Gentle Readers

I love that salutation and often used it on emails when I was doing something delicate, such as sending a controversial speech around to subject matter experts -- you know, the technical ISTJ engineers -- for comment.

Now, I use it to address the wonderful folks who have visited "Retirement and Relocation."  I haven't been writing for seven years (just over one), but still I need a sabbatical. My creative juices, such as they are, are all flowing into getting ready to teach next month. I really want to do a good job -- having written speeches I know how easily an audience can get bored, even if a grade depends on feigning attention.

So, for now, I am signing off.  But, if I have a great idea for one of these essays, I shall, like Gen. MacArthur, return. And, it may be that teaching will provide topics and ideas -- my own version of Up the Down Staircase. I will surely gather stories in the classroom, just as I plan to tell them.

Thank you, gentle readers, for joining me here in this time and space.

Life is good.


I am fortunate.


I am thankful.


Extremely so.

Now to do more to make it so for others.

Five Drafts, Or How I Learned to Write

I couldn’t wait for 6^th grade. I was in 4^th grade with the stern Mrs. Copper. My brother, lucky guy, had Miss Johnson for 6^th grade. She let her students write short stories.

I was ready. I had proof:  pages of loopy handwritten loopy stories.

Finally, I reached Miss Johnson’s class. No more stories. Decades before Virginia’s Standards of Learning, Miss Johnson dropped story writing. Had they – the administration – gotten to her? I’ll never know.

I am still disappointed.

Lexington, Va., had great teachers. I found still more in Fullerton, Calif. Yet, in 8^th grade I never learned how to diagram a sentence.  Mr. Hindman would put the chalk down mid-diagram and open a book of short stories. He’d read a suspenseful one out loud and stop just at the climax. Our assignment:  finish the story. I doubt my endings to “The Most Dangerous Game” and “The Lady or the Tiger” approached the originals, but I was having fun with writing and with school.

Troy High School offered a trifecta of teachers to instruct and inspire. Mr. Johnson, with his required daily essay, developed my writing muscle. An essay a day, he reasoned, would keep the Subject A at bay. It was the feared exam the University of California required all freshmen to take to demonstrate their command of the English language.

I passed.

Miss Long taught discipline in writing and the absolute importance of reviewing, rewriting, and revising some more. She instilled the notion that five drafts are a minimum.

Aren’t they?

Mr. Beaver – one of the best – instilled joy in the process and product. He taught history but what I remember is his assignment to write an essay about anything. Mine included observations of women shopping in LA’s garment district. I don’t recall the grade, but I treasure his comment:  “Funny.”

Yet, even with great teachers and my Brenda Starr-turn on the high school newspaper, I put aside writing as a career goal when I got to college. Ms. Magazine was years away, the job-wanted ads were divided by gender, and, to quote John Irving, I thought I had to be “of use.”

So, I got two degrees – a B.S. in child development and an M.L.S. – and after three uninspiring library job interviews I disabused myself of being of use. If I had to earn a living, and I did; dammit, I wanted to do something I enjoyed, which was working with words.

I entered the full-time work force as an editorial assistant at a place where they figured my undergrad degree would help me understand the jargon. It did. I edited academic articles, learned proofreader’s marks, got my first blue pencil, and realized I loved it all.

My growing skills, experience, and camera, led to a job at Allegheny Airlines, which offered an added benefit:  flying free! Doctor Seuss was right: “Oh, the places you’ll go.” To keep my flying privileges, I wrote newsletters, magazine articles, news releases, and annual report copy.

One day I asked the CEO about the future for a writer at the company.

“I’m giving a speech next week,” he said.

I had just got a booklet called How to Handle Speechwriting Assignments. I took it, along with reference books and a stack of yellow legal pads, and hid in the sales department conference room where I struggled to come up with a speech.

I'm sure it took far more than Miss Long's five drafts to write remarks for the Albany, N.Y. Chamber of Commerce. But I did it -- in longhand on lined yellow paper. Personal computers, much less word processors, were years away.

White Out was a speechwriter’s best friend.

And, that booklet was my lifesaver. (A special shout out to its author, Douglas Starr, now a renowned science writer and published author.)  

Among other communications assignments, I would write for Allegheny Airlines (later USAir) CEO -- Ed Colodny -- for the next 13 years. I would learn his biases and preferences, his likes and dislikes, his turns of phrase. I spent hours listening to him on my car tape player.

