50 Robyn Rabbeth Leach: former television broadcaster

Robyn Rabbeth Leach spent 20+ years in radio and television broadcasting working at WHAS in Louisville, WLAP radio and WLEX TV in Lexington, Kentucky.

She is a Louisville native and graduate of Western Kentucky University. Robyn has been married for 38 years to Tom Leach, voice of the University of Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball and football. They are parents to Connor, a chef, and Caroline, a data scientist. Lately, Robyn has been restoring her home, traveling, and lingering with friends and family.

Kathie’s note: Robyn is my longest-running BFF, though neither of us runs. We met at WLAP radio in the 1900s, hahahaa, where she was in news and I was a disc jockey. The station had an actual news department (!) with at least three or four people on the news staff. Talk about a previous lifetime. And it was such a full, full life, we don't reminisce about the same stories over and over. Plus, we have plenty of current things to talk about these days.

Writers Rotation intro/outro recorded at Dynamix Productions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Transcript

Robyn [00:00:00]:
I'm Robyn Rabbeth Leach, former television broadcaster. Writing is nourishing, and it's a legacy that I will leave to my children.

INTRO [00:00:09]:
Hi, welcome to the Writers Rotation podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Stamps. I love words and writing and people and talking. So I'm talking to people who write all kinds of things in different professions. It's a Writers Rotation.

Kathie [00:00:25]:
Robyn, how are you?

Robyn [00:00:27]:
I am well. How are you?

Kathie [00:00:30]:
I'm well. I'm good. Grammatically both correct.

Robyn [00:00:34]:
I did that for you, Kathie, and only you.

Kathie [00:00:37]:
It actually is “I am good.”

Robyn [00:00:38]:
Is it really? I would have bet the farm it was “I am well.”

Kathie [00:00:43]:
“I am well” means I'm healthy, which is fabulous, but “I am good” because “good” is an adjective and “am” is a linking verb. Linking verbs require adjectives.

Robyn [00:00:53]:
Well, there you go. I'm Really, really glad to hear that because I always feel pretentious when someone asks how you're doing and I say, I am well. I just feel like, I don't know, I'm condescending or something.

Kathie [00:01:07]:
No, I like being healthy. So.

Robyn [00:01:09]:
Yeah, yeah, we'll look at it that way.

Kathie [00:01:11]:
But yeah, good. And then “I feel bad” is correct instead of “I feel badly.”

Robyn [00:01:19]:
And why is that?

Kathie [00:01:19]:
Because “feel” is a linking verb.

Robyn [00:01:22]:
I think I usually get that one.

Kathie [00:01:24]:
Am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being, grow, look, appear, become, taste, feel, smell, sound, seem. I had to memorize the 17 linking verbs in eighth grade.

Robyn [00:01:31]:
Well, if I ever have a grammar question, I know who I can call, and I do. And you know, you're one of my oldest friends.

Kathie [00:01:39]:
Oldest friends.

Robyn [00:01:40]:
I mean, you're one of my, one of the friends I've had the longest relationship with.

Kathie [00:01:46]:
That's right. One of my favorite photos is, we took it when we went to Chicago back in the 1900s.

Speaker B [00:01:54]:
Yes.

Kathie [00:01:54]:
And I posted it one time. I said, Robyn and I were taking selfies before the selfie machine was invented.

Robyn [00:02:00]:
That's right. We went to see the Monet exhibit at the art museum in Chicago, and it was fabulous.

Kathie [00:02:07]:
Yes. We love our art museums.

Robyn [00:02:09]:
Yes, we do. I'm so glad to have a friend who likes to go with me because my family doesn't.

Kathie [00:02:15]:
Oh, I love my culture. Cultural events. You majored in journalism?

Robyn [00:02:21]:
Yes, actually my degree is in broadcast news and public affairs from Western Kentucky University.

Kathie [00:02:29]:
What did you want to be when you were a little kid?

Robyn [00:02:31]:
I always wanted to be a reporter.

Kathie [00:02:33]:
Really?

Robyn [00:02:33]:
Always, since I can remember. Well, news and current events was very big in our household. I grew up in Louisville, and at the time we got two daily newspapers. I know younger people will just find that hard to believe, but you did. You got in the morning, you got the Courier-Journal, and in the evenings they delivered the Louisville Times. And my dad came home and had his bourbon and read his newspaper every afternoon. And then at dinner, we would talk about current events. It was just always interesting to me.

