A cup of coffee

Today marks the inaugural installment of this new adventure, whatever it turns out to be. And right here, amid the news, good and bad, and the sports scores, amid who got married and who died, who wrote a letter to the editor, and what Dagwood and Blondie are up to, I hope you'll find a few minutes for it every week.

I like to think of this as our having a cup of coffee together to start our day, or one in the evening to finish it, dependent on when you read the paper. Back in Oakwood, the little East Texas burg where I was raised, having a cup of coffee with friends was a treasured event. The men would have theirs at Laurene's Café, while ladies met around each other's breakfast tables. Often the problems of the world were tackled. And I don't buy into the notion that it was a simpler world then, with simpler problems. As I recall, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, and racial discrimination weren't exactly petty trifles. Every age has its own problems, I guess, sufficient to itself.

But mostly those conversations over cups of coffee dealt with less significant things. Recipes were shared. Sick friends were discussed and put on one another's prayer lists. Somebody got a new color television set, and it turned out that Ed Sullivan looked even worse than he did in black and white. Cattle prices were up, or down.

These assemblies transpired at any time during the day and sometimes several times daily. Whenever friends wanted to confer about anything, specific or general.

And that's just what I'd like for this to be.

There's no telling what our subject will be on any given Sunday. We'll be fancy free and will wander in whatever direction the wind and current events take us.

Let's steer clear, if you don't mind, of religion—I'll hold to my religion and you hold to yours—but we'll probably take up faith in general as our topic now and again. We'll leave politics to the syndicated pundits and angry letter writers, unless, that is, some politician does something either interesting or aggravating, the latter being the most likely case. Endorsements, implied or explicit, of anyone running for any office in any place will never be offered. Good, old-fashioned patriotism is allowed, but I'll keep it shy of soapbox bellowing.

I teach senior English and creative writing in high school, so I'll talk about teachers and students and education now and then. I might as well go on record right now as believing that good teachers are underpaid, bad teachers should find another career, students are smarter and have more potential than they are sometimes given credit for, and the giving over of a school's curriculum to the teaching of a single state test is both dangerous and wrong.

I'll talk about books occasionally, since I do dearly love reading good books and see it as an enterprise that society should take up more in earnest. I am in the business of writing books, but I'll refrain from pushing them at you, like a barker at a sideshow. And Oakwood, my little hometown, will make regular appearances, since you couldn't any more take that little town out of me than you could train a cat to roll over.

Speaking of cats. My wife Karen and I are empty nesters now, with the exception of four cats named Will and Grace, Earl Gray, and Missy. We're awfully attached to them and pretty much let them run the place. But I promise to not go on and on about them like some tiresome people do about pets and children.

In fact, you might never hear another word from me about those cats.

But, then again, you might.

On wizards

Many people—what pollsters would label a "significant demographic group"—find young readers' fascination with the Harry Potter novels to be dangerous, disturbing, and indicative of a societal slide into regions dark and dire. And most, if not all, of their conclusion rests solely on the fact that Harry, the baby-faced lad in the large eyeglasses, is, in fact, a wizard.

My first inclination here is to suggest that this group find something more important to worry about. But, after all, it isn't any of my business what people choose to worry about. Also, I'm well aware that their concerns are, in many cases, born of deeply held beliefs, religious and moral, and who am I to trample around in that field? I harbor pretty deep religious and moral beliefs myself, and I don't take kindly to any such trampling.

So what I would suggest is this: consider the fact that kids, millions of them, are spending time, when enjoying the Harry Potter adventures, reading big thick books. And that, I have to...