As a ghostwriter, I would develop a thick skin. There’s no choice for someone who writes for others. You are climbing into their egos, which brings rewards and risks. Your carefully developed draft might be unceremoniously flung to the floor with the declaration, “This is boring.”

That really happened. The speech was delivered word-for-word two days later.

I’ve written for a baker’s dozens of clients, male and female, young and old, well educated and school-of-hard-knocks products. Each would teach me more about the craft. From FAA Administrator Jane Garvey I learned the paramount importance of understanding the audience and targeting the message. She was masterful at owning the room.

My next client, Marion Blakey, another FAA administrator, had worked in the White House for the Great Communicator himself, President Ronald Reagan. I learned mechanics about type size and spacing, but more importantly, I learned about storytelling to convey a message. I spent more time looking for stories than writing; it’s well worth the effort.

My last client before I retired taught me about perfection, that is, aiming for it. Thirty-eight, or so, drafts could be exasperating (I exaggerate to make a point) but it was necessary. The product got better. The client began to own it. 

I learned about collaboration. I had long been the speechwriter flying solo. With Deborah Hersman, head of the National Transportation Safety Board, it was often a team effort, not always easy on a writer’s ego. We have them, too. Big time. (Full disclosure: Skin doesn’t thicken, it just scabs over.)

From Hersman, with her great speaking skill and passion for safety, I learned perhaps the biggest lesson:  The spoken word can change behavior and even save lives.

Speeches can be “of use.”

I’m fortunate to have had so many great teachers. But, can I be one? I start teaching speechwriting in January. I’ll have my notes, my syllabus and assignments, my worn speechwriting booklet, and more.

Better yet, I’ll have all these great teachers with me as I strive to be “of use” to my students.

Restive

I awake. Bereft.

Strange possessions and people fill the house.

We are losing our home.

My safe place.

It’s just a bad dream.

I arise to a bigger loss.

Of innocence.

Again.

So much effort unrewarded.

So many things unchanged.

How much longer can I presume goodness?

How many more times can I show my soul?

Questions to sleep upon,

And rise again.

Gone Fishin'

I haven't gone fishing, but I may as well have for all the attention I've been giving to writing new entries for Retirement and Relocation.

I've had some thoughts for blog topics, including "Here Be Dragons." Other possible topics include writing about the joys of spending time with adult children (going to weddings with my older daughter and road trips and baseball games with younger daughter or about the sheer joy of reconnecting with a cherished sibling (my sister visited last week).

But, we're in the midst of an intense election season in North Carolina.

Duty calls.

For Halloween, I may go as a "flaming liberal." I tried out the costume last week at the Charlotte rally where Hillary Clinton came to stump for Sen. Kay Hagan's re-election. (I live-Tweeted -- my new career?) I know, I need more buttons and more blue to complete the look, but I've gotten a start, especially with the Catawba County Dem Women t-shirt.

So, off to work the polls, where here in this conservative county if you offer a Republican information about Democrat candidates the reaction can make you feel as if you just said, "Would you like a vial of Ebola virus?"

Back to fishing.  For votes. For good candidates and fair-minded judges.

Have Glove Will Travel

It’s hard to play catch with a tree. So, my practice is unidirectional. I pick out a spot on our old elm and aim for it. Now, if I had a partner like my softball-playing daughter, she could lean, jump, or stretch to catch my not-quite-on-target throws. 

The tree stands tall in apparent disdain of my amateur attempts. The ball returns toward me about once for every three, okay, four, throws. Mostly, the trees spins the ball off at cockeyed angles, or, worse yet, deep into the bushes.

Today, I am the retriever in the family. Our dog, who in her prime was better at ball than I ever was, watches me with Chessie bemusement.

This weekend will be a ball, with a game, a reunion with dear friends, and a wedding. Before the couple exchanges their vows, they are planning a softball game. One team will be the folks who would sit on the left side, if the wedding were to be in a church, with the groom’s men and women on the other team.

Piper and the ball-eating bush

I’m in training. Well, as much as a 64-year-old, who just discovered there’s little cartilage left in her knees, can train. But, I love the game. I was my daughter’s first coach. That was fun – pitching for contact to seven-year-olds. Another good memory is when my now-husband came with me to an office picnic. He still tells the story of my first at-bat and all the men (likely from the airline’s marketing department) moving toward the infield. Meanwhile, Shirley, the tallest and most outspoken member of the legal department, motions them back toward the outfield and belts out, “She can hit!”

