Authors Who Influenced a Young Mind

Growing up in rural Knox County, Tennessee, I never realized until years later how my parents unintentionally exposed me to some of the region’s greatest journalists of that era.

Our home was filled with numerous publications to which they subscribed. There was the local newspaper, of course, the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Then there were several farm-related publications, such as Tennessee Farm Bureau News, Tennessee Farmer, and Progressive Farmer. And there were several religious periodicals.

Within each of those publications were several columnists of note–Don Whitehead, Carson Brewer, Bert Vincent, and Pettus Read, to name a few.

My exposure to these writers began with my overhearing my parents reading excerpts to each other.

“Hey, Ralph, did you read what Bert Vincent said this man uses to keep slugs from his tomato plants?”

“No, what’s he say?”

What followed would be a snippet from Bert’s column, or from that of one of the other journalists they read. Sometimes informative. Sometimes funny. Always interesting.

I was in upper elementary or junior high school when, after having just read Don Whitehead‘s The FBI Story, I learned that he wrote a regular column for the News-Sentinel, and I became a faithful reader. Knowing my enjoyment of his columns, Mother even cut out some of them and mailed them to me when I was attending college out of state. She continued to do so even after I was married and living in Pennsylvania.

I especially remember a column in which Whitehead spun a purely fictional tale of a man named Mostel Doctors whom some manufacturer paid big bucks to use his name in the firm’s advertising: “Mostel Doctors recommends (name of product).”

He and the manufacturer made a lot of money that way, and word soon spread to other businesses’ ad departments. Requests poured in for the right to use Doctors’s name in other firms’ ad campaigns. Before long, the ad writers modified both the spelling of the verb and the man’s name: “Most Doctors recommend (product name).”

Well, so many readers believed Whitehead’s fictionalizing that a few weeks later he was forced to issue another column titled “On the Fine Line Between Fact and Fiction,” explaining his use of a vivid imagination and revealing the gullibility of many of his readers.

But Whitehead’s initial fame came not from his column or fiction writing but from his reporting as a war correspondent. After working for the Lafollette Press, the Harlan, Kentucky, Daily Enterprise, and as a columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Whitehead worked for the Associated Press, covering World War II. He also covered the Korean War. I’ve written about Whitehead and other war correspondents in an earlier blog post (https://www.dennislpeterson.com/post/they-covered-the-war-and-more).

Whitehead was the recipient of the 1950 George Polk Award for wire service reporting and Pulitzer Prizes in 1951 and 1953, the latter being for “The Great Deception,” covering president-elect Dwight Eisenhower’s secret trip to the Korean front. Whitehead authored eight books, including The FBI Story, Border Guard: The Story of the United States Customs Service, and Combat Reporter (posthumously).

Carson Brewer was for forty years a columnist for the News-Sentinel. He quickly gained a reputation as a leading promoter of conservation of East Tennessee’s natural wonders, especially the Great Smoky Mountains. He wrote one of the first and most comprehensive histories of the Little Tennessee River Valley, Hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains, and a history of the Tennessee Valley Authority titled Valley So Wild: A Folk History.

Brewer had been born in Hancock County, Tennessee, and attended Maryville College for two years before joining the Army and serving in Europe during World War II. He later attended the University of Tennessee, but illness prevented his obtaining a degree. Instead, he began writing for the News-Sentinel, covering city hall and the court house.

He described himself as a “meanderer,” writing on a variety of topics, all of regional interest. His columns ranged from descriptions of Appalachian autumns to preservation of natural resources to vegetable growing–and everything in between. He was a master storyteller.

His numerous awards included the 1974 Golden Press Card Award, the 1978 UPI award for his column on sourwood honey, and the 1984 Tennessee Conservation League’s Z. Cartter Patten Award. In 2023, following Brewer’s death, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution honoring his memory.

