Last Thursday morning was interesting. To some extent it reminded me of the time when I was a kid of four or five--maybe 15, it's hard to remember--and first encountered a pedestrian crossing sign.

I'd never seen the word "pedestrian" before, mind you. I could, however, piece the letters into something familiar. So I turned to my mom, who versed us early in the various religious denominations, and asked why Presbyterians were so special.

Where, I wondered, was the Lutheran crossing?

Like I said, last Thursday was something like that. Several people burst into the office announcing the bypass had officially opened, at long last. One even wondered if we captured any photos of the ribbon cutting ceremony, apparently held earlier that morning.

Much earlier, actually--around 7 o'clock, or thereabouts.

The source of all this excitement was a Star-Herald article. The lede (that's newspaper talk for "lead") read "after two years of construction, a new stretch of the long-awaited Heartland Expressway is ready to carry its first traffic"--vaguely misleading if one stopped reading right there.

What followed? Well, tidbits about road crews continuing their work on the southbound lanes, about the routing of traffic through new construction, about the need to complete parts of the intersection and about the 30 days or so remaining on the project.

Which, of course, may translate into something like 40 or 50.

The city learned all of this the day before, so some confusion is understandable. But a ribbon cutting?

Actually, midway through the story, reporter Rick Willis took a florid turn: "from the top of the hill facing southeast, the new road looks like a ribbon cutting through the farmland."

Nice. Reminiscent, in fact, of the poem "The Highwayman" that Mrs. Looks Like A Marine Drill Sergeant (I'm not making that up) forced us to memorize in seventh grade.

In the coffee conversations around Kimball, that somehow became "a ribbon cutting ceremony." The mayor was there, along with other dignitaries--or so we heard from breathless residents.

Mayor James Schnell was bemused when we mentioned his participation.

One of the reasons I love weekly newspapers is the time for perspective. News cycles, after all, are no different than rumor cycles. Stories begin with "what was that?" and "did I hear that right?" Before clarification begins, there's a rush of "did you hear?" and "can you believe?" Pundits jump in and try to direct the conversation toward one end or another. Electronic media types offer insights or cracks. Finally, the facts fall into place and the tale settles.

Before that happens, though, another round of "what was that?" begins.

We call this the "Information Age," right? In 1945, Vannevar Bush observed that "we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers--conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember."

I'm beginning to think the "Age of Reason," was a much more leisurely era. Of course, they didn't have DirecTV back then.

Sometimes, I guess, we are all confused little kids wondering why Presbyterians merit special treatment at crosswalks or explaining, as a classmate did one summer day, that every major league team plays a home double header on the Fourth of July.

Now that's news to me.