Editor's note: After nearly 19 years of providing our magazine and readers with her monthly observations about life, politics, family and growing older, Observations columnist Harriett Rose is retiring her pen. Our magazine will miss her wit and insight, and we know that many of our readers will, as well. If you’d like to send her a farewell note, please feel free to mail it to our office at 434 Old Vine St., Lexington, Ky., 40507, addressed to Harriett Rose c/o Editor, Saraya Brewer. We’ll be sure to pass them along to her. Thank you, Harriett, and best wishes to you!
This column had its enthusiastic birth almost 19 years ago. I couldn’t wait to opine about everything, and I had an opinion about everything. Having an authorized space was great, and I was free to write.
Nobody said “too long”; nobody criticized at all; and all I got was praise from readers and from my writing class, which was all too ready to serve as critics before I turned in my column.
A new editor once suggested that weather was not a good subject for a monthly publication, since the the weather very well might change during the magazine’s shelf life – so I went on my merry way, choosing subjects from what appeared at the university, in the town and in the state, as well as Kentucky and federal government happenings. I gave advice on many subjects: how to adjust to being a widow, being a mother-in-law, revising curricula for college, how to celebrate New Year’s Eve. I’m embarrassed at how much expertise I claimed in my 215 columns over nearly 19 years.
When I read one a month, my advice presents itself more charitably than it does when read all at once, which I just did. Interspersed with the comments of praise and agreement from readers helps with the vanity, which kept me writing until now. My typing is terrible; my vision is going; and I don’t think I fit in with the magazine any longer. If age has taught me anything, it is that everything comes to an end.
So this is my final column – 215 – and my final suggestion for saving the world.
The integrity of democratic institutions is under assault from within and without.
If you are horrified at what is happening in Washington and many other states, you can march in the streets, you can write to your representatives – all worthwhile activities, but none of it matters if you don’t go out and vote!