Robyn [00:03:07]:
I liked knowing what's going on in the world. I loved writing. I started really in sixth grade writing for the school paper, and my first job was coming up with headlines because I was, I guess somebody said I was, some teacher, thought I was good at that. And my first headline was they were thinking of closing the library. They used to have it open like an hour before school started, and, and this is elementary school, and an hour after. Well, they were going to cut that out. For whatever reason, probably, you know, budget cuts. And we were writing an op-ed against that. We wanted to keep the library open. And my first headline, I was maybe 12, was “Rights for Readers.” I still remember. And I was hooked.

Kathie [00:03:55]:
That's awesome.

Robyn [00:03:57]:
Because we made a difference. We made a difference. We got the library to remain open. So I always believed that journalism mattered, that it could change things. And, you know, the old adage, it's the first draft of history, really is true.

Robyn [00:04:14]:
I think we've gotten away from some of that lately. And, you know, not to be political, but the news business has changed dramatically since I was in it. Yeah.

Kathie [00:04:24]:
But you didn't want to go do student council and go into the political realm, the government realm?

Robyn [00:04:29]:
No, actually, my minor was political science. I found it fascinating. I didn't want to make the rules, but I wanted to cover the people making the rules.

Robyn [00:04:39]:
My first job out of college was covering the 1986 legislative session in Frankfort, and I was thrilled. I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. I worked about two, three in radio, and then I went into television at WLEX and altogether about 22 years in broadcasting. Which is where I met you.

Kathie [00:05:04]:
Yes, I was the disc jockey and you were in news.

Robyn [00:05:07]:
And Kathie used to give me pointers. Like, I hadn't lived in Lexington, so I mispronounced a few things. I mean, not like, you know, Versailles. I knew that. And I knew Athens instead of Athens. But I think it was Ben Ali. I pronounced it Ben Ali because, you know, I grew up in Muhammad Ali's hometown, but it's Ben Ali in Lexington. [like “ally”]

Kathie [00:05:29]:
Something like that. [the Ben Ali stakes race at Keeneland]

Robyn [00:05:29]:
So things like that. You were very helpful.

Kathie [00:05:32]:
We had fun. I can't remember which one of us said it, but I was like, today's the most difficult date to pronounce. It was August 6th.

Robyn [00:05:42]:
Definitely.

Kathie [00:05:42]:
It would take an hour and a half just to say it. How did you get into television?

Robyn [00:05:47]:
Well, when I was at WLAP, where we both worked, the news director at the time, or the station manager, I do believe, was Jim Allison, who went to WLEX as the news director. And when he had an opening, he hired me. He already knew me. It's very hard to break into television. I kind of had an inside track because I'd already worked for him. Otherwise, I don't think somebody with my lack of experience would have gotten a job in Lexington in television. I would have had to work at a smaller television market first.

Kathie [00:06:22]:
And what about the learning curve?

Robyn [00:06:23]:
Oh my gosh, I just assumed that I would be given at least a few days to learn things, but no, I got to work at 9:00 and at noon I was doing a live shot. I was mortified. Long John Silver's used to have the headquarters, this was in Lexington, and there was a protest going on, on Richmond Road at the corner of Man o' War, except there wasn't a Man o' War yet. They were protesting the fact that Long John Silver's, when they would catch their Icelandic cod that they used in their fish, they would sometimes also in the big nets, they would get endangered fish sometimes. And so, it was a group protesting against Long John Silver's fishing practices.

Robyn [00:07:12]:
And the person that I had to interview was dressed in a giant fish costume. So it was really visual. It was a busy street and it was hot and people were honking their horns. And I don't know, I have no memory of how it actually went. I think it must have been okay because I think I did another one the next day. Baptism by fire. That was back when we, you know, had to shoot with videotape and then go back and like physically edit it. People—and I know you did this, Kathie—but in radio, you—

Kathie [00:07:49]:
Oh, I had a razor blade in my mouth all the time.

Robyn [00:07:51]:
Yeah, you, you had a razor blade, and you literally—you had a machine, a reel-to-reel machine, and you would cut where you wanted to make the edits, grease pencil, splice it. Yep, splice it together. Then you had to record it onto a cart, and then you had to play the carts for the sound bites for the news, and then you would, erase the carts. And yeah, it was It was quite something live. It was so much fun. You know how it is. There's nothing like live radio and live television. I didn't know it at the time, but I guess I was an adrenaline junkie. And, you know, give me a deadline and I'm happy.

