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There are three significant birthdays in everyone’s life. I won’t count our first one, which is a big deal to our parents. But none of us can remember it, so we can’t have any reaction. The first life changing one, of course, is our eighteenth. We are legally considered adults. We can vote. Most of us have our driver’s license by then. We are just finishing high school. Many of us are going off to college. When I turned eighteen, the legal drinking age was still eighteen. I was a freshman in college. So that was a real bonus. The second significant birthday comes only three years later. Yes, twenty-one. You can drink. You can gamble. You become a real part of adult society. You can go to anyplace that says you must be twenty-one or older to be admitted, or eligible to win a big prize. So two of the three big ones come when we are just fully maturing, at least, we should be. Our whole life is ahead of us. Marriage, relationships, children, career, mortgages, paying off the college loan money you spent between those first two big birthdays, success, failure, and, we all hope, some degree of happiness and satisfaction.

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We’ve all seen the surveys of high school and college students who don’t know anything about current events or history. There was a survey done of students at Texas Tech University in 2014 called Politically Challenged. Most of the students didn’t know who the vice president was, or who won the Civil War, or what country we fought for our independence. Everyone knew Snookie starred on “Jersey Shore”, and that Brad Pitt is married to Angelina Jolie and was married to Jennifer Aniston. You can laugh, or cry through it on “YouTube”. Most of the students laughed, or were only slightly embarrassed by their lack of knowledge. Some would think, “What’s the big deal?” And if we really had to find the answers, we could just look it up on our phone.

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“First in war-first in peace-and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and enduring scenes of private life; pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting.” The words of Congressman and Revolutionary War General Henry “Light-Horse” Lee in his eulogy of George Washington. That’s a pretty tough act to follow. Forty three men have followed. Some have been great. Some have been fair. Some have been, well, not so good. Now ten men and women are asking us if they can have the job.

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“Wow, what a great idea. Nobody has ever suggested that to me. Wow, I love that.” That was Hillary Clinton’s response when a young woman at a campaign rally in Iowa asked if she would consider nominating President Obama to the Supreme Court if she’s elected president. Only one other former president served on the Supreme Court after serving as president. President William Taft, a Republican, was president for only one term from 1909-1913. Eight years later, he was nominated as Chief Justice by Republican President Warren Harding in 1921. Taft served until his death in 1930. Taft had been a federal judge earlier in his career, and always aspired to be named to the Supreme Court more than he ever did to be president. He said serving on the court was his greatest honor, “I don’t remember that I ever was president.”

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It’s coming. It started building earlier this week. Tracking the monster. It starts thousands of miles away, and slowly creeps toward us. It gets bigger and bigger. The guessing and speculation begins about exactly when it will hit and how much will bury us. This is what local television news can feast on during these dark, cold winter months. People working in television news hate it, except for the meteorologists. It means long hours of all day coverage. Staying over night in a hotel so you can make sure you can get into work. Everyone else can use the excuse that they can’t get to work because they are snowed in. It’s the job of those TV news people to provide coverage for everyone else who is snowed in.

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The great writers do it alone. It’s exhilarating. It’s frustrating. It’s fun. It’s maddening. Writing demands the best of our creativity. It makes us push ourselves to express ideas and emotions. Sometimes it’s things we can’t say out loud, but can pour onto the page. We can re-write it until we get it just right. Find the right word until it sounds good when we read it, both silently, and out loud. As much as writers love to immerse themselves in their work, all the great ones struggle. James Joyce said, “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for the sins committed in a previous life. The English reading public explains the reason.”

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Guns. We love them. We hate them. We can’t live without them. We can’t live with them. They dominate our lives. Stories about their use and misuse dominate the news on many days. They are at the core of our political discourse about crime, terrorism, race, constitutional rights, national security, personal security, immigration. It seems the most important and divisive right we have as Americans is our right to have a gun. Most people agree with other rights guaranteed by the constitution like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to peacefully assemble, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to a fair and speedy trial. But the right to bear arms divides us like no other.

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Words are a journalist’s most important tool. For broadcast journalists, I would argue they are more important than the video we use to tell our stories. It’s how and what we say about the pictures and the people we interview that has the greatest impact on the viewer. It’s because that’s how we normally interact with each other. The choice of the wrong word can change the meaning of our story, and damage our credibility. Once we lose that, our most critical bond with the viewer is lost.

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My wife noticed some weeks ago that there didn’t seem to be anyone living in our neighbor’s house. The only lights that came on appeared to be on a timer. There was no sign of anyone leaving for work in the morning, and no cars in the driveway. We wondered if everything was alright. Another neighbor told my wife that she had seen a moving van in our neighbor’s driveway. My wife finally spotted the neighbor outside the house, and went over to ask if they were okay. He said they had moved to a house they had bought about three years ago. They had been fixing it up, and finally moved in, and were going to sell the house next to us. We were never very close to the neighbors, but found it strange that they didn’t tell us they were selling the house. They had lived next door for over 30 years. But they left something behind. They left an American flag flying from the front porch.

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