Why the Little Things Stay With Us

Small stories. Small moments. Small actions that reverberate through the years, often in ways we never fully realise at the time.

My own writing life — if one can call it that — began in the fourth grade, with a teacher named Mrs. Drew. I do not recall her first name, if I ever knew it at all. Back then, adults were simply Mr., Mrs., or Miss, and that seemed sufficient. (You need not bother doing the arithmetic — I am seventy-six.)

One afternoon near the end of the school day, Mrs. Drew propped a landscape painting against the blackboard for all of us to see. Our assignment was simple enough — write a short story inspired by the scene in the painting. It showed a family in a wagon, travelling along a dirt road that wound through woods and farmland, headed somewhere beyond the frame.

We began writing in class and were sent home to finish. A few days later, Mrs. Drew returned our papers, handing them back one by one. All except mine. Mine, she kept.

When she finally explained why, it was because she intended to read it aloud to the class. And when I eventually received it back, there at the top of the page were words I have never forgotten:

“A++      Jim — You will be a writer someday.”

I was painfully shy at the time. I did not know what to do with such encouragement. But I carried it with me — quietly, steadily — for the rest of my life.

There are moments like that — small at the time, almost unnoticed — that stay with us long after louder things have passed. They do not announce themselves. They do not demand attention. And yet, years later, they are often the ones we remember most clearly.

Perhaps it is because they arrive without agenda. Or because they involve people rather than events. Or because they ask nothing of us except that we notice.

Big news tends to move quickly. It arrives loudly, fills the room, and just as quickly makes way for the next thing. Important, yes — but rarely something we live with for very long.

Small stories behave differently.

They settle in. They are carried from one telling to the next. They attach themselves to places, to routines, to faces we know. A neighbour helping a neighbour. A promise kept. A kindness offered quietly and without witnesses.

These are not the sorts of things that make headlines — but they are the very things that shape how a community feels to be part of — when you call it home.

Once upon a time, newspapers understood this instinctively. Alongside the larger happenings of the world, there was room for everyday life — for announcements, observations, and bits of human goodness that mattered deeply to someone, even if they never reached beyond the county line.

Those stories were not small to the people living them.

Kindness, like small stories, travels slowly — but it travels far.

It does not race. It does not shout. It moves from person to person, often unnoticed, leaving traces behind. A softened moment. A steadied heart. A sense that decency still exists and is still being practised somewhere close at hand.

To notice such things requires a certain kind of attention — one that is patient, unhurried, and willing to look past what is loud in order to see what is lasting. And real.

And perhaps that is why we remember them.

In a week already full to the brim, it is fair to wonder why anyone would choose to add one more thing these days — even something as harmless as a fictional little Saturday-morning newspaper from a place that does not appear on any map.

But perhaps that is the very point.

Real life asks so much of us — our attention, our worry, our time — that a person begins to crave something smaller, steadier, and kinder. Not another headline to carry around, but merely a few quiet minutes set aside on purpose. A small Saturday ritual. Something read with coffee or tea — perhaps even a doughnut — before the day and weekend gather speed.

Not an obligation. Just an invitation.

And if you love Little Red Bear and have ever caught yourself wondering what goes on in his world while the storybook is closed — what the neighbours are up to, what the woods sound like, what news might be passed from porch to porch — then the Gazette is simply a way to step back inside the stories for a while.

Not to escape your own life, but to rest for a moment inside a world made for warmth, for familiarity, and for the kind of small stories that stay with us.

A paper like this does not come together by accident.

There is, for instance, Thaddeus “T. J.” Booker, the Gazette’s Circulation Editor, who believes a newspaper should arrive when it promises to arrive. Saturday mornings, on time, rain or shine.

He takes a quiet pride in routes well-traveled and duties faithfully kept — because a small paper is built on trust as much as ink.

Whether through the Honey Hill Country backroads or your email provider, “T.J.” will make sure the Gazette arrives on time.

And there is Abigail “Abby” Whitcombe, who tends the Heart of the Holler column each week.

Abby listens for the stories that pass softly through a place — shared kindnesses, neighbourly gestures, moments that might otherwise go unrecorded. She sets them down just as they are, without advice or instruction, trusting that some things do not need explaining to be understood.

Together, they represent two simple promises — that the paper will arrive, and that what it carries will be worth opening.

Small stories last because they remind us of who we are when we are at our best. They ask very little. They give more than expected. And they leave us, somehow, a little steadier than we were before.

There is room for them still.

Sometimes, one simply needs to notice.

— Jim  (and Red!)

P.S. If you find yourself wondering how the Gazette arrives, it is simple. It is delivered through The Writing Pages each Saturday morning. If you are already subscribed, it will simply arrive in your email inbox — no extra steps required. And if you are not registered yet, subscribing is just a way of raising your hand to say you would like to be included. There is no cost, no obligation, and no expectation beyond taking a few quiet minutes when it suits you — perhaps with coffee or tea, and maybe even a Saturday-morning doughnut.

Pen-and-ink illustrations created with the assistance of AI and lovingly styled for Little Red Bear Land.