Confession #1

Yes, I'll admit it... I buy Reader's Digest Condensed books (fiction and nonfiction) at secondhand sales and read them in the dark of night... I know, I know... I'm an editor, a publisher... a writer for heaven's sake... how can I stand to have the author's work condensed just so I can find the time to read it?

But, that's the thing... last night the young folks who live next door (well, they don't really live there, they are using the house for their garage band, which is really playing in the basement while someone's father remodels the house), anyway, as they played dodgeball in the street next to my new car at midnight, mohawks waving back and forth like the crest of a purple cockatoo... the chains on their jeans jangling and my Chihauhau--all four pounds of her--barking incessantly... well, it's a summer night like that when it's just the thing to pick up a condensed book. There's even the hope I can finish it in one setting without altering my sleep pattern too significantly.

Last night I read Lesley Stahl's biography. Sorry Lesley, not only do I not remember whether it's "--ley" or "--lie" I don't remember the title. This is what happens when there is no discernible book cover.

More importantly though, it was a "great read" as they say. And, lo and behold, I was reading the chapters on her time as a White House Correspondent for CBS during the Reagan years, just after watching the first of a week of services for Ronald Reagan. I particularly liked Stahl's paragraph about a convention held for mayors. Reagan went up to one gentleman (his housing secretary it turned out) and asked "Mr. Mayor, what city do you represent?" or something similar. Hmmmm....

Stahl shares the story of her covering a political convention in 1974, the first female to do so for the network. She was a bit nervous, and her boss walked her to the place where the chairs for the network's anchors were arranged in a semi-circle... "Cronkite" was written on one chair; "Mudd" on another; "Rather" on another... on Lesley's: "female." Her boss had the good sense to blush...