So the moon is almost full, and I have a relatively minor birthday coming up in the rear-view mirror, and I'm feeling a nostalgic wave of emotion with the reappearance of a lost-lost friend through the fiendish magic of Facebook, and in the midst of the usual everyday ups and downs comes news of the death of a long-disappeared but still resonant literary hero. So I join just about everyone I know in celebrating the work and mourning the passing of J.D. Salinger.
I cannot think of a more poignant coming-of-age story than Catcher in the Rye, yet there is nothing I can say about it that hasn't already been said - and said badly - in a thousand freshman English papers. For starters, I'm betting Salinger would hate that word poignant, which I added in the second draft, and I'm using it anyway.
A literary critic on NPR praised Salinger for writing "with all his stars out," whatever that means. Actually I think I know what it means, but I can't tell you, and if you don't get it, well, never mind. It's a metaphor, damn it, a linguistic bridge from an obvious, so-called literal, statement to a truth beyond the literal, and either it speaks to you or it doesn't. It's something Salinger accomplished with remarkable, even breathtaking honesty. That's why Holden, that slightly snotty, sophisticated preppy antihero, hit home so well with so many less self-aware midwestern kids like me and every single one of my friends.
When I arrived in the rec center parking lot, I wanted to keep listening but I had to turn off the car radio because it was time for class to begin. One by one the students filtered in, and the circle in the middle of the room gradually expanded from three to four to eight, and the shakuhachi music in the background only made it more conducive to surrender to the lapping of the internal wave machine and to dedicate this evening's practice to an old man who valued privacy yet had contact with millions of fortunate readers.
There isn't much people can do for each other on a cold Thursday night in January in Ohio, but we can stand in a circle and try to keep each other from walking off a cliff. I had some time after class, so I went to the library just to see if there were any Salinger titles still on the shelves, and to my surprise found two copies of Franny and Zooey, so I checked one out, got a cup of coffee, read a few pages, and immediately fell back in love with the voice that so many young readers cut their reading teeth on. I wish I could write dialog like that.
What can you do? You go to your next meeting, where a few of the people in the circle are on the same page and some are not. You can listen respectfully and go home with the candle wax drying on your sleeve and answer the phone when it vibrates in your pocket. It's my parents on the phone, wishing me a happy birthday and disclosing, because I asked, the latest wrinkle in their ongoing struggle with the inevitable challenges of aging. Which I can relate to, but in comparison I have no idea, so there isn't much you can do but listen and bear witness.
Zelda came over for dinner the next night like a breath of fresh air on a cold night. She has read some, if not all, of Salinger's fiction, and she knows the characters well enough to correct my pronunciation of their names. So there is that. She and her brother are not Phoebe and Holden, but they have made their acquaintance and possibly gotten together for cocktails on occasion.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Haves 5, Have-nots 4
On the face of it, this week's Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited campaign spending is another major step toward institutionalized oligarchy. Or maybe it's just an open acknowledgment of what has long been the case in the United Estates of Amerika.
The myth that "our" democracy - of the people, by the people, and for the people - counts the votes and opinions of the rich and the poor equally has long been challenged by the practices of both major parties, by electoral irregularities, by lobbyists and fundraisers, and by selective news reporting. Nobody really believed that poor people, women, or people of color received equal treatment under the law or had equal access to the levers of power.
According to five old men in robes, the law of the land now confirms the widely held suspicion that person-like business entities with greater resources not just do but should have greater rights than others to shape policy and influence the composition of the public sector everywhere from dog catcher to Congress.
No one should be too upset by this officially validated state of affairs. You don't have to be a nineteenth-century Spencerian social Darwinist, a twentieth-century Ayn Rand egoist, or a gun-toting wilderness survivalist to know that the strong get to do things that the weak don't get to do. Although the degree and brazenness of their natural advantage has varied over the 250-odd years of Amerikan history, this disparity of power is built into the formal and informal structures and functions - the gesellschaft and gemeinschaft if you will - of this country.
By birthright or by the privilege of their position, rich white men founded the nation and directed its development into the military-industrial superpower in which we live. So it's no accident that rich white men have reaped the greatest benefits of a political economy set up to serve their interests. Despite the noble Jeffersonian rhetoric, the Framers did the self-serving Hamiltonian thing and made the new nation safe for bankers and merchants at the expense of common yeoman farmers.
