A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

Careful readers of our American Scene section will have noticed that pieces by Gregory Jaynes appear more often than those by anyone else. This week's story, about a musical recital in the ranching community of Choteau, Mont., is Associate Editor Jaynes' 44th for the section. Like many others, the idea came from one of his favorite sources, a reader. A woman from Montana wrote to TIME about a nearby piano teacher with an interesting clientele.

Jaynes, 38, came to TIME in 1983 from the New York Times, where he reported on Africa out of Nairobi and also was a roving national correspondent. He recalls, "In a total of 15 years of daily journalism, I covered everything from coups and killings to a cat caught up a tree. I reached the point where I wanted a note from my doctor saying 'No more hard news for this man! It's bad for his heart.' The opportunity to do American Scene was just the prescription. I am happiest writing about people who have nothing to gain from the press."

To help find them, Jaynes pores over vast quantities of newspapers and periodicals, scooping them up wherever he happens to be. At home in Atlanta, he heads for a local bookstore that carries the city's largest assortment of out-of-town publications and buys $80 worth at a time. "The clerk is always happy to have me do it," Jaynes says in characteristic deadpan manner.

Story ideas often lead Jaynes down a circuitous path. "I may go into a town to write about a mean billy goat in someone's yard," he says, "and end up writing about an old goat at town hall." Such reflections come naturally to the Alabama-born Jaynes, who remains very much the Southerner. Yet his patchwork-quilt collection of pieces covers every section of the nation. Among the subjects that have piqued his interest are the loon preservationists in New Hampshire, a restaurant in Barrow, Alaska, that is the only place to find Mexican food in the Arctic Circle, and an entrepreneur in Des Moines who sells live bait through vending machines.

Jaynes, who travels one week and writes the next, calculates that he has recorded enough mileage to have circumnavigated the globe nine or ten times. "I was about to say that is too much flying for anyone," he adds. "But the truth is, I am just about to get on a plane."