One of the jokes of political life is how candidates are forced to eat fried chicken at the many fundraisers and club meetings they must attend so they can give a stump speech. I once heard this part of the campaign trail referred to as the “rubber chicken circuit.”

As times have changed, so have elections. Now, it seems, every candidate for president or a party’s presidential nomination also has to clear another hurdle: Publication of a book outlining his or her beliefs.

This certainly is part of this year’s race for the Republican presidential nomination. Not only have almost all of the hopefuls written books, some even are prolific, searches of barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com show. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul has five books to his credit and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, four each.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jon Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, has penned a foreword to just one book – and not written one of his own that I could see.

(You’ll find a by-candidate list of the books below.)

Several of these books have been on the market for years. Others have come out just in time for this campaign. More – or at least one more – can be expected: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has a memoir, “Core of Conviction: My Story,” to be published in November by Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Group.

The website’s descriptions of the books characterize them in tones ranging from glowing to defiant to presidential. Consider:

> About “This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House”: “When Herman Cain speaks, people listen. When he debates, he wins.”

> From Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “Fed Up!”: “Our fight is clear. We must step up and retake the reins of our government from a Washington establishment that has abused our trust.”

> From Mitt Romney’s “No Apology: Believe in America”: “Nations such as China and a resurgent Russia threaten to overtake us on many fronts. .... In the face of such challenges, America need not apologize for its liberties.”

One interesting twist to the trend: In addition to writing on politics, Gingrich also has been penning novels. Written with William Forstchen, they are centered around key military events running from the Continental Army’s hard winter in 1777-78 at Valley Forge through the Civil War to World War II.

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For several reasons, readers will face a challenge finding these books on the shelves at Braswell Memorial, Edgecombe County Memorial and Cooley libraries, their directors said. Braswell has seven titles, Edgecombe County has five and Cooley has one.

That’s not necessarily bad; there apparently is limited interest in the candidates’ writings.

“With out limited budget and space ... most of our collection development comes by way of customer requests,” its director, Alana Fisher, said in an email.

Still, Cooley has a number of books about past candidates or related to their earlier campaigns. For instance, the library has “The Politician,” the tell-all by former John Edwards aide Andrew Young, the late Elizabeth Edwards’ “Resilience” and “Saving Graces,” Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue,” President George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” and President Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams From My Father.”

Among Braswell’s books, only Gingrich has seen much demand. His “Real Change” has been checked out 42 times. Fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul runs a distant second with his “Liberty Defined” checked out six times.

But Braswell might see this area of its collection grow.

“I’m going to send the list on to my collection development person to consider buying for the library,” director Jane Blackburn said in an email.

Roman Leary, director of Edgecombe Memorial, pointed out another concern.

“A book that’s being written by a candidate ... unless that candidate is going to win, is going to lose its relevance,” he said in a phone interview.

The example he cited was “Unfit for Command,” the book that targeted U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

“Libraries had multiple copies of that sitting on their shelves collecting dust” after the election, Leary said.

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As promised, the candidates’ books are:

> Michele Bachmann – “Core of Conviction: My Story” (coming in November).

> Herman Cain – “This Is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House,” “They Think You’re Stupid: Why Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It,” “Leadership is Common Sense” and “Speak as a Leader.”

> Newt Gingrich – “Real Change: The Fight for America’s Future,” “A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters,” “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine” and “Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in our Nation’s History and Future.” His novels written with William Forstchen are “Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory,” “Gettysburg,” “To Try Men’s Souls,” “Days of Infamy,” “The Gettysburg Trilogy,” “Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th,” “Never Call Retreat,” “Grant Comes East” and “The Battle of the Crater.”

> Jon Huntsman Jr. – foreword to “Utah in 2050: Glimpses of Our Future.”

> Ron Paul – “Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom,” “End the Fed,” “The Revolution: A Manifesto,” “A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce and Honest Friendship,” “The Case for Gold: A Minority Report of the U.S. Gold Commission” and “”Pillars of Prosperity” (March 2008)

> Rick Perry – “Fed Up!” and “On My Honor.”