Yet this is still the land of opportunity. The long list of exceptions in this historical materialist account has made it more interesting and open to fanciful interpretation by idealists of many stripes. De jure changes like the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts of the 1960s leveled the playing field on paper by granting equal rights to groups that had been disenfranchised by law.
Some were entitled to own property, to vote, and to have a lawyer's representation in court, and some are not. It hasn't been long since blacks and women were granted the status of human beings and gained the privileges of citizenship. And these legal reforms have had substantial de facto consequences, reflected in a more diverse ethnic and gender composition of local, state, and national government and culminating in the dramatic ascendance of Barack to the presidency. You've come a long way, maybe.
This inspiring triumphalist reading of Amerikan history is only one of many layers of text on a time line that also includes a series of wars fought largely by poor provincials on behalf of captains of industry; an Industrial Revolution that profited enterprising robber barons on the backs of immigrants and other exploited workers; income disparities that dwarf the aristocratic social hierarchies of Europe from which egalitarian Amerikans self-righteously distance themselves; health and social services that systemically exclude more of the population than any other so-called civilized nation. These things too make Amerika special. No, I'm not bitter. I'm just the last common yeoman farmer to wake up and smell the coffee.
Whining about the hypocrisy of judicial conservatives engaging in the heresy of judicial activism does little to address either the intention or the consequences of the Court's ruling on campaign spending. In theory, it equates dollars with free speech and corporations with persons, but the practical intent could be something akin to the Founders' compromises in 1789: to create a stable social order in which to do business, while hedging against the fickle desires and unreliable opinions of the ordinary rabble by placing real authority in the hands of those who know better and have the most to lose, should anything upset the applecart, and the most to gain by controlling the size, shape, location, contents, availability, and access to the applecart.
The consequences of the ruling are a little harder to discern, especially after the financial collapse of 2008 and the sense of denial with which the bailout and recovery have been managed by and for the parties who perpetrated the collapse in the first place. Rather than tamper with the very business practices that nearly brought down the system, while making them very wealthy, the oligarchs in New York and their minions in Washington bought themselves an escape hatch from accountability for large-scale mistakes, while increasing the accountability of the consumers, borrowers, and taxpayers who work for them. And yes, we all work for them.
Don't like it? Then move to Russia, where an authoritarian government in league with a small group of wealthy industrialists makes the rules that every Ivan and Nina has to abide by at their peril. Sound familiar? Or move to China, where a centralized ruling elite decides military, economic, and social policy while flouting the masses' civil liberties and access to information in the name of national security.
Clearly the differences in the material conditions of life in the three countries are significant, and the methods by which deals and made and authority is maintained are perhaps less blatant in the U.S. than in Russia and China. It's all done under the guise of due process and equal protection, and that gives patriotic Amerikans the right, by jingo, to call other countries corrupt. Our government is for sale, and it's all Constitutional and squeaky clean. Five old men in robes just said so.
The myth that "our" democracy - of the people, by the people, and for the people - counts the votes and opinions of the rich and the poor equally has long been challenged by the practices of both major parties, by electoral irregularities, by lobbyists and fundraisers, and by selective news reporting. Nobody really believed that poor people, women, or people of color received equal treatment under the law or had equal access to the levers of power.
According to five old men in robes, the law of the land now confirms the widely held suspicion that person-like business entities with greater resources not just do but should have greater rights than others to shape policy and influence the composition of the public sector everywhere from dog catcher to Congress.
No one should be too upset by this officially validated state of affairs. You don't have to be a nineteenth-century Spencerian social Darwinist, a twentieth-century Ayn Rand egoist, or a gun-toting wilderness survivalist to know that the strong get to do things that the weak don't get to do. Although the degree and brazenness of their natural advantage has varied over the 250-odd years of Amerikan history, this disparity of power is built into the formal and informal structures and functions - the gesellschaft and gemeinschaft if you will - of this country.
By birthright or by the privilege of their position, rich white men founded the nation and directed its development into the military-industrial superpower in which we live. So it's no accident that rich white men have reaped the greatest benefits of a political economy set up to serve their interests. Despite the noble Jeffersonian rhetoric, the Framers did the self-serving Hamiltonian thing and made the new nation safe for bankers and merchants at the expense of common yeoman farmers.
Yet this is still the land of opportunity. The long list of exceptions in this historical materialist account has made it more interesting and open to fanciful interpretation by idealists of many stripes. De jure changes like the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts of the 1960s leveled the playing field on paper by granting equal rights to groups that had been disenfranchised by law.
