For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They'd measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people.... We are a nation rich in rivers.

There is such a thing as a national conscience, and it can be touched.

I had a tight stomach all the time. I actually developed ulcers. I've learned better than to put all that internal pressure on myself.

I was on the high school track team, believe it or not, and played baseball, poorly but passionately.

I'm not knocking the wholesale grocery business or any other, but there is a kind of romance in journalism which some people, the lucky ones, feel inside them all their lives.

It's that enthusiasm, that passion for what you're doing, that is most important.