> Mitt Romney – “No Apology: Believe in America” and “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games.”

> Rick Santorum – “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good” and “Rick Santorum.”

Ross Chandler is Life editor for the Rocky Mount Telegram.

Following on the heels of the end of the Borders bookstore chain, Books-A-Million is closing a series of its stores.

Relax, Rocky Mount bibliophiles, the store here is not on the list. But readers in Wilson won’t be happy to hear their store at 2420 Forest Hills Road W. is among those to be closed.

The actual list of stores to be closed is something of a secret, at least as far as BAM sees it. Individual newspaper reports found through a Google search show closings as far away as Tupelo, Miss., Columbus, Ga., Macon, Ga., Florence, S.C., and Roanoke, Va. Closer to home, the chain is shuttering stores in Asheville, Greensboro, Fayetteville and Raleigh. (The Raleigh location is at 7221 Sandy Forks Road).

The company, however, was not so forthcoming.

“Our official response is going to have to be no comment,” Jeff Skipper, vice president for marketing, said in a telephone interview.

No comment?

“I think an official no comment from the organization should be enough,” he said.

(In his defense, I have to say Skipper sounded as if he was more apologetic than mean-spirited about not talking about the matter.)

There is a ray of good news for the Birmingham, Ala.-based company. It is opening new stores, Skipper said. However, he again would not go into details.

Published reports said that BAM had been interesting in acquiring 35 locations from Borders. When the corporate dust settled, the deal was for leases on 14 stores.

One difference is clear between Borders and BAM’s closings: BAM is wasting no time. The Wilson and Raleigh stores close Saturday. The first report of the Raleigh closing was in Friday’s edition of The News & Observer. I learned of the Wilson closing Saturday through two staffers at the BAM in Rocky Mount.

Borders locations, on the other hand, went through long going-out-of-business sales with tiered discounting as weeks past.

Again, Skipper declined to comment on the reason.

Ross Chandler is Life editor of the Rocky Mount Telegram.

Whoever coined the phrase “The show must go on” evidently never rode out a hurricane.

Hurricane Irene arrived Saturday just in time for five events at area venues. Calls today confirmed that four were canceled. The good news is that some of them will be made up.

Monkey Foot was to have played Saturday night at Westridge Grill.

“I’m working on some dates right now” for a makeup show, owner Michael Wise said. “Most likely, it’s going to be the late-year season,” possibly in late October.

Ebony “E-Bone” Moore was to have played Saturday night at Via Cappuccino. While admission was to have been free, donations would have been accepted to benefit the My Sister’s House domestic violence shelter.

Via Cap co-owner John Fatheree said that he would reschedule the show if Moore would contact him, but no plans have been made yet.

The Rocky Mount chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays had planned to show two films, “Prayers for Bobby” and “For the Bible Tells Me So,” on Saturday afternoon at Braswell Memorial Library. However, the last installment in the group’s three-month film series was canceled when the storm forced the library to close.

“We have not rescheduled,” chapter Vice President Susan Ayers said. “We haven’t met yet to decide if or when we’re going to reschedule it.”

Another Irene casualty was the outdoor landscape oil painting workshop that the Howard Arts Center was to have run all day at Battle Park. It is coming back, albeit in a different form, on Oct. 9.

“We’re not going to reschedule the workshop,” said Maureen Daly, the city’s cultural arts administrator. “We’re going to swap it for a gallery talk.”

The instructor, Robert Tynes, will participate in the artists reception for the center's upcoming exhibits. The event runs from 2-5 p.m., with Tynes speaking later in the program.

Artists who paid for the painting workshop will have their money refunded, Daly said.

The office at Lakeland Theatre and Cultural Arts Center in Littleton was closed today. No word was available on the fate of its final weekend productions of “Catch Me If You Can.”

Two other interesting things came out of the calls.

> The formal ceremony to name the arts center after Maria V. Howard will lead off the program there on Oct. 9, Daly said.

