Category Archives: Personal

Does my little guy’s freak flag no longer fly?

The Before look: Having a laugh with his big sister in the back of my truck a couple of weeks ago.

I’m in suspense waiting to see my grandson’s new look.

During the cut…

I learned from Facebook that he had his first haircut over the weekend, and I haven’t seen him yet.

I’m told his aunt, who is a professional at this, went easy on him, and that he’s sort of just down to, say, early-Beatles length rather than the late-60s look he’s had the last couple of months.

So it’s not like he has a crewcut or a high-and-tight or anything. It’s not like John Candy in “Stripes.”

That’s good. Because I very much like him the way he was.

I get to see him when he spends the night at our house tomorrow night. I’ll just have to wait until then.

Yes, when you get to be a grandfather, you go around thinking about stuff like this. You don’t want people making your grandchildren grow up too fast, because they’re so much fun as they are.

Also, hair length is more of an issue to us Boomers than to other generations…

Sharing a flower with Big Sister. Not that he’s a hippy or anything…

You’re a good man, Jim Hesson. Hang in there…

18 Replies

Jim Hesson was possibly my best friend on senior staff at The State, except for Warren Bolton. He was the paper’s IT director. Actually, we called it “I.S.,” for “information services,” and Jim lived that. He was helpful, patient, competent, and had a great sense of humor.

Jim Hesson

I still remember with embarrassment the time we were all riding up to North Carolina in a van for a senior staff retreat. He and I talked and joked back and forth so constantly that the person sitting between us finally offered to move, so that we would stop talking across her. Which made me feel bad that we’d been so rude. But I always had a good time talking with Jim.

The purpose of that trip, by the way, wasn’t to talk business. It was to go whitewater rafting. Holly Rogers, the life-loving soul who was then our human resources director, had this idea that to work together effectively, people should sometimes have fun together (another year, she dragged us all out to Frankie’s Fun Park). I would grumble and complain and pass critical remarks about these outings, and fret about the work waiting for me, but once there, I would throw myself into it and have as much fun as anybody. Those were different times.

Back to Jim Hesson. Today, Jim posted this on Facebook:

Yesterday morning I was having my quiet time on the train heading in to work. I was praying that God would give me clarity about my job and if it was time to seek another position. After I got in I was called in to a meeting where I was told my position was eliminated , along with a number of others in our IT dept. So God did answer my prayer, just not in the way I expected. God is good. And I know He can be trusted in all things.

I am so sorry, Jim. But I believe your faith is well-placed. You got an answer; it’s just not going to be an easy one to accept. May you soon see clearly the next steps on the path before. That’s the hard part — wondering whether that next opportunity will ever come. The good news is that you’ve got the right attitude about it.

I am deeply impressed by Jim’s honesty in sharing this. I wasn’t like that. Oh, I shared a lot — far, far more than most people who are laid off do. Thousands upon thousands of words, in my last columns and on the blog. On the first day I didn’t have a job to go to, I stood up in front of the Columbia Rotary Club and cracked jokes about it. And I didn’t lie about anything.

But it was superficial, stiff-upper-lip stuff. It was never gut-level. Not that I meant to mislead; I was just so busy figuring out the next step of each day that I didn’t plumb the depths of what I felt. In truth, of course, I wasn’t feeling on a deep level. I wouldn’t fully realize at the time how much I was losing. The grief of losing the job that paid me well to do what I do best is something that has unfolded itself gradually over a period of years. At the time, the bad feelings were offset by relief that I would no longer be the one laying off, and then having to figure out how to do the job going forward, without those good people. I quickly got over the rush of anger that I felt in the moment I got the news. I refused to dwell, even in my own mind, on how it felt to tell my wife and family.

And I certainly didn’t share private communications between me and the Almighty. In any case, they would have seemed rather incoherent and repetitive, not elegant and direct like what Jim shared.

It occurred to me to keep a journal, maybe write a book, about what it was like to have reached the pinnacle of what you wanted to do for a living, and then have it all taken away in an instant, just as you’re stepping into your peak earning years. And about what happens next. It would have relevance, in that year of 2009. (And today as well. How many people out there have never regained what they had? The unemployment figures don’t tell you that.) But I thought, what a bummer that would be — I certainly wouldn’t want to read such a book, much less write one.

Now, if I wanted to go back and write something like that, I’d have trouble assembling the details. I’ve just forgotten so much of it.

In any case, what could I write that would be as powerful as what Jim did?

You’re a good man, Jim Hesson. I know God will bless you going forward…

My favorite store in the universe is closing!

45 Replies

As y’all know, one of my very favorite leisuretime activities is to go to Barnes & Noble, get a cup of coffee, and browse. And sometimes blog — it’s one of my favorite remote locations for that.

I’ve done this in lots of Barnes & Nobles — such as in Memphis; Myrtle Beach; New York; Florence (SC); Charleston; Harrisonburg, Va.; Camp Hill, PA — but my favorite, my essential, my default, has always been the one in Harbison.

I wrote one of my favorite early blog posts, headlined, “The Caffeine Also Rises,” at a Barnes & Noble. An excerpt from that over-stimulated ramble in 2005:

This is blogging. This is the true blogging, el blogando verdadero, con afición, the kind a man wants if he is a man. The kind that Jake and Lady Brett might have done, if they’d had wi-fi hotspots in the Montparnasse.