Kathie [00:08:27]:
And the movie Broadcast News. BobbyBobbyBobby.

Robyn [00:08:28]:
Yes! I've been in that same situation. Still to this day, I think one of the best movies ever about journalism, not just broadcasting, but journalism in general. If you go back and watch it today, a lot of what they were predicting and worried about has come to pass, unfortunately.

Kathie [00:08:48]:
So with today's entertainment news, can you pinpoint that to a particular person or a date? Or has it just been an evolution. Er, devolved?

Robyn [00:08:57]:
Um, no, no, it's—you can, in my opinion, you can pinpoint it. Ted Turner, 24-hour news, CNN. Brilliant idea, changed everything, but it also really diluted the product because you had to fill 24 hours instead of the way we grew up, you had your 30 minutes in the evenings, 6:30 to 7:00, with, you know, Walter Cronkite or Eric Sevareid or whoever it was. And I can remember Walter Cronkite once saying you should not just get your source of news from television, because the entire—if you took the word count, the entire word count in a 30-minute television news broadcast, it would not even be enough words to fill the front page of the New York Times.

Kathie [00:09:49]:
Really?

Robyn [00:09:50]:
Yes, and it's true. So you can't go in depth on anything. What cable news did is it diluted. Plus, it made viewing more viewer-driven. And to drive viewers, to get them into the tent, you have to entice them with “if it bleeds, it leads” type stories, more entertainment type stories. When I first started at Channel 18, I was the city hall reporter. They don't even have city hall reporters anymore. You don't even have beats anymore. It's you chase the car accidents, the stabbings, the trials, the salacious things. You don't cover council meetings anymore or things going on at the state capitol unless it's just something earth-shattering.

Kathie [00:10:38]:
When you covered city council, what did you have on you? A tape recorder?

Robyn [00:10:43]:
Um, no, not even that. Well, in radio I did, yeah, just a tape recorder and a notepad. And a pen. In television, we, you know, you had a cameraman with you. So they had the camera and the tripod, and the reporter usually carried the tripod because it was very heavy and the camera was very heavy. And then I just had a little flip notebook, a steno pad, I think they called it, with the spiral edging. And you just, yeah, you just took notes. We even had classes in how to take notes.

Kathie [00:11:15]:
Well, I think it would have been easier if you knew how to take shorthand.

Robyn [00:11:18]:
Yes. And I did study that for a while. My mother knew shorthand. And she taught me some of it. But, once you, you know, you know yourself and you know your own handwriting and the little words that you use for things, it, you know, over time it gets easier. And then I would also have, when I was actually doing an interview, I would have the benefit of it, it was recorded so I could go back and double-check, you know. But with television, right, you know, you're playing the sound bites, so it's not like you can really misconstrue what they're saying because they're saying what they said. In newspaper reporting, it's a little bit different because, you know, you're quoting. Yeah.

Kathie [00:11:58]:
And what was a typical deadline for you, to write?

Robyn [00:12:00]:
Well, in radio, the deadlines were every hour. So if you covered something, you had to turn the story almost immediately. And then in a lot of cases, cover the story, then build the rest of the newscast and, you know, deliver it every hour and sometimes on the half hour too. I can remember being at WLAP, which is way out Russell Cave Road, and I heard a bad wreck, and it was on a side road that had been controversial for, you know, not having shoulders, and there were a lot of wrecks. I was the only person in the newsroom, but I decided I wanted to go and talk to the police officer and the person involved in the wreck. And I ran out, interviewed them, ran back to the station, edited it, built the rest of the newscast and got it on the air within like 30 minutes. So that was radio.

Robyn [00:12:48]:
Television usually had, you know, several hours, but it was, you know, more complicated because you had more. You had video you had to deal with, and then you had to write up a story that was fed to the anchors. So you had to have a formal story written. I couldn't just, you know, do it off the top of my head like you can in radio.

Kathie [00:13:11]:
And especially being— because you were an anchor, did they have little hand signals of stretch? Go faster?

Robyn [00:13:16]:
They did. And we had a lot of that. We had to ad-lib a lot. They would, you know, pull their hand like you're pulling taffy apart. That was stretch. That was the most dreaded signal.

Kathie [00:13:29]:
Yes, because it's much easier to wrap up and say back at noon.

