Phonecalls for help

As the audix voicemail lady greets me Monday morning, she notes I have 27 new voicemail messages.

Must have been a big weekend, I figure, for angry readers. I suspect the ELCA Lutherans approving of gay ministers. Or, maybe we messed up the crossword puzzle again.

No, instead, our circulation customer service rep had forwarded me 27 voice mails of a woman desperate to be heard, but most likely without much of her mental faculties. It involved a town in Illinois, a place she had been taken, in, she says, what was a kidnapping. The town, she says, was morally deficient. And on she goes for several more minutes.

She apparently called the newspaper some 27 times between Sunday around 10 a.m. and 4 a.m. Monday morning.

This is not a totally unusual occurrence. Another mentally troubled man would leave me much more comprehensible voice messages, mostly about politics, earlier this year, or was it last.

He spoke quickly and asked us to "look into" numerous conspiracies he had about the unabomber and "the real" John McCain.

I wonder why it dawns on these folks that the newspaper can help them. Perhaps the institution of the newspaper has just become the phonecall of last resort. I've had numerous people visit me in person with real problems, but most of them could be better solved by a marriage counselor, psychologist or priest.

A newspaper editor can listen, and repeat what they hear, if it's newsworthy. But only if. After that, we're pretty much not much help when it comes to the social safety net for personal problems.

Unfortunately, a lot of these personal problems can't be told without names, and anonymity is what a lot of these folks need, or are comfortable with.

So I didn't listen to more than a couple of the 27 voice messages.

They weren't newsworthy here, but I'm sure they were to her.