What brings this on is that I am writing standing up, Hemingway-style, at the counter in a cafe. But there is nothing romantic about this, which the old man would appreciate. Sort of. This isn’t his kind of cafe. It’s not a cafe he could ever have dreamed of. It’s a Starbucks in the middle of a Barnes and Noble (sorry, Rhett, but I’m out of town today, and there’s noHappy Bookseller here). About the one good and true thing that can be said in favor of being in this place at this time is that there is basically no chance of running into Gertrude Steinhere. Or Alice, either.

I’m standing because there are no electrical outlets near the tables, just here at the counter. And trying to sit on one of these high stools and type kills my shoulders. No, it’s not my wound from the Great War, just middle age….

There’s nothing like writing under the influence of your first, or second, coffee of the day. Especially back then, before I had built up resistance.

But the best of all was at the B&N at Harbison. It just had the perfect feel to it. I wrote this and this and this there.

The one at Richland Fashion Mall (or whatever it’s called now) is OK in a pinch, but not the same. Maybe it’s that there’s no video and music department; I don’t know — but I’ve never been inclined to spend much time there.

Anyway, you get the picture. So you can imagine how dismayed I am at this:

By KRISTY EPPLEY RUPON — krupon@thestate.com

COLUMBIA, SC — Barnes and Noble on Harbison Boulevard will close at the end of the year, leaving the Irmo area without a traditional bookstore selling new books.

A manager answering the phone at the store Monday morning said she could not give details to the media. Efforts to reach a spokesperson Monday morning were not successful.

However, employees are telling customers that the store at 278-A Harbison Blvd. will close at the end of the year because its lease is not being renewed….

If I were a guy whose favorite recreation was jogging in the park, and the park got paved over, I couldn’t be more upset.

This is just wrong.

Maybe I should have bought something now and then when I was there browsing. Or maybe I shouldn’t have fallen into the habit of buying my coffee at the actual Starbucks across the parking lot before entering the store.

But surely I’m exaggerating the impact of my own behavior — right?

Gathering to say goodbye to Lee Bandy

8 Replies

Lindsey Graham and Mark Sanford, at reception following Lee Bandy’s funeral.

Above are some of the better-known people who showed up at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia yesterday to pay their respects to the inimitable Lee Bandy.

There were other politicos, such as Sen. John Courson and former Attorney General Henry McMaster. But far more numerous were present and former colleagues of Lee’s from The State.

With the emphasis being on “former.”

Lindsey Graham wondered whether there were more alumni of the paper in the receiving line — which wound all the way around the fellowship hall — than the present total newsroom employment, and I looked around and said yes, almost certainly.

The former certainly outnumbered the present at the lunch that some of us went to at the Thirsty Fellow after the funeral and reception. That group is pictured below. Of those at the table, only three currently work at The State. The rest are at The Post and Courier in Charleston, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and various other places. Some are free-lancing. Some of us, of course, aren’t in the game at the moment.

That night was when we gave Lee a proper newspaper send-off. There were about 50 of us at Megan Sexton and Sammy Fretwell’s house. At one point in the evening, we crowded into a ragged circle in the biggest room in the house to share Bandy stories. The first couple of speakers were fairly choked up. Then Aaron Sheinin of the AJC cheered us up by saying, “What would we all say if he walked in that door right now?” And immediately, we all raised our glasses and shouted, “Bandy!”

So we went around the room, and after each testimonial — some poignant, some humorous, some both — we hoisted our glasses and cried out his name again. Just the way we did during his lifetime, in a tone infused with delight. That was the way everyone greeted him, from presidents to senators to political professionals to his fellow scribes. Everyone was glad to see him.

And everyone was deeply sorry to see him go.

There was in the room a rosy glow of remembrance of what we had all meant to each other once, and a joy at regaining that comradeship, if only for an evening. But none of the rest of us will have a sendoff like Bandy’s, nor will any of us deserve it as much…

My excuse for not blogging more today: I was in a wreck

17 Replies

Actually, that’s my second excuse.

My first is that all the Midlands Reality Check stuff this week put me behind on my day job with ADCO, and I’m hustling to catch up.

And as I said, my second one is that I was in a wreck this afternoon. I was on Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia, heading west, and another car coming from the opposite direction turned left in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, skidded for 20 feet or so, but couldn’t stop. Totally destroyed my headlights on the right side and buckled up the hood. The other car’s front passenger door was dented in.

The main thing is, no one was hurt. Except for a stiffness in my neck afterwards, but that may have been from the tension of spending more than half an hour on the phone with my insurance company.

Anyway, I’ve been distracted…

We’ve lost Lee Bandy, the dean of SC political journalists

9 Replies

The word went out Thursday afternoon that our old and dear friend Lee Bandy was on life support in intensive care at Palmetto Health Baptist. His family was gathering.

Within an hour or two, his other family — the one that had had the privilege of working with him during his long career as South Carolina’s pre-eminent political writer — had started gathering in a message thread on Facebook.

By the time the inevitable word came this afternoon that Lee had passed away, that exchange of memories had turned into a virtual wake among 248 people who treasured his acquaintance. It included current and former alumni of The State, veterans of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, family members, and many others he had touched along the way.

