Friends without Facebook

As it would work out, I sent a letter to my friend Norm – he, the ultimate arbiter of words – and how does he respond?

By email.

At least he has the sensibility to put Friends without Facebook in his subject line.  I don’t perceive Norm as much of a Facebook or social media guy.  All his working life he was a journalist or a behind-the-scenes journalist, so you’d think e-things would be anathema to him.

Norm’s name probably doesn’t ring a bell for you.  But his work influences what you read in print and online every day.  He was, for a long, long time, the man behind the Associated Press Stylebook.  The Stylebook is the bible of the sport for newspapers, magazines, and virtually any other entity that puts words in front of you in any form.  If or how a word entered official use by journalists, bloggers and writers – Quran vs Koran (“Quran: The preferred spelling for the Muslim holy book”), e-commerce, nano, JPEG, etc. – that was Norm’s decision.

And he was my editor when I wrote my national housing columns for the Associated Press.  He gave me not only a chance, but he let me follow stories on my own.  He rarely, if ever, interfered let alone second guessed me.  He had confidence and trusted me and that meant everything to my writing career and style.

I am glad to call Norm my friend.

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December 9, 2011

Norm: My New Year resolution to stay in touch with you has come a few days early but I suppose the new Post Office dictum to take first class snail-mail to new levels of slowness means this could still arrive after January 1.  Hopefully not.

Actually, there’s not a hell of a lot new down here in North Carolina besides our even farther right than usual right-wing politics. But it is in the 50s here today so at least the weather validates my move.  Nearing six years as a Southerner, so the next time I visit NYC (which is overdue) let me know if I’ve acquired any of the local intonation.

I think you’re onto something with the retirement thing.  The idea of non-work is beginning to dawn on me and I’m thinking of pulling the plug on work in the next year.  Age 63, or at least the 40-some years before it, seem about the right number of years in the salt mines.  I don’t know how you’ve kept yourself busy but I wouldn’t mind finding out how that works.

My daughter is expecting so any advice you have on the grandpa thing would be more than welcome.  Ellen is in St. Paul, MN and likes it very much, although the single digit temps they’ve had the last couple of days may temper her enthusiasm.

Not doing a hell of a lot with my free time except walking and growing older.  I keep threatening to write a book but the inspiration continues to escape me.  That’s probably just as well for the reading public.  There are enough bad books out there.

So what are you up to?  Still freelancing?  I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing.  And Jeanette?  I don’t keep up with the AP much these days.  I see their ‘contact us’ web page still has e-mail with a hyphen even though they issued some decree earlier this year that email would henceforth be one word.  That’s why they still need you in the shop to at least run the Stylebook.  My son Reid still has your signed copy.

Still living alone although I have a steady girlfriend who has quickly moved up to significant-other status.  There is still the very real threat that we could visit New York and you’d have a chance to meet her and give her the third degree: “Felicia, why are you with this guy…?”

Hopefully, you’ll find out sooner than later.  Really, let me know how and what you’re doing.  I don’t need to know the why.  I hope things are well…

The ice has broken…

The toughest part of writing most days is to simply get started.  The first word, the first sentence, the first paragraph.

It’s one thing to write to a faceless crowd.  When I wrote my weekly national housing column for the Associated Press, it never once crossed my mind that tens of millions of people might scan my tepid columns if they were hard up for something to read. That didn’t fluster me at all.

But it is an entirely different story altogether when I write that very first letter to someone.  It is doubly hard to expose yourself, so to speak, for the first time.  You open yourself and your writing style to their perception.  They see you in an entirely different light than they have previously seen you.  So it is with my friend in Des Moines, Bob.

Lucky for me (and maybe for Bob), he’s been on the receiving end of several letters as of late.  The ice has broken, and whatever jitters I had before that first letter to him have subsided.  Who knows what his perception might be, but that ice floe is already under the bridge.

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March 11, 2011

Bob: I hope you don’t see the steady stream of $1 bills as any sort of annuity program because it’s not.  The greenbacks are just another reminder to make hay while the sun shines.