Robyn [00:13:32]:
That's right. That's right. That doesn't happen so much anymore because everything's just much more sophisticated. But yeah, we would have, you know, the, the teleprompter would jam up or the pages would slip off of it. Now it's all computerized. But back when I was in television, you typed your script out on a typewriter that had 7 pieces of carbon paper. That's how many copies you needed. So each of the anchors got a copy, the producer got a copy, the director got a copy, the reporter got a copy. You had to hand out all these copies. And you know, that takes a while. So you had to get your story done and it couldn't have typos. So yeah, it was, it was really, really different. People just can't believe, yeah, that when I started at Channel 18 in 1987, we had not electric, not the IBM Selectric, those came later. We had manual typewriters. But you know what? There's nothing like just that sound, that clicking, rhythmic, that cadence of a busy newsroom, the buzz and the typewriters going and the AP bell going off, which meant there was an alert, something big was happening. The teletype machine that made all those noises, it was like a symphony. And it was, it was, it was addictive. The minute I walked into that newsroom, that was it. That was it for me. I was happy.

Kathie [00:14:55]:
And the police scanners.

Robyn [00:14:56]:
And the police scanners. Yep. And you would also get, you know, you get a lot of egos in a newsroom. So you get people screaming at each other. And, you know, fighting, there was a lot of that. And back in the day, we were not politically correct. People told bawdy jokes in the newsroom. That was not unusual. It was not unusual for you to keep a bottle of bourbon in your desk. And, you know, after a really big scoop or a great newscast, everybody would come back—not everybody, but a lot of people would come back and have a little toast. And it was, it was actually a lot of fun. Wouldn't fly these days. But yeah, it did 40 years ago. Yeah.

Kathie [00:15:34]:
And interviewing, did you take classes? Did somebody teach you? Did you watch, learn by watching?

Robyn [00:15:41]:
Or just, you know, all of the above, Kathie. We did have classes. Western was a great school for regionally for broadcasting. We did have classes in that. My advisor was an old—he had been a colleague of Ed Edward R. Murrow's at CBS. His name was Doyle Satterthwaite. And he was this crusty old guy who always had a pipe, just an old-fashioned pipe with like the cherry tobacco, always had a pipe in his mouth. Just like you would picture a colleague of Edward R. Murrow's, you know? He was great to me. He was a great mentor. And he taught me a lot about writing and producing. And then we had classes too, which at the time was very unusual. There were not many schools, including the University of Kentucky, that even offered a broadcasting degree. That's why I went to Western, because you could major in journalism at UK but not broadcasting.

Kathie [00:16:35]:
I got mine at Eastern.

Robyn [00:16:36]:
And you went to Eastern. That's right, Eastern. Good, good school too. Yeah. And then I had a great mentor in Sue Wylie. So that's like getting to learn at the side of Barbara Walters. I mean, she was that good. And people who remember her know what a pioneer she was, what a groundbreaking figure she was and respected. And to be able to work with her was, um, that was like a career-changing event for me, was getting to work with Sue.

Kathie [00:17:03]:
Did she take to you right off?

Robyn [00:17:05]:
She did. For some reason, she always was good to me. And there was not that, you know, there could be a lot of rivalry, especially among women, because back then there weren't very many women in newsroom. Sue was the very first one, but she helped me a lot. She encouraged me. She would, you know, prop me up when I had had a bad day and tell me not to give up. And she taught me a lot about interviewing. She was, she was great at interviewing.

Robyn [00:17:35]:
She had the television show Your Government. That was called a public affairs show. They don't even have those anymore. The airwaves—a lot of people don't know this, but they're actually owned by the public and they're licensed to outlets, stations, through the FCC. And there used to be a rule called the 7-7-7 rule, and that was that no entity could own more than 7 radio stations, 7 television stations, and 7 newspapers.

Robyn [00:18:03]:
And why do you think they would do this? Well, so that no one entity has a monopoly or too much sway over the politics and the viewpoints of the station. Well, that changed in the Reagan administration. There was deregulation. It was further deregulated during the Bush, the H.W. Bush administration. And that's where you get, like, now you have the Jeff Bezoses who own everything pretty much. You know, just two or three entities own everything, which, I don't see how you can say that is anything but a bad situation.

Kathie [00:18:45]:
Monopoly.