For those of you who didn’t know him, let me try briefly to explain…

Leland Bandy first went to Washington during the Kennedy administration. Early in his career, he did some radio reporting — he had the voice for it — but he was primarily known for his 40 years with The State, most of it as the newspaper’s Washington correspondent.

After Knight Ridder bought The State in the late 80s, Lee officially became part of the KR Washington Bureau, but he never gave up his prestigious desk in the Senate gallery. He was a rare asset for the bureau, and not just because he was one of the only two or three people in the bureau who got tickets to the Gridiron show (he was a regular performer in the shows, as well as a loyal member of his church choir). Lee Bandy had access to people that no one else had. I remember in particular the way editors in the bureau hung on every word he had to share, after he and I had been over to Lee Atwater’s office at the RNC on one of my trips to Washington.

When Atwater was dying, Lee was the only journalist he or his family would have anything to do with. It was a pattern we’d see repeated when Carroll Campbell was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and when when Strom Thurmond died.

Everybody, including the politicos who despised all other journalists, loved and trusted Lee Bandy. Why? For the simplest of reasons. He was a good man. He treated everyone not only with fairness, but with kindness and generosity. It was quite a potent formula. More journalists should try it.

As his editor for a brief portion of his career — 1987-1991 — I have my own Lee Bandy stories to tell. But I was deeply impressed by some of those told in the outpouring of love on Facebook.

Here’s a sampling…

From Aaron Gould Sheinin, formerly of The State, now with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (and here’s something Aaron wrote about Lee for The State):

I’ll go then. During the 2004 presidential campaign John Kerry came for an Ed board meeting. After Brad and Cindi and Mike and Warren finished their wonk nerd questions there was a pause. And Bandy pipes up, “So, John did you get Botox?” Kerry, his face devoid of emotion, says, “No, Lee, I didn’t.”…

Same year. Lee and I are at Crawford Cooks house to meet Bill Richardson, then governor of New Mexico who is thinking of running for president. Just the four of us. Richardson gives his opening spiel. Bandy clears his throat and says “So, I hear you got a bimbo problem.” Richardson, his face impassive, says “No, Lee, I don’t.”

Neither became president….

Oh man. So Bandy is at the Gridiron in 2001. Bush’s first year. Lee Makes his way up to the head table. Bush sees him and says Bandy! Like everyone does. Bush says I want your speaker of the house to be my ambassador to Chile.

bandy says ok. And comes back and tells the editors

He calls David Wilkins the speaker who denies all knowledge. We decide that since the gridiron is supposed to be off the record that Lee needs to call the White House press office

Lee calls and tells them what he’s writing. They get all indignant. No way. Who’s your source?

Bandy: Your boss.

The press aide: Ari Fleishcer?

Bandy: No the president.

Press aide: oh.

Long story: Wilkins turned down the job an later took the canada job.

Angelia Herrin, who represented the Wichita Eagle (which was where I first worked with her, before I knew Lee) in the KR bureau:

We are so sad, reading this and yet, George turned to me and said, can’t you hear just lee bandy laugh? And we both laughed and cried a little. Because my god, Lee Bandy could make you laugh when you were just in the middle of the worst stupid day in Washington. Because really– that’s just the right reaction on the worst stupid day on Capitol Hill.

Jeff Miller, formerly of The State and now with an advocacy group in Washington:

I cut my teeth covering politics during the 1988 GOP presidential primary, the first to come right before Super Tuesday, and Poppy Bush needed to win. I was so far out of my comfort zone that crazy month. In hindsight, I needn’t have worried. I had… Bandy, who knew everything and everybody, to coach me through it. Greatest professional experience of my life. Bless you Lee. A legion of young, impressionable reporters owe you so much.

Megan Sexton, formerly of The State, now working at USC:

My favorite: Bandy interviewing Strom Thurmond Bandy: “Strom, have you tried that Viagra yet?” Strom: “Bandy, I don’t need it.”

Wayne Washington, formerly of The State, now of the AJC:

Lee, who was a reporting giant when I was in elementary school, was the first person to call me and tell me how much he was looking forward to working with me when I was hired by The State. I was speechless. Great sense of humor. Great generosity. Class.

Kay Packett, a sometime commenter on this blog, who explains in her stories how she knew Lee:

I am heartbroken. I met Lee when I was a brand-new press secretary in Washington and I avoided him assiduously because my previous boss — Mont Morton at the SC Department of Education for you old-timers — had told me Lee would have me for lunch. Then he called one day at the end of a very bad day and suggested a Bloody Mary, and I have loved him every minute since. He taught me everything I know about working with a real reporter, and he made me learn it the hard way! But we had a lot of fun along the way. My thoughts are with his family and I am so sad for all is us who loved him….

That truly was Lee’s gift — doing his job well and fairly and keeping his friends at the same time. I remember once when Carroll Campbell had instructed me to yell at Lee over an unflattering column, and I called to tell him I had to yell at him, and he said, “Good. Meet me at Yolanda’s.” So we had a couple of scotches and laughed. I wonder what questions he’s asking Campbell now.

There is a hole in my heart. Thanks, everyone, for sharing your memories.

Doug Pardue, formerly of The State, now with the Charleston Post and Courier:

A true journalist’s journalist, hard-hitting, and a truly nice guy. I remember when one young reporter from The State went to Washington and got in a cab. The driver asked him where he was from and he replied South Carolina. The cabbie then asked him, “Do you know Lee Bandy?”

