Ms Vowell, I think you are amazing (I bet you’ve never heard that before). I have watched you on TV and the shit you say cracks me up. I’m just finishing The Partly Cloudy Patriot and I came across something that may explain why I find your writing so comforting.
I doubt that I would have ever bought one of your books. I’m more of a Michener, Tolkien, tome, the more volumes the better, kind of guy. I pick my reading by weight as much as anything else (I got through most of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and I’ll finish it some day). And I like unusual authors, I am waiting for the last three volumes of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events come out in paperback.
While I am waiting for paperbacks to be published and then sold to and resold at Powel’s, I picked up The Partly Cloudy Patriot from my wife’s reading pile. She is waiting to read it on our next airport excursion. I’ll probably go with something non fiction but not one of her American presidents, early American history biographies.
If you have read this far I hope you don’t stop now. Some years back, maybe seven or eight years ago, on or about the 4th of July I came home to find a flag stuck in my lawn, sound familiar? Someone had put flags in every lawn along the street. Most were still standing but some were listing dramatically. Over time, some most were taken in but a few ended up in the gutter. I picked up some but didn’t make it a mission to police the entire street. I should have. The next year it happened again. Disrespect of the flag really increases my blood pressure. The people at the mall, who give out those little flags, on oversized toothpicks, to passing children who then unceremoniously drop them on the ground to be trampled on and then eventually thrown in the garbage, should be jailed!
On the stick holding flag, that I pulled from my front yard, was a business card from a local real-estate agent. I called them and informed them that I thought that not only were they disrespecting the flag by using it as an advertising tool, they were also contributing to the desecration of the flag by treating it as a lawn ornament. And they had no right to believe said lawn ornament would be respected as the symbol of our nation. I also let them know that I would do everything I could to make sure they never represented a household in my neighborhood unless they came and retrieved every flag they had placed. And they better do it before the flags were soiled.
They were taken aback by my outrage and assured me that they had gotten a ‘very positive response’ from every one else. And to this day they have not advertised their company in my neighborhood by abusing the flag.
Obviously I am not the wonderful writer you are. Thank you for, in part, telling my story with much more depth and clarity then even I have lived. God I wish I could just think your thoughts even if I could never communicate them to another living being. Reading your words helps me think thoughts I didn’t know existed.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
PS I just found out that you were born on my 11th birthday, sorry.
I doubt that I would have ever bought one of your books. I’m more of a Michener, Tolkien, tome, the more volumes the better, kind of guy. I pick my reading by weight as much as anything else (I got through most of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and I’ll finish it some day). And I like unusual authors, I am waiting for the last three volumes of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events come out in paperback.
While I am waiting for paperbacks to be published and then sold to and resold at Powel’s, I picked up The Partly Cloudy Patriot from my wife’s reading pile. She is waiting to read it on our next airport excursion. I’ll probably go with something non fiction but not one of her American presidents, early American history biographies.
If you have read this far I hope you don’t stop now. Some years back, maybe seven or eight years ago, on or about the 4th of July I came home to find a flag stuck in my lawn, sound familiar? Someone had put flags in every lawn along the street. Most were still standing but some were listing dramatically. Over time, some most were taken in but a few ended up in the gutter. I picked up some but didn’t make it a mission to police the entire street. I should have. The next year it happened again. Disrespect of the flag really increases my blood pressure. The people at the mall, who give out those little flags, on oversized toothpicks, to passing children who then unceremoniously drop them on the ground to be trampled on and then eventually thrown in the garbage, should be jailed!
On the stick holding flag, that I pulled from my front yard, was a business card from a local real-estate agent. I called them and informed them that I thought that not only were they disrespecting the flag by using it as an advertising tool, they were also contributing to the desecration of the flag by treating it as a lawn ornament. And they had no right to believe said lawn ornament would be respected as the symbol of our nation. I also let them know that I would do everything I could to make sure they never represented a household in my neighborhood unless they came and retrieved every flag they had placed. And they better do it before the flags were soiled.
They were taken aback by my outrage and assured me that they had gotten a ‘very positive response’ from every one else. And to this day they have not advertised their company in my neighborhood by abusing the flag.
Obviously I am not the wonderful writer you are. Thank you for, in part, telling my story with much more depth and clarity then even I have lived. God I wish I could just think your thoughts even if I could never communicate them to another living being. Reading your words helps me think thoughts I didn’t know existed.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
PS I just found out that you were born on my 11th birthday, sorry.
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