Some were entitled to own property, to vote, and to have a lawyer's representation in court, and some are not. It hasn't been long since blacks and women were granted the status of human beings and gained the privileges of citizenship. And these legal reforms have had substantial de facto consequences, reflected in a more diverse ethnic and gender composition of local, state, and national government and culminating in the dramatic ascendance of Barack to the presidency. You've come a long way, maybe.
This inspiring triumphalist reading of Amerikan history is only one of many layers of text on a time line that also includes a series of wars fought largely by poor provincials on behalf of captains of industry; an Industrial Revolution that profited enterprising robber barons on the backs of immigrants and other exploited workers; income disparities that dwarf the aristocratic social hierarchies of Europe from which egalitarian Amerikans self-righteously distance themselves; health and social services that systemically exclude more of the population than any other so-called civilized nation. These things too make Amerika special. No, I'm not bitter. I'm just the last common yeoman farmer to wake up and smell the coffee.
Whining about the hypocrisy of judicial conservatives engaging in the heresy of judicial activism does little to address either the intention or the consequences of the Court's ruling on campaign spending. In theory, it equates dollars with free speech and corporations with persons, but the practical intent could be something akin to the Founders' compromises in 1789: to create a stable social order in which to do business, while hedging against the fickle desires and unreliable opinions of the ordinary rabble by placing real authority in the hands of those who know better and have the most to lose, should anything upset the applecart, and the most to gain by controlling the size, shape, location, contents, availability, and access to the applecart.
The consequences of the ruling are a little harder to discern, especially after the financial collapse of 2008 and the sense of denial with which the bailout and recovery have been managed by and for the parties who perpetrated the collapse in the first place. Rather than tamper with the very business practices that nearly brought down the system, while making them very wealthy, the oligarchs in New York and their minions in Washington bought themselves an escape hatch from accountability for large-scale mistakes, while increasing the accountability of the consumers, borrowers, and taxpayers who work for them. And yes, we all work for them.
Don't like it? Then move to Russia, where an authoritarian government in league with a small group of wealthy industrialists makes the rules that every Ivan and Nina has to abide by at their peril. Sound familiar? Or move to China, where a centralized ruling elite decides military, economic, and social policy while flouting the masses' civil liberties and access to information in the name of national security.
Clearly the differences in the material conditions of life in the three countries are significant, and the methods by which deals and made and authority is maintained are perhaps less blatant in the U.S. than in Russia and China. It's all done under the guise of due process and equal protection, and that gives patriotic Amerikans the right, by jingo, to call other countries corrupt. Our government is for sale, and it's all Constitutional and squeaky clean. Five old men in robes just said so.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
A View with a Room
The upstairs studio becomes a bedroom; the downstairs bedroom becomes a living room; the downstairs living room becomes a studio. Everything has to be moved out of one room into another, so for a while, the only place to sit down was here at my desk while everything else was turned upside down. Most of the furniture that had to be shuffled around is at last in place, at least for now. We can sit down for a meal, and we can even watch TV in relative comfort.
The cable guy showed up late Saturday afternoon and connected the northeast corner with the internet and the southeast corner with the TV. He didn't balk at going into the crawl space during a snowstorm to drill a hole through the subfloor, and I got to use the new outdoor outlet. So the new living room is on the grid, and we've restored our connection with the outside world.
The changes in Om Shanty are making an amazing difference in our use of space. The sight lines are much improved, and suddenly looking from the dining room into the living room suggests connected spaces that you might want to inhabit. I can sit in the rocking chair watching TV and turn my head to see the fire in the den adjoining - which is still the best room in the house.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Going negative
It's winter. Get used to it.
On this planet, temperatures go up and down. Especially here in the middle latitudes, including central Swingstate where I live, the seasons come and go with remarkable variation, bringing wide fluctuations of warm and cold weather. So pardon my interruption of your January rant about how horrible it is to endure the harsh subfreezing gale outside, but hey, it's winter.
Or you could move in with Ken Lay down in the Cayman Islands, where it's nice and warm with all that oily money. Here in the relatively temperate Lower 48, it's not as tropical as Hawaii and not as arctic as Alaska, and there will be warmer months and colder months. Like yin times and yang times in the cycle of the year, they're not going away very soon.