Another of my favorite columnists was Bert Vincent, who was born in 1896 in Bee Springs, Kentucky, graduated from Kentucky State Normal College, and was a World War I veteran. He began writing for the News-Sentinel in 1929. About four years later, he began writing the column for which he is now most famous, “Strolling with Bert Vincent.”

In “Strolling,” Bert wrote about a plethora of subjects, from folklore to simple living, from recipes and superstitions to vegetable growing. He promoted numerous charitable efforts and suggested what became the now-famous (or infamous, depending on one’s taste buds) Ramp Festival.

The extent of Bert’s influence is evidenced by the Bert Vincent Memorial Library at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, and his induction into the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Electronic Communication Hall of Fame.

Finally, and most recently, there was Pettus Read. He is the editor of the Tennessee Farm Bureau News, Director of Communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation, author of the column “Read All About It,” and, most recently, the District 8 Commissioner in Rutherford County, Tennessee.

Everything about Read promotes agriculture and the rural lifestyle. His column, which is published in more than 50 newspapers, is a mixture of agricultural news and promotion and homespun humor. I especially enjoyed the columns that featured “Uncle Sid and Aunt Sadie,” who always had some “good ol’ common-sense advice” for the readers’ benefit.

After we moved from Tennessee to South Carolina, one of the things I missed most was reading Read’s column in the Tennessee Farm Bureau News. Seeking to alleviate my withdrawal symptoms, I googled his column one day and learned that he had compiled a little book of some of his writings. I ordered Read All About It: A Rural Psychology Primer and, when it arrived, devoured it in one sitting.

“Rural farm life had its challenges,” he wrote in the preface, “but those bumps in the road presented opportunities and rewards that may not have been mine if my life had begun elsewhere. People who were just what you saw shaped my growing up. Family ties were everything, and good morals were expected. . . . An active imagination is something I have possessed all my life, and being bored was never allowed around our house.”

Both Read’s book and all of his columns are filled with what he calls “rural psychology” applied to everyday situations. That philosophy reflects how he and I were reared, and those principles are as good today as they were then.

What about you? Which authors did you read in your youth whose writings have affected your own life’s direction and principles? Be sure to share them in the comments.

Benefits of Reading Old Books

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been reading volume 7 of Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church and learning to appreciate the writing characteristics of Martin Luther. In that work, which was originally published in 1888, Schaff recommended an even older book. His description was so convincing that I found it in my local library and read it–in spite of its being fiction.

Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield was published in 1766, a full decade before our Declaration of Independence. Set in England amid that country’s rigid class system, it nonetheless showed human nature then to be the same as it is today.

As I read the book, I couldn’t help sensing that its story line was like all the episodes of the British TV series Keeping Up Appearances. Although in that sense it begins with ridiculous (to our American sensibilities and social situation) humor, it soon turns tragic and gets only more so as the narrative unfolds. In the end, however, all wrongs are righted. As Shakespeare titled one of his plays, All’s Well That Ends Well.

In spite of its being a work of fiction, The Vicar of Wakefield is quite instructive. It also set me to thinking about the many benefits of reading old books.

If one studies the best-seller lists for any length of time, it soon becomes obvious to anyone that none of the books on the list is old by any stretch of the imagination; they’re all new releases. They stay on the list for a few weeks (a few months if they’re real blockbusters or if their authors have well-established platforms, such as a nationally syndicated radio or TV show), but then they disappear like a drop of snow on a warm sidewalk. Few of them last. Their appeal and value are ephemeral.

But the old books are still around. They hold their value over the generations, in fact over multiple centuries. Why? Because they are “evergreens.”

Ephemerals versus evergreens. That’s our choice.

Consider one example, and this is not intended in any way to present any political leanings on my part. Consider these books: The Return: Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback by Dick Morris and Animal Farm or 1984 by George Orwell. Which book will still be around, be read, and still have relevance in 2030? Although the Morris book might make the best-seller list, it is (and will continue to be) Orwell’s that last for years to come. The former will quickly be irrelevant by (or perhaps even before) the 2024 presidential election.

