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.