Campus Chronicle

Professional writers often get asked the question "When did you start writing?" and most give an answer traced back to early-childhood, or a good teacher in middleschool, or their parents' love and devotion. Something cliché. A year ago, a poet I know gave me an answer that forever changed the way I view writing: "When people ask that, a better question to ask them is 'When did you stop?'" Because everybody writes when they're young, and draws, and colors, and paints, but not all that many people keep writing stories and poems and paintings for the rest of their lives.

I do not believe for one moment that Barack Obama has given John Edwards serious thought as a Vice Presidential running-mate or cabinet secretary, as Edwards is not of particular influence in North Carolinan politics or the south and he has been widely-panned inside the beltway for his mediocre performance as John Kerry's veep in 2004.