Don McCann says he has recycled his new Verizon directory because Yellowbook still provides residential listings.
"That's unfortunate for all those advertisers who wasted money on Verizon," the Millersville resident observes.
That's one of several comments the Scribbler has received following the Feb. 14 column discussing the elimination of residential listings from Verizon's telephone book.
Here's another:
Lancastrian Ed Trees also says Yellowbook provides the numbers he needs, and continues:
"Verizon stock pays a decent dividend and has held up well. I guess the dropping of the numbers has something to do with it. Land lines are a thing of the past, as the kids use their wireless devices.
"I guess one has to look out the front window because the back (the past) is not coming back."
Other graves destroyed
American Indian cemeteries and graves (Scribbler column, Feb. 7) are not the only burial places that have been destroyed or looted over the years.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of immigrant graves have been lost in Lancaster County alone. Some are buried under churches and other buildings, as well as tons of asphalt, in Lancaster City.
One example:
Lancastrian Cynthia Roth has unearthed an item from the Intelligencer Journal of June 15, 1888. It describes bones being removed from the site of an old church cemetery.
Workmen excavating the cellar for Joseph H. Huber's candy store on the site of the old German Reformed graveyard, the story said, found human bones "in great numbers."
The Scribbler assumes this was the original cemetery of First Reformed Church, in the first block of E. Orange St.
Workmen threw the bones into a corner of Huber's cellar.
"Some boys carried away some of the bones," the story said, "and if they are allowed to remain much longer, there will be none left for burial."
City authorities had been alerted but, as yet, had done nothing to stop the looting, the story concluded.
"Imagine bringing bones home for your Mamma!" says Roth.
Talk about a bargain price!
Gene Moore, of East Hempfield Township, is a discriminating shopper and speller.
Recently, he purchased a pair of shoes from the Bostonian store at the Tanger Outlet.
He found a sticker on the shoe box that read, "Our price: $89.99."
Next to it was another sticker that said, "Compare at $90.00."
Moore figures he got the "senior citizen discount."
Moore also recently spotted an ad for a show now playing at the Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre.
The ad misspells lovable (as "loveable") twice and also misspells exhilaration (as "exhileration").
"Isn't it ironic," Moore observes, "that in promoting a show named 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,' they manage to misspell both words?"
And that is why, contrary to the "progressive" thinking of some educators, we still need to memorize some things. How to spell words in English, for example. Or the order of the American presidents.
Spell Check and the Internet are not always available or reliable.
And sometimes it's necessary to use the stuff that's already in your brain to make sense of a complex problem.
Answers.com isn't much good at that.
Contact the Scribbler at jbrubaker@lnpnews.com.
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