JOY

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

JOY

“Literacy Isn’t Just…”

Literacy isn’t just about reading the great novels. Literacy is a newspaper article. A headline. A Tweet. An on-screen graphic. Literacy is making sense of the world around us, in an instant, with a glance. Whether I’m writing a script for a TV news story or posting a comment on social media, I’m grateful I can do both. I’ll never forget watching my mother, Marie Robertson, as she volunteered her time at Dwight Elementary School in Russellville, Arkansas helping some struggling classmates learn to read. I loved having her there, and I always wished she was sitting with me. But I understood she was there to help others. I would watch as she patiently offered help, smiles and hugs. Her efforts made an impression on me.

One of the great joys of my life was reading to our daughters. During their early years I would help write news stories during the day, read a Teleprompter for the 5 and 6PM newscasts, go home for dinner and read the kids some bedtime stories, and then head back to read and write for the 10PM show. To this day, I’m a news junkie. Sometimes the pace of digital information makes my head spin...maybe it’s time to quit scrolling, slow it down, and pick up that novel.