By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JUNE 10, 2025 | Several of you may face this problem: what to get a young graduate, from high school or college.
For those going to college, for years we bought a hard-back Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. We thought that was reasonable for someone about to embark on years of study. But today with cell phones, many have definitions with them at their fingertips.
We were looking for a college graduate’s gift, one who recently completed work on an engineering degree, and is about to enter the workforce. It’s a little more difficult to consider this gift.
Below is part of a letter we sent to this graduate.
Dear Graduate: We decided on a fiction book for an engineering graduate for one main reason: to encourage you to read outside of your chosen field, and to continue to read widely your entire life.
Continual reading will make you a more well-rounded person. You may find, by reading a wide variety of books, that this will contribute to your work as an engineer. It will obviously expand your mind. All in all, it will make you a more well-balanced person.
Now to this particular book, My Italian Bulldozer. First, it is from my favorite author: Alexander McCall Smith, a Scotsman and medical ethicist who now writes full-time. His first book, The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency, was an instant hit. (The book is set in Botswana, about a lady who finds a book about how to become a detective, opens an office and is successful.) So far, McCall Smith has written 26 books in this series.
McCall Smith also writes stories, in a series of books, about several families in a house on Scotland Street in Edinburgh, or in another series, of an anthropologist who can also solve problems for people, to a hilarious account of three German professors of Portuguese irregular verbs! His scope is amazing. I was going to enclose a list of his books, but it would be too long! Go to the internet for books by Alexander McCall Smith to understand.
One more element: none of his books have foul language. That’s amazing in today’s cuss-word society.
The Bulldozer book we send along is a stand-alone book, not part of any series. The title pulled me into it, and its ending is surprising. We hope you find the pleasure in it that we did.
But mainly, we are wishing that for you, the dedicated precise engineer, you will allow your free time to include continued outside reading for growth and stimulation.
Now enter the world of adults, and enjoy life at its fullest.
New subject: For years we’ve advocated that Gwinnett County should adopt regulations to limit all sorts of disposable plastic, for shopping bags specifically, and switch to paper bags. We’ve also advocated for eliminating plastic straws in restaurants.
One of GwinnettForum’s Continuing Objectives, published in each edition, reads: “Eliminate single-use plastic packaging and straws in Gwinnett and require instead the use of paper products.”
Let’s compliment restaurants in Norcross, which have switched to paper straws instead of plastic. Its “Strawless Norcross” campaign was designed by the Sustainable Norcross Commission citizen board. It’s estimated it will reduce the number of plastic drinking straws by at least 50,000 a year!
We’re glad to see major progress on this objective. We look forward to other cities, and the county, adopting elimination of single-use plastics. Hurrah to Norcross restaurants for their leading role in one manner of keeping more plastic out of our lives. Hurrah!
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