Hello? Are you out there? Anyone?

One of my daily pleasures is to the read the newspaper.  I'll sometimes skip over the front page if the news is terribly upsetting.  I've already listened to NPR for the morning update by the time Doug brings in the papers, so I feel up-to-date on events.  At some point in the day, no matter how hectic it gets, I'll take time to grab the papers and read.  I always start with Sports, then move to Business, the main section, and finally Calendar (as the Los Angeles Times calls it).

One of my favorite columnists for the Times is Sandy Banks.  She writes several times per week on a variety of topics, many related to living in L.A., others about raising 3 daughters on her own or balancing work, family, and a social life.  On the surface, Ms. Banks and I don't have a lot in common.  I'm from another generation, Doug and I raised our children together, I'm retired (yippee!), and I'm not African-American.  But her words resonate with me so often that I like to think that we'd have a great old time having coffee together and just yakking.

Last Saturday, Sandy's column was about a letter written by her mother, Ruth, in 1941 to a younger sister.  The letter was recently discovered by a family member and mailed to Sandy.  Ruth chats about daily life, socializing, looking for work, all things important to a young girl of 19 - fourteen pages of words!

Somewhere in the letter, Ruth wrote the following:

If you don't want to bother about reading all this it's alright; I'll never know the difference.  But it was on my mind so strong, I couldn't help writing it.

That's a bit the way I feel about this blog.  I love knowing that, somewhere, people are reading my words.  I see the names of cities, towns, and countries on the Live Traffic Feed and wonder - who is the reader, how did they stumble on my blog, will they return to read more?  Will they leave comments?  Please, please let them leave comments .....

I hope someone, somewhere is reading what I've written.  But if no one reads, that's okay, too.  I write because I like to write.  It helps me think.  It forces me to be creative.  It keeps the old brain cells oxygenated!  It proves that something was "on my mind so strong" that "I couldn't help writing it." 

If you'd like to read Sandy Banks' column in its entirety, and I encourage you to do so, please click here.