Robyn [00:18:45]:
It is, yeah. And that's something that we tried to guard against. And public affairs was done, that was the way that stations, they benefited, of course, from using these free public airwaves. They didn't have to pay for them, but they would get ad revenue. So these stations made a lot of money through advertising. Well, in order to give back to the public, they had public affairs programming. And that was when you would do the in-depth interviews with the governor, with the legislators, with the mayor, things like this. Now that's all gone. With deregulation, stations don't have to do that anymore. They do have to reapply for a license, but it's nothing like it used to be. It's all political.

Kathie [00:19:30]:
What was Sue's origin story, do you know? How she got in?

Robyn [00:19:33]:
Yeah, I do. She actually started in Miami. She went to University of Cincinnati, the School of Music, actually. And at the time, there were so few people at all in broadcasting that she said we had all kinds of choices when we got out of school, just the fact that we knew a little bit about television. So she got a job in Miami doing commercials, you know, where you would have like the sewing machine or the washer and dryer. And she would do—they were live commercials like you would see, you know, like I Love Lucy. Sometimes Lucy would do those, you know, live commercials. And Sue—

Kathie [00:20:11]:
Vita veta vegamin.

Robyn [00:20:12]:
Exactly, Vitameatavegamin. And Sue would do those. Well, just by virtue of the fact that she was a woman, the only woman at the station, and she was there, she would occasionally get to do a really fluffy story like oh, there's a fashion show that we want to, you know, show our viewers, or here's someone who wants to show you how to bake a cake or whatever. Well, eventually, because Sue was a good hard news reporter, she convinced them to let her do some actual news stories. They pushed back, but one day there was a baby in Miami that had been abandoned, and they thought, well, we have a woman, she's a woman. She's a mother. We'll let her cover the story.

Robyn [00:20:56]:
And it was like a big story that led the newscast and made a splash nationally. And it was just because of the fact that it was a baby that they let her do it. When they saw how good she was, then she started getting other opportunities. But that's how it was for women back then.

Kathie [00:21:12]:
Now, has anyone written a book about her? Will you?

Robyn [00:21:14]:
No, but it could be done. I always encouraged her. I said, oh Sue, you have to write a book. I said, oh, it would be so much fun. Let's do it together. Now, she would've written a book about, you know, people she covered because she interviewed, you know, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Jackson, the head of the Ku Klux Klan, Ross Perot. She was the first person to have James Carville on a television program when he was helping Wallace Wilkinson with his gubernatorial campaign. And of course, James Carville now is one of the leading political, I guess you would call him a—

Kathie [00:21:48]:
I was gonna say he was a campaign manager.

Robyn [00:21:50]:
Campaign manager. He got, you know, he helped get Bill Clinton elected. So, I mean, it was, He's legendary, but he started out, his first campaign was Wallace Wilkinson in Kentucky. Nobody thought he had a chance, and he won. So, he kind of made his mark, and he did a lot of that by being on Your Government. But yeah, Sue would never have written a story about herself because she said she had too many skeletons in her closet. She didn't want to open that door. But she would have written about, you know, her career. Sadly, she did not. Yeah.

Kathie [00:22:24]:
Yeah. And she used to give you her books when she would finish reading one.

Robyn [00:22:28]:
Yeah. I still have the most fabulous collection of books that she gave me. She would get 10, 12 books a month and read all of them. She would read, you know, two or three books a week and then she would give them to me. She didn't care. She didn't want to keep them. And I love books. I love having bookshelves full of books. She got me to like fiction.

Robyn [00:22:48]:
And as a writer, you'll appreciate this. With my background in news, I only read nonfiction. It had to be a biography or, you know, I just could not get into fiction because I thought if it didn't really happen I'm not interested in it. But she got me to realize that fiction it's written to, you know, teach us something, to learn something from it, from a story. So she got me to appreciate it. And start reading fiction. So I will always be thankful for that.

Kathie [00:23:17]:
Yeah. And what are you reading these days?

Robyn [00:23:20]:
I am reading— I'm actually rereading Truman Capote. He is one of my favorite authors. I love the Southern authors.

Kathie [00:23:27]:
In True Blood?

Robyn [00:23:27]:
Well, I have a first edition of In True Blood—In Cold Blood. That's my favorite. Yeah, that's my favorite book. But this is Breakfast at Tiffany's. I've never read Breakfast at Tiffany's. I'm also reading Wendell Berry's latest book. I think he is such a treasure for Kentucky. I love Silas House. I love Crystal Wilkinson, her poetry. I love Flannery O'Connor. The Gothic Southern writers are my favorites.

