Perplexing absence of news

Mom received a call the day before yesterday from exsailorette, during which ExS told Mom that one of our friends from the auction had died suddenly, Sunday night. So far, none of the local papers has anything about it. His name isn't in the obits, so I won't post, yet, either, out of consideration for those family members who haven't had a chance to hear the news directly from somebody they trust (not everybody in this neighborhood likes or trusts me or ExS. Such is life in a small-ish town).

But if ExS says this is true, it is probably very much the case -- she has a lot of long-term local & family connections, and a couple of friends with police scanners (names not given, again, because... well, you know).

I will likely post more, when the news is officially released.

It just frustrates me that, in this day and age, our local newspaper should be on the ball enough to at least get a preliminary obit printed or posted online within 48 hours of the discovery of a person's passing on, and yet they have nothing.

Of course, our local newspaper is the one which ran an article on the "upcoming performance" of a musical at the high school -- the last one to have been directed by the soon-to-retire John Van Ausdall (instructor at our high school since 1979) -- "upcoming" apparently meaning "over and done with, last weekend". This is the same paper which had, as a front-page item, a photograph of a cobweb on the dashboard of the editor's car. The same paper which, just yesterday, had a two-thousand-word article on the city council meeting, headlining the council's discussion of the city's trash-burning restrictions and codes, without once actually citing the current codes and restrictions, so we still don't know what the law is. The same paper which sees fit to run my column each week on Friday (and very kindly doing so at no cost to me), so that, even when there are no garage sale ads, they can still keep their numbers up for the weekend... (do I have a colossal ego, or is it the truth? or is it somewhere in between?).

At any rate, I'm not so terribly shocked that the DRA is lacking in information about our friend's demise, but I am a bit surprised that neither the Galesburg nor Burlington news has a brief mention on the obits pages. The man has been active in the community, has many respected family members (as well as a few who are friends of mine, but we can't hold that against him, can we?), and has been a decent, kind, generous, and caring gentleman. I hope whoever writes his formal piece can make that clear, in print.