Excuse me if I repeat myself, but in case you didn't get the memo, change happens. Sometimes change is wet and cold. Learn to live with it. The wet and cold stuff of January is good for the apple trees and other flora that grace this part of the country. Put on your mittens, fergoshsakes.
As much as you might object, it might get hotter than 72 F. in the summer, then you can complain that it's too hot. And as much as you hate the cold, the temperature might drop below 32 in the winter. Horrors! In our command-and-control culture, you can push all the buttons you want, and it doesn't change the fact of the ups and downs.
I say life is a garden, so dig it.
It's the same with human interaction. I respectfully disagree with the unwritten rule that when someone asks "How are you?" the appropriate response is the upbeat "Great!" or even "Fine, thank you." If they take the trouble to ask, I think you owe them an honest answer, even if it's "I feel like hell but I think I'll live."
I realize these are mixed messages. On the one hand, everyone should enjoy winter - as I do - and get all gung-ho about wearing wool, shoveling snow, and turning corners in a controlled slide. On the other hand, everyone should act as grumpy as they feel - like I do - and stop feigning a constant but perfunctory state of happiness.
In other words, enjoy the down side. We're not in any old recession, we're in a Great Recession. I'm not just in a bad mood, I'm mired in an acute state of existential malaise. But at least be present for the event.
Excuse me while I leave my cubicle to take a walk in an outdoor oval to breathe unrecirculated air.
On this planet, temperatures go up and down. Especially here in the middle latitudes, including central Swingstate where I live, the seasons come and go with remarkable variation, bringing wide fluctuations of warm and cold weather. So pardon my interruption of your January rant about how horrible it is to endure the harsh subfreezing gale outside, but hey, it's winter.
Or you could move in with Ken Lay down in the Cayman Islands, where it's nice and warm with all that oily money. Here in the relatively temperate Lower 48, it's not as tropical as Hawaii and not as arctic as Alaska, and there will be warmer months and colder months. Like yin times and yang times in the cycle of the year, they're not going away very soon.
Excuse me if I repeat myself, but in case you didn't get the memo, change happens. Sometimes change is wet and cold. Learn to live with it. The wet and cold stuff of January is good for the apple trees and other flora that grace this part of the country. Put on your mittens, fergoshsakes.
As much as you might object, it might get hotter than 72 F. in the summer, then you can complain that it's too hot. And as much as you hate the cold, the temperature might drop below 32 in the winter. Horrors! In our command-and-control culture, you can push all the buttons you want, and it doesn't change the fact of the ups and downs.
I say life is a garden, so dig it.
It's the same with human interaction. I respectfully disagree with the unwritten rule that when someone asks "How are you?" the appropriate response is the upbeat "Great!" or even "Fine, thank you." If they take the trouble to ask, I think you owe them an honest answer, even if it's "I feel like hell but I think I'll live."
I realize these are mixed messages. On the one hand, everyone should enjoy winter - as I do - and get all gung-ho about wearing wool, shoveling snow, and turning corners in a controlled slide. On the other hand, everyone should act as grumpy as they feel - like I do - and stop feigning a constant but perfunctory state of happiness.
In other words, enjoy the down side. We're not in any old recession, we're in a Great Recession. I'm not just in a bad mood, I'm mired in an acute state of existential malaise. But at least be present for the event.
Excuse me while I leave my cubicle to take a walk in an outdoor oval to breathe unrecirculated air.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Ink-Stained Wretch
Why do all my shirts have dark blue or black blotter-like stains on the cuffs below the elbow? Why do two of my favorite pairs of pants have small but impossible-to-ignore and hard-to-remove Rorschach tests on the seat? Should I start wearing plastic sleeve coverings like the bookkeeper or telegraph clerk in the old movies? Its an occupational hazard.
I've been scribbling since I can remember. Some of my early work was drawing on scrap paper my dad would bring home from the office; the writing of actual words and sentences probably came later, but the medium is the message, and the visual line, not the play, is the thing. Paper, pencil, pen, eye, hand, analog marks on a two-dimensional surface.
Early on, uniforms of sports teams and military units - real or imaginary - were a favorite subject. The typography of team names, logos, and players' numbers was fun too. Serif or sans serif, block or rounded, printed or cursive. Later came lists and maps of realigned baseball or football leagues with divisions reflecting geographical balance, maps of dreamed-up cities with street grids and government buildings, floor plans of unlikely houses. I spent a lot of time in my room and went through a lot of paper in the 1950s before anyone thought about saving trees.
