I talked to
Vickie from Thompson Station outside the Bellevue Library. She was there with
her friend, who was signing up for the Affordable Care Act. Neither of them
seemed worried that I was out to sexually harass them.
Vickie has
been a lifelong reader, but she says her attention span isn’t what it used to
be, so she doesn’t read like she used to. Even so, she had a list of books she
wants to get around to soon, including The
Devil’s Apprentice by Jan Siegel and Collusion
by Luke Harding. The subtitle of the latter is “Secret Meetings, Dirty Money,
and How Russia Helped Donald Trump,” so when our discussion got around to
politics, it was no surprise to learn that Vickie is a liberal.
“I really
think that our democracy is at risk,” she told me. She brought up a book she’d
recently read, Washington’s Farewell,
a narrative of George Washington’s farewell address to the nation, in which the
Founding Father warned future generations to beware of hyper-partisanship and
the autocracy.
Vickie is a
fan of histories and biographies. She visits the Franklin library every couple
of weeks or so. She grew up reading the classics, and she still has the set of
classics her folks bought her when she was eighteen--50 years ago. Her favorite
author these days is John Grisham.
Given her
love of books, it was also no surprise to hear that she’s writing one--a diet
book. Maybe she’ll include a recipe for what ails us.
