Reading and Emily Dickinson

Yesterday Wayne Jordan did a column at RTB about reading. For some reason it made me remember my 5th grade teacher Blanche Permoda. My Dad was doing a remote tour in Korea which means he was stationed at Osan AFB and we couldn't go. So my Mom packed up her seven children (there were two more to come yet!) and moved us back to be near her family in Anaconda, Montana.

There in a small worn out old mining town I was the student of a woman whose love of books and reading would influence me for life. She encouraged us to read, read to us in class, and told us we could do anything or be anything with a book in our hands.

When she wrote the phrase, "There is no Frigate Like a Book" on the chalk board and read Emily Dickinson's poem, it changed my life. I've never forgotten it or what she said.


THERE IS NO FRIGATE LIKE A BOOK
by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!