Kathie [00:23:54]:
Oh shoot. I can't remember who wrote it. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Robyn [00:23:58]:
Oh yes. John, uh, starts with a B. I actually got to interview him. That was one of the bestselling books of the decade. of the '90s. And he was doing a book tour when Joseph Beth had its big store, it had one in Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington. So they would get a lot of big authors. I mean, remember Stephen King came to Lexington and did a book signing. So he was coming through. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was huge. You know, it would go on to be made into a movie with Kevin Spacey. Anyway, I got to interview him because he came on the noon show when I was anchoring. And he signed a book. So I have, I have the first edition of that signed by him.

Kathie [00:24:40]:
Berendt?

Robyn [00:24:40]:
Yes. John Berendt. Yes.

Kathie [00:24:43]:
My favorite line in that movie is one of my favorite lines of any movie. Canapé?

Robyn [00:24:48]:
Canapé! And then you had all that wonderful music from Johnny Mercer. And Savannah is the most haunted, dark, beautiful, mysterious city. Even more so than New Orleans.

Kathie [00:25:05]:
Really?

Robyn [00:25:05]:
Yeah. Yes. And Flannery O'Connor's childhood home is there, and I have visited it. It's fascinating. Yes. You and I need to do that sometime. Go on a literary tour.

Kathie [00:25:16]:
That's exactly what I want to do. 

Robyn [00:25:18]:
I would love to drive to Harper Lee, her hometown, Alabama. And some of the things that she referenced in To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, are still there. I would love to go there and just kind of walk the streets that she walked and go to the courthouse.

Kathie [00:25:33]:
I would totally go there. Let's do it.

Robyn [00:25:35]:
We'll go in the fall. Yes. Our favorite time of year. Our Libra time. It'll be here before you know it. I just rewatched To Kill a Mockingbird. I try to watch it every few years. It's good for the soul.

Kathie [00:25:48]:
Yes. And what about writing? Do you write stories? Do you write fiction?

Robyn [00:25:53]:
Sadly, I don't. I've written a couple of short stories, nothing recently. What I'm focusing on now is just kind of some personal history. As I'm getting older, I want certain stories to not be forgotten. Growing up with a mother from Appalachia, I grew up with storytellers and, you know, people who lived in the hollers. And that's what they did. They told stories. I can remember sitting around my grandmother's house and just listening to all my aunts and uncles talk.

Robyn [00:26:22]:
And how interesting it was. I think that's kind of what made me want to be a reporter and a writer, because their stories. You know, if you've read Appalachian writers, it's all kind of has this patina of doom and because they were so poverty-stricken, and life was hard. So one of the things that they did for entertainment was, you know, they just sat around and talked. They sat around the fire, or they made a big old batch of cornbread and beans, and you had to eat cheap food, and you told stories. And some of just the richest, richest memories I have. I don't want that to be lost because my children didn't get to experience that. I don't want those stories to be lost.

Robyn [00:27:14]:
So I've been working on things like that, scrapbooks, so that they can know what their relatives looked like and know something of their past. Because, you know, my kids just grew up in Lexington in a neighborhood, and that is wonderful. It's a great way to grow up. But they missed some of the colorful experiences that I had with my elders.

Kathie [00:27:37]:
Yes, good for you.

Robyn [00:27:38]:
You know, my kids are grown now. Connor's a chef, and Caroline is a data scientist. I raised two very, very different children. Which was fascinating and interesting and hard. So yeah, they'll have that part of me forever. I am so glad I have some things that my grandmother wrote and that my favorite aunt wrote. I treasure those more than any piece of jewelry they could have left me because it's just a piece of them. And having their actual handwriting too means so much because they put that pen or pencil to that piece of paper and wrote on it, and they were present in that moment, and that has been captured. To this day, I still, when I'm seriously writing something that I want kept, I write it out in longhand.

Kathie [00:28:29]:
That's good. Robyn, this has been so much fun.

Robyn [00:28:33]:
Okay, friend.

Kathie [00:28:33]:
Thanks for talking on the podcast.

Robyn [00:28:35]:
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Kathie [00:28:38]:
See ya. Bye.

OUTRO [00:28:39]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Writer's Rotation. Like and subscribe for more, and remember, writing is a marketable skill. Smiling is a remarkable skill.