> Via Cap will start opening weekdays at 7 a.m. beginning Thursday, Fatheree said. The coffeehouse had moved its weekday opening time back to 8 a.m. from 7 a.m. about two years ago.

Ross Chandler is Life editor of the Rocky Mount Telegram.

If you’re looking for a good read when hot weather keeps you cooped up in the house, pick up “The Triple Agent” by Joby Warrick (Doubleday; $26.95).

Warrick recounts a terrorist coup: the 2009 suicide bombing at a U.S. base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed five CIA officers, a Jordanian intelligence officer and two U.S. security contractors for what formerly was Blackwater Worldwide. It’s a story of outrage, jihadist posing, earnest service by Americans at a dangerous station abroad and overlooked (and sometimes unheeded) warnings of potential trouble.

But, Warrick offers more than that. He digs into the people behind the story, including the CIA base chief who was killed in the blast, the unlikely alliance between another of the CIA officers and the Jordanian officer (both of whom also died) and the suicide bomber, a well-educated Palestinian doctor. These and others characters are drawn as far more than stereotypes; on one hand, each is seen as a selfless worker in a greater cause, on the other as humans with the usual servings of faults or shortcomings.

Memories of the attack have faded like those of so many other deadly blasts in the long war. Warrick, a reporter for The Washington Post, brings the attack back into sharp focus in an eminently readable narrative.

Look for a fuller review of “The Triple Agent” in the Aug. 7 edition of the Telegram.

Ross Chandler is Life editor for the Rocky Mount Telegram.

Help! My appliances/electronics have turned on me. I think sometime recently in the middle of the night when no one was around to hear, they all got together and decided to go haywire.

First it was the 40-inch LCD high-definition television purchased at a now out-of-business giant electronics chain store just four years ago. The background picture looks like a funky screensaver. Sometimes. Then sometimes, I think just to get my hopes up that the television has cured itself of whatever ailed it, the crazy lines vanish and the picture looks normal. I have started a repair account with the nice people at Samsung.

I say started because I needed the serial number off the back of the set, and I had to wait for assistance to (a) turn the heavy doggone thing around to find the number, and (b) read the tiny print that required someone else to hold a flashlight to illuminate while I read and wrote. Believe me, it was a two-person job to get this information. I haven’t called Samsung back yet because the television, as I said, has its good days, and ...

The icemaker on the refrigerator quit working, and the milk didn’t seem as cold as usual. Bad television won’t kill you, but food poisoning will, so I dropped the television project to concentrate on getting a repairman to come fix the fridge. Scheduling was a problem. Monday was booked solid “unless, ma’am, your refrigerator has absolutely quit working.” Tuesday afternoon was open for the appliance people, but I had a meeting at school I didn’t need to miss, and my husband had an auditor at work.

No ice, food possibly spoiling, the husband gave the auditor lots of stuff to look at while he stayed home to wait for the fridge guy. It cost well over $100 to get some kind of coils defrosted, but I am happy to report that I just heard the ice maker drop its first batch of cubes in the tray, and the milk already feels colder.

Oh, and today, I finally phoned about that possible recall on my 3-year-old dishwasher. “Certain dishwashers can pose fire hazard” said the letter along with “Second Notification” printed in red capital letters. Yes, I’m busy, and I ignored the first letter. The dishwasher seems to be working fine, but of course I have the model that has a defective heating element.

A repairman is coming Friday (“be available from noon to 5 p.m., ma’am. That’s the most exact time we can give you”). Fortunately, there is no charge, but get this: I’m supposed to “disconnect the electric supply by shutting off the fuse or circuit breaker. ...”

I’m pretty sure that means I’m supposed to quit using my dishwasher. Washing dishes by hand? This could be worse than fuzzy television and food poisoning!

The question hit me like an extra large package of Depends.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, ma’am, but do you qualify for the senior discount?”

I don’t usually shop on Thursday at my local grocery store, where, evidently, it was senior citizen discount day. I guess the cashier was trying to help me save a few cents.

“Well, how old do I have to be to qualify?” I asked thinking the answer surely must be 55.