But we can go even farther back in literary history and find books that, although addressing the social or political issues of the times in which they were written, are still relevant even today. The Vicar of Wakefield is but one example.

Perhaps the best such example, however, is the Bible. Written centuries ago, it is still very much relevant today. Although not intended as a science book, it is scientifically accurate. (Just one example is that it stated the existence of ocean currents long before Southerner Matthew Fontaine Maury proved their existence.) Although not intended as a history book, per se, it is historically correct. (Archeologists are regularly discovering the existence of some ancient people mentioned in the Bible but long discounted by unbelieving “experts” or finding various objects or manuscripts that confirm the biblical accounts.)

Most importantly, the Bible accurately describes man’s sinful nature and his proneness to evil; predicts accurately the steady moral decline of society; prescribes the only cure for man’s problems to be salvation through Jesus Christ, and even addresses such current controversial topics as climate change, with God’s promise that “seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22). And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

So what are the benefits of reading old books, especially the Bible?

1. They help us understand that people are essentially the same throughout history and even today. Some things never change, including human nature.
2. They increase our appreciation for the authors’ genius and abilities. Reading them increases our vocabulary, strengthens our imagination, and hones our own writing skills as we learn from those authors of proven value.
3. They show us how important human relationships are, especially the family.
4. They show us the consequences and rewards of certain behaviors, giving us the chance to avoid the agonies of sin and to imitate good actions so we can reap their rewards. C.S. Lewis said, “We all . . . need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”
5. They demonstrate their value by having withstood the tests of time. They never get old. I recall one of the titles in a ten-volume set that was part of the Collier’s Encyclopedia that my parents bought when I was a kid: Stories That Never Grow Old. I also recall the words of Christ in Matthew 24:35: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” That’s an evergreen for sure!
6. They offer us a window to the past and a lens to the present and future.
7. They even offer health benefits! According to a study by experts in Liverpool, England (reported by Country Living on March 3, 2020), reading old books “could help to boost your brain power and improve your life satisfaction” by sending “‘rocket boosters’ to the brain and help those suffering from depression, anxiety, chronic pain and dementia, too.”

So, with all those benefits awaiting you, what are you waiting for?! Grab an old book and start reading. A good one to start with might be the Bible, perhaps the most widely available but least read old book on the all-time best-seller list.

Do These Stats Alarm You?

The other day, I came across some statistics that, to me, are quite alarming. I wonder if anyone else finds them similarly alarming.

Those statistics concern the reading habits of Americans, both young and old, but they are especially relevant to the younger generations among the population. And, if true, they portend no good for the future of society.

Now I haven’t done any research to verify the authenticity or accuracy of these statistics, but my experiences as a teacher and a writer (and a reader) tend to make me trust them. The precise figures cited might vary a bit, but I tend to trust the accuracy of the general tendency they seem to indicate.

The statistics were cited by an organization known as the Heinlein Society, a group dedicated to sharing and perpetuating interest in the writings of Robert Heinlein. I’m familiar with neither the organization nor the man, so I cannot recommend either with any knowledge, but a quick Google search revealed that he was a science fiction writer, so it’s no wonder I didn’t recognize his name: I don’t read much fiction and no science fiction.

The Society reported that 33 percent of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives.

Let that sink in. Learning doesn’t stop completely, of course, but think of how much less those kids are learning. Moreover, the Society reported that 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after they march. And the situation gets even worse when we consider that, according to the Society, 80 percent of families did not buy or read a book last year. These findings bother me, and I hope they bother you, too.

Continuing with its findings, the Society reported that 57 percent of new books are not read to completion. Even when people do read, they don’t finish what they start.