I don’t particularly care to hear about your jaunts to and fro around the country.  It makes those of us anchored in our seats feel not quite as appreciative of your travels as you would like us to be.  I am, however, looking to the “Reunion Tour” of DDD&B.  It would be a travesty if there were no golf clubs involved.  That is my only line in the sand.  Hopefully by that time I will be able to keep pace with you “long knockers” (no pun intended).  The assumption here is that Jane will be the tour (director) de force.  If she’s not, she should be.  In her prior life, or the next one, that sort of detailed organization fit(s) her to a T.

I am inching back toward full participation in life.  It’s taken me significantly longer, frankly, that I ever thought it would.  That means I am either a slow healer or incapable of understanding the complexities of the situation.  Probably a mixture of both.  Maybe that’s the sentence handed down to those of us who are aging beyond our time.  Most days it’s been a matter of one step forward, one-half step back.  I’ve yet (knock on wood) to really experience any pain, a bit of discomfort here and there, but that’s written off to the recuperative process.  At least I hope it is.  The only thing that bugs me is that my last half-dozen years of faithfully working out and staying in a semblance of condition have all evaporated.  It is all gone.  The only thing that remains is my appetite, which remains at pre-workout levels.  That’s not a good thing.

When the bike becomes on-limits for riding is up in the air.  I go back to the doc in about a week’s time for the next check up and I hope he gives me the all-go sign for full activity.  The Harley could, however, rattle my cage significantly and my guess is I’ll know how that goes after just a few miles in the saddle.  My “Iron Butt” days might be a thing of the past.

I’ve enclosed the attached cartoon as more evidence that you can take the boy out of Iowa but you cannot take Iowa out of the funny pages.  Iowa is always getting lampooned in a good-natured way but at least such humor is devised rather than being reality based as it is here in the Carolinas.  The Observer this week reported we are 46^th in spending on public education, which is fitting given that we have moronic legislators who want our uneducated kids to pack heat on college campuses.  That’s an appealing recipe for disaster in a crowded campus bar on a Friday or Saturday night.  You guys have it easy up there by comparison.

I’m still thinking about Des Moines the first full weekend in May.  Steve Allen is getting re-hitched and I’ve got stuff to cart out of Kathy’s house before she gives it the heave-ho.  I hope there is enough time to see everyone and do everything.  At the last we can meet at Grounds on Ingersoll.  They made the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had: Luna Tango.

So much for an all inclusive update.  It shows you how little is really going on in my little corner of the world.  Keep the text messages coming, and I’ll hopefully keep the $1 bills flowing.

A grammarian’s grammarian…

A brash Carolina Wren feeds at the trough just outside the kitchen window. Woe to other birds that dare to venture onto this feisty little bird's turf.

Once in a blue moon I get an itch to get back in touch with long-lost friends.  Among them is my friend Norm.

He is a great man.  He was my editor at the Associated Press and has a storied journalistic past, notably, he was the long-time shepherd of the AP Stylebook.  The stylebook, which is the arbiter of dangling participles and split infinitives (whatever those are) and everything in between that involves words, is the bible of the sport for all writers all over the world.

Who decided the word Internet should be capitalized?  Norm.  Who decreed the term e-mail should have a hyphen?  Norm.  Who introduced us to Quran and not Koran?  Norm.  Look up the definition of dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker and this is who you will find: Norm.

Norm can go toe-to-toe with anyone, anywhere on the elements of style.  He is a grammarian’s grammarian.  When I sent him my national housing columns, he could have (and perhaps should have) taken a meat cleaver to each and every one, but he didn’t.  He was civil and supportive.  And a good friend.

But as has happened with so many folks in my past, I utterly dropped the communication ball with him.  So, hoping to atone for missteps of the past, I sent him a letter.  And in true Norm fashion, he has already responded.

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December 21, 2010

Norm: I’ve often thought about sending you a regular letter but I was always afraid to dangle too many participles or other writing nasty’s that you’d pick up on in a heartbeat.  That’s the problem with associating oneself with someone of your caliber.   I worried that you’d send them back all marked up.

