Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Americans in my desk drawer

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As you know, I occasionally consort with politicians. Elected officials meet lots of people and see lots of names. And over several years, one of those officials has been sending me, on scraps of paper and the backs of receipts and Post-It Notes, the most interesting of the names he has come across. At some point I started putting them in my desk drawer.

I present these names now as a poem. They appear in the order they came out of my drawer.

Americans

McHenry Robinson

Sam Shew

Parthenia Stegal Floyd Combs III

Bruno Lorgus

James Livergood

Vera Haire

Laquisa S. Loggins.

Canita M. Treece

Andy L. Ruppenkamp

Pam Popularum

Jerri Berry

Mabel L. Fuse

Alexa McJimpsey

Perlleta Bannister

Irma German ("say it aloud")

Jesse Stiff

Shawn P. Horn

Amy M. Mings

Don W. Scattergood

Paula Poutry

Monica Beavis

Lou Tobacco

Georgia Doucette

Margine Shampine

Penny Papp

Mindy Munn

Ginger Rocks

Otto Toke ("maybe the winner re. the most memorable name using the fewest different letters, eh?")

Lad Smutny III

Zeno Regas

Jarrod Butter

Hospicio Baron

I feel well-informed. By Facebook. (Seriously.)

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Before the advent of the goddamned Internet, it was possible to feel a feeling called "well-informed."

Back then, you read your hometown newspaper. You listened to National Public Radio. You read The Wall Street Journal. You read a trade publication. And you felt, more or less, rightly or wrongly, as if you had a handle on things.

But then the Internet, with all its nooks and crannies, its infinite capacity to contain odd points of view convincingly expressed, its oceanic ability to remind us that our stupid little place in the world is the real cranny, took that feeling away.

Permanently, I thought.

But no.

In recent months I notice that the feeling of being informed is creeping cautiously back into my head and heart. And I think I know why: It's Facebook.

Here's how it works now: I do my dilligence—I read the local and national newspapers, I keep up on the communication trade as as I always did—and then I rely on my 368 Facebook Friends to give me a heads-up on the rest of it. I reckon—rather, I passively, subconsciously assume—that if something important is happening that's not in The New York Times, one of these friends or acquaintances or who-is-that-again-half-strangers will point me to it.

A quote, a new song, a YouTube video, a new piece of architecure or writing: I've got hundreds of friends or at least like-minded acquaintances scouring the world every day in hopes of finding something to amuse or inform their like-minded friends. (That's me!)

Knowing this, I begin to feel not only informed but, dangerously, justified in the feeling. And, after all these years of forced informational humility, even deserving of it.

Right?