“Sixty,” said the cashier without blinking.

Sixty! Holy moly! I’m four, I repeat four, years away from 60.

“No, I don’t qualify,” I said in a voice cold enough to chill my hot deli-baked chicken.

It would have been one thing if this cashier had been some teeny-bopper. Heck, everybody over 30 looks like a senior citizen to an 18-year-old.

But this grocery store employee was no spring chicken herself. True, she was younger than I am, but only by a decade — or two.

I was rattled. It’s shallow, but I am influenced by a society where getting old is celebrated with black balloons and being young is celebrated in rock songs and cool advertisements.

And I’m vain. I know I am. I totally admit it. I like to think I look good for my age — which is not 60. I work out at Curves three, well, OK, maybe two times most weeks. (Sometimes I’m on vacation and sometimes, there’s something good on “Oprah.”) I try not to dress frumpy and keep a fairly current haircut. And — well, I don’t want to share all my beauty secrets.

Beauty secrets which evidently are not working! But here’s my advice for all these stores which offer senior discounts. It’s a spin on the military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” People do love to save money, but if they don’t tell you they qualify for a senior citizen discount, then by all means don’t ask them.

Patsy Pridgen is an English instructor at Nash Community College.

Chef Don Sexauer's recent blog with its recipe for peach and blueberry cobbler sent me looking in my cluttered recipe box for a dessert I remember from my childhood. Blueberry pudding cake with its sponge cake texture was something my mother often baked during the summer. I don't know why she didn't call this dessert huckleberry pudding cake, as she used the wild huckleberries from the woods surrounding our house as often as she did the blueberries that grew on my dad's fruit trees.

My siblings and I, of course, were the berry pickers. In those lazy, hot summer days of long ago, we would each get a plastic milk jug, cut off the top half, punch holes in two sides, and tie a string through these holes. We would loop the string around our necks, wearing the jug in front. Both hands were then free to pick our berries, and we could conveniently drop our produce in our jug/bucket.

Sometimes, we picked blueberries, and sometimes we picked huckleberries, depending on what was ripe and abundant. A huckleberry is really just a wild blueberry (or that's what I've always thought), and my siblings and I had no trouble selling extra berries of either type for 50 cents a pint at the stockyard where my father worked.

In the 1960s, $4 or $5 from berry picking was good money for a preteen. After all, it cost only 80 cents to go to the movies, and a quarter could get a girl a Pepsi and a bag of chips at the local country store.

But back to finding that recipe. I'll try Chef Don's peach and blueberry cobbler recipe, but now that I've thought about it, I'm determined to make blueberry (huckleberry) pudding cake, too. I can always call Mama out in Edgecombe County if my recipe has vanished in my jumbled cooking file. I'll bet she knows it by heart.

On a particularly cool recent Tuesday afternoon, I spent two hours tie-dyeing T-shirts with a group of 40 kids. We got lucky, and the overcast skies did not dump rain on us, and instead we had a few hours of organized chaos and downright fun. That evening, I went home with blue and green spots all over my hands and clothes and was asleep on the couch by 8 p.m.

In library school, people told me I was crazy when I said I wanted to work with teenagers. I wanted to “change lives” to “inspire” teens with words and writing the same way I had been inspired not-all-that long ago.

After two short years as a “professional” in the field – yes, believe it or not, librarianship is a field! – I have learned more from the students I serve than I ever thought possible. For those of you who think I am crazy, consider this: Like it or not, these students are our future. Complain about “bad” manners, “poor” writing, whatever your rant is, in 20 years (if not sooner) they are going to be running the show.

So, put your perceptions aside and reconsider: Put yourself in the shoes of a 11th-grader looking to an uncertain future in an economy that’s crumbling, where education is expensive and often feels out of reach. Or, think about an undergraduate struggling to pay back education loans with the part-time job at a big-box retail store. Remember that you, too, used to be that dewy-eyed kid, and some “adult” shrugged you off. Rise up, and show them that there is possibility in a world that changes so fast we all are having to question where we go from here.