Notes that made it to publication

Invited to speak briefly to the seniors group at Fayette First Presbyterian, I flipped through some stuff I’d written and found odds and ends that have never been tucked into a file for later use.

None was very productive, but before I’d decided they’d had enough, I took a few questions – and the first one alone had an hour’s worth of discussion.

“What to do you read?” a lady asked. “Who’s your favorite writer?”

The simplicity of that question was overwhelming. The short answer: I don’t read books; I read newspapers, especially locals. This house is sometimes stacked with papers I haven’t gotten to, but will. My reading newspapers compulsively leads to some occasionally acrimonious conversations between me and the other reader in this family. (Or as a participant in one of the more heated divorces currently playing out between a minister and his wife put it, “We had some heated fellowship.”)

Dave reads newspapers almost as much as I do but also manages to read through actual books like no one else I know. Yet he keeps the table on his side of the bed neat and well stacked so they are easy to return to Omega books to be recycled.

I tend to have stacks of newspapers here and there, some still in progress, some as recent as Sundays. We’re talking newspapers here, not books.

And this is what the Presbyterian lady was asking about. Books. Not newspapers.

So I came clean and was pleased to see heads nodding in recognition of their own modus. “I don’t read books,” I said. “Would love to plow through the newspapers first and then savor the books in bed with a nightlight on. Trouble with that is reading puts me to sleep, no matter how interesting or stimulating.

“My favorite authors would have to include John Grisham, Jan Karon, Clive Cussler,” I said, forgetting Patricia Caldwell and Bill Bryson, though truth to tell, I rarely actually read them. But they are my favorites to wish I’d read.

Way back at Thanksgiving, I began making my way (very slowly) through Bryson’s 1995 “Made in America.” A friend lent it to me for a distraction from knee replacement rehabilitation, with a note that she wanted it back when I’m done with it. Ummm. I’m on page 302 out of 417.

Bryson should have gone on the initial list. He feeds right into my love for words and can be picked up almost anywhere for a few minutes’ reading in an airport waiting room.

I doubt if there’s an American alive today who hasn’t marveled at comparing the difference in the time it took information to travel great distances in the 18th century. “The Bastille was stormed in July 1789,” writes Bryson, “but President Washington, newly inaugurated, didn’t learn of it until the autumn.”

In the electronic age, Washington would have had all the details before afternoon tea.

The problem was largely one of transportation. A paved road was a rarity and roads that covered any distance at all were more accurately defined as “trails.” Most transportation – hence news dissemination – depended on horse-drawn coaches, horsemen, steamboats and canal barges, and, where available, rail.

Now, for heaven’s sake, we find out about the news before it even happens. We get plans for the newest military surge, I swear, before the generals do. And in the warmth and security of our own homes.

Do you remember the World War II slogan, “Loose lips sink ships.” Roughly translated, it means that you should keep your conversation low when discussing war news, in case by some fluke an enemy spy is sitting at a nearby table.

I suspect that, like other slogans and some actions, the Powers That Be were giving civilians something to do to feel involved in the war effort. It’s like saving toothpaste tubes. They told us they could get the lead out of them.

Dave, whose memory is better than mine, says a dairy in St. Petersburg where he grew up poured gallons upon gallons of milk into Salt Creek because it was rationed and consumers had run out of coupons. He was an eyewitness.

Life has changed a lot since then, and there’s so much to know about some things and better not to know about others. Bryson and Caldwell, I notice, have far outstripped me, by publishing several books just while I’ve sat around here pouting.

I can’t even catch up with their last offerings.

And Dave wants to go out for lunch.