The man with his “nose in a book” is Army Specialist 4th Class James Cummings, caught on camera reading at an Army barracks (early 1970s).
Reading is a wonderful escape! It transports us to the thoughts, critiques, and views of other people, as well as their whimsy, novelty, and sheer brilliance. A theory held by my late father (1911-1974) is that anyone can travel anywhere, without leaving his own armchair. That is even more true today than it was in his time, because now we have wonderful travel shows on television that bring us to the most remote regions of the world. He relied on “National Geographic.”
I can never understand how anyone can get through life without developing reading skills. Yet, in America, we have many who are illiterate, who disguised their non-ability to read, and who slipped through the educational cracks. One of my graduate courses in Education was to learn how to teach children to read. I found, via a hands-on field project, that it can be a daunting task!
This is a photo of me, studying at my home in Deerfield, NH. I don’t know for sure, but I believe this was taken when I was in high school because I recognize the pink sweater that I had made, at that time.
One common interest that my husband Jim and I both have is a love of the written word. He is an avid reader who visits the library at least once a week and actually finishes reading all the books he takes out. I enjoy reading but purchase books as I linger longer over the words and it takes me quite a while to finish reading any book, often because my mind is on other things, full of “fluff,” like Winnie-the-Pooh.
When one has five younger siblings, it is easy to see why one (meaning “Jim”) would like to escape the house, physically, or take a mental trip elsewhere, via a book. At one time or another, both of us were accused by our families of origin as always having our “noses in a book,” inferring that we should have been doing something else. However, with our scholastic achievements, I guess the practice actually paid off for both of us.
Jim amazes me with the encyclopedic knowledge he possesses about most any subject I can mention. However, no one but me probably knows this: he is humble, quiet, and never lords it over anyone else that he happens to know more than they know.
Yes, Jim and I are two peas in a pod in many ways. In a sense, we lead separate lives in the same house, until we choose to come together on common ground to compare notes, share new information, do photo shoots, plan little day trips, and things of that nature. This is a brief glimpse into the lives of two bookworms. The insensitive people who took so much joy in calling us names, in the past, are either dead or are no longer a part of our lives. So, life goes on. When one gets to a certain age, one tries to minimize the baloney.
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications
