It is a delight to find an excellent writer, to read language well used, to be enlightened. A good novelist or poet is refreshing, and an exceptional journalist is a pearl.

I like the anonymous nature of written communication. When communicating strictly in print, we can transcend what at times seems to be people’s preoccupation with our physical traits. The writer usually never receives much communication from the reader other than the message that the book or article has been purchased or viewed. The reader in turn never knows the appearance of the writer, freed instead to focus on the spirit of the words written. By using an initial instead of a first name, we communicate less about ourselves and more as individual beings less confined by our physical side.

If there is such a thing as objective communication, it must be these words written strictly in print by an author with a good pseudonym. I know that when I read a printed communication and have no knowledge of the author, if I’m persuaded it’s not because of the writer’s physical being. I’ve avoided that annoying habit of judging a book by its cover.

Pseudonyms have a long tradition. Ben Franklin wrote as Silence Dogood; James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay used the pseudonym Publius; Samuel Clemens wrote as Mark Twain; Eric Blair was George Orwell; Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum wrote as Ayn Rand. Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips and her daughter have written the “Dear Abby” columns.

It clears my mind and liberates my soul to escape television and the misguided religious belief of its fans. If they keep watching, and they keep mimicking like a parrot, whatever was spoken on the TV becomes true, they seem to believe. Newspaper, magazine and web journalists in particular have a way of bringing the latest TV demaguoge back to Earth with critical print. “What a tragedy” I think as the TV stars fall back to Earth.