Valerie Bauerlein Jackson, who used to sit next to Lee in The State‘s newsroom and went on to work for The Wall Street Journal:

I could not guess how many stories Bandy wrote about Carroll Campbell and Strom Thurmond–hundreds, maybe, and many, many of them critical. I think Bandy was the first to question whether Thurmond was still fit to hold office, and he certainly broke the story that Strom was living at Walter Reed. But when the Campbells were ready to let the world know that the governor had early-onset Alzheimer’s, they called Bandy. And when Strom died, the Thurmonds called Bandy….

… he also said, “In many of our newsrooms today, we have too many people living a life of journalism for journalism. There’s nothing else. Well, I would like to suggest there is something else. That there is something more to life than being a journalist. And that is being a human being.”

Bandy was one of the best human beings I’ve ever known.

Michelle Davis, formerly of The State:

He was the only person from The State to ever come visit me in the far-flung Camden bureau when I was 23 years old. He treated me to lunch at The Paddock and actually took me seriously when I said I wanted to go to Washington someday like he did. And then he helped me get there.

Danny Flanders, formerly of The State:

I’ve been reading this all day, and it didn’t hit me until tonight when I first truly encountered Lee. As a new night editor at The State in 1990ish, one of my Friday night duties was helping with weekend copy. (Unless, of course, someone set fire to Rockaways) On my first Friday night on the job, I was told to “keep an eye out” for Lee’s Sunday column when it came in. Oh, God, no. I would be charged (in my early 30s) with editing Bandy, whom I read for years? So when he called me to tell me he’d filed (Remember all of that?) he introduced himself and we chatted for an hour about life, not the business, before he said, “Change anything you like, Danny.” I thought, Was he buttering me up to protect his copy, was he calling from a phone booth at happy hour, or is this guy really that nice? Yikes!. So I made a few nips and tucks, then held my breath as I called him to read it back to him, and he thanked me profusely for, he said, making him “look better”. Whew!…

thanks for the vote of confidence, Lee. Godspeed.

Brigid Schulte, whom I hired to “replace” Lee when he moved from Washington to the Columbia office in the early 90s. She is now with The Washington Post:

Lee Bandy. You can’t say the name without a smile. And perhaps a bit of a chuckle, remembering something he said, or did, hearing his own frequent chuckle after saying something a tad irreverent but always spot on. I had the great, wondrous and intimidating privilege to follow Lee Bandy as the State’s reporter in Washington after his long, illustrious stint when he’d decided it was time to go home. Bandy ferried me around the Capitol, expertly ducking in and out of offices, secret passageways, waving to just about everybody along the way. He was gracious, generous, supportive, hilarious, kind and just great fun to be with. He even snuck me into a Grid Iron rehearsal after we’d had a long, breezy, gossipy lunch that stretched into the late afternoon. We both giggled at the thought of Strom Thurmond referring to me as “that nice little girl from the State Newspaper.” My heart goes out to his family. I wish him not just peace, but dearly hope he’s sitting somewhere with his feet up, celestial newspaper open, a tinkling glass by his side, regaling fellow angels with irreverent, and spot on commentary on the doings in the world below. He was a peach of a man. He’ll, no doubt, make one hell of an angel.

Joseph Scott Stroud, formerly of The State, now political editor with The Tennessean:

Thanks to all for the sustaining thoughts through all this. Lee’s life showed us, and has reminded me this weekend, that you can be a constructive critic and observer of public life and still have a generous heart. Mary, I hope you and the family are blessed with a sense of why Lee is so loved by the rest of us — because of his good, kind heart and buoyant spirit. He won’t be replaced, but we all carry him with us in our hearts

And finally, one more from Valerie Bauerlein:

I love you, Lee Bandy.

She is far from alone in that.

For me, a more fitting Lennon tribute than any out there

29 Replies

Well, as you know, today is John Lennon’s birthday — he would have been 73.

Or maybe you don’t know. As I’ve said in the past, it falls on the same day on which we celebrated Ecuadorean independence, back when I lived there when I was a kid. So it’s easier for me to remember.

It’s not exactly “Ecuadorean Independence Day.” It was the day that the city of Guayaquil managed to free itself from Spanish rule. The rest of the country had to wait a bit.

I lived in Guayaquil for two-and-a-half years — the longest I ever lived anywhere growing up. I attended 5th and 6th grades at Colegio Americano. The city had a major boulevard named Nueve de Octubre, and we celebrated the date with a whole week off from school. By contrast, we only got a day-and-a-half for Christmas. (But then, the school year ended a week or two later, so that was something.) Kids remember things that give them a week off from school.

But I digress. Anyway, I’ve told you all that before.

Today I ran into something on the Web headlined, “It’s Johnny’s Birthday: Nine Lennon Tributes.”

I checked it out, and it contained some usual suspects such as George Harrison’s “All Those Years Ago,” and Paul McCartney’s “Here Today.” And the first thing I thought was, wouldn’t it have been great if they’d been at the height of their songwriting powers at the time, which they weren’t? Then the next thing I thought was, no, I’m glad their best was lavished on the stuff we know and love that wasn’t all about the tragedy of Lennon’s death.

