LIFE TRIBUTES
The Old Rusty Nail
AN E-JOURNAL FOR OLD PEOPLE
Russell Burton, an Old Person
My local newspaper the San
Antonio Express News continues to make changes in an attempt to make it
more appealing. This makes sense for
newspapers are in a fight to remain profitable as they compete with several
different venues which offer news. Many of these changes are strictly cosmetic
in order to appear to give the reader a feeling of experiencing a more advanced
approach in getting the news. You know a
feeling that this old mode of delivering news is keeping up with the many TV
news channels, Web news on computers, and I phones all of which provide news
streams which include instantly everything that can be called news.
Of course one change in my newspaper which continues
unabated is the fact that it gets smaller.
A while ago I noticed the Bridge section had disappeared in the section
entitled my SA. In fact this section is reduced to only three
pages. With double-sided printing I
guess it could be called six pages.
Another loss was the physician’s column which attempted to make
diagnoses that had been missed by physicians using hands on examination with
multiple medical tests of the patient. I
always considered that quite a feat of medical skill coming up with a better
diagnosis using a small paragraph of symptoms as described by the patient.
This section also contains the comics which have also shrunk
considerably. Still the Sudoku and Crossword
puzzles remain for without those features subscribers would leave by droves. Luckily for the printed news these games can
not now be accomplished while watching TV or your computer. You noticed I wrote ‘not now’ for I am not
sure what the future holds in regard to these e-things.
Now that I have established that my newspaper is getting
smaller and as it attempts to modernize it has focused on the obituary
section. Well that was what it used to
be named but now it is Life Tributes.
And, with this change comes much larger individual life stories now with
much larger photographs of the deceased frequently one as a younger person and
the other a more recent shot. I guess
this approach makes some sense as I have written before in this e-journal entitled
‘Obituaries’.
Of course when a person dies at a relatively young age the
photographs appear to be bothers or sisters staring at the reader. Another thing I have noticed is that the older
picture is not always that recent which makes me look at it again when I read
how old that person was at death. As an
example today I saw a picture of someone in their early fifties who was born in
1921! Come on that person died at the
age of 93. Certainly a more recent
photograph would be in order.
I have a feeling that these obituaries as they appear to be
more modern looking are actually taking up much more space. I assume that this kind of ‘news’ is much
cheaper to obtain so why not make it larger thereby making the newspaper appear
that it has not shrunk more than it actually has.
I suppose Life Tributes is a more modern title for this
section and perhaps more fun reading when the reason for this section is death
which of course is really an obituary.
Now I looked up the obituary word in my computer dictionary to find
exactly what obituary means. Well it is (1)
announcement of death and (2) recording death neither of which
has the word Life in it. Now in the first description listed above it does note
that it may contain a short biography of the dead person.
So with the title Life Tributes the newspaper is making the
real reason for this announcement of death secondary to the biography section
of an obituary. Strange because the main
purpose here is the death notice.
I suppose this all goes back to the fact that people do not
like to think about death or dying nor do they like to read about it each
morning as they face a new day in which one’s death is possible. So, now when I read the obituaries in my
modernized newspaper my mind is not about that person’s death but more about
how that person lived and their contributions to society.
In this section there is always one person singled out with
a much larger life tribute found at its beginning. In fact, it takes up nearly half of the
page. This tribute written by the
newspaper staff writers begins with a large bold printed title announcing some
reason for this extra tribute. As I look
at the other life tributes which follow I find some of those who have died to
have accomplished a great deal perhaps even more than the person who is the
headliner. So, I ask myself how does someone suddenly escalate to a celebrity
in death. Who decides which person gets
the star treatment?
Oh well life goes on and being chosen as a headliner for the
Life Tributes section is of no consequence to those people whom I believe would
have preferred this tribute to be acknowledged before they had died.
Yes, when a person dies it is difficult to imagine that
person enjoying any tribute which announces some good things they did in
life. Of course if you believe that this
person is looking down from Heaven and enjoying this recognition then it does
make sense. But, that is another story.
This specific article on life tributes was prompted by a
Wednesday edition of the newspaper – really nothing special until I noticed the
title of a short column entitled ‘Notable Passing’ next to the large headliner
four-column spread I just wrote about.
It read ‘Dropkick Me, Jesus among Craft’s hits’. Now there is a headliner.
10/14
Please note that the date which appears at the end of these
articles is when they were written.