I’m still down here in Charlotte, although my eye is opening a bit wider to retirement.  In that regard, you need to bring me up to speed on what you and Jeanette are up to and how things are going.  Of all things, they’ve given me a chunk of responsibility over correspondence that floods into the mortgage side of the business.  They put me in charge of revamping what passes for a ‘style guide’ although that is like putting a 6^th grade graduate in charge of a nuclear facility.  You won’t believe this, but my first recommendation was to make the strong suggestion to bag our own style guide and buy an institutional subscription to your handiwork at AP.  

Incredibly, they never warmed to my theory of media relations which is to be relatively truthful and candid and plainspoken.  That didn’t work out so well.  They gave me a pink slip back in July after which they allowed (sic: me) to stay tethered to my cube to look for other jobs inside or outside the bank until the end of September.  One of those was to become the senior housing columnist for the Charlotte Observer (I think my first column is still online, tepid as the subject is) and I was primed for a once-per-month piece.  But I’m scaling back on it to focus on the task at hand.  The Observer did set a new threshold for freelance pay: $25 for 750 words.  Their Saturday home section is riddled with writers just like me.  I wish I was still penning for the AP since that was the most fun I’ve ever had.

This is a tough spot for the AP.  Their business writer bolted a few months ago for a PR firm in D.C.  She’s not been replaced, and honestly, to my knowledge, AP has two or three people in a rather large office just south of what passes for a downtown.  It’s a real skeleton staff.  Same at the Observer.  If it wasn’t for pick up from the Raleigh News & Observer, the local paper here would literally be a single sheet 8.5”x11”.  I don’t hear much about AP up in NYC these days but they can’t be faring as well as they could.  We’ll just rely on Fox News for our balanced coverage.

But on the whole things are going along okay.  The two kids are on their own, physically and fiscally, and that is a good thing as you know.  Hope you’re getting down to Maryland (isn’t that where your son is?) on a frequent basis.  If you don’t watch out, I may follow through on the veiled threat to visit NYC.  They say the trip up from Charlotte via train isn’t too onerous, so once your weather – not ours – clears, I may slip up north for a quick visit.  Hope your holidays are good.

One dollar words…

If I don't grab the chance to write Mary and henry now, the chance will slip by.

When I was a U.S. housing columnist for the Associated Press, one of the guiding tenets was to keep the story as simple as possible for the reader.  You don’t need to be a journalist to grasp that concept.  No one dollar words  when a 25 cent word will do.

The same with letters.  Here are two one pagers written early today.  Both share some of the same material but the telling took a slightly different path in each one.

The first is the usual weekly note to my mother.  In her unfortunate state, it’s fine to update the same topics from week to week.   The sentences tend to be short and uncomplicated.  So are the paragraphs.  Sure, I want to be informational but also to let her know she’s still important to me.  If the page occupies a few moments of her time then we’ve both won.

The second letter is to my dear aunt Mary and uncle Henry (aka Hank).  They live in Portland, OR and face their own health and life challenges.  He’s a former minister (and my mother’s brother) and Mary is a proverbial live wire.  I’ve missed them over the years and this past summer was a chance to reconnect with them and their two sons, Tom and Tim.  Henry asks about his sister at every opportunity.  This letter is another such opportunity.  I can be open and candid with these two.   They are part of the family equation these past few months.  If I don’t tell as much of the  story as I can in what is essentially a one-off letter, it will never get done.

——————–

September 10, 2010

Mom: Never in another million years did I ever think to see you sitting on the back of a Harley, but now I’ve seen it all.  Country House was nice enough to send along photos of the bunch of you perched on the Hog as it tooled around the neighborhood on a pretty day.  That really looked fun.  Hopefully his pipes were loud enough to shake things up a bit.  It’s fun that they have lots of activities for you guys.  If and when I ever get my bike out there we’ll take a ride for real.

I hear through your other son that they’ve dialed back some of your medications.  That’s good.  I’m taking one aspirin a day plus a vitamin, and that’s about all I want to take these days.

