Out of sight

I had a strange editorish experience over the last two days…

I was amused to see a tiny item in the newspaper. It was an Associated Press story, so it has run, with identical wording, in hundreds of papers all over the country.

I showed it to a couple of people around here, and then showed it on Facebook, with varying grinning comments amounting to, “You know, you’d think this would rate a bigger headline.” And waited for answering laughs.

… Then I told them to read the first paragraph very slowly.

… Then nothing!

I got back responses like, “What? I’ve read it five times! What am I supposed to see?” One friend half-counterattacked: “Respectfully, perhaps whatever is wowing you is simply not that astounding. Unmanned? First-ever private?”

So far, I have had to break down and tell everyone.

Here is the story in question:

Space capsule fulfills mission [headlines vary by newspaper]

By Marcia Dunn – Associated Press

Cape Canaveral, Fla. — An unmanned space capsule carrying medical samples from the International Space Station splashed down in the Pacific Ocean Sunday, completing the first official private interstellar shipment under a billion-dollar deal with NASA.

The California-based company SpaceX gently guided the Dragon into the water via parachutes a couple hundred miles off the Baja California coast.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station used a giant robot arm to release the commercial cargo ship 255 miles up.

The supply ship brought back nearly 2,000 pounds of science experiments and old station equipment. Perhaps the most eagerly awaited cargo is nearly 500 frozen samples of blood and urine collected by station astronauts over the past year.

The Dragon is the only delivery ship capable of returning items, now that NASA’s shuttles have been retired.

SpaceX launched the capsule three weeks ago from Cape Canaveral, full of groceries, clothes and other station supplies.

… Seriously. I thought it was gorgeously funny. But it would only be funny if seen right off. The most amazing part to me is, not that people didn’t see it at first, but that they didn’t see it while they were actively trying to see what I was talking about.

And it may be an editor’s eye, but is an editor valuable if no one else would notice the same things?

Dear noters, please let me know whether or not I need to explain in here too…