Put The Dog On The Phone

If you loved the newspaper columns of Erma Bombeck and Jim Bishop, Janis Osborne’s book, “Put The Dog On The Phone,” a collection of her favorite newspaper columns written over 20 years, is a must read.

Mrs. Osborne wrote with humor and poignancy about the life and times of the small town where she grew up, of her family, friends and acquaintances, that are the personification of people we have all known and sometimes loved.

She was often stopped on the street or in the supermarket by people who say they have pinned her column to the refrigerator door or who identify with her experiences as a wife, mother, daughter and working woman. But the book is not for women only. Men will enjoy her vignettes of sons, husbands and fathers as much. To read her book is like sitting down to have a conversation with an old friend. It will leave you with a better feeling about yourself and the world around you.

Janis Osborne was born in Hartford, Conn. in 1943. She grew up in Port Jervis, N.Y. and graduated from Port Jervis High School in 1961 and attended SUNY Orange in Middletown, New York. She has three children from a previous marriage, Thomas, Michael and Megan and 13 grandchildren. She retired in 2006 as the editor of The Gazette, a weekly newspaper and has received an Associated Press Award for Column Writing and two New York State Publisher’s Association Awards, one for Community Service Writing and one for News Reporting. She passed away on March 1, 2008.