The technology of the game changed in junior high school when I developed a personal relationship with the typewriter. I still wrote longhand of course; make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold. Mr. Fiocchi had a roomful of manual Royals in typing class, and I had access to a little blue Olivetti portable at home. Neural pathways connecting with the keyboard, smudges on the fingers from changing the ribbon, followed by crisp impressions on the paper. The round eraser with a little brush attached.
In high school we had a couple of IBM Selectrics in the journalism room, with the detachable golf-ball you could change to get a different typeface (we didn't call it a 'font') and a half-backspace key to justify lines. That was when I started to compose at the keyboard instead of doing a draft with a pen and then transcribing. But then, as now, it's all about revising, deleting, inserting, and transposing in a quest for the perfect lead, active verbs, and an editable inverted pyramid.
It's not always easy finding gainful employment when words on a page are your bricks and mortar, so I have found it expedient at times to do something else for a living. Then I would come home with dirt or dough under my fingernails instead of ink on my fingers. At times I had a hard time staying with a job in publishing, like the summer internship that convinced me I really didn't want to work at a newspaper, but that's another story.
Then there was the time I wanted to set type in the composing room instead of writing articles as a beat reporter, only to quit the night shift for a nine-to-five gig at the phone company doing business letters on an early A.B. Dick word-processing machine, circa 1978. Once you typed it in, the plastic magnetic cards stored the data electronically and printed out on command, very cutting edge.
When I decided to go back to college and get a degree in education, NOT journalism, the employment agency put me behind an IBM Selectric where I knocked out engineering syllabi, vitae, tests, and grant applications. When I changed schools and applied for financial aid, the administrators took one look at my record and put me to work on the faculty-staff newspaper. I thought I was in heaven, with my own office in the old stone theology building next to Asia House and facing Tappan Square, but as usual I didn't take full advantage of the opportunity. Was it the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time? I don't know, but I chose to go elsewhere and do other things.
Doing other things, of course, led me back behind a typewriter. I couldn't get away. After brief forays teaching kids, planting trees, selling trees, and landscaping trees - my karma after all that paper - I entered the digital age at a keyboard attached to a Mac, then a PC, then a Mac again.
It's only right to ponder, every once in a while, the possibility of another line of work, especially now that print is on its way out as the dominant publishing form. Yet half the people I know are connected in some way to printed pages and their digital offspring. In the meantime, anybody know a good stain remover? Out damn spot!
I've been scribbling since I can remember. Some of my early work was drawing on scrap paper my dad would bring home from the office; the writing of actual words and sentences probably came later, but the medium is the message, and the visual line, not the play, is the thing. Paper, pencil, pen, eye, hand, analog marks on a two-dimensional surface.
Early on, uniforms of sports teams and military units - real or imaginary - were a favorite subject. The typography of team names, logos, and players' numbers was fun too. Serif or sans serif, block or rounded, printed or cursive. Later came lists and maps of realigned baseball or football leagues with divisions reflecting geographical balance, maps of dreamed-up cities with street grids and government buildings, floor plans of unlikely houses. I spent a lot of time in my room and went through a lot of paper in the 1950s before anyone thought about saving trees.
The technology of the game changed in junior high school when I developed a personal relationship with the typewriter. I still wrote longhand of course; make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold. Mr. Fiocchi had a roomful of manual Royals in typing class, and I had access to a little blue Olivetti portable at home. Neural pathways connecting with the keyboard, smudges on the fingers from changing the ribbon, followed by crisp impressions on the paper. The round eraser with a little brush attached.
In high school we had a couple of IBM Selectrics in the journalism room, with the detachable golf-ball you could change to get a different typeface (we didn't call it a 'font') and a half-backspace key to justify lines. That was when I started to compose at the keyboard instead of doing a draft with a pen and then transcribing. But then, as now, it's all about revising, deleting, inserting, and transposing in a quest for the perfect lead, active verbs, and an editable inverted pyramid.
It's not always easy finding gainful employment when words on a page are your bricks and mortar, so I have found it expedient at times to do something else for a living. Then I would come home with dirt or dough under my fingernails instead of ink on my fingers. At times I had a hard time staying with a job in publishing, like the summer internship that convinced me I really didn't want to work at a newspaper, but that's another story.
