Readers look to newspapers for the big stories: politics, technology and all the other forces that move the world in big ways. But journalists also need to catalog the minutiae that often have the most immediate impact on how we live.</p><p>One of the biggies in this category: the closings boxes that run in the Local section on most holidays. People expect that banks and government offices will be closed on occasions like Memorial Day &#8212; but what about services like trash collection and bus routes? It&#8217;s one thing if you find a museum&#8217;s doors locked unexpectedly on a day off, but it can get downright inconvenient if you miss trash collection and have to deal with an extra week&#8217;s worth of detritus sitting around the house.</p><p>Especially unfortunate are those times when the closings box contains a mistake, like an item in the recent Veterans Day list that led some area residents to think their trash routes were delayed by a day, when they were actually on the regular schedule.</p><p>One reader called me on Oct. 13 to ask why <em>The Kansas City Star </em>didn&#8217;t run a notice about possible closings for Columbus Day. It&#8217;s a bank holiday &#8212; but relatively few businesses observe it. &#8220;This is one of those days that&#8217;s sort of on the fence, don&#8217;t you think?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;I would think the newspaper would want to let us know on the holidays where it&#8217;s not obvious, because that&#8217;s when people wonder, &#8216;Do I set my trash out?&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>An excellent point. Sometimes, just a note that services are unchanged can provide utility to readers without taking up much space.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">No error is really trivial</span></strong></p><p>One of my favorite calls in recent weeks, from Nov. 19: &#8220;You&#8217;re going to think I&#8217;m a little obsessive,&#8221; she said. &#8220;This is important! Your description of Wavy Gravy ice cream is wrong today in the Food section. ... I take my ice cream very seriously.&#8221;</p><p>And so the next day, Page A-2 set the record straight. Wavy Gravy was caramel and cashew Brazil nut ice cream with a chocolate hazelnut fudge swirl and roasted almonds, confirmed to me by Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s rep Liz, who read me the ingredients from an empty container on a shelf in their &#8220;flavor graveyard.&#8221;</p><p>Too minor a detail to merit a correction? You could argue that &#8212; but in this case, the ice cream was a fairly central part of that element of the story. I thought it was worthwhile to note it in print, especially since bad info about the flavor proliferates on the Internet.</p><p><em>The Star </em>has corrected lots of other seemingly minor details, including mistaken middle initials, incorrect Scrabble Gram answers, and even one howler from 1992 about a person who was mistakenly credited for creating &#8220;Star Trek&#8221; Klingon costumes for friends to wear to an Earth Day celebration.</p><p>Still, if it was wrong, it was wrong. <em>The Star </em>always needs to note its own flubs.