I’m not 100% certain of this, but I think this book may have started (unintentionally and unknown to me) several years ago with the story told on page 40 (Doctors and Educators). I won’t spoil the details, but it involved some chance remarks at a dinner conversation with friends on a beautiful summer evening on Table Rock Lake. The conversation wasn’t even about education (at the time), but it got me thinking.
For some reason, I came home later that evening, sat down jotted down a skeleton of those thoughts, and enjoyed the experience. I had written columns for our local paper some years/decades ago and had enjoyed that, too. So, for fun, I casually enquired of The Springfield (MO) News-Leader about any interest in an occasional educational-perspective column of that type. (I envisioned something between a Letter to the Editor and a Regular Column.)
It didn’t happen at once. But, long story(ies) short here, they soon began to accept and publish submissions like those in the book roughly every month or so, as a variety of factors allowed.
Responses (at least the ones I saw) were mostly positive, and the paper continued to print them semi-regularly. Soon, I was simply informed that the columns were to appear regularly (bi-weekly) and become a regular feature on the Op Ed page. Suddenly, somehow, I was a ‘columnist’, like it or not.
After a couple of years or so, the idea developed to enquire about publishing a collection of these columns. It was a LONG process (which actually started well before the Rolling Down the River adventure and book), but eventually the book was released by Oghma Creative Press in October 2018.
I hope you enjoy these thoughts – or that they at least make you think, and I’d welcome any input, responses, and/or comments of any nature.
