When I was growing up, my family never subscribed to a daily newspaper. We called our local paper the Daily Mess, and only bought it on Sundays from the drive thru line at Hardee’s. I devoured the front page while my mom hemmed and hawed over the local editorials, with a special disdain that continues to this day for columnist Jim Spencer (who retired from the Mess in 2003). The family’s low affinity for printed news makes the following a grand occasion:

My mom wanted to send me an article she saw in the paper.

Wait, you say. How did she even see the article if she doesn’t get the paper? She’ll read the paper from time to time if she sees it elsewhere, like at my grandparents’ house. But, the Daily Mess does not deserve her business.

The Mr. and I are recently back from our honeymoon in Rome, and my mom had seen this item about a popular Roman tourist trap:

However, she forgot to clip it while she was visit my grandparents. She called them, asked for the paper, but they had already put it in recycling. She tried another Mess-subscriber, my godparents. They had also already recycled that day’s paper, but:

My family is the best, no?

Where’s the library tie in with all this? Guess where my mom usually reads the news? ONLINE! Little Reuters bits like the one on the “centurions” often don’t appear in the online edition of the Mess, and when they do, they can be hard to find. She probably could have Googled the story, found it, and emailed it to me. But, the information’s not the point here (at least I don’t think). Cute item, yes, but I’m most touched that she saw an item in one format, thought of me, and wanted to preserve both the thought, and what made her think it.