I’ll start with recent columns from the Ahwatukee Foothills News and I’ll use the time while you’re reading to craft an explanation about where I’ve been.

For some inexplicable reason, the AFN ran me twice this last week. Not that I’m complaining….

There was this one, which was memorable because I managed to squeeze Disraeli into a humor column.

And then we had this one, where I spill the beans about my little book problem.

If you’re link-phobey, just click Read More and you’ll see.

I’ll be back. Really.

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By the time you’re reading this, our little friends in Congress will have either settled their political hash and come up with a budget and gotten the government back to work or we’ll all be huddled around a trash can fire in a desolated parking lot, fighting for road kill in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian society.

I hate it when that happens. And I hate it when the American public starts drawing itself into camps, drawing a line down the middle of the country and squaring off. I mean, I get it: these are important issues. People care a great deal about what happens here. They are, you might say, passionate about it.

So now, a word about passion.

“Man is only great when he acts from passion.” Benjamin Disraeli said it, and it’s fitting that we quote the former British Prime Minister because he was so passionate that he resorted to duels to sort out political disputes.

From the looks of things, everyone is trying to be Disraeli-great lately, because it’s getting all angry outside when anyone talks about the shutdown, the default, the budget, and whatever. What’s not so great is that they’re not debating the actual merits of any one proposal; no, they’re flinging manure at each other. It’s not that his thoughts on the budget are misinformed; no, he’s a racist because he wants to cut benefits. It’s not that her desire to expand health care is shortsighted; no, she’s a lazy commie.

We’re all doing it, not just those bone headed legislators dancing us ever closer to the brink of The Pit of Financial Ruin. We’re the ones screaming on Facebook that The Other Side is lazy, stupid, or selfish, or racist, or greedy. We’re the Internet’s own Commentariat, turning every website comments page, even the ones for comic strips, into a roadhouse brawl that threatens to spill out onto the street.

This is not great.

What would be great?

I’m glad you asked! If you are indeed so passionate about a topic that you fervently believe everyone should believe the same way as you, try being something called “persuasive” for a change.

So if I don’t agree with your opinion on say, the debt ceiling, you might try acknowledging my intellect (I have, after all, managed to survive thus far even if I’m dim-witted enough to hold a differing opinion) and appeal to that intellect with facts. If I still dare to voice a different outlook even after hearing your impassioned presentation, you might question the strength of your presentation before you questioned my sanity, intelligence, and parentage, or labeled me as “uncaring” or “unprincipled.”

“Persuasive” arguing means that at no time in this example would you slap a label on me or sling mud, because doing so pretty much guarantees that I will never want to agree with something you believe in. Leading with something offensive tells me that you’re not interested in changing my mind; you’re interested in calling names. That issue you’re so passionate about? It’s clearly just an excuse to be obnoxious, and then we all wind up huddled around a trash can fire, fighting over road kill coyote.

Then we’ll have to turn back to the gun-toting Disraeli, who left us with this: “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct?”

copyright E. Stocking Evans 2013

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Hi. My name is Elizabeth, and I’m a bookaholic.

I hit rock bottom about 10 years ago when I escorted two clipboard-wielding real estate appraisers through my house. At one point they stopped for a whispered sidebar, and then turned to me. What was it? Did they see termites? Did they hate the paint?

“We’ve never seen so many books outside of a library before,” which is Appraisers’ Speak for, “Your house looks like an episode of Crazy Librarians Meet the Series Finale of Hoarders.”

Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

I started my habit at age 4, driven by the example of my own addicted mother who would whimsically declare “Bring Your Books to Dinner” night and all seven of us would eat, not speaking, with our noses jammed in our respective tomes. Years later I realized that BYBTD Night always coincided with a book she couldn’t bear to put down.

Well played, mom. Well played.

Like a good junkie, I have hauled my paraphernalia with me over the years, accumulating a notable stash of paperbacks and hard cover novels and textbooks that fill the bookcases that line my walls.

So this autumn, as I anticipate a remodeling adventure (coming to a newspaper near you soon as “new column ideas”) I am faced with the book lover’s version of “Sophie’s Choice:” which beloved manuscripts will I move to a new bookcase? Which ones will be consigned to donations? Which ones will I store, only to have them emerge years later, blinking in the bright light of a new day on the off chance that I still might want to read “You Can Solve The Rubik’s Cube!” from 1983?

It’s estimated that there are no fewer than 520 “Star Trek” book titles in print today, and I’m guessing that I have at least 300 of them. (Note to self: find out which ones you don’t have and buy them! Another note to self: Are you listening to yourself? You’re trying to purge, not buy more! Yet another note to self: Ignore that, because I’m a book lover, Jim, not a logician).

There’s the entire “Outlander” oeuvre, a fabulous series that combines bodice-ripping high jinx with science fiction set in the madcap hilarity of the Second Jacobean Revolution. There’s a pile of Stephen King, accumulated before I realized that they made me afraid of the dark; calculus textbooks from college; certification workbooks from 1999.

Oh, I’m certified, all right. Certifiable, in fact.

You might ask: Have you heard of this newfangled thing called an eBook, Elizabeth, it being the 21st century and all?

Why yes! I still haven’t mastered the science behind reading two books simultaneously, but much to the delight of the fine folks at Amazon and the people who hold my overworked credit card, I can readily BUY two books at a time. Or three, she said quietly, so her husband won’t hear. When I find an interesting title, and baby, there is no combination of written words that is not interesting, up to and including the back of a ketchup bottle, now I can be instantly gratified, to the point where I’m pretty sure they’re going to find me some day sprawled on the ground with a Kindle glowing dimly by my head.

And a smile on my face.

copyright E. Stocking Evans 2013