Then there was the time I wanted to set type in the composing room instead of writing articles as a beat reporter, only to quit the night shift for a nine-to-five gig at the phone company doing business letters on an early A.B. Dick word-processing machine, circa 1978. Once you typed it in, the plastic magnetic cards stored the data electronically and printed out on command, very cutting edge.
When I decided to go back to college and get a degree in education, NOT journalism, the employment agency put me behind an IBM Selectric where I knocked out engineering syllabi, vitae, tests, and grant applications. When I changed schools and applied for financial aid, the administrators took one look at my record and put me to work on the faculty-staff newspaper. I thought I was in heaven, with my own office in the old stone theology building next to Asia House and facing Tappan Square, but as usual I didn't take full advantage of the opportunity. Was it the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time? I don't know, but I chose to go elsewhere and do other things.
Doing other things, of course, led me back behind a typewriter. I couldn't get away. After brief forays teaching kids, planting trees, selling trees, and landscaping trees - my karma after all that paper - I entered the digital age at a keyboard attached to a Mac, then a PC, then a Mac again.
It's only right to ponder, every once in a while, the possibility of another line of work, especially now that print is on its way out as the dominant publishing form. Yet half the people I know are connected in some way to printed pages and their digital offspring. In the meantime, anybody know a good stain remover? Out damn spot!
Monday, January 04, 2010
Champagne and Caveat
Happy New Year? Take a rain check.
Is it a new decade yet? I can never remember whether a decade officially begins or ends on the zero-numbered year? If it starts with a 1, then I guess we're a year away, but I have my own reasons to redraw the line. It's been exactly ten years since I began working at the Hill. As anniversaries go, it might not be much, but it's a record of professional longevity for me.
I interviewed with Michael and Marty for a staff job that went to someone else, but they called me back and offered me a project editor position. I told them I would think about it. After another interview with a small company that offered less money with less job security in worse working conditions, I consulted with my career counselor, Zelda Golly, who strongly recommended that I take the job at the Hill.
I called Marty to accept the offer, and she asked what salary I was looking for, so I pull an hourly figure out of the air that was slightly higher than what I made freelancing. She said they would pay me a little more than that, I said okay, and that was that. I reported for work the first Monday of 2000. Ruth showed me to my very own cubicle with my very own computer, phone, Web 10, and Herman Miller chair. Janet handed me my very own copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and I thought, hey, this might work. But would it last?
Flash forward ten years to the waning days of 2009, and my new supervisor in my new department in a newly constituted division of the Reorganized Corporation of the Latter-Day Hill calls a meeting to celebrate my ten-year anniversary. She even brought pie - apple, cherry, and blueberry! Since the date in question happened to fall during the week following Christmas, there were all of four people in the office to eat the delicious pies and help me celebrate. It was fun anyway.
With very little prompting, I described my brilliant career in publishing, starting with the high school newspaper, a summer at the Detroit News, through three undergraduate and one graduate institution, off-the-beaten-path sojourns in the UP, north Georgia, the composing room of a newspaper on the North Shore of Chicago, stints as a busdriver, landscaper, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. Jaymee, Kim, Aaron, Sandra, and Valerie made me feel special, and that's what's important.
My dark secret was that my date of hire was in the last days of the last century, just before the dreaded apocalypse Y2K, but my first actual day at work was in the first days of 2000, after the would-be threat had passed. It was also in the early days of the opening of the new building at Polaris, so my new co-workers were just getting used to the space after moving up north from Eastwind Drive.
My tenth year ended with me and my new co-workers getting used to a new space at the Easton office, with new and transitioning people arriving every day. I'm going to pretend that today's impromptu lunch at Anemame was an unofficial celebration of that unofficial anniversary. The sushi, the atmosphere, and the company were excellent. Alas, no sake, since we were going back to work.
Almost in passing, the other anniversary last week, my thirty-first as a married man, was also just a half-bubble off center. Since Gven Golly and I had gone to Chicago last year to celebrate our thirtieth in style, we thought we would keep it simple this year, just go out to dinner, and maybe do something wild like paint the new baseboards. However, family events intervened, and we found ourselves driving south the morning of December 30 to attend a funeral.
We stopped off in central Tennessee to have dinner and stay overnight with my parents at their retirement place in Vol Halla. By happy accident, my brother and his wife and daughter were also there for dinner, so we got to spend some bonus time with Pete, Cindy, and Liz, swapping stories of home renovations, college applications, and musician offspring. In-depth discussions of plumbing, wiring, framing, and drywall are just as effective as anything else in bringing people together.