Now we certainly must qualify that last statistic a bit. Over the years, I’ve realized that it’s not always a rule of life that one has to finish a book once he or she has started it. It took me a while to learn that lesson, but when one considers how many good books are available and how little time one has in this life, why should we waste time reading bad books to the end when we could be using our time more wisely with one that is good? (That statistic might say more about the quality of the books being published today than about the readers who never finish the books.)

A similar qualification must be made for another statistic: 70 percent of adults have not visited a bookstore in the last five years. When one can buy almost any book online now, why would one spend a lot of time and gasoline going to a brick-and-mortar bookstore? The Covid lockdowns also no doubt played a part in that statistic. I must admit that I, too, have been ordering more books online rather than wasting time searching through shelves (or literally piles) of often poorly organized books trying to find that specific title I need.

But these statistics seem to be authenticated when one also considers how much time we spend doing other things: on our cell phones, at our computers, in front of the TV, and engaged in other non-reading activities.

But what can we do to reverse these dismal statistics? Like many problems of life, the beginning of the solution must be the home. Provide your children or grandchildren an abundance of good reading material in your home. Encourage them to read about a variety of subjects. Eventually, one or more will “click” with them, and off they’ll go, pursuing a new-found interest.

Guide their reading by providing direction and purpose. At first they might not know what to read, so you can suggest some good books. Prioritize their activities to permit time for reading. Many kids today are so busy with school, sports, clubs, etc., that they don’t have time or energy left to read. Help them make the time.

Participate in reading with (or, for younger kids, to) them. Nonreaders beget nonreaders, so set a good example by being a reader yourself. And let the kids see you reading and enjoying it.

And what better book could they begin learning to read that The Good Book–the Bible? Let them see you reading it! Read it to and with them. Pray that they will begin to read and benefit from it themselves.

I’m so thankful that my grandchildren are growing up to be readers. I hope they will continue to love reading and not stop once they’re out of school. I hope they come to realize that their after-school lives are really just the beginning, their education having opened the doors to endless reading. I hope they’ll become as familiar with their local libraries as they are with their own living rooms. They–and society–will be the beneficiaries.

As is reportedly inscribed in the children’s reading room of the Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Library,

Books are keys to wisdom’s treasure;

Books are gates to lands of pleasure;

Books are paths that upward lead;

Books are friends. Come, let us read.

What I’ve Been Reading

Those who know me or have read much of my blog know that I read a lot, often having multiple books going at the same time. They also know the subjects about which I tend to read, whether for my writing projects, for edification, or for mere pleasure.

Recently, I became aware of two books with a bearing on one of my projects that is in the publication process at TouchPoint Press, Dillon’s War, an account of my uncle’s experiences during World War II. I wish I had known about them while I was writing that book. Those two books are After D-Day by James Jay Carafano and Victory at Mortain by Mark J. Reardon.

Those who know me or have read much of my blog also know that I enjoy reading about the people who lived in the mountainous regions of the South. Perhaps the greatest evidence of this preference is my affinity for the life and writings of Jesse Stuart. Of course, his autobiographical works The Threat that Runs So True and To Teach, To Love, of which I’ve written before, were influential in shaping my own teaching career. And my own family heritage includes such people from the ridges and mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. (The photo at the start of this post is of my maternal grandfather’s family when he was only a teenager. That’s him sitting on the porch rail. His father is holding the rifle, apparently ready to shoot the photographer if the photo doesn’t turn out to his liking.)

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that I was immediately enticed to purchase a book that my pastor mentioned in a recent sermon. The Man Who Moved a Mountain by Richard C. Davids. After opening the package when it arrived and glancing at the book’s opening pages, I put all of my work-related reading on hold for a while and became immersed in the new story. Only iron-willed self-discipline forced me to lay it aside in deference to on-going writing projects, but short, intermittent reading sessions will guarantee that I soon will finish this relatively short (~250 pages) book.

