You Can Make A New Friend But

Somebody Says, 'do A Tom Bodett, A Folksy Kind Of Thing,' And It Sounds Like Something Out Of 'hee Haw,' Very Insulting. They Turn Wry Humor Into Disparaging Sarcasm, And You Get What Amounts To Insulting Advertising.

The Media Is In The Business Of Finding Exceptions To Everyday Life. Bad Things Are Still The Exception. That's Good, Because Once Bad Things Stop Being News, We Really Are In Trouble. If People Forget That Bad Is The Exception, They Think They Live In A Horrible World. There Is So Much That Works And Is Right And Friendly And Warm. But We Take That For Granted.

Kids In Alaska Don't Know They're Growing Up On The Last Frontier. It's Just What They See On The License Plates, And It's Something Tourists Like To Say A Lot Because They've Never Been Around So Many Mountains And Moose Before.

I Come From Very Common Stock, And I've Always Been Uncomfortable With Pretension And All The Forms It Can Take, Including Disingenuous Broadcasting.

Professor Al Drake Encouraged Me To Just Write The Way I Talk. I Decided If That's What I Needed To Do, I Didn't Need To Be In School To Do It.