Fred McFeely Rogers summered in a modest, gray, shake shingled house on the edge of Nantucket. My mother rented a cottage next door. So Mister Rogers really was my neighbor.
On the afternoon of our first meeting, Mister Rogers asked me about my job as an MTV News producer. I felt exposed and a tiny-bit embarrassed, a PBS mind in a jump-cut, sound-bit MTV world. Mister Rogers said warmly, “I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.” A year later ...