Ink, Hornets, and Spokane

· A reader wrote to say she wondered whether The Post had changed its ink recently, because she thought she had developed an allergy to the ink. Kevin Conner, printing quality assurance manager, checked with suppliers and said that he could find no change in the ink.

Well, every column needs one folksy story, right? And why stop at just one:

· Another reader complained that the paper wasn't being delivered, only to find that his wife had forgotten to pay the bill.

Or even two?

· William Friar of Burke reached into a Post vending box at the Virginia Railway Express station on Rolling Road. "I felt a sharp stab on my wrist. I bent down to look up at the ceiling of the box and was surprised to find myself staring at a small hornets' nest with some annoyed-looking residents. I had been stung . . . " He called The Post, but found the nest still there the next day and wrote to me: "While the nest is small, and there are only a few hornets around it, if someone who has a high reaction to a hornet's sting is stung, it could be dangerous." The Post circulation team got on it, and Friar wrote the next day: "I am delighted to report that the hornets have been successfully evicted."

Deb can still overlook inconvenient facts while defending The Post's editorial choices:

· Local readers usually get my attention first, but I wanted to know the answer to this query from Paul Turner of Spokane: "Why, in print editions, [does] Spokane require the state designation while cities such as Boise and Syracuse do not?" Ashley Halsey, associate Metro editor and weather map guru. said, "Because there's a Spokane in Missouri."

Hey Deb! There's a Syracuse in Indiana. And Kansas. And Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio. Also Utah. See, I think there's a problem when the Ombudsman refers to any editorial employee as a "guru" — especially when the wikipedia is so close at hand.

I agreed with Book World Editor Marie Arana's assessment.

Trivial? Usually.