Wednesday

Today we are recovering from yesterday's paper bonanza; I had to run out and cover the State of the Town address (which will be in next week's paper) and return to finish editing the pages, so I was barely home in time to see President Obama's speech (making it two State of the ___ in one day). Hopefully, no massive spelling errors made their way into this week's edition.

I thought that we had a good mix of stories on this week's front page. David Hunt's Revolutionary War Day also looked great on the PDF and in the paper. We held some photos of students performing science experiments with Mentos and cola, which we'll likely use next week when we have available front-page color. If you've never seen what those experiments look like, search on YouTube and you'll know why those pictures are worth holding on to.

Dance lessons
This is an item that we'll put in the calendar, but I got the flier for cheap social dance lessons yesterday and wanted to make people aware of the next event. Tomorrow night, Feb. 26, will be the next Hillsborough Social Dance Club "meeting," at 7 p.m. at Carillon Assisted Living (Orange Grove Road). They'll teach you how to waltz, foxtrot, hustle, swing or line dance for $7 per dancer. For more info, call Michele at 644-8440.

Business success in hard times
We're looking for stories from businesses or patrons of businesses that have adapted to the current economic climate. We want to hear success stories, or just stories of trying things a different way. If you've noticed any business doing something to adapt to the economy, let us know.

Editorial cartoons
This week, we published a stand-alone photo with a caption in place of a cartoon by Andy Marlette, nephew of the late Doug Marlette. We had been running Andy's cartoons since Doug passed a few years ago, and his work touched on national politics; having some editorial views in the paper that provide diversity is a good thing for any paper.

Recently, we had been hearing more complaints about the content of the work that appeared in the paper, which led us to discussing the relative benefits of publishing the cartoon versus the drawbacks. For now, we think the space can be better used to run photos from close to home; space is often at a premium in print, especially for pictures.

That said, we're going to try and use the space for photos or possibly for another, more local cartoon. We're open to discussing use of the space with any aspiring local cartoonist who would want to comment on current events, be they local or national. You can send an e-mail to editorial@newsoforange.com if interested.

Now it's time to go through all of the e-mail that's built up in the previous 1.5 days. It looks like lots of letters.