The things you say

One of the pleasures I get from writing a column is the feedback you give me.

Your thoughts, reactions, suggestions and disagreements come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Like a kid at a birthday party, I like them all.

Here are some recent examples:

Every time I write about the trips my wife and I take to the Oregon coast, I hear from someone who has been there or who is thinking about going there.

I love trading experiences with those who have made the trip, and I love evangelizing about the Oregon coast and its beauty. I ought to be on the payroll of some tourism agency in Oregon.

My wife and I are not experts on the Oregon coast, but we share the interests of most Midwestern landlubbers who go to the ocean. We know where the congested, touristy areas are, and we know where there are peaceful, isolated getaways on the coast.

By the way, I have to interject here that there are many Oregonians who stoutly stick up for every part of Oregon, including the vast near-desert that covers most of the state east of the mountains. If I were an Oregon native, I would not be among them. Oregon's coast is different than, say, Portland, which is a fine city, or its iconic Mount Hood, which is majestic. And there's the Columbia River gorge in the north and Crater Lake in the south. But it's the coast that makes Oregon a worthy destination year after year. My wife and I ought to know. We've been doing it since 1972.

By the way, if you make it to the Oregon coast, you will feel right at home. Most of the people you will meet are from somewhere else, and a heckuva lot of them are from Missouri.

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I recently wrote about the reunion of relatives on my mother's side of the family. Several of you said you could relate to much of what I described, including the harebrained choice of having an outdoor get-together during the hottest month.

But one surprising response came from Pat Fischer (hope I spelled the name correctly) in Dexter, who, it turns out, shares a common ancestor, one William King, who is buried near my grandparents in the cemetery overlooking Brushy Creek valley in the Ozarks over yonder.

We must be something like fourth or fifth cousins, maybe even twice removed, whatever that means. On the other hand, we could be double cousins, because that branch of the family had brothers who married sisters and men who married their late wives' sisters.

If you can keep all that straight, you can see how sons and daughters of the same father could also be cousins.

I know. It gets confusing real fast. That's why my mother and her only surviving sister are in charge of keeping it all straight.

Not that they agree, of course.

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Many of you found ways to tell me you can't dispute my recent assessment of bottled water as being the biggest case of tomfoolery in modern history. Thank goodness all of you have the good sense not to be holding a plastic water bottle.

Matt Henson at US Bank, a fellow Rotarian, showed up at this week's Rotary meeting with something special.

It is a jar of water with what looks like some sand and gracious knows what else.

The label on the jar says:

Old Man Authentic Jar Water

direct from Old Man River

Hand-dipped to insure consistency

Unfiltered to guarantee presence of all

natural minerals & sediment

Untreated to glow in the dark

The jar, by the way, formerly contained pickles. You can tell by the smell.

That, my friends, is a special vintage. The water occupies a place of honor on my desk.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.