Posted on 06/09/2008 8:38:50 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob
I looked it up. Ralph Waldo Emerson did not write this exact sentence, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” He did express a similar thought though. Two examples came to mind this weekend.
My wife – what a marvelous phrase, my wife -- is using our exceptionally joyful and funny wedding and reception as inspiration for her column this week. So, I’ll talk just about the national media aspects of the event. The what? The national media?
We live in a small town in the Blue Ridge, whose resident population has grown all the way to 3,500. That’s quite a jump, driven in part by folks from New Orleans who discovered after Hurricane Katrina that their “second” home in Highlands was now the only home they had. Still, Highlands is only a dot on the map. I thought about that long and hard, before I made the final decision in 1994 to spend the rest of my days in this town.
People move to Washington to be in the center of politics. People move to New York to be in the center of writing and publishing. My other career, in addition to constitutional law, is writing. Between my wife and I, we moved away from both Washington and New York, to be here. As Dr. Phil says on his justly-popular TV show, “How’s that working for you?”
Considering the mousetrap quote, the challenge is to work from the middle of nowhere, or more accurately 15 miles south of nowhere, and still have an impact in national media markets. It sounds impossible, and yet....
Read your New York Times for Sunday. 22 June, 2008, the Style Section in particular. It should have a lead story on the marriage of John and Michelle in the Church of the Incarnation, in Highlands, NC. No, I won’t say a word about how that coverage came to be. The story will explain itself. The point is, the media mousetrap worked. There is now a path to our door, even though it’s along a half-mile gravel road.
A similar media mousetrap should become known beginning about the 4th of July, and extending through Labor Day. I’m working on a ten-part series on “American Government: The Owners’ Manual.” First off, it isn’t easy to boil complex constitutional concepts down to plain English and then boil that down to just 750 words per column. Yet, it can be done.
Decades ago, I observed something profound about the “children’s time” that my minister had in church every Sunday. He’d invite the children down front, and would give them a mini-sermon on the subject of the day. And he’d lead into it by asking questions of the children.
I observed that the adults seemed to pay closer attention and gain more understanding from the mini-sermon than from the regular sermon that came after the tykes had gone off to Sunday School. There were two reasons for success. One is that parents paid very close attention for fear their progeny would blurt out inappropriate and wildly funny remarks in response to the minister’s questions. But the other was that simple words and clear sentences communicate better.
I concluded that no one, and especially no would-be expert, really understands the subject he’s dealing with, unless he can explain its concepts to a group of fidgeting five year olds. When a columnist puts his words out there for you to read, and he is an unknown writer (which I’ll be to most readers of the Constitution series), there’s only a few seconds to capture your attention and encourage you to read. Please don’t take offense, but you do see the slight parallel between y’all as readers, and the children sitting cross-legged on the carpet of the Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, don’t you?
When I first moved to Highlands permanently (I’d been visiting here since 1948) I thought that huge chunks of my life would be shelved because I was now so far from the center of things. Within two years, I’d discovered the Internet. Within a year after that, I was both publishing articles nationally and filing occasional Supreme Court briefs, without leaving this home on a mountain top, at the end of a gravel road.
So, Emerson was right about the better mousetrap. Even if the subject is media, rather than mousetraps. And, even if Emerson never said that, anyway.
- 30 -
About the Author: John Armor practiced law in the US Supreme Court for 33 years. He now lives in Highlands, NC, and is working on a book on Thomas Paine. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
- 30 -
John / Billybob
Well, congratulations!!!! I wish too that our church would go back to having the “Moments with the children”. It was an encapsulated version of what the sermon would be about. Just in simpler language.
John, forgive my ignorance but I am not sure what that means. Did you represent clients with cases before the court or work in some capacity for the court itself?
Jonah
Highlands is in a beautiful area. Do you notice many people from NE/NY/Mid-Atlantic States moving down that way to semi-retire or fully retire?
That means I represented clients with cases before the Court. I don’t think I was ever “establishment” enough to work FOR the Court. The standards are much more law for attorneys who work IN the Court. LOL.
John
That should be “standards are much more lax” not “law.” Proofreading is your friend.
J.
The climate is great. The cost of living is reasonable. The folks are friendly. Hence the snow birds flock here.
John / Billybob
C.S. Lewis said essentially the same thing, I believe in the preface to Mere Christianity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.