And, I could. My bat connected and my ball sailed over scheduling and pricing department heads.

Sweet.

Yet, there’s more to this weekend’s gathering than softball that has me questioning my abilities. I cannot count how many published authors will be there. Books, articles, essays, and more; genres and mediums that didn’t exist when I was their age. Prestigious outlets and imprints. Heck, I’m bringing my lefty glove and books to autograph.

This brings up a frequent question. Do I have a book in me? I know I can write. After all, I’ve ghosted speeches and op-ed articles (with respectable placements) and written numerous articles (okay, it’s easy to get a placement when you’re FAA Safety Briefing’s managing editor or you’re the one in charge of USAir Magazine). Yet, I did start my writing career with a personality profile in Northern Virginia People and a demanding editor who told me my early draft sounded like I was in love with my subject. I was not. I was in love with writing and the idea of being published.

But, as Kevin Costner’s character called the major leagues in “Bull Durham,” I’ve never been in “the show.” I haven’t written a book, much less published one.

Now that I’m retired and have the time, I wonder if I have a story to tell? A story worth telling.

I don’t know. 

Right now, I know I’m too busy. There are other things I want to try. My top priority is having something worth saying when I stand in front of a couple dozen students next semester in COMM 4101, Speechwriting, at Appalachian State University.

And, as readers of this blog may have noticed, I’m also working furiously to help Democrats get elected in North Carolina on Nov. 4.

Hey, I just got published this morning. The Hickory Daily Record published my letter to the editor about three Democrats running for local offices and why they deserve Hickory’s support.

That is satisfying. It’s almost like connecting and getting on base with a solid hit. I’ll take it. I’m still a player, even if my knees are a little creaky.

Let's Face It

Paul Simon famously wrote and sang there are “Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover.”

Slip out the back, Jack. Hop on the bus, Gus. Drop off the key, Lee.

But, about the leaving – how do you communicate it? In this modern era, there are at least fifty ways to tell your lover you’re leaving.

Post it on Instagram, Sam. Send an email, Dale.  Just write a Tweet, Pete.

And, as difficult as it is to break up, I expect these methods – and other impersonal ways like them (think Facebook relationship status update) –  are used to signal an end.

Today, there are so many new ways to communicate, including the ones mentioned above and likely many more my contemporaries and I haven’t even heard of. We boomers come from a simpler time and fewer methods, e.g., telephones, letters, and cards. (Note:  I am still the queen of postcards.)

Oh, and face-to-face conversations. Remember those?

Communication is much on my mind as I do volunteer work for the upcoming election and as I prepare to teach a spring semester class on speechwriting at Appalachian State University.

As for the election, we have a high energy Forward NC campaign coordinator in our county. He’s working hard for the reelection of Sen. Kay Hagan. This campaign worker is so persuasive it’s hard to tell him “No.” But it’s a firm “No” I give him and anyone else when asked to make phone calls for candidates. I dislike talking on the phone with strangers, but I will canvass up and down hills and traverse confusing steps and sidewalks to talk face-to-face with voters.

Unlike on the telephone, with door-knocking you can read the person’s body language and use your own body language and enthusiasm and conversational gambits, such as “I love your garden!” to start a conversation, engage the voter, and, yes, sometimes persuade.

Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) research confirms my anecdotal evidence. According to the Yale UniversityInstitution for Social and Policy Studies, “door-to-door canvassing was the most consistently effective and efficient method of voter mobilization…the success of canvassing could be attributed to the personal, face-to-face delivery of the GOTV messages.”

Personal, face-to-face delivery brings me to speeches and their delivery. 

With all the new media and YouTube videos and more, are speeches going the way of Ma Bell and landline telephones?  

No. 

Oratory is alive and well. There’s still something to be said about “being there” and hearing a person, especially a good speaker at a big forum on an important occasion (fellow Tar Heels, think Rev. Dr. William Barber II and the crowds who gather at Moral Monday gatherings).  

Rev. Dr. William Barber II, Moral Monday in the Mountains, Aug. 2014

Standing alone in front of a room, on a dais, or on some other platform and speaking dates back thousands of years. The eloquent ones endure.  How many years ago did Martin Luther King Jr. tell hundreds of thousands on the Washington Mall that he had a dream?

