The end of an age

Our Ukrainian friends have left the building.

Their weekend (and that of a few S-R folk) consisted of drinking vodka and chasing that down with little corncob-shaped pickles from a jar. And the other part of their weekend involved shopping, but not the county fair.

Editor Steve Smith finally compared them to a group of very happy locusts. Wishing them a safe trip home and hope they enjoyed their visit.

Thin slices

• Emailing your doctor . Would you email vacation photos to your doctor?

Be personal, but not too personal. Of course it’s OK to send a note to your doctor with your symptoms, but your Hawaiian vacation photos are too much. Remember that the e-mail is part of your medical record. Emotions might not be appropriate.

• Memories of the Davenport

• Spin Control : What Larry Craig was doing during his month.

• Editors noticed that with the weekend papers all lined up, all the photos had a person wearing a red shirt. Was it a subversive way to support WSU? (Alison Boggs) a communist plot? (Ken Paulman) But actually red and the warm colors tend to look good in newsprint.

• As for the protest in Washington D.C. featured on page A1 on Sunday, political reporter Jim Camden said there was also a local rendition of that protest (which was not covered).

Offensive words

Has The S-R ever explained why the word “squaw” is offensive? This weekend there was this story about changing the name of the creek. According to a native languages nonprofit , the word “squaw” is a Euro-mispronounciation that should never have existed anyway, but throughout history has grown into a racial slur.

But what happens if, say, there was a murder at Squaw Bay? Would the word be edited out? Should there be an editor’s note with each story like that? And then there are many football teams with politically incorrect names.