Bob Childress, the topic of The Man Who Moved a Mountain, was born and reared amid the ignorance, superstition, poverty, violence, and moonshine making and drinking of southwestern Appalachian Virginia, but his ministry was in an area that was an even more intense version of it. Childress had been a part of that sad environment–until he met and accepted Christ. He ended up returning to school, a grown adult among little children, attended college and seminary, and ministered to his mountain people to change their rough, godless environment by promoting education and Christian living. His own selfless service to people was a major factor in his success. In that, his life provides a good example for us all.

In preparing this book, Davids interviewed a plethora of Childress’s relatives, neighbors, congregants, and acquaintances and did a masterful job of putting their accounts and remembrances together, painting a compelling and inspiring account of Childress’s life and ministry. And I have no doubt that I will surely enjoy and learn from the rest of this book. Although I’m only about one-third of the way through it, I already can recommend it to my readers.

And what are you reading?

What Books Are in Your Background Scene?

One’s books can reveal a lot about someone. After all, we are, in a sense, what we read.

Whenever I’m watching a television interview of someone who has a bookcase in their background, I invariably find myself focused more on the titles of the books behind them than on the substance of the interview. That distraction was intensified during the Long Covid Sequestration, when many of us conducted much of our meeting work online.

In such instances, I find myself, head tilted sideways so I can read the titles of the books on the shelves. Those books can tell a lot about the person sitting in the foreground.

If the person is a professed expert on the presidents, I expect to find biographies of those men and books about aspects of their presidencies featured prominently on the shelves behind them. One or more of them might even have been written by the person.

If the person is a professional sports reporter, I expect to see books on various sports and the athletes who play or played them.

If the person is a minister, I expect to see books on theology, such as commentaries, sermon collections, Bible dictionaries, etc. And surely somewhere nearby, a Bible.

I also find myself searching the person’s shelves for any books that I, too, possess. If I find any, it gives me the feeling that I have sort of a connection to the person, at least a shared interest.

Sometimes, however, I’ve been disappointed. Instead of seeing titles that lend credibility to the person’s professed area of expertise, I’ve found only unrelated titles. For example, I recently saw on the shelves of a state legislative mover and shaker, not history or business or legal titles, as one might expect, but books on the writing of fiction. I certainly hope that the bills that person helps to pass and get enacted as law are not fiction. We have enough fantasy fiction in politics already!

Granted, I know that to preserve their privacy, many people in the computer age now use purchased fake background scenes to make it seem as though they are where they aren’t, so some of the titles I see aren’t really there. But it nonetheless sends a message.

My wife forgot to remove a background scene she had used for a lesson she taught when Covid forced virtual schooling on her. When she later attended a faculty meeting by Zoom, she seemed to her colleagues to be living the high life on a sunny Caribbean beach!

But this got me to wondering what books people see in my backgrounds. Since I don’t use a fake background, people see my environs for what they are. Pressed for shelf space, the book titles in my background will depend on how I’m sitting.

Behind me in one direction will be books on history, especially either biography (arranged alphabetically), general American history (arranged chronologically), military history, or Southern history.

In another direction will be books on the Bible: commentaries, dictionaries, sermon collections, etc.

In yet another direction one would see books on education, dictionaries, thesauri, quotation books, reference books, and books on writing and publishing.

And in still another backdrop, one would be hard pressed to find any single organized focus because the shelves hold all the overflow from all the other tightly packed, overcrowded shelves, including even a few fiction titles.

I suppose that the single conclusion one would reach if they saw these various background scenes is that I love books.

And that would be correct.

The Physical Cost of Spiritual Work

“The physical price that chaplains paid was enormous. Although most of them did not lose their lives on the battlefield, as did thousands of the soldiers, a few of them did. Others were wounded while ministering in the same venue. When soldiers had opportunities to rest in camp, that was when and where the chaplains had to exert their greatest efforts and expend the greatest amount of their energies. They often labored late into the night, preparing sermons, organizing Bible study lessons, writing letters to churches and soldiers’ parents and wives and other loved ones, and laboring in prayer before the Lord for the spiritual needs of the soldiers in their care. Physical exhaustion was the rule rather than the exception for chaplains.”

