Even busy Pulitzer Prize-winning writers need a break

I received this e-mail on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago:

We've noticed Leonard's Pitt's column missing from the Gazette the last few Sundays. We miss him. Is he on vacation or is he too left wing for the Gazette's right wing sensibilities? Just curious.

A short while later came this, from the same reader:

OOPS!! I didn't gaze past right wing Krauthammer. Sorry.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and surmise that the reader likes Pitts more than conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on The Gazette's Sunday Opinion Page cover.

I have not met Krauthammer but have met Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize winning-columnist who usually shares that opinion page cover with Krauthammer. Pitts was here a few years ago and I drove him from an Iowa City appearance to one in Cedar Rapids. I wrote about this in my Sunday Gazette column and would like to share it here on the blog.

I like reading Pitts. He writes with clarity about how the way we behave as a nation impacts people, especially those who get marginalized. So I jumped at the chance to get Pitts alone in my car for 30 minutes so that I could pick his brain about writing, in particular, but also his views on the human condition in America.

I'd do the same with Krauthammer if given the chance, knowing that he has a far different take on the human condition in America than Pitt has.

It turned out on this particular day with Pitts that he had endured a tiring trip in which he landed in a plane in Des Moines, got a ride to Iowa City for his morning sessions and then went to Cedar Rapids for the afternoon and evening sessions. He was exhausted when we pulled out of Iowa City.

He was gracious with the time I captured from him but admittedly wasn't as sharp as he would like to have been. He conceded that he needed the 30-minute drive to Cedar Rapids to just rest so I backed off on the questions.

Pitts is to return to Eastern Iowa later this month. He is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at Coe College's Contemporary Issues Forum the night of Jan. 31 but you are out of luck if you are a fan who wants to see him. The event is sold out.

He's a busy -- and popular -- man.