Publisher's Point Of View
Robert Allan Hooftallen

Hello and happy new year.

Thank you kindly for making Endeavor News part of your lives. I'm sure I can speak for everyone here when I say this: we don't take our responsibility to you lightly.

I might be stretching my artistic and realistic license a little to include the rest of the crew here in the following, so I'll speak for myself only the rest of the way out.

I absolutely love what I do and if you knew what my salary was you'd think I was completely insane.

Newspapers are special businesses. They always have been. And the service they provide is special, too.

I love this work. It's not only what I do. It's who I am. It shapes some of me and when it lets me, I shape it.

I am not the news junkie I once was. The polarity of other aspects of the business have pulled me toward them, but I still love delivering the news, presenting it and occasionally still writing it.

I try to treat every Endeavor News as if it is my last one, partially because it very well could be and mainly because I am becoming increasingly obsessed with every day and its beauty.

I had one of those besidebody moments the other day where I recalled a something from the past so clearly that for a breath or two, I was in it. It was full sensory recollection. Smell. Touch.

It was last spring. My daughter and I were handtilling a raised flower bed behind my mom's house. It was a sparkling April day. The sun was hot, bright. The soil was warm for the first few inches and nearly frozen below.

We turned the soil to hasten the soil's recovery from winter. We very meticulously picked out every little thing that did not belong, leaving the soil smooth, black, beautiful.

Being as realistic as I can be, that day seemed at that moment no longer than two months past. Yet it was eight.

I've been obsessed, well I guess it's been my whole life, with the passing of time and how it quickly it seems like we are all hurling toward our eventual end.

And as unpleasant as that stuff is to think about, it has become a very practical way for me to appreciate today and differentiate between what's real and what's not; what will endure and what will pass.

It's calming and centering for me to be able to put things into that kind of perspective. And I just couldn't get there without this obsessive appreciation of the passing of time and the understanding that tomorrow is always closer than yesterday.

And that tomorrow's promise is never guaranteed, is all the more reason to romance today and not take tomorrow for granted.

I used to loathe winter and would all the time be saying "I wish it was May!"

My father used to say to me, "Oh Bobber, don't wish your life away."

I get it now, pop.

So, in 2008, no wishing for tomorrow for me. No wishing for next week, next month, next nothing. I'm going to be thankful for the moments I'm in and let the ones out in front of me come at their own pace.

____________________

Yes. It's true

No color in the Endeavor this week.

We've earned a lot of new readers over the past year, so the lack of color deserves another explanation.

To be candid, we simply can't afford the price of color for the next several months, as newspaper stand sales dip and advertisers scale back their advertising through January and February, months that can be painfully slow on the retail front in these parts.

I also like to think of it as art imitating life in this black and white world that this dead of winter is.

Besides what's wrong with black and white?

Everyone's spoiled, but the fact is before we came on the scene with color, no one else was using it- especially full color.

When our pockets get deeper or our arms get longer, maybe we'll be able to keep up with the big dogs and use color throughout the year. In the meantime, we'll just keep looking better than them without color. Kind of makes it more fair, don't you think?

____________________

I applaud the efforts to interest students in geography you'll read about on page 5 this week.

I went to school in the 70s and 80s when instruction in what I believe we generically called "civics" classes, was the big thing.

I remember the school hiring a geography teacher in my first year of high school. I recall thinking, "what on earth is geography?"

I was 13 and in the seventh grade.

Today, I am passionate about this big blue marble we're spinning on and hopefully it's rubbing off on my children, who have puzzles that are big maps, complete with bumpy mountain ranges, bright blue lakes and oceans, winding streams and clearly marked land masses- all named! And then there's the big, lighted globe they use for a nightlight. Geesh. I guess they don't have a choice.

I suspect that most adults don't know a whole lot more geography than what they see on the Weather Channel and, really, who cares? But, young people need to know what's where in the world to understand their place in it.

A National Geographic study last year found that only about 35 percent of college-age students could locate Iraq on a map, despite the fact that their own country had been at war with that nation for nearly four years.

And closer to home? Nearly half couldn't point to Mississippi on a map.

A similar survey showed that locating obscure countries on the map was nearly out of reach for 90 percent of the students and naming continents was a difficult challenge for half of them.

Understanding and participating in a Democracy requires a basic knowledge of world geography and young adults not knowing US geography is simply pathetic.

Here's hoping geography bees catch on in every school at every grade level.