Missing this week through no fault of his own is the column of Ricky Harpole — balladier, raconteur extraodinaire. No fault of his own because we simply misplaced two that he had brought to the newspaper office weeks ago.

Ironic, isn’t it? The writer who had so recently in one of his columns extolled the virtues and possibilities of dumpster diving and here we were on press day diving ourselves into that vast abyss behind the building in an attempt to recover lost columns.

Obviously, the dive was unsuccessful, so we are employing the dynamic of Murphy’s Principal of Loss.

Stated simply: Anything lost will magically appear right where it was supposed to have been all along if only the loser will make a public announcement about the loss.

So there it is.

But in the meantime, we hope he made copies before he brought those columns to us — just in case.

Call us Ricky!