Sit.  Take a load off.  Join the conversation.

     In the big cities, they’re stoops. In smaller towns, they’re porches.  Hawaiians have lanais. You may have a deck, a patio, a terrace or a veranda.  

     Whatever you call it, it's a place where people get together and talk.  They tell stories.  They share their thoughts and feelings.  It's where some of the best tales begin.

Novels are important, especially now ...

I read this quote recently:

"...the novel is the strongest and supplest medium for conveying thought and emotion from one human being to another..."

The author?  F. Scott Fitzgerald, writing in 'The Crack Up" his 1936 collection of essays and short stories.

Think about that.  The strongest and supplest medium.  Of course, TV was just getting started but, of all the media, it's the novel that gets his nod.

Marshall McLuhan, the pop culture communications guru of the '60s talked about hot and cold media.  Books are very "hot."  You have to crawl right in there and get involved. Your imagination is exercised to fill in faces and colors and smells.  You have to examine the very fiber of your own emotions to fill in the blanks. All the colors and nuances, textures and emotions are contributed by you.

McLuhan points to TV as a cool medium.  It's all right there.  All spelled out.  You can contribute as little or as much as you'd like  Your mind is free to wander.  And often does.  He contended that modern man is "stunned" by this encounter with the cool media of the modern world.

A good friend of mine "never reads fiction."  He calls it a waste of time.  "Why do I care about something some guy made up?"

It's sad to think of all he is missing.  

When Frodo says: "I will take the ring."  

Or when Melville tells us in Moby Dick: “Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”

How about Robert Browning in Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came?  How can you be anything but fully inolved when you read: "My first thought was, he lied in every word.  That hoary cripple with malicious eye.  Askance to watch the working of his lie."

During my newspaper career, I could have written 10,000 words trying to describe these emotions -- these primitive gut-level human qualities -- and still not have communicated as well.

What do you think?