which leads to a certain kind of voice-trembling, massively misinformed performance by naive homeowners who never realized that zoning could be so exciting! All at once we are learning about RA and BP and Section 137 G and H, and how important that can be.

You mean there really is going to be a — fill in the blank — right there? Where we can see it?

Well, yes, there was a public hearing at the planning board, but you weren't there for it, right?

At that point our efforts to acquire a magic sword in the World of Warcraft, or those happy hours spent in the company of sizzling housewives may come to seem, well, wasted. That's because our inattention to planning and zoning and local governance is going to hurt us personally.

So, in an effort to prevent such pain, we should take note of a couple of important meetings that are coming up. Today, July 9, the Town of Crawford's Zoning Change Committee is meeting at 7 p.m. at the Town Government Center to discuss the thorny problems attached to mixing economic urges and pastoral peace and quiet in pleasant Pine Bush.

Then in Mamakating, on July 15, at 7 p.m., the New York State Department of Conservation will be holding a public hearing at the town hall looking into the water ins and outs of the proposed Yukiguni Maitake Mushroom Plant. The proposed 450,000 gallons a day from the aquifer and three quarters of that put back into the ground — albeit not into the aquifer — will have some kind of effect. Good, bad, indifferent? You, the local citizens, be the judge.