“Chaplains also engaged in far more than sermon preaching, baptizing, and other duties connected directly to their preaching ministry. Those duties included visiting the sick and wounded wherever they were, whether in the hospitals, on the battlefield following a battle, or even on the battlefield amid battle. Noncombatant chaplains were then in as great a danger of being killed or wounded as were the ‘fighting chaplains’ and the common soldier.”

“Chaplains, not unlike the common soldiers and even many officers, did not get many opportunities to go home or otherwise get away from camp life, marches, or battle. Whenever they were so fortunate as to be granted some time anyway, it was not only welcome but also usually packed with activity, and a good percentage of the time was spent in traveling, often. Often, the chaplains’ time off was not for rest or time with family but on chaplain or church organizational business.”

“For a chaplain, evangelist, or colporteur to have a lasting positive spiritual impression on the soldiers, each minister had to attend to his own spiritual condition.”

The preceding quotations are excerpts from Christ in Camp and Combat: Religious Work in the Confederate Armies by Dennis L. Peterson and available at https://bit.ly/Christ_in_Camp_Combat_FBblog . Get your own copy today. Get another copy to share with someone you know who is interested in the War Between the States and the work of the chaplains, missionaries, and colporteurs during that conflict.

Recent Reading

For some reason, my Facebook page has been inundated lately with memes about books and reading. (Could it be because I am a bibliophile and read a lot?) That put me to thinking about some of the books I’ve read recently. Although most of my reading of necessity involves the research I’m doing on my current writing, some of it (believe it or not) actually has been for sheer pleasure. (Imagine that, and not a single work of fiction!)

One book, City Behind a Fence by Johnson and Jackson, was sort of a nostalgic glance backward to get the backstory of a place where I once worked. The Manhattan Project of World War II created the plants where the components of the first atomic bombs were built, and around it, housing the workers at those plants, developed the city of Oak Ridge. That history is a fascinating story, especially for someone who worked there after the war. That included me. I started out as an intimidated Technical Publications Analyst I, or technical editor, lowest man on the totem pole. Over time, however, I proved myself and rose to the position of a senior editor. All in historic surroundings and among a few historic people. I was fortunate to have been able to talk to one of them when we met occasionally at the communal coffee pot. His office was just down the hall from mine. But this book also revealed the heartbreaking inside story of the forced removal of hundreds of families from their farms and homes so the plants could be built. Many of them earlier had been forced off their land in what became the Smoky Mountains National Park and yet again when Norris Dam was built. Was there anywhere they could go to escape the long arm of the federal government and live in peace?

Another pleasure book was A History of the Amish by Nolt. That one was an impulse purchase from an Amish restaurant where we ate during a summer trip to the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania. As I read about the development and divisions of that quaint religious group, I couldn’t help seeing in its history the decline of Protestant Christianity over the years as the influences of worldliness and compromise have eaten away at the once sacred standards of the Church. One cannot read the history of the Amish without admiring their determination to remain distinct from the world around them. We might think that many of their ways are extreme, but at least they know what they believe and have generally stuck to those beliefs. However, they have experienced the same departures from the faith, the decline of standards of behavior, and the derision directed toward them by the world (unbelievers) because of their efforts to remain steadfast to their faith.

The other books I’ll mention are all related to my current project, the effort to track my uncle’s footsteps through Europe during World War II and to experience, albeit vicariously, what he must have experienced.

I began with Andy Rooney’s My War. The irascible and frequently irreverent news commentator was a young war correspondent during the war, covering primarily the Allied bombing campaigns in Europe. But after the D-day landings, he also covered the ground war, often tagging along with the 3rd Armored Division and occasionally Task Force Lovelady, my uncle’s unit. I tried to read Rooney’s descriptions of the death and destruction he witnessed as though I were seeing it all through my uncle’s eyes as he peered through the tiny slot at the front of the driver’s compartment in his M5 Stuart or M4 Sherman tank.

