WOW! QUITE A DECADE!

By Edwin Cooney

Ten years and one week ago I offered my first column to approximately 30 private readers, most of whom were family and friends, and to a gentleman who posted it on his Harlem-based website.  The date was Wednesday, June 15th, 2005.    The website was owned and managed by Mr. Dennis Holston.  It was Dennis who encouraged me to write a weekly column and although my work never gained the response from his website users that he and I had hoped for, Dennis remains a valued friend and reader today.

My readership, which has gone from the original 30 to approximately 200, consists of people who possess a variety of outlooks.  Most of my readership has been tolerant of my own personal socio/political orientation. However, several have given these weekly musings a disgusted “good riddance.” One of these is a member of my family; two others were friends from my California days.  What all of them have in common is allegiance to a certain ideology -- although not all conservatives have offered me a verbal or intellectual raspberry!

To inform, stimulate, and entertain are the goals for each week.  I’m pleased to say that I’ve achieved at least one of those goals most of the time - however, occasionally just barely!

As for the rewards, they’ve been quite numerous!  First, there’s the loving commitment of my editor who has been a dear close friend since the fall of 1973 when we attended graduate school together. Then, there’s the magnificent gentleman who has been having his favorite columns of mine (which now number more than 100) transcribed into Braille. (He’s threatened to have them transcribed into English as well so that I might comprehend what I’m writing!)  Next, I’ve had the honor of having one of my columns published in The Braille Monitor, the publication of the National Federation of the Blind.  Its editor, a real gentleman by the name of Gary Wunder, has become a reader, something of an intellectual soulmate and, I dare say, a friend. Finally, several of my columns were picked up and published in two local Vermont newspapers courtesy of Marianne Apfelbaum, a most delightful lady.

The question I’m asked most frequently is: how do you come up with topics every week?  The only response to that is that I have an ongoing interest in the way people react, rationalize and respond to their own experiences and to the world around them

When my first column which was entitled “What You Think, You Are!” was written and released, George W. Bush was about five months into his second term, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was expressing his support for President Bush’s increasingly unpopular war policy in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina was about two months away, and Barack Obama had just taken office as a U.S. Senator.  Nancy Pelosi had yet to become the first female Speaker of the House thereby, along with Hillary Clinton, giving conservatives fodder for their traditional contempt for ambitious women -- Sarah Palin excepted, of course!  Most of all, 2005 predated Barack Hussein Obama, his healthcare system and his capture of America’s most notorious enemy.  Against the background of these events, approximately 421 columns have been composed and saved under the category in my computer which I label Cooney’s Corner.

I love writing about topics that I regard as significant or substantial.  Perhaps my best column, which I entitled “Out of the Blue,” was an analysis of my own stereotypic assumptions and fears when I came in contact with a blind man who also had no hands at a Washington D.C. train station in June of 2007.  Other favorites have been: “Remembering Archie,” the story of Archie Mitchell, a preacher and missionary, who suffered two overwhelmingly outrageous misfortunes but continued his service to humanity.  (The first of these occurred when his 26-year-old pregnant wife Elsie and six children from their new Sunday school class were the only Americans to die within the borders of the United States during World War II. It’s quite a story! Archie’s second misfortune was sadder still if that’s possible.) Then there was the column about the preacher who befriended someone most of us would be repelled to even notice: Jeffrey Dahmer.

I’ve also written columns denying the existence of “common sense,” proclaiming the equal ownership of “political correctness” by conservatives as well as liberals, and asserting my opposition to capital punishment.  I’ve drawn attention to the waving of the Confederate flag by Americans who condemn some forms of treason but insist on glorifying the Confederacy that President Abraham Lincoln (whom many of the same people insist they revere) labeled a rebellion against the government of the United States.

Yes, indeed, the last 3,652 plus days have been a wonderful time during which to write.  Of course, I’d do it all over again and do it pretty much the same way.  Not having had the opportunity to teach at a college or university, I have found this forum to be quite a satisfactory substitute.

Of course, there are many more knowledgeable and skilled writers than I!  Some of them are fortunate enough to be syndicated - which is a place I occasionally visit in a dream or two.  Still, it’s hard for me to imagine that they enjoy what they do as much as I do!

As for the decade ahead, if you’re up for being informed and stimulated and occasionally entertained — I like to think that I’m the man to read!

We might even meet sometime in the unpredictable 3,653 days ahead!  Wow! What kind of a decade might that be?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY