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Carver Communications - Index

Carver Communications - 5.1.09 - Index

By Cathey Meyer
Bill of Reading
As a civics teacher of decades past,
I still remember my favorite lessons on the
United State Constitution and our precious
Bill of Rights. I slept better at night knowing
our U.S. Citizen Instruction Book provided
us specifically vague guarantees that
for over 200 years have served us fairly. (I
could say served us fairly well or fairly
good, but this is a reference to my civics
days not my English mangle daze.) I particularly
enjoyed teaching the 2nd
Amendment, Right to Bare Arms and
entering into the discussion of sleeveless
tops verses cap sleeves with the blond high
school seniors. Remember this was the
1980’s and the Reagan years of china patterns,
not military interventions on foreign
soil.
Our rights to choices to believe or
not in a higher power, wear sleeveless tops
while hauling loaded weapons, deny a uniformed
officer a free night on the hide-abed,
grant a dust-bunny search, keep our
trap shut, go to trial for speeding and let
our peers decide if we did, keep our bail in
our budget and remind our government
these rights apply to everyone is what
keeps America red, white and blue. Sadly,
when you do your research on Wikipedia,
some things get lost in translation, but
trust me, most of the above can be translated
into that foreign-East-coast-18th-
Century dialect and still matches those
First Ten Amendments.
While our elected officials do an
excellent job of keeping our Constitution
relatively free from Amendment over-load
(unlike the budget), we might want to consider
a movement to defend something we
all take for granted—especially if you are
doing it RIGHT THIS MOMENT. If you
can read this, you are practicing a rapidly
developing habit of extinction—reading a
newspaper. Some of you may be reading
this on that new fangled contraption—the
pesky computer or any of its blackberry—
sidekick—twittering cousins—but you are
reading. As we mentally dissect the syllables
of the written word, we are fast evolving
as the dinosaurs of generations past.
May 1, 2009 REAL ESTATE NEWSLINE 7
We must not let the habit go extinct with
our passing (or failing vision).
Reading is rapidly becoming an
elitist hobby. I am from the old school of
reading when the daily morning newspaper
arrived on the porch before dawn and
the evening newspaper was thrown during
the viewing of Captain Gus on Channel 5.
Paper parts were divided up between family
members and exchanged as newsprint
smeared over fingertips and white teeshirts.
Today, I pray daily my paper delivery
old man is driving a Prius and will
faithfully deliver me today’s edition sometime
during the day. I am willing to pay
three times the subscription rate I paid just
three years ago but I enjoy reading the
details of world in my daily, local paper.
Currently I am paying more for
less. My favorite reporters have been let
go; I now have no columnists to disagree
with on local issues; sections of the paper
have been combined and shrunk to save
ink and money; advice columnists are long
gone; the cartoon print is so tiny I now
read the few classifieds instead just
because I can still read that print and the
beautiful, colorful advertising is now just a
memory of days gone by.
While I will continue to pay the
price for my daily paper, I have ceased
renewing subscriptions to my favorite
monthly magazines. The luxury days of
stacking up magazines that I thought I
might read one day have now terminated.
My favorite magazine (that I actually did
read), The Washingtonian (a Texas
Monthly version of our nation’s capitol
boundaries) sent me—a decade long sub-
scriber— my renewal notice last week.
Almost $60 a year! I might as well get
cable television for that price! (Yes you
read that correctly.) My many fashion
magazines now demand around $4 an
issue to remind me I am getting older and
need anti-aging products. For $4 an issue,
and there are more issues than I care to
admit, I will just look in the mirror, mirror
on the wall rather than let my wallet take
the fall.
As I reviewed my income tax for
2008 and studied my rejected claims for
‘educational reading’ on my line item
veto, I realized that the days of affording
to subscribe to magazines and newspapers
is long past. I am not THAT old that paying
to read for mental enrichment should
be a ‘thing my grandmother did’ but I fear
in truth, I am now of my grandmother’s
generation. If a gainfully employed, highly
educated (most of my college class
were on the third floor of buildings) individual
with expendable income is now
choosing NOT to spend money on reading,
what is the generation following me
doing? Yes, they are txtng wtht vwls. Yes,
they are watching live video streaming of
things of which I have never seen. Yes,
they are moving at the speed of sound, but
not hearing a thing. And, no, many of
them are no longer reading anything of
substance.
Treasure this moment with your
NEWSLINE. We are still guaranteed our
REALTOR right to read as delivered at
will. Thank you Carvers for believing in
our right to READ!