I am often asked this by longtime acquaintances. Because I’ve been writing “Party of One” almost regularly since early October 2013, I’m tempted to ask in return, “When did you stop reading the Reader?” But I don’t.
I appreciate those acquaintances who tell me they like a column, but please tell me which one. I am thinking about three columns at the same time: the one that is already in print, the one I have submitted for the next issue, and the next one that I have sketched out. I may have forgotten the column published two weeks ago.
How do I decide what to write about? My stock answer is “Writing what I damn well please since 1999.” I have this on my “business” card. What damn well pleases me can be almost anything: current politics, news stories, computers and other gadgets, everyday mundane observations, or just whimsy.
Sometimes the ideas almost flow from my fingertips. Last week’s “Free market in telecommunications?” was one. I think I wrote it in two sittings. Sometimes I have to do quite a bit of research. “How folks change rivers” was one. Sometimes I have to pull ideas out of my head; ideas can be like teeth, loose but not coming out. This column is one of those.
Writing about politics is rather easy. Sometimes the political class has some good ideas; sometimes it has some really, really bad ideas. Unfortunately, the bad ideas get more coverage than the good ideas. Good ideas do get coverage, but too often they get attacked more often than explained because the good ideas don’t fit somebody’s idea of a “perfect world.”
Once upon a time, I was active in the Minnesota Republican Party. Then there was Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, there were still the likes of Rep. Bill Frenzel and to-be Gov. Arne Carlson, politicians more concerned with resolving problems than promoting an ideology. I have yet to see a Congressional newsletter like Bill Frenzel’s. He wrote critically about what Congress did, not what he did. Almost without exception, Congressional newsletters and websites are photo-ops showing how “hard” the representative is “working” for his or her “hard-working” constituents.
Promoting ideology now seems to be the only politics that is acceptable, no matter the party.
This situation does make it easier to write a column. As the adage states, “It’s easier to criticize than offer solutions.”
I do try to offer solutions now and then, but few people seem to take them seriously. I should have a bit of humility, though—if they are such great solutions, shouldn’t my blog get more attention from American readers and less from Russian reverse spammers, and shouldn’t my writings spread wider than a weekly newspaper in a small city?
One aspect of our lives that is easier to criticize than offer solutions for is technology, whether it is all the glitches in the rollout of the government health insurance or all the problems we have trying to have our computers and other gadgets perform consistently.
I use my computer and gadgets for a large variety of tasks, from writing this column to preparing taxes. Certain software also allows me to have the same data on my computer as on my gadgets. For example, I can use email on my laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone. A copy of every received and sent email will be on all three.
Almost every program I use does far more than the programs I wrote for the Macintosh over 25 years ago. I consider my programs from then almost as toys. Because modern programs are far more complex than mine of yesteryear, that complexity leads to a longer problem list than my nine-page problem list when I folded my company.
Sometimes I write a bit of wordplay. “You can write haiku” was one of these. Writing that column was almost a word torrent. One thing led to another. The only hard part was making sure I had the 5-7-5 syllable form. I think I missed on one or two.
Since then I have come up with a Japanese haiku from my very small Japanese vocabulary.

Wakarimasen!
Zero, ichi, ni, san, shi!
Wakarimasu!

I don’t understand!
Zero, uh-one, two, three, four!
I do understand.

Both versions are a stretch. Technically the “masu” at the end is two syllables, but most Westerners only hear “mas.” I had to use “uh-one” to follow the same number pattern.
Every so often an acquaintance asks me to write about some topic; generally he or she is asking me to report on the topic. Sorry, I don’t do reporting. I’ll leave that to those who want to interview lots of people and sift through the various views.
The closest I came to that was “Does ‘environmentally friendly’ copper mining exist?” I found more sources about this topic than I would ever read. Some of the sources gave reasons that it does; some gave reasons that it doesn’t. Every “pro” source I found was countered by a source, neutral or “anti,” that showed otherwise.

Will I keep writing for the Reader? You betcha! I have a long list of notes in my computer and on scraps of paper that can provide material for several years to come.
Now I ask, are you still reading the Reader?

You can find more of my thoughts at
http://magree.blogspot.com