Contributing writer
How many books can you read at one time? I read about a girl who could do seven. Seven! Wow, how can she keep them straight or what does she get out of them? I have read two at a time. I have never tried more. Maybe I could. I will try at some time.
A book on elephants that I just read is a serious book. It is about how elephants are becoming fewer in numbers in the wild. They are killed for their ivory tusks or for meat by natives. It tells about how terrible they are treated when being trained for circuses and zoos. Those who do research think they have feelings just like human beings — compassion, sorrow, and pain. We have always heard “an elephant never forgets.” Sometimes they hate their trainers and even kill them.
Why don’t they use the method horse trainers used in the book that told about training horses with kindness and whispered orders to them?
Look at Tarzan. He always had a friendly elephant to carry him around in the jungle.
Pat Jackson brought my next book to me. A 90-year-old woman who grew up in the Flint Hills and now lives in New York wrote it. She writes in a friendly fashion, like talking to a person about her life or writing a letter to someone. So, easy reading.
Speaking of letters, I always wonder how all those letters written by presidents are preserved to be published after their deaths. They do explore what kind of person they were — so interesting to us. If you plan to be president, start saving your letters now.