Beacon Journal editors spend countless hours in planning meetings. But no more.
A woman from Georgia wrote a letter to Editor Bruce Winges specifying exactly what will appear in future issues — and when.
“Your newspaper has been chosen as one of the largest 254 newspapers in the United State to receive these 13 Prophetic Messages from Father God and from Jesus Christ for the weekly syndicated newspaper column called ‘Hot Off the Throne.’
“All the even-numbered messages are from Father God and all the odd-number messages are from Jesus Christ. They are to be published weekly for the 13 weeks beginning with the first week of April and continuing through the end of June 2017.”
No problem. Each of the messages is about 1,500 words, twice the length of a typical Bob Dyer column. Of course, hardly any of my columns come directly from God or Jesus. Or even the Dalai Lama, for that matter.
“Father God and Jesus Christ spoke these messages for the readers of the newspapers, and these messages will not return unto Them void, but will accomplish that for which they are meant.”
Nice to hear God and JC still read newspapers.
“Please do not omit a word, add a word or change a word in these messages. Please print them EXACTLY as given.”
OK, now she’s sounding like a columnist.
If you were thinking, as I was, that the woman has incredible gall to demand hundreds of column inches of free space, wait — it gets better.
“It is God Who gives you the power to get wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18). There is a $35 fee for these 13 messages, which is less than $3 per message. If you will print these messages, our God will help your newspaper to prosper more than it ever has before.”
Well, if she can get us above the 27 percent profit margin we had in the late ’90s, I’m all ears.
BLINK, BLINK
You’ve probably heard enough about daylight saving time at this point, given my two previous columns on the topic. But I just can’t let this email go to waste.
Bob: If I may offer another reason why I don’t like DST?
Back in the days of VCRs, I always had to set it to blink 1:00 in the spring instead of 12:00.
Ron Hujik
Green
TRUMPING TIME
Well, OK, I can’t resist this one, either.
Bob: When I was in the Navy, back in the early ’70s, sailing around the Mediterranean Sea, we were always crossing time lines.
If we were crossing a line and losing the hour, it always happened at 2 a.m. But if we were going to gain the hour, they always added that hour to the workday at 16:00 (4 p.m.).
Good for those sailors on the Midnight Watch, bad for everyone [else]. [It happened] sometimes every couple days, and I did this for almost three years! ...
This whole silliness with time zones was started by the British. Greenwich Mean Time (time zero) runs through Great Britain. Since we are the top of the heap (supposedly), I think President Trump should sign an executive order moving the GMT to Washington, D.C., making it the center of the empire.
Paul Schweigert
Akron
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31