Early Thursday morning, Gven and I were on the dark, winding, rainy, foggy road across the ridge and down the mountain toward Atlanta, where we arrived in ample time for my niece's funeral. Such occasions are often a happy-sad opportunity to reconnect with distant family members, and this was no exception. I hadn't seen some members of the Bradley clan for many years, and now their kids, like my kids, are grown up, some with kids of their own, and I'm one of the old folks. Under the circumstances, I can enjoy that distinction. Cry, laugh, talk about old times, catch up on what's new, laugh, cry.
Since Sandra was a veteran of the first Gulf War, burial with military honors was at the National Cemetery outside Canton, Georgia, in an otherwise beautiful spot on top of a pine-covered and increasingly gravestone-covered mountain. After initially missing the turn-off from highway 20, we got there in time to witness the playing of "Taps" and the folding and presentation of the flag to my brother-in-law. Burt understandably looked a little the worse for wear, having buried two of his daughters in the last few months. Family members went back to my sister Jo Jo's house to eat, relax a bit, and begin the next phase of grieving, healing, adjusting. Clearly it is easier to do that among others who are doing the same.
Eventually Gven and I went to our motel, which was way out in Norcross but was very cheap and very adequate. Gven was tired, so she went to sleep early. I was wound up, so I stayed up. The superstition says the way you start the new year shows what kind of year it will be. Apparently 2010 will consist of multiple "The Thin Man" movies watched back to back over a local pale ale and a tangerine; doing a taiji form and sitting for half an hour with the last movie on mute; sleeping soundly with active dreams that I don't remember; eating the complimentary bagel and coffee while watching CNN in the lobby with visitors from India and Tennessee; and meeting Jo Jo for breakfast.
The days have totally run together, but I'm pretty sure it was New Year's Day in most time zones. We drove straight down Peachtree Road past our former neighborhood near the Brookhaven MARTA station, so we happened to pass a few familiar places, like Nuts & Berries, the natural food store we used to frequent when the kids were little. The IHOP in the heart of Buckhead was packed at noon, but we were seated within minutes. The country omelet was excellent, the service was even better, and the additional time with loved ones priceless.
When it was time to go, we head up Roswell Road for the nickel tour of Sandy Springs on our way out of town. Atlanta turns into Marietta, Calhoun, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Lake City, and London, Kentucky, where we stop at Frisch's Big Boy for a Brawny Lad (Sven) and an open-face roast beef sandwich (Gven). We phoned Zelda from Frisch's to check in with her, and she follows up with text messages updating us with the score of the Rose Bowl. Go Bucks. Lexington, Cincinnati, Grove City, and home in record time. I'm pretty sure there's a pretty good bottle of L. Mawby Consort sparkling wine in the fridge just waiting for a special occasion.
Is it a new decade yet? I can never remember whether a decade officially begins or ends on the zero-numbered year? If it starts with a 1, then I guess we're a year away, but I have my own reasons to redraw the line. It's been exactly ten years since I began working at the Hill. As anniversaries go, it might not be much, but it's a record of professional longevity for me.
I interviewed with Michael and Marty for a staff job that went to someone else, but they called me back and offered me a project editor position. I told them I would think about it. After another interview with a small company that offered less money with less job security in worse working conditions, I consulted with my career counselor, Zelda Golly, who strongly recommended that I take the job at the Hill.
I called Marty to accept the offer, and she asked what salary I was looking for, so I pull an hourly figure out of the air that was slightly higher than what I made freelancing. She said they would pay me a little more than that, I said okay, and that was that. I reported for work the first Monday of 2000. Ruth showed me to my very own cubicle with my very own computer, phone, Web 10, and Herman Miller chair. Janet handed me my very own copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and I thought, hey, this might work. But would it last?
Flash forward ten years to the waning days of 2009, and my new supervisor in my new department in a newly constituted division of the Reorganized Corporation of the Latter-Day Hill calls a meeting to celebrate my ten-year anniversary. She even brought pie - apple, cherry, and blueberry! Since the date in question happened to fall during the week following Christmas, there were all of four people in the office to eat the delicious pies and help me celebrate. It was fun anyway.
