I wrote press releases updating the unemployment figures every month, I wrote a speech for the Assistant Secretary of Commerce, I did the clips every weekday morning, reading seven newspapers from around the state and marking items of interest to the governor, the Secretary of Commerce, and his department heads--Employment Security, Unemployment Compensation, Tourism, and Economic Development.

A secretary would cut them out, paste them up, copy, and distribute them.

Doing the clips was a fine practical education in news as a manufactured product.

I saw how a story is born, senesces, and dies. Is revived on its anniversary.

I saw how one paper will print it on the front page, another paper will bury it in the back, and a third paper won't cover it at all.

I got to where I could predict how the papers I read would handle the stories I read.

Orwell said in Spain he saw victories reported as defeats, defeats reported as victories, and some stories that bore no relation to truth whatsoever, "not even that contained in an ordinary lie."

That's what I see on television. Each side accusing the other of what is true of them, but not the other side. It's like you can read their black little hearts by listening to the subtext.

Do they listen to themselves? Do they believe what they are saying? Have they lost the ability to tell the truth from a lie?

I think reading newspapers critically helped my learn how to watch television.

I don't know what watching television teaches you to do. Except buy the products advertised and vote for the candidate of your choice.

"All hail the Consumer's Age, the voices boomed," Lawrence Durrell writes. "But which consumer is, and which consumed?"

Brenda and I liked living in Tallahassee.

Besides the seashore, nearby, fresh seafood, primeval forests and wild rivers, there were cultural activities in Tallahassee we were not near, in North Carolina or Fort Walton Beach: the campus movies, concerts, lectures, art shows, college football games, and so forth, of our student days.

Food and book and record co-ops. Organic foods. Natural childbirth and breastfeeding support groups.

We went to faculty recitals, we went to hear Charlie Mingus play in Ruby Diamond Auditorium, we saw the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, with Peter Serkin on piano, perform, and rehearse, there were bluegrass bands at The Pearl, a beer joint and oyster bar on the truck route around the city. Jim and Jesse played at ABC Mobile Homes on a flatbed trailer with a string of lightbulbs overhead.

The clique of writers associated with the university turned out to be, well, a clique.

They snubbed me.

I wasn't a writing instructor.

I hadn't graduated from a university writing program.

A couple more yets.

I hadn't been fired for writing on the job--after I finished doing the clips I wrote on my novel for the rest of the day--I hadn't filed a grievance and blacklisted myself for employment as a writer by state government, to protest my dismissal, I hadn't been arrested for drunk driving, fined, my driver's license suspended and my automobile insurance canceled, I hadn't had to go to Drunk Driver School and find out I was an alcoholic, I hadn't been evicted from my house, with no job and no money saved up, and I hadn't had a manuscript come back rejected that a New York publisher had had for nine months, and I thought he was considering, and when I called, he found out it was lost, located it, and returned it to me, unread.

By winged messenger.

Hermes, with the wings on his heels (Roman name: Mercury), is the god of commerce, thieves, and the medical profession. His symbol is the caduceus.

Compare the staff of Asclepius, the healer. With its one snake.

Beware the twisted seppents of Hermes! Of commerce. Of thieves.

My yets happened.

If you're a drunk, and haven't done something you can't imagine yourself doing, yet, keep drinking, and it will happen.