Just heard from Ellen this morning and she’s giving a thumbs up to her first week of teaching second graders in St. Paul.  The full debriefing should come sometime this weekend.  She’s got mostly immigrant children so their language skills are all over the map, literally.  She is supposed to send photos of her new classroom and when she does that I’ll include one in the weekly letter.

As for Reid, he’s doing okay, too.  He’s liking his new studio apartment but the one down side is he has to haul out his laundry to the local laundry place.  There are worse things however.  He’s really working hard at his job and liking it quite a bit.  He rides his bike around Chicago quite often and it would be a cheap way to see the city, plus he gets some exercise.  I’d like to see him join a gym but am not sure what his monthly budget allows.

Last weekend was not a real big weekend for me.  Rode my Harley a few hundred miles up toward Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  A nice ride through the countryside.  Stopped at the local Harley shop for a few minutes, then on back home.  Spent Sunday re-staining and waterproofing my little front porch but it looks a lot better now.  You wouldn’t believe how many townhomes are for sale in my little development.  By my count the total is 12.  Times are tough for lots of people and the payments are just a little more than lots of folks can muster month in and month out.  My guess is that Grand Island’s economy isn’t nearly as bad as it is in these parts.  Lots of people looking for meaningful work.

Spent part of Labor Day morning at my church helping to paint the rooms on the second floor of our big secondary building.  It’s being converted to a temporary shelter for homeless women.  It had been vacant for quite some time and needed a good sprucing up.  It’s a good use for the space and the congregation is fully behind the project.  It will house around 50 women in a dorm-type of situation.  Well you be good, and don’t ride into the sunset on that guys Harley.  Not a bad idea, though.

——————-

September 10, 2010

Mary and Henry: This note is long, long overdue, and after this summer, it’s high time I brought you up to speed on most things.

Hank, your sister seems to be doing better these days.  She had a rough patch last month, and Ralph took her to another unit in Hastings where she had a thorough evaluation which was probably long overdue, too.  The end result is that the doctors throttled back the hodge-podge of medications she’d been taking.  The disparity of drugs seemed to throw her for a loop.  She’d been shifted from enough places that with every move came another tweak to her medications.  Now it appears that it’s been ironed out (knock on wood).  She’s back in Grand Island now and appears to do pretty well.  I don’t get to talk to her all that often but when I do she sounds chipper and alert.  She’s somewhat restless though, yet she doesn’t talk about Omaha and the other events.  On the whole I’m glad she’s there because Ralph has seen her just about every day.

I may get out there in October.  We’ve got some estate things to do along with a fair amount of packing at the house.  There have been a lot of people troop through it but there’s not been a single offer.  It’s a reflection of the local economy.  People just aren’t in the market for a home, and if they are, they know they are in the catbird seat in a buyer’s market.

I’ve been in touch with Tom now and again.  He’s a good guy and he keeps me posted on you guys.  He follows my blog relatively religiously (not many people do) and it keeps him up to speed on the latest news.  I can’t tell you how much it meant to have he and Tim shepherd the two of you to Omaha during those trying days.

Tom may have told you I’m back in the job market.  My stake is firmly in the ground in Charlotte so this is where I’ll cast my lot.  Since I’ve come back to the Presbyterian church (I edit the church newsletter and will send the next installment to you.  You can see past issues online at Caldwellpresby.org), my pastor has been beyond supportive.  I’ll admit that my feeble power of prayer has not been extended to the job hunt since it’s my belief that God has more important things on his plate (i.e. showing the divine light to the bizarre Koran-burning, publicity-seeking whack job in Florida) than something as mundane as employment.  Honestly, I’ll be content to ride things out with any sort of work that can be shut off at 5:00 without taking any of it home with me.  I’m fine with that.

Well, it’s back to the job hunt.  I suppose you two will hear from me with a little more frequency now that mom has landed in what looks to be a longer term solution for her.  Don’t think for a minute that you guys haven’t landed in the right spot.  It was the right decision when you made it and it will continue to be so.