Next was the Pictorial History of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division in World War II by Neely. This work left nothing from the printed descriptions of the carnage of the war to the imagination; it showed them in authentic and vivid detail in photos right from the battlefield, often just moments after the destruction had befallen its victims. My uncle was a tank driver in the 3rd AD, and I found myself scrutinizing every photo of an American tank to see if he had been its driver. No luck with that, but it did reveal even more of what he saw and experienced as a frontline soldier.

And then there was Bracketing the Enemy: Forward Observers and Combined Arms Effectiveness during the Second World War by Walker. My uncle was not just a tank driver but a driver for an artillery forward observer (FO). Those were the officers (and, when necessary, even NCOs or privates on the crew) who called in artillery barrages and air support for the frontline combat forces. He was not only a member of the Spearhead, the nickname for the 3rd AD, but also the tip of that spearhead, since FOs had to be at the forefront of the battle to see firsthand what was going on there. It was a dangerous job. the mortality rate of FOs being extremely high. This book gave me an even greater appreciation for what my uncle had to experience. And an understanding of why he never talked about his war experiences.

If I’ve learned nothing else from these books, the combination of lessons learned is that one should know what he believes and stand uncompromisingly for it, that we should appreciate our history and how we got where we are today, and we should try to understand what those who fought for our continued freedom went through to preserve that freedom. And that should make us ever vigilant to the dangers of losing those freedoms.

By the way, in the process of learning these things, I’ve also had fun!

Can You Tell Me Why?

Figuring out why people read what they do is a mystery to me. Each individual reader differs in so many ways: political and religious worldviews, educational levels, life experiences, skill levels, natural or developed interests, occupations, family backgrounds. The list of contributing factors is endless.

If an author’s readers’ habits are observed over time, however, maybe one can detect reading patterns that begin to develop. Even before my marketing guru began directing my attention to my blog’s analytics, I began to notice something that puzzled (and still puzzles) me. One particular blog post kept popping up as having been viewed, long after it originally appeared as a post. I found myself wondering why. What about that post attracted such long-term reader attention and interest? The title? The content? An accompanying photo? What?

After carefully considering these questions, I finally reached a profound conclusion: I don’t know!

To find out the answer, I must ask the only ones who really know, the readers themselves. And that’s what I’m doing with today’s blog post. I would welcome any ideas you might have about why that one particular post has attracted such interest. Maybe by helping me answer that question you can help me improve all subsequent posts! Or at least improve some of my writing.

The post in question is titled “Put the Cookies on the Bottom Shelf.” (You can read it at https://www.dennislpeterson.com/post/put-the-cookies-on-the-bottom-shelf.)

The backstory of the post: It is a shortened, modified version of a much longer article I wrote in the fall of 2009 for an educational journal aimed at K-12 teachers. Its purpose was to combat the tendency of some teachers (especially first-year neophytes and advance-degreed “philosophers”) who tended to pontificate much as their upper-level college professors had, thereby ensuring that those teachers lost their students in meaningless self-exalting, mind-numbing verbiage. That article was condensed for the August 2018 post, and it was redirected from teachers toward writers, but the principles discussed remained the same.

That post has been, without rival, the most viewed and shared of all my posts since the blog began. Not a week passes without someone somewhere viewing it. (Perhaps you have been among those viewers.) But WHY?

Why do YOU think that is the case? Why has it been so popular? I’d be interested in knowing what you, the readers, think the reason(s) might be. Please share your thoughts. And thanks in advance for your insights!

Wye Jony Can’t Spel or Rite

Sitting at a light in heavy traffic the other day, my eyes suddenly became aware of the writing on the double doors of the work van in front of me. I can’t recall specifically what the words were, but they spelled out the company’s name. As I read it, I suddenly exclaimed to my wife, “No wonder kids can’t spell today! Just look at how they spelled that company’s name!”

