Greetings loyal readers (both of you). I want to dedicate this weeks post to a very special young lad named Tommy. Tommy lives in Oregon and helped inspire me to write this column.

No big gripes or profound observations this week. Just a thought or two that is close to my heart. Let me preface these thoughts with the statement that computers are cool, groovy, far out, boffo, neat or whatever lingo is the norm today for indicating I like them a lot.

With that said let me now say that computers have presented what I think is a significant problem, especially for our young people. What with everything ever known or imagined by mankind, as well as a few things that seem beyond imagination being on "the net" many of our younger folks have lost the need and desire to just sit down and read a book. Granted, when it comes to doing research for a paper due next Tuesday or looking for good information on buying anything from a new house to a ream of paper, computers are great. I use it almost everyday for that very purpose myself. However, when it comes down to just relaxing with a good novel, the computer is the pits!

Did you ever try and put a real bookmark on an LCD screen? Trust me it just won't work. How about folding down the corner of a computer screen? Don't! It doesn't work very well either. Try underlining a favorite passage on a computer. Sure you can underline what you write, but when it comes to someone else's work, forget it. Pull out the old magic marker and underline your favorite passage and at first all seems fine. Then when you go on to the next page you have to read through the lines you just made. Not only that, when it comes to erasing them there is no good method. Seems most of what you try either does nothing or ruins the screen. The one good thing I can say came out of my experience reading on a computer is that I learned something. Computer screens and whiteout do not work well together. Please trust me on this, the details are just too horrendous to go into.

Now back to the main topic, reading. Our young people have to a great extent become lost in computers of one type or another. Desk or lap tops for their research, mail, communication and even record keeping. For entertainment it is various computer game systems such as X Box or Nintendo. I am not saying that these games are not fun and entertaining, just that they have almost eliminated the use of imagination. Everything is done or created for the user, leaving them to just push buttons and move the control stick.

When was the last time you saw a person under the age of thirty set down and enjoy a well written book? To loose themselves in a story that although given many many details, still required them to create the picture in whatever manner they chose, within their own mind? Despite the wonder that computers are can it possibly compare to the marvel of the mind? The limitless possibilities that exist in a few billion cells of gray matter?

Im my most recent trips through the pages of a book, I have been carried back to the 1830's, working my way through the rocky mountains in the dead of winter searching for the illusive beaver, visited the planet Vulcan and listened to the wisdom of T'pou, and taken a trip to the deep south of the 1930's and watched a futile struggle for an oppressed people. As useful as it is, as much as we depend on them, a computer simply cannot provide the up close and personal experience as rewarding as flipping the pages of a book.

I am not asking that the computer be laid aside or be relegated to no more than a tool for our more mundane task. It offers its own types of entertainment and rewarding times. I am merely asking that the young people take the time to visit some other time and place courtesy of a good book. If you know some young man or woman that has yet to experience the joy of reading, do them a favor, do our society a favor and buy them a book. There is no way you can go wrong when joining a young mind with the world of literature. It is a win win situation.