So I thought, what would be a great song to remember John Lennon by? Not the overly celebrated “Imagine” — I’m sorry, but he wasn’t even a Beatle anymore then. And definitely not “Across the Universe,” which was an almost entirely ignored song on the ragged “Let It Be” album at the time. Kids who were born years and even decades after the Beatles broke up think “Across the Universe” is a great Beatles song. They even named that movie for it (starring a kid born eight years after Lennon’s death). Personally, I like the Fiona Apple version better. She made me realize how good it was. Great video, too.

And then I thought of something far better.

The first time I heard the live BBC recording of “All My Loving,” I wasn’t ready for it. I was in a music store (remember those?) in Columbiana Mall, thumbing through discs, and it came on, and I thought, Nice… a live version of “All My Loving.” Which, of course, is a song on which McCartney sang lead.

But then, 1:14 into it on the YouTube clip above, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I heard John harmonizing with Paul on the second “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you…” And it was a shock. I hadn’t expected it. It was like he had risen from the dead to sing along with the tune, right there in the store. It was very clear, but raw and immediate-sounding.

I later realized that he was singing behind Paul on the original recording on that part, but George Martin had recorded it so smoothly that the backup doesn’t POP out the way it does on the more primitive BBC version.

Anyway, it caused me to appreciate the song on a whole new level.

There’s just something about that tune…

Sometime later, we went to see McCartney perform at Williams-Brice Stadium. He started out with “Drive My Car.” Then he did a couple of other songs, and it was nice, but not special. It’s like I was seeing and hearing “Wings” Paul instead of Beatles Paul.

Then, without warning or preference, he launched into “All My Loving,” and a tidal wave of You are really here and that’s an actual Beatle washed over me and the whole audience, or the Boomers there anyway. It was the sort of reaction you might expect on “She Loves You” or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” but this was the one that did it. We were there with our three oldest kids, but suddenly everything felt just like 1964 — only better, because I didn’t get to see the Beatles live in 1964, even on TV (on account of being in Ecuador). There was a magic, for a moment, that I don’t think I’ve ever felt at another live show. Also, some sadness, since there was no John on the harmony.

So it may seem odd, that being a Paul song, but I like it better as a John Lennon tribute than any of those other things…

Gearing up for Reality Check, visiting old haunts

3 Replies

Earlier this week, I found myself in the editorial boardroom of The State, for the first time in, what — two years, I guess.

It was unchanged. And to show that I was unchanged, I shot a couple of pictures — something I used to do obsessively in that room, as long-time readers would know. I explained to those present, who were trying to talk while I was distractingly getting up and moving around the room for a good angle, that if I didn’t do this, Warren Bolton wouldn’t know who I was.

I had brought friends with me — Irene Dumas Tyson and Herbert Ames, co-chairs of the Urban Land Institute’s upcoming Midlands Reality Check, on Oct. 22 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. They were there to meet with Warren, and reporter Roddie Burriss.

That’s the event at which 300 people, from all walks of life in the Midlands, will get together and talk about how to prepare for the growth that’s coming over the next 30 years.

More about that later.

Anyway, I just thought I’d take note of the fact that I had been back to the old homestead, briefly. Below is a picture from earlier days, with one of our guests…

Happy Birthday to Sheriff Leon Lott, the federal income tax, and anyone else born on this particularly auspicious day

8 Replies

Well, I got my annual birthday card from my twin, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.

He’s a thoughtful guy, although in truth, it’s not that hard for him to remember, even though he’s getting older now. He and I were born on the same day, right here in South Carolina.

The coincidences between Leon and me abound. For instance, we’re both known and admired for our rugged good looks. He passed a series of demanding fitness tests to be named the SC Law Enforcement Officers’ Association “Toughest Cop” — twice. I have been named “South Carolina’s Toughest Editor” multiple times. Or I would have been, if such an award existed. He once got three standing ovations at Columbia Rotary, in the midst of the national controversy over his having busted Olympic champion Michael Phelps for smoking dope in Columbia; I got one such ovation — when I got fired from the newspaper, which makes you wonder what they were applauding.

And a few moments ago, when I called to thank him for my card and wish him a happy right back, the lady who answered the phone was named “Janell.” My mother and one of my daughters are named “Janelle,” although we spell it differently. And Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. (Although, despite urban legend, Lincoln did not have a secretary named “Kennedy.”)

But wait: I’m not done. Taegan Goddard reports the following today on his Wonk Wire:

Happy 100th Anniversary to the Federal Income Tax

Today is the 100th anniversary of the federal income tax. President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation into law in 1913, concluding a process begun four years earlier by President William Howard Taft.

Paul Caron: “The new tax applied only to those with very high incomes. There was a personal exemption of $3,000 for individuals (equivalent to $71,000 today) and $4,000 for married couples (about $94,500 today) but none for dependents. Additionally, all interest and state and local taxes were deductible. After that, the following rate schedule applied to both individuals and couples.”

Some of my libertarian friends will find it particularly meaningful that the income tax and I share a birthday, although Leon and I are slightly younger. Y’all all join me now in a rousing hip, hip huzzah for former Columbian Woodrow Wilson…

Or don’t. No skin off my nose.

I will now thank a partial list of folks for wishing me a happy birthday so far today: Five Points businesswoman and community leader Debbie McDaniel, frequent candidate Joe Azar, Chapin Mayor Stan Shealy, former Mayor Bob Coble, ex-coroner Frank E. Barron III, Rabbi Marc Wilson, lobbyist Robert Adams, Patrick Cobb from AARP (fitting, huh?), Randy Pagem (director of PR at Bob Jones University), veteran political reporter Steve Piacente, radio host Jonathon Rush, SC Treasurer Curtis Loftis Jr.