Well-crafted and well-delivered speeches are still a powerful way to communicate and persuade. I’m reading Lend Me Your Ears, Great Speeches in History, compiled by word maven and former presidential speechwriter William Safire. The collection includes a speech Safire gave at Syracuse University in 1978 decrying the telephone as the subverter of good English. He told the graduates clear thought and logical argumentation requires time, preparation, and not ad-libbing by quickly responding to a ringing telephone.

Nineteen-seventy-eight:  Jimmy Carter was president and the phone company was a monopoly.  Something on your wrist, it told time.

What would Mr. Safire say today?

We cannot know since the Pulitzer Prize winning pundit and observer died in 2009.  

But, here’s what he said in his preface to the 2004 edition of his compendium. “I used to be a writer. My son, a Web site analyst, calls me a ‘content provider.’”

Today, you can be both a writer and a content provider.  Even with all the ways to communicate – content still comes first.

For speechwriters and speakers, Safire’s collection of oratory -- from exhortations to eulogies -- includes encouraging words:

“Human beings will continue to seek leadership or instruction through the speaking voice of another person who presents a position in an organized and persuasive fashion.”

An organized and persuasive fashion. That’s the point of artful speechwriting, which, coupled with great delivery, can move mountains and minds.

Let’s face it: What we need for the spoken word to remain alive and well is a new generation of stewards to care about logic and clarity. That’s one reason I am looking forward to working with young writers next year in COM 4101: Speechwriting.

Going Home

I told our daughters, when explaining the change in destination for our retirement move, “If your father has friends, I’ll be fine.”

We had shifted gears from building a new home in Maryland to buying an old house in North Carolina. Instead of joining long-time friends in Havre de Grace, we were following great neighbors to Hickory.  At one point it seemed as if we were only considering places that started with “H.”  Our older daughter quipped, “How about Havana?”

We didn’t know anyone in Havana, for one. Two, these neighbors were proven. We liked living across the street from them. Why not continue the proximity and its benefits? Good neighbors seemed a great assurance policy for striking out for unfamiliar territory.

In turn, our neighbors had followed friends of their own to North Carolina. Why not populate a Tar Heel street with like-minded Old Dominion transplants?  We could be a modern-day commune -- separate houses, but joint activities.

My husband, a solitary man, likes and enjoys the once and current neighbors as well as their friends, the earlier settlers or “founding family.” In my part of the calculation to head south by southwest, I figured my husband having “fellowship” so convenient could help ease his transition.

So, that’s how I explained it to our puzzled daughters who asked, “What? Hickory? Where? North Carolina?”

As for me, I knew I would need more than neighbors.  Not hordes of people, but as an EFNP (Myers Briggs shorthand) I am an extrovert, and like all those other “Es,” I get energy from other people. At my last job I hated it when my E supervisor was away. I’d tell her, “Find me a battery charger for while you’re gone.”

As an extrovert, I knew I would be the one in our couple who would likely fare better in meeting people and making new friends.  I just didn’t realize just how hard it would be.

I know the advice about joining groups, volunteering, taking classes, and more, but starting over in a new place in your 60s and finding friends is a lot like dating.  Further, there’s no assist from work or your children’s schools and activities. On top of that, our dog is no longer a puppy. You can meet a lot of people when walking an adorable dog in training.

Like dating, you’ve got to put yourself out there. I’ve gone to lunches. Some more successful than others. (Others, wildly successful. New friend, you know who I’m talking about.) I’ve gone to meetings. Again, mixed results. I’ve also gone to gyms (2) and yoga studios (2).

Yet, anything worth doing takes time. Like so many women, I place great value on female friendships. Women are blessed with something in our brains or hormones or both (pick your study)

that helps us seek and value non-romantic relationships and support networks. The anecdotal evidence and research is clear, if you have friends you have less stress, more joy, and live longer and healthier. 

So, I keep at it. I am lucky that there is a cause here that really caught my attention (“Blue” readers will know what I’m talking about.) There are many great women working on getting out the vote.  After months of meetings and miles of canvassing, last week was a breakthrough in my acceptance that I am becoming a Tar Heel.

As I was driving home from visiting my husband in the hospital (he’s home and okay), I realized that I hadn’t told any of my DC-area friends about what was going on. Over the past year, we’ve had some medical ups and downs in our family (dog included). Each time, I reached out to DC-area women friends for support.

This time, I shared the news with new friends. They rallied with support -- texts, calls, and concern -- and freshly baked bread.

While I miss my old friends, and always will, now I have more friends and nearby battery chargers. 

It’s beginning to feel a lot like home.