THINGS OF NO CONSEQUENCE.....

Two items in our local newspaper this morning caught my eye. They are of absolutely no consequence, but I was surprised and puzzled by both.

First, in the business section there almost two full pages of alphabetized names of people who have unclaimed money in the Riverside County Treasury.



If you are awake this morning you will notice that these are alphabetized by first names! Have you ever heard of such a thing? There are two pages of three columns each of names. Want to know how many Barbaras there are? It's easy to find out. Look under the "B"s and you'll find three. Amazing. Maybe someone in the treasurer's department thought this was a good idea. Or maybe someone had them in Excel and sorted on the wrong column. Or perhaps they only used one column for each name and couldn't do a last-name sort? Finding this in my newspaper at 5:30 a.m. was too much of a shock to my system. It is of no consequence, except I'd sure like to read an explanation in tomorrow's newspaper.

Next I found a list of local births. Our newspaper does not print this on a regular basis. Every so often, probably when they have too much empty space, they drop one of these kinds of things in. Anyway, today's newspaper looked like we are having a baby boom, for sure.



But, in perusing this page I wondered about the names of the parents. When I was having babies, my newspaper had a similar column and there we were: Joe and Barbara Kirkpatrick, boy, June 25, 1956. So in looking at today's printing, it would appear as if none of the couples are married. Each entry has a full name for momma and a full name for poppa (if both claim the baby!) Since there are 153 entries today, at first glance it would look like nobody, BUT NOBODY, bothers to get married any more. Well, I said to myself, that probably isn't what it means. Maybe it is listing the maiden name of the mother and the full name of the father. That sounded more reasonable, I thought.

But then down at the bottom I found this lone entry: Elizabeth and Daniel Bingenheimer, boy, July 31.

So, now what am I to believe?

Newspapers don't care any more. They know they are headed for print oblivion so are they just not standing back and looking at themselves from time to time? Is it enough that they put out eight pages a day, even if those eight pages don't make sense?

OK. I know this is of absolutely no consequence. Not worthy of writing a letter to the editor about. (Anymore I doubt there is even an editor). Don't get me wrong, I love print newspapers and hope that I am long gone before I am forced to read mine on my computer screen (not having a raspberry or any other kind of berry). But I sure wish my local newspaper, the one I take by choice because it is the only one that has local news in it, would eyeball its local news once in a while so I don't have to get so agitated so early in the morning!