>>>I was reading a news article today and the writer called the food nutricious. Does he not know that all food is now refered to as 'healthy' . . . . even though it is dead? This wreckless over educated pen pusher is going to confuse people all across the USA. Children will have to learn more descriptive words for what they are eating. To what is the world coming?
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>>Are you suggesting we eat live food?
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>>PS -- I bet the writer didn't call the food nutricious, unless editors were the first to be laid off there <g>.
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>Don't be vitious.

The Tribune regrets the error.

Call me old school but I do regret the ongoing death of the newspaper business. That was my first ambition, as you may know. First I wanted to be a sportswriter, then an investigative reporter -- this was when Woodward and Bernstein's stories were rolling off the press -- then a columnist. I thought a Mike Royko spot on some paper would be about right. I still wonder what my life would be like if I had persevered in that direction.

When I was in high school I sent letters to four prominent sportswriters asking them for advice. The one I have kept through many moves -- this was back in the letters through the mail epoch, pre-email -- was from the dean of them all, Red Smith. It was handwritten. Scrawly. He was probably about 70 by then. He said the main thing is to read everything you can get your hands on, from the dictionary to Proust (direct quote), and then it will come out somehow.

Not in that letter but elsewhere he likened his daily columns to opening a vein and letting it bleed a little.

I wound up going in a different direction. My hearing was a problem and I didn't like the adversarial nature of journalism. And I didn't have much hope of enlisting as Red Smith <g>. We all know now that there was only one Red Smith.

Sorry for gassing on. Rainy mornings do that to me.