There were 63 in all. What’s the etiquette on this — thank each individually, or all at once?

Sheriff Lott called me back while I was typing all this. He and I agree that this just doesn’t make sense — when other people are this age, they’re old. At least, that’s always been the pattern in the past. It’s weird…

No half measures for Walk for Life: We’re going for $5,000!

1 Reply

Might as well be bold, right?

Last week, we went from exceeding our initial $1,000 goal to topping the $3,000 mark in just two days. Yes, we had some extraordinary help. After Doug Ross had singlehandedly put us over the thousand mark, Bryan Caskey came in and raised almost half of our current total of $3,231.

But I don’t think the well is dry yet. So I just did another Col. Cathcart, and raised our team goal to $5,000.

Sure, it’s a stretch. But we’re well on our way toward the $4,000 mark without any additional effort the last few days on my part. Now, I’m going to take a page from Doug and Bryan and send an appeal out to a lot of my contacts — emphasizing people who may not be regular blog readers — and thereby give a broader audience a chance to chip in.

Basically, I’m going to do what I haven’t really done with y’all yet — get serious, and talk about the real reason I’m a supporter of Walk for Life.

And no, it’s not because my good friend Samuel Tenenbaum nags me about it weekly. It’s because of my wife’s experience as a cancer survivor, as I wrote about back here.

Of course, even if you don’t receive one of these emails, you’re still welcome to give (or give more, or ask your friends to give more). In fact, you’re encouraged to do so.

Just go to this page, and click on “Give Now.” It’s the button over on the right.

Boy, I sure can pick cities to live in, can’t I?

3 Replies

Kathryn brought this to my attention. It’s a list, from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, of the top 100 cities that are “the most challenging places to live with allergies this fall in the United States.”

As she noted, “We are up there, but better than Charleston or Augusta!” Columbia came in 33rd on the list; Charleston was 26th, and Augusta was 27th.

But then I looked at the list, and discovered something more startling — I have lived in three of the top 11 cities, including No. 1 Wichita. (The other two were No. 5 Memphis and No. 11 New Orleans.) I also lived in Charleston as a kid.

Lower down on the list, I’ve lived in Philadelphia, No. 42; and Washington, No. 83. OK, technically I lived in Woodbury, N.J., and Kensington, Md., but each was close.

So, given that I’m a hyperallergic kind of guy, I can really pick ’em, can’t I?

At least I made a relatively smart move coming here from Wichita…

I’m giving blood today. Anyone want to go with me?

17 Replies

I’m going to look just like this later today. I’m even wearing a yellow shirt…

Yesterday, I got a call from the Red Cross saying the requisite 16 weeks have passed since I last donated double red cells (after giving whole blood, you only have to wait 8 weeks), so it’s time to give again.

As usual, they were eager for my blood. When the lady on the phone suggested Wednesday, and I said neither Wednesday nor Thursday was good, and they didn’t have any slots that fit my schedule on Friday, so how about next week… she jumped in with “How about tomorrow?”

So I’ll be down at the Red Cross HQ on Bull Street at 5:30 today, preparing to donate through the Alyx process.

Before we got off the phone, though, the lady asked if I had any friends or family who could also come along with me and give.

They’ve asked me that before. It’s always sounded sort of odd. It makes recruiting someone to give blood sound as casual as, “Hey, wanna grab a beer after work?”

But it must work sometimes, or else they wouldn’t keep doing it. So I’ll try it.

Anybody want to go down to the Red Cross with me this evening and give blood? My treat…

Finally, a perfect job fit for me!

5 Replies

Back during my long period of unemployment, I signed up for a number of Internet services to help me in the job hunt. I still get emails from them.

Today, I got one that claimed, “An employer or recruiter on TheLadders just posted a job that matched with your profile.”

Exciting news, eh?

What was the job? Vice President of Logistics for Belk. An excerpt from the description:

This position is responsible for planning and coordinating domestic transportation and retail DC operations and includes operational and fiscal responsibility for these activities. He / She will take a strategic leadership approach and will be accountable for creating plans to develop and integrate the capabilities of the organization in line with the current Supply Chain Mission. The VP of Logistics ensures that internal and external customers receive the highest level of service, makes decisions that maximize the operation’s performance and cost metrics, and builds strong associate work teams with a positive work environment…

Yeah… that’s me all over.

This would be mildly amusing except for something else I know… algorithms that are no more sophisticated than the one that saw this as right up my alley are making decisions about who will get interviewed for jobs and who will not. I don’t know how many jobs I got rejected for before a single human being had looked at my application, but I assure you it would be a depressing number.

Summer cold, the ‘different animal,’ has me in its grippe

14 Replies

I’m quite frustrated that I can’t find video for the old Contac commercial with the jingle that went:

“A summer cold is a different animal
an ugly animal… oooh!
It hits you in the summer,
When you’ve got a lot to do!”

Hey, I didn’t say it was Shakespeare, I just said I wish I could find the video.

Anyway, I seem to recall someone deriding the ad at the time, saying that a summer cold was in no way different from a winter one. It’s never felt that way to me. To me, there’s always been something particularly miserable about going out on a hot day with the runny nose, raw throat, mental cloudiness and vague feverishness that comes with such a bug.