Examples of this phenomenon abound all around us. This is no reflection on the utility or value of the products or services of such companies. It’s no reflection on the creative ingenuity of the firms’ marketing gurus. But it is a reflection of why otherwise educated kids grow into adults who can’t spell or write correctly. With so many bad examples surrounding them, the wonder is that they can spell and write as well as they do!

Let’s consider a few examples.

Nutone, Reddi Whip, Wite-Out, Sno-Cone, Krispy Kreme, Froot Loops, Cheez Stiks, Playskool, Blu-Ray, Snap-Tite, Speedi-Products, Dreem Sleep, SafetyKleen. I’ve tried to be brief, but the list just keeps growing!

My favorite sad-but-true example comes from a TV advertisement that ran repeatedly during baseball season several years ago. The fact that kids were watching and learning bad spelling from it became clear in a school classroom when the teacher asked a student, “Johnny, how do you spell relief?” And the student dutifully replied, “R-O-L-A-I-D-S!”

But popular advertising and marketing gimmicks are just one reason kids can’t spell or write correctly today. Another reason is our over-reliance on auto-correcting features and spelling and grammar checkers on our electronic devices. Our cell phone texting features and word processing software automatically think for us or second guess our meanings, supplying what they “think” we really mean when we text or type.

Some of the things that go out to our messages’ recipients can be funny and harmless. Others can be embarrassing. But some could prove harmful or otherwise detrimental, causing gross misunderstandings.

And don’t even get me started on handwriting! I’ll admit that my own handwriting, especially when I’m in a hurry, can be atrocious. But have you noticed the handwriting of the general, run-of-the-mill member of the public today? And we accuse doctors of having bad handwriting? We owe them an apology!

I think back to my mother’s handwriting. Neat. Legible. Even artistic. Even when she was scribbling her grocery list in a hurry, her handwriting was still clearly legible. Certainly better than mine when I took my time. And that seems to have been a characteristic of her entire generation, at least for the women but also for many of the men. And the key is that they were TAUGHT to practice good handwriting! It didn’t just happen. Typically, it was either the Palmer or the Zaner-Bloser technique they learned. And it stayed with them. Distinctive, artistic, and legible to the very end!

Several months ago, the museum where I serve as a docent opened a new display of accounting books from a large corporation that had once operated in the community before, during, and shortly after World War II. The thing that immediately struck me about the display was the neat, legible handwriting in the account ledgers. It looks just like my mother’s!

But kids aren’t taught to value handwriting today. No separate, intentional instruction in the skill. No special writing workbooks over which the young scholars labor. No notetaking by hand for history, science, or English class. If notes are taken at all, it’s done on the computer.

When I returned to college to take some post-grad classes after having been out for several decades, I was appalled at what I discovered as I looked around me. Not only was I the oldest person in the classes but also I was the only one taking notes in longhand!

And in the hustle-bustle of the modern world, kids-grown-into-adults get no instruction in or practical application of what used to be simple courtesy skills. Writing of thank-you notes. Writing of letters.

A rule of education is that you will get from students what you reward. If you reward a particular behavior, it gets repeated. If you pay attention to the guy who’s goofing off just to get attention, he’ll keep doing it. If you honor and reward good spelling and handwriting, students will soon pick up on that and begin to spell and write well.

But today, we often reward the wrong things, things that don’t really matter all that much in the long run. We are really big on honoring athletes with letters and letter jackets, huge trophies, hefty scholarships. What do we give the good speller? A measly paper certificate.

When was the last time you wrote a thank-you note or letter? By hand? How is your own spelling? We must set the example. People will know we’ve taken the time and made the effort to express our thoughts. At least they’ll be able to read them! Moreover, something handwritten is something that might actually be cherished and saved. That text message or e-mail will soon be deleted and forgotten.

Look What Just Came Out!

Good Old Days, July/August 2020