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Facing a comics page disaster

My habit in the morning is to get the newspaper from behind the screen door them reading the headlines as I walk back to the bedroom where I can get back in bed for a brief time to examine my favorite part of the paper, the comic strips.

That habit is broken on Sunday when the Independent is not published. It is not until after breakfast eating out that I get a Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune and attack the comics of that paper. But notice that I again read the comics first.

I was shocked two Sundays back to find a disaster had occurred. Most of the comic strips had been shrunk, not by a little, but mostly by a cut of 33 percent. What had been on six pages was now crammed into just four pages.

Some of my fellow comic page readers made their voices heard in the letters to the editor published in the Trib this last week, but that apparently was not enough to get the Trib back to reasonableness. This past Sunday, the Trib persisted with the hard-to-read panels of miniaturized comic strips.

I liked the letter to the editor in this Sunday’s paper that empathized a bit with the paper needing to cut cost, but gave three options that made sense to me. My slight rewording of those suggestions: 1) cut the color and use black and white like the strips are on weekdays; 2) shrink only the single panel cartoons such as F Minus and Rhymes with Orange; 3) cut title panels if they do not contribute to the rest of the cartoon.

Is there a conspiracy against older folks who are reaching stages in their lives that require LARGE PRINT?

Now I am not sure, but I wonder if the person who decided to shrink the comics is the same one who was in charge of the changes that occurred a few years back in my telephone books. At least for the telephone books it is not too hard to use a magnifying glass to get a particular number.

The only problem I have with doing that is trying to hold the telephone book open, hold the magnifying glass and hold a pencil to write the number down on another piece of paper without losing sight of the number in the book by moving the magnifying glass slightly.

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One of my favorite comic strips is Peanuts. This is the time of the year when thoughts of Linus in that strip turn to The Great Pumpkin. The strip is certainly enhanced in color to see Linus standing in with the orange pumpkins nestled in the green leaves of the vines in the garden. I hope they do keep the Sunday comics in color, but as I said, I could get along with my imagination if they resort to all black and white.

The Halloween season has certainly changed. Many people do not seem to remember that it was originally a religious celebration, a time of remembrance of those who have died. Hallow can roughly be defined as a saint or holy person. On October 31 the celebration is that of All Hallows Eve or All Saints’ Eve or Hallowe’en or the most modern: Halloween.

Mexico has a national holiday at this time and for some parts of Mexico it becomes a triduum or three day celebration with All Saints’ Eve on October 31, followed by All Saints’ Day on November 1, and All Souls’ Day on November 2. All Souls’ Day is often called Day of the Dead emphasizing the remembrance of those who died as mentioned before.

Honoring the dead was sometimes done by taking “soul” cakes to the burial spot or providing the soul cake to friends and family. The soul cake often had some sweet with it such as some fruit or baked with cinnamon.

Potato pancakes were also a treat to serve at this time. Souling and guising, begging for the treat and dressing in a costume were the customs also associated with this time of year. Candles were taken in the evening to be placed at the grave. Lighting a bonfire also was a custom in places.

With the modern tendency to put celebrations into the weekends closest to the older traditional days, this year Mexico City celebrated the Day of the Dead Parade on Saturday Evening, Oct. 27, with many brightly colorful costumes and most masks looking like a skeleton. A bit of commercialism as clearly the hope was to attract visitors.

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As I have mentioned before in this column, one of my favorite movies of all time is: “Meet Me in St. Louis.” The two main stars headlined in the 1944 show were a young Judy Garland and an even younger Margaret O’Brien. Tootsie (Margaret) was the younger sister of Esther (Judy). One of my favorite episodes from the movie was the Halloween story.

For the first time, Tootsie was deemed old enough to go trick or treating without a parental escort. To build up courage and to possibly double-dare one another to do a trick, they built a bonfire in the street.

Tootsie’s trick was to have a bag with flour in it and to knock on the door of an old grump and then run away after tossing a handful of flour on the grump. She does indeed manage to douse him in flour when he answers the door. Of course he sort of chuckles with his wife as he re-enters the living room telling her about Tootsie throwing the flour at him.

These days tricks are not considered de rigueur. Some tricks got out of hand. Ah, well. BOO! Hope you have a Great and Pleasant Halloween.

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!

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