It&rsquo;s time for a little roundup of items that lie outside my normal purview in the newsroom. Jumping right on in:</p><p>&bull; Today&rsquo;s Kansas City Star features the first wedding announcement that the paper has run from a gay couple. The item under the &ldquo;Celebrations&rdquo; heading inside the A+E section recognizes two local men who married in Missouri&rsquo;s border state of Iowa.</p><p>The Star&rsquo;s new policy is one that many other papers around the country adopted long ago, some even before states started recognizing same-sex unions. The decision was made by the paper&rsquo;s senior management, including publisher Mark Zieman, vice president for advertising Tim Doty, and editor and vice president Mike Fannin.</p><p>I wrote about the new policy on my blog at <a href="http://adastrum.kansascity.com">http://adastrum.kansascity.com</a> a few weeks ago, and the feedback I heard from readers there was positive by about three to one. </p><p>&ldquo;Celebrations&rdquo; notices are paid classified advertising, and I can&rsquo;t see why The Star shouldn&rsquo;t accept ads such as this. </p><p>The one objection I&rsquo;ve heard &mdash; that Missouri and Kansas don&rsquo;t recognize the marriages &mdash; doesn&rsquo;t really work for me. After all, the section also runs announcements of engagements, anniversaries, birthdays and other commemorations that aren&rsquo;t legally sanctioned or binding.</p><p>As ever more gay people open up about their lives, everyone begins to recognize those same people among family, friends and neighbors.</p><p>Newspapers reflect the world around them, and there&rsquo;s no reason for them to refuse an ad that simply states an objective fact. My experience tells me most readers agree.</p><p>&bull; A common question: Why does my carrier throw my paper on the grass when it&rsquo;s rainy or snowy out?</p><p>The answer: Experience shows that&rsquo;s the best bet for getting subscribers a dry copy of The Star. Through trial and error, the circulation department has discovered the poly bags that protect the paper are more likely to tear when they hit concrete than when they land on a soft lawn. </p><p>&bull; How can I search historical obituaries that ran in The Star?</p><p>The paper started keeping electronic records in 1991. Readers can access that data through a variety of sources, including the &ldquo;search&rdquo; box at the top right of KansasCity.com. Public and school libraries often have subscriptions to electronic archive services that patrons can search, sometimes at no fee to end users. </p><p>For obituaries before 1991, microfilm is the only option. If you have the person&rsquo;s date of death, it&rsquo;s usually fairly simple to find the notice by checking a few days afterward. </p><p>If you don&rsquo;t know the date, it&rsquo;s a much tougher problem. Searching microfilm can be incredibly tedious work. Remember, too, that all deaths weren&rsquo;t necessarily noted in the paper, though The Star has historically run more death notices than many papers.</p><p>A final word of warning: Spinning through microfilm is visually disorienting to many people (seriously). If you plan to tackle a big research job, you might need something to help counter motion sickness.