Rants of a Raconteur

Words by Ryan Waterfield 

Mother of Townes and Zula Hendrix. Wife of Greg. Writer, editor, friend, neurotic, daughter, sister, I get irrationally irritated by the overuse of exclamation marks! For a long time I harbored a grudge against Christian Laettner (former Duke basketball player who, way back in 1992, stomped on the dreams of many Kentucky fans, for those of you not obsessed with NCAA basketball), but I’m working my way up to getting over it. I taught English for 15 years yet wholesale mlb jerseys I’m probably the worst book club member—ever. Unless cheap nfl jerseys a tween lit novel is on the horizon, I most likely will ignore the assignment. Because, hey, you’re not the boss of me. But that little guy in my arms sure thinks he is.

Rants of a Raconteur

It’s been widely heralded for a long time that print is dead. And, sure, we see some evidence of its demise, but my friends and I at FOCUS are not ready to dance on the Studenten grave of the printed word. Here’s my confession: I’m still madly in love with it. Truly, I get as excited wholesale nba jerseys as a schoolgirl with a crush every time I buy a new book or magazine, open the pages, put my nose to it, and smell the intoxicating mix of ink and paper. Yes, I Taking get some funny looks at the bookstore. But that’s another story.

Consider FOCUS un acte de resistance (no I, regrettably, don’t speak French. But I thought it sounded better, and yes, admittedly pretentious). In a world set spinning by 140-character minutiae, FOCUS asks you to do just that. Sit a spell and focus on what is right there in front of you. Unglaubliche Not on the screen of whatever gadget you are glued to at the moment, but focus on the three-dimensional world. Focus on the pages in your hand, lick your finger, grab a hold of one, and start flipping. Read about a man who took to mountaineering when he was in his forties and how he lost two fingers to his passion. Also read ?te about his journey to the South Pole and imagine yourself ignited by a dream like that.

Maybe what I love about reading an actual book or magazine is that turning the page is ultimately an act of optimism. There’s something else to come—something else of value, some Как more fuel for our fire. Sure, the nitpickers out there are going to say, “Well, a finger swipe is also optimistic. You’re electronically flipping the page.” I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the visceral over the electronic any day. And to boot, “finger swipe” cheap mlb jerseys just doesn’t pack the punch that “flip” does.

At FOCUS we take our jobs as storytellers, raconteurs of reality, pushers of perspicacity very seriously. But not so seriously that we can’t laugh at ourselves. We promised ourselves that we’d have fun doing this magazine, in the hopes that you’d have fun reading PHP7 it. You’ll find moments of levity amidst celebrations of local entrepreneurs and tall tales of exploration. You’ll run smack dab into a brief bout of irreverence followed by passages of praise. But what you won’t find is a formula. We Golf will keep you guessing, because as one of my favorite writers [Oscar “The Man About Town” Wilde] said, “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” Or, if you want someone who gets walked around the block a bit more often, Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” We don’t suffer fools or hobgoblins around here.

Call us antiquated. Call us old-school. But there is something appealing, seductive even, about picking up a magazine, doing the obligatory flip-through from back to front cover—admit it, hardly anyone picks up a magazine and begins reading from the front cover—and then sitting down, putting your feet up, and reading a section or two at a time. Dog ear the pages you like, give the finger to the pages you don’t. Write us with praise or send us your complaints. Either way, we’ll take the good with the bad—isn’t that the way of any worthwhile cheap nba jerseys journey?