QUOTABLE
Words are my only evidence that I have a shadow in this world. Only with a commitment to notebook and pen, early mornings in cold leather-backed chairs or empty dining room tables - and opening my senses - am I able to coax them out.
Hey, here’s a post I made today to Career College Central. This is the industry magazine I edit that focuses on the career college sector of higher education. There is some information here on my journalism background and the fate of print journalism. I originally wrote it for this blog, but it was a bit too rambling even for these pages. I cleaned it up and it actually made some sense.
My first real writing gig was as a reporter for a driveway-weekly newspaper. You know the kind. The kind that nobody picks up to read, that bake in the sun until they are stacked like kindling and threatening to catch flame. No one read the newspaper I worked for so no one knew the name of it or who to call to hold delivery if they took a trip with the kids to Disney World. In the summer, every other driveway in the suburban delivery zone would pile up with them because no one was there to feel the shame from being too lazy to toss them. The glory in writing for that paper wasn’t in the byline and certainly not in the paycheck. What should have sweetened the deal was that I had my own office, even if it was a storage closet with no view onto the quaint rivertown streets. (more…)
The Urban Times cover story about City Manager Wayne Cauthen was mentioned on a few local blogs. John Landsberg’s Bottom Line Communications featured the magazine in a post last week, a brief reference that describes Cauthen’s difficult relationship with the sitting mayor. Another post on Tony’s Kansas City was an eye opener, to say the least. Aside from those, I found a few comments on Yael Abouhalkah’s blog on The Star’s site, including a link I provided last week (see Nice Comment). If you find anything I’ve missed, feel free to drop me a line.
Good writing lately has come by keeping my head down and not letting up. I’ve started with weak, constricted sentences that are a pain to see on paper or re-read, but I leave them behind at the opening and keep going down the page until I forget they are there. My eyes look over them. My attention turns to the natural flow of what’s trying to works its way out of my mind until a sentence deep into what I was writing starts to sound as though it’s the beginning. (more…)
After writing the February cover story for Urban Times about Kansas City Manager Wayne Cauthen, I expected to see some backlash from local political pundits, either in print, in blogs or perhaps hear something inadvertently on talk radio. Mr. Cauthern apparently is quite the polarzing figure I learned in researching his story. Of course, all public officials are subject to criticism and I knew the long road he’d gone down with the mayor in seeing his contract renewed, but some of the comments I read were still rather vicious. Nothing I read was comparable to the man I interviewed and wrote about. (more…)
TITLE: The Electric Joe Satriani: An Anthology
AUTHOR:
TITLE: Horse's Neck
AUTHOR: Pete Townshend
TITLE: Siddhartha
AUTHOR: Hermann Hesse
TITLE: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 19441990
AUTHOR: Charles Bukowski
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