With very little prompting, I described my brilliant career in publishing, starting with the high school newspaper, a summer at the Detroit News, through three undergraduate and one graduate institution, off-the-beaten-path sojourns in the UP, north Georgia, the composing room of a newspaper on the North Shore of Chicago, stints as a busdriver, landscaper, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. Jaymee, Kim, Aaron, Sandra, and Valerie made me feel special, and that's what's important.
My dark secret was that my date of hire was in the last days of the last century, just before the dreaded apocalypse Y2K, but my first actual day at work was in the first days of 2000, after the would-be threat had passed. It was also in the early days of the opening of the new building at Polaris, so my new co-workers were just getting used to the space after moving up north from Eastwind Drive.
My tenth year ended with me and my new co-workers getting used to a new space at the Easton office, with new and transitioning people arriving every day. I'm going to pretend that today's impromptu lunch at Anemame was an unofficial celebration of that unofficial anniversary. The sushi, the atmosphere, and the company were excellent. Alas, no sake, since we were going back to work.
Almost in passing, the other anniversary last week, my thirty-first as a married man, was also just a half-bubble off center. Since Gven Golly and I had gone to Chicago last year to celebrate our thirtieth in style, we thought we would keep it simple this year, just go out to dinner, and maybe do something wild like paint the new baseboards. However, family events intervened, and we found ourselves driving south the morning of December 30 to attend a funeral.
We stopped off in central Tennessee to have dinner and stay overnight with my parents at their retirement place in Vol Halla. By happy accident, my brother and his wife and daughter were also there for dinner, so we got to spend some bonus time with Pete, Cindy, and Liz, swapping stories of home renovations, college applications, and musician offspring. In-depth discussions of plumbing, wiring, framing, and drywall are just as effective as anything else in bringing people together.
Early Thursday morning, Gven and I were on the dark, winding, rainy, foggy road across the ridge and down the mountain toward Atlanta, where we arrived in ample time for my niece's funeral. Such occasions are often a happy-sad opportunity to reconnect with distant family members, and this was no exception. I hadn't seen some members of the Bradley clan for many years, and now their kids, like my kids, are grown up, some with kids of their own, and I'm one of the old folks. Under the circumstances, I can enjoy that distinction. Cry, laugh, talk about old times, catch up on what's new, laugh, cry.
Since Sandra was a veteran of the first Gulf War, burial with military honors was at the National Cemetery outside Canton, Georgia, in an otherwise beautiful spot on top of a pine-covered and increasingly gravestone-covered mountain. After initially missing the turn-off from highway 20, we got there in time to witness the playing of "Taps" and the folding and presentation of the flag to my brother-in-law. Burt understandably looked a little the worse for wear, having buried two of his daughters in the last few months. Family members went back to my sister Jo Jo's house to eat, relax a bit, and begin the next phase of grieving, healing, adjusting. Clearly it is easier to do that among others who are doing the same.
Eventually Gven and I went to our motel, which was way out in Norcross but was very cheap and very adequate. Gven was tired, so she went to sleep early. I was wound up, so I stayed up. The superstition says the way you start the new year shows what kind of year it will be. Apparently 2010 will consist of multiple "The Thin Man" movies watched back to back over a local pale ale and a tangerine; doing a taiji form and sitting for half an hour with the last movie on mute; sleeping soundly with active dreams that I don't remember; eating the complimentary bagel and coffee while watching CNN in the lobby with visitors from India and Tennessee; and meeting Jo Jo for breakfast.
The days have totally run together, but I'm pretty sure it was New Year's Day in most time zones. We drove straight down Peachtree Road past our former neighborhood near the Brookhaven MARTA station, so we happened to pass a few familiar places, like Nuts & Berries, the natural food store we used to frequent when the kids were little. The IHOP in the heart of Buckhead was packed at noon, but we were seated within minutes. The country omelet was excellent, the service was even better, and the additional time with loved ones priceless.
When it was time to go, we head up Roswell Road for the nickel tour of Sandy Springs on our way out of town. Atlanta turns into Marietta, Calhoun, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Lake City, and London, Kentucky, where we stop at Frisch's Big Boy for a Brawny Lad (Sven) and an open-face roast beef sandwich (Gven). We phoned Zelda from Frisch's to check in with her, and she follows up with text messages updating us with the score of the Rose Bowl. Go Bucks. Lexington, Cincinnati, Grove City, and home in record time. I'm pretty sure there's a pretty good bottle of L. Mawby Consort sparkling wine in the fridge just waiting for a special occasion.
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