This newspaper typo may trump them all
We journalists do our best to spell proper names properly, as I related here recently, but we’ve all made mistakes due to haste, carelessness, bad information or sources who mumble.
The most embarrassing errors are in headlines, which after all are in large print.
The day of my Feb. 21 item on typos, an email arrived from Matt Neely of Arizona, who writes: “Visiting the area and read your column this morning. Attached is a photo of the front page of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. The date was Election Day.”
A four-column, frontpage headline spells the president’s name as “Tump.” Before he lost the election, he lost a consonant.
“Yup. Unbelievable,” Neely says. “The president. But there it is… To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
Meanwhile, also chiming in is Barry Zander of Oceanside. First Arizona, now Oceanside? I’m getting some far-flung emails, but Zander is formerly of Idyllwild, so he must be keeping up on local haps.
Zander takes the blame for a long-ago mistake from his days as editor of a small-town weekly in north Louisiana. The police chief used to phone him with the week’s arrests and incidents.
“‘James White arrested for drunken driving’ was one report. Slight misunderstanding. It was James Wyatt who was arrested. James White was the preacher at a rural Pentecostal church,” Zander says. “Luckily, he practiced forgiveness and had a sense of humor.”
Like Neely said, “to forgive, divine.”
I’d also quoted a Chino newspaper columnist who had joked about a sign in a store window declaring “No Interest” and wondered if that meant they didn’t want his business. That reminded reader Carl Schafer of something.
“In one of our early trips to England while driving the motorway I saw a sign at a restaurant that said ‘football coach is not allowed.’ I wondered what they had against people who coach football,” Schafer relates. “Then I learned
it meant ‘buses with soccer fans not allowed.’ They wanted to keep the hooligans away.”
Schafer, by the way, lived for decades in Upland but now lives in, where else, Tucson. I wonder if he saw the “Tump” headline — or if, like whoever proofread that page, his eyes blipped right over it?
A fine welcome
Our front page Tuesday published a photo of a welcome-back event at an elementary school in which the balloons greeting students declared “Wellcome.” Distance learning is eroding the skills of children and adults alike.
Local Globe
Taylor Simone Ledward, who on Sunday night accepted the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama on behalf of her late husband, Chadwick Boseman, is a 2014 graduate of Cal Poly Pomona. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music industry studies, according to Oprah magazine. To my knowledge she didn’t minor in speech, but she gave a heartfelt, heartbreaking one.
Books! Books! Books!
It’s not often, or maybe ever, that you see a large sign outside a shopping mall advertising “thousands of used books,” but that’s what I saw from the 15 Freeway as I drove through Lake Elsinore recently. (I was on my way to Murrieta Hot Springs to interview Bob Munson, the fellow who grew up with Ritchie Valens.)
I don’t know how many people in the 21st century find “thousands of used books” a draw, but my eyes certainly opened wider. On my drive back I made a point of stopping at the Outlets at Lake Elsinore to check out the store in question, Bargain Book World. The mini-chain also has stores in Brea, Buena Park and Mission Viejo.
For we book lovers, the presence of a used bookstore anywhere is welcome, but to find one in an outlet mall — amid shops specializing in blue jeans and handbags and a Wetzel’s Pretzels — was a surprise. Trust me, I’m all for the normalization of used bookstores into life’s fabric.
As I browsed the stacks, a mother with two young children entered, apparently on a whim, drawn in by the novelty. The children did not seem to have ever been inside a bookstore. They asked excitedly several times, “Is this a library?” Their mother’s eventual reply: “Almost!”
More outlets
Refreshed after a hearty book browse, as well as a visit to the mall’s facilities, I started for the parking lot. But one feature prompted a smile.
Outside some stores, stickers on the pavement, spaced six feet apart, memorably read: “Stand Here to Stay Safe.”
That promise may not be legally binding. But a part of me wanted to grab a spot and stay there as far into 2021 as it takes until someone shows up to vaccinate me.
BRIEFLY
Driving north on the 15 into Corona, I saw a sign that had a business name, Performance Utility Supply, and above that its acronym, in large capital letters. There are sights you don’t want to see as you contemplate lunch, and among them would be the word “PUS.”