And my belief was vindicated last week with this section-front piece in The Wall Street Journal, “Summer Is the Real Season for Bad Colds, Not Winter.”

And in fact — the bugs themselves are different:

Colds in summertime can last for weeks, at times seemingly going away and then suddenly storming back with a vengeance, infectious-disease experts say. A winter cold, by contrast, is typically gone in a few days.

The reason for the difference: Summer colds are caused by different viruses from the ones that bring on sniffling and sneezing in the colder months. And some of the things people commonly do in the summer can prolong the illness, like being physically active and going in and out of air-conditioned buildings.

“A winter cold is nasty, brutish and short,” says Bruce Hirsch, infectious-disease specialist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y. “But summer colds tend to linger. They can go on for weeks and reoccur.”…

The piece also notes that because summer colds linger so long, people mistake them for allergies.

I knew better when mine first struck a week or two back. I had been using a new nasal spray that had my allergies under great control. And then one day, bam, my nose is running anyway. And I feel like total crud, Ferris.

Also, my grandchildren had been passing a bug back and forth, and my wife had had it. So, not just allergies.

The piece also notes, “A summer cold’s symptoms also can be surprising. Along with the sniffles, sufferers may also get a fever, diarrhea and achy body.”

I’ve had all of those, except — I think — the fever. And I could be wrong about that. In a meeting this morning at ADCO, my wary colleagues were accusing me of having fever, partly because every time I touched the surface of the conference room table, I left damp handprints.

I don’t know. I just know it feels pretty lousy.

How are y’all feeling?

Join the bradwarthen.com Walk for Life team!

8 Replies

Proud members of the championship 2010 team — Mark Stewart, Kathryn Fenner and Doug Ross.

OK, I’ve finally gotten around to setting up our team for the Walk for Life on Oct. 5, as promised previously.

Here’s how you sign up. Go to this page, click on “register” on the left-hand side, then click “I agree,” and then click on the “Join a team” button. Then click on “Please select a team.” Pretty high up on the pull-down list you will see “bradwarthen.com.” Join that one. (Pretty intuitive, right?)

Then follow the rest of the steps logically. Registration will cost you $25, but you can give more, and I encourage you to do so. After you’ve signed up, go out and get your friends to give even more money. I’ll post more instructions on how to do that later. In the meantime, Doug Ross can probably tell you how to do it, because he did such a great job of fund-raising the last time we had a team, two years ago.

I’ve set a $1,000 goal for the team, but we can exceed that — can’t we?

Click on this link to see how we’re doing toward that goal.

So sign up, be generous (and/or get other people to be generous), and I look forward to seeing y’all on Walk day!

Another one of those privacy messages that I don’t read

40 Replies

This morning, in her column for tomorrow (that still confuses me; I don’t think any other major columnist in the country writes columns that appear online so long before they do in print), Peggy Noonan was waxing deeply concerned about my privacy, or her privacy, or someone’s (I didn’t read the whole thing; in any case, if it’s someone else’s, it is by definition none of mine, right?):

What is privacy? Why should we want to hold onto it? Why is it important, necessary, precious?

Is it just some prissy relic of the pretechnological past?

We talk about this now because of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency revelations, and new fears that we are operating, all of us, within what has become or is becoming a massive surveillance state. They log your calls here, they can listen in, they can read your emails. They keep the data in mammoth machines that contain a huge collection of information about you and yours. This of course is in pursuit of a laudable goal, security in the age of terror.

Is it excessive? It certainly appears to be. Does that matter? Yes. Among other reasons: The end of the expectation that citizens’ communications are and will remain private will probably change us as a people, and a country. ..

Later in the day, I got this email from some honcho at AT&T, addressed to me as the holder of a certain numbered account (and the number is none a yer damn’ bidness!):

Dear Valued Customer,

We know your privacy is important, so we’ve made it a priority to talk to you about it. We’re revising our Privacy Policy to make it easier to understand, and we want to point out two new programs that could help us and other businesses serve you better.

The first program will make reports available to businesses. These reports will contain anonymous information about groups of customers, such as how they collectively use our products and services. The second program will use local geography as a factor in delivering online and mobile ads to the people who might find them most useful.

As always, we follow important principles to keep your trust:

We are committed to protecting your privacy.

We provide you with privacy choices.

We will not sell information that identifies you to anyone, for any purpose. Period.

We are committed to listening and keeping you informed about how we protect your privacy.

The two new programs are described in this notice, including your privacy choices for each. You can also read the new and old versions of our privacy policy at att.com/privacy.

To provide feedback on the new policy, please write us in the next 30 days at privacyfeedback@att.com or AT&T Privacy Policy, 1120 20th Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20036.

Sincerely,

Robert W. Quinn Jr.
AT&T
Senior Vice President – Federal Regulatory & Chief Privacy Officer

Whenever I see anything like that — something that intones, “We know your privacy is important…” — I’m like yes, I suppose so, if you say so, and don’t read further, and move on.

But I appreciated his caring so much. I wondered whether his concern had anything to do with the Snowden stuff. Don’t know. Don’t care.

