Frank J. Buchman

Cowboy • Horseman • Writer

Reading Still Most Important

“Newspaper and magazine stacks are cleared away ready for a new year.”

Naysayers assert printed writings are a thing of the past. At least will be, the cynical predictors emphatically proclaim.

Admittedly, newspapers are farther and fewer between. Major dailies are much thinner than years gone by. Hometown papers have become non-existent in many locales. Rural weeklies struggle to survive mostly as service to community.

Yet, reading the news and feature stories in hardcopy print remains a main source of being informed. That is for majority of the baby boomer generation, depending on the differing definition who that might be and include.

Still, slick covered four color magazines remain prominent in newsstands and mailboxes verifying attraction for. Books continue source of enjoyable reading for many based on recorded sales.

Notwithstanding, “Go green, read it online” is soothsayers’ demand to be environmentally cordial, most efficiently and effectively informed.

A personal strike when 15-year-old freshman grandson informed “everything in high school is done on the computer.” No books, no handwritten notes, nothing with pencil and paper, even tests taken, scored and recorded on lighted screen.

Most newspapers, magazines and books are available online to be read on the computer. Or even to be accessed on the cellphone, which apparently is becoming even most common source of news recovery.

Believe it or not and there are those who deny it, many people still don’t have those hyperspace communication devices. The only way to get the information is read it from a printed piece of paper.

National Finals Rodeo preview arrived in the mailbox with “no guts.” Postal service machine ripped out the innards, so the mailman could only deliver the cover. Pleasing though when a call to the Colorado editor informed “it’s not online, we’ll mail a new printed copy today.”

Old school cowboy remains as a handful of newspapers come daily totaling a dozen or more when weeklies arrive, too.  Three dozen horse and livestock magazines are delivered monthly as well.

Thus, stacks of all get pretty high by year’s end.

Papers are clipped for stringer notebook perpetuity, before trashing. Five heavy cardboard boxes of magazines were distributed to whoever wanted at the horseshow banquet, so good reading was not wasted.

Reminds us of First Timothy 4:13: “Until I come, attend to the reading, exhortation, and teaching.”

+++ALLELUIA+++

XI–1–1-1-17

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