November 20, 2022
By Arthur H. Gunther III
There is a hot-metal printer’s expression – “running out of sorts” – which means the typesetting supply of a particular letter, punctuation, character, etc., is low. In civilian terms, if we don’t feel 100 percent, we are out of sorts. An apt comment for these worldly times.
Thing is, the printer can usually hop to another “job case,” another collection of the sorts or type needed. An apt correlation for these days, too, because somewhere – usually under our noses – there are the “sort” of people we all need to restore the equilibrium or bring it in the first place.
If you don’t have that sort of hope, we might just as well close shop and do like the Nazis did in destroyed Berlin as the Russians came – go hedonistic in wild parties. But the best pleasure always comes from being with the right sort because it puts you back in the best of sorts.
The writer is a retired newspaperman.
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