Sometimes what I say bites back. That's OK

Last week I told you how, in my eight years of retirement, I've made a career of doing only the things I want to do.

I also told you how, for a couple of days last week, I was stretched well beyond my goal of doing just one thing a day, with weekends off. As a matter of fact I was challenged to do a dozen things.

Boo-hoo.

That's what several of you told me -- in the kindest and most sympathetic way, of course.

One woman, the mother of small children, suggested I should think through my whining before committing it to the eternal archive of newspaper print. She asked me if I knew what she would call having to do "only" 12 things a day. I suggested she might say that was a heavy workload.

"Ha!" she responded. "That's not what I'd call it."

So, I asked: What would you call it?

"A paid vacation!"

I must say that, over my many years of seeing my scribblings appear on newspaper pages, I have been humbled, many times, by readers. This harried mother certainly put me and my chores in perspective.

n

As long as we're at it, let's take a look at some of the other grumbling that has been generated recently by my weekly musings.

For example, there was the reader who wondered if my thinking had changed about the sculpture in the roundabout at Fountain and Morgan Oak streets. When the sculpture was first installed I wrote that, basically, I didn't get it. Of course, I confessed that I was no expert on art.

This reader wondered if maybe I had softened my position on the sculpture. Maybe it had grown on me. Maybe my appreciation of all things artistic had mellowed.

I don't spend a lot of time driving through that particular roundabout, so I made a special trip to take a look. Maybe, indeed, I would see the sculpture with a different perspective.

Quite frankly, the only real change I saw was that weeds have sprouted in the central circle of the roundabout. Some of us might be inclined to see the vegetation as an improvement.

(The weeds, by the way, have been recently removed.)

n

Where are all these people coming from?

That's a question I hear more and more as the vast apartment complex at Sprigg and Lexington opens to its first tenants.

There's another good-sized apartment development at Bertling and Old Sprigg.

And look at all the residential -- apartment, townhouses, duplexes, single-family homes -- construction scattered around Cape Girardeau.

So I'll ask again: Where are all these people coming from?

Some of you have pointed out that there are more and more vacant buildings of all types all over the city. But is that enough to explain the hundreds of units being added to the city's housing?

Here's my worry: I am confidant that the past couple of stabs at counting who lives where in the 2000 census and the 2010 census fell short. Why? Because instead of sending census workers out to knock on every door and accurately count every current resident, the feds relied on mailed-in forms and computer algorithms to determine an estimated count.

We're less than a couple of years away from the next federal census, and I'm wondering, like some of you, if the plan is to actually count the population, or just guess.

n

Finally, I must assure some of you that it's perfectly OK not to read this column.

Some of you are aware that I write occasionally, but you're not aware that this column appears in the newspaper just about every Friday.

When you see me, you are not obligated to pretend you read my column religiously. I know you don't. How? Easy. You say you really enjoy my column. To which I reply, "Which one?" Your red face tells me you may have read it once or twice, back in 1998 or 2014. That's OK. Really it is. I'm glad (1) that you ever read my column and (2) you still think newspapers are still worth reading -- in any format.

Some of you, perhaps, will have the fortitude to tell me, to my face, that you used to read my column but got bummed when I started whining about having to do stuff in my retirement.

And so the big circle closes.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.