And it strikes me as extremely ironic that this guy probably gets paid more money than I’ve ever been paid to do anything to worry more about my privacy than I do. I’m more concerned about the fact that today, for some reason, I keep getting myself into sentences that don’t have an elegant way out of them, such as the preceding one, and to a lesser extent this one…

Oh, wait, you know what’s really weird? That AT&T notice came through my ADCO email, not my personal email. I have an AT&T account at home, not through ADCO. Oh, well…

What if I’d come back in 2013? Would I have been impressed? I think not…

17 Replies

Some seemed to doubt the premise of the preceding post about how static and dull and lifeless popular culture has become (or at least, to discount the importance of it). But to someone who was young in the ’60s, there’s something very weird about living in a time when a photograph of people 20 years ago would look no different from a photo today (assuming you could get them to look up from their smartphones for a second during the “today” picture).

As I said in a comment on that post…

I’ve written in the past about how enormously exciting I found American pop culture when I returned here in 1965 after two-and-a-half years in South America without television. My words in describing it are probably inadequate. It was so amazingly stimulating, as though all my neurons were on fire. It was like mainlining some drug that is so far unknown to pharmacology, one that fully engages all of your brain.

If I had returned at that same age in 2013 rather than ’65 — meaning I had left the country in March 2011 — I doubt it would have been such a huge rush. It would be like, “Oh, look: The latest iPhone does some minor stuff that the old one didn’t. And now we have 4G instead of 3G. Whoopee.”

Most of the big movies would be sequels of the big movies when I left — or “reimaginings” of Superman or Spiderman. The best things on TV would still be “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.” “Firefly” would still be canceled. I’d be disappointed that “Rubicon” had only lasted one season. And I’d marvel at the fact that, with hundreds of channels out there, everything good was on one: AMC. (HBO hasn’t impressed me since “The Sopranos,” and that would have been over years before I left the country.) “The Walking Dead” would be new to me. Again, whoopee.

I just can’t imagine what I’d grab hold of and say, “Wow, THIS is different and exciting…”

But consider this list of things that I saw and heard for the first time in 1965, either immediately when I got back into the country, or over the next few months:

James Bond – who was enormously important to my friends and me, and who did a lot toward defining the decade (just ask Austin Powers), and who embodied much of what “Mad Men” recaptures about the decade. Yes, Bond had been around earlier, but I had never heard of him before the film “Dr. No,” which I actually saw on the ship on my way down to Ecuador. Which I did not enjoy. I didn’t really get Bond, as something that interested me, until “Goldfinger.”
Really exciting new cars that changed dramatically from model year to model year. I had seen ONE Mustang, parked outside the Tennis Club in Guayaquil, and I thought it was awesome. I’d never seen a Sting Ray, and the ’65 model was particularly cool…
Not just the Beatles, but the entire British Invasion – the Stones, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Animals, Tom Jones, Petula Clark. Just those few names illustrate the tremendous diversity of styles just within that one category we describe as the “Invasion.”
Folk rock – The Byrds, Chad & Jeremy, Simon and Garfunkel, and so on.
Beach music, West coast – The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Surfaris
Gimmick bands – Paul Revere and the Raiders, Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, etc.
One-hit wonders – Much of the vitality of the era was personified by such groups as ? and the Mysterians, the Standells and the Troggs (OK, all three of their hits were technically in ’66. But consider such one-time hits of 1964 and 65 as “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Eve of Destruction,” “Keep on Dancing,” “Land of 1,000 Dances”…)
Ordinary guys wearing (relatively) long hair. Yes, we’d heard of The Beatles by this time in South America, but the fashion had not caught on.
Beach music, East coast – Yeah, this music had been around, and white kids had been listening to this “black” music, but it didn’t have the kind of profile where I could hear it until this point. I think Wikipedia rightly cites the heyday as being “mid-1960s to early 1970s.”
Color TV – It had existed, but I hadn’t seen it.

OK, taking off on that last one, let’s just take a quick run-through of the TV shows, icons of the era, that were either new in 1965, or new to me because I’d been out of the country:

Gilligan’s Island
Green Acres
I Spy
Hogan’s Heroes
The Wild, Wild West
The Smothers Brothers Show
Lost in Space
Bewitched
Daniel Boone
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Get Smart
The Munsters/The Addams Family
Shindig!

I want you to especially note the variety in those shows — they weren’t all manifestations of the same cultural phenomenon, the way, say, “reality TV” shows are today. (A phenomenon that would not be new to me at all from a two-year absence.)

I’d like to include “The Beverly Hillbillies,” but it actually premiered shortly before I left the country, and I’d seen it once or twice. And I won’t cite the ground-breaking “Batman” because it premiered in January of 1966 – which was still within my first year back in the country. Also, I never saw “The Andy Griffith Show” before my return, but that was my fault — it had been out there for a year or so before I left.

This may all seem silly and superficial to y’all, but I think it’s actually significant that our popular culture is so static and unchanging today. Someone, trying to dismiss this, said on the previous post that I was ignoring the fact that the dynamism of popular culture in previous decades was just a First World, affluent-society phenomenon.

No, I wasn’t. In fact, that is sort of my point. I had come from an unchanging, static culture in the Third World into one of the most exciting cultural moments in the life of the most affluent country in human history. I would even go so far as to suggest that the dynamism of the popular culture is related somehow to economic dynamism.

And maybe the economic stagnation that is the New Normal today is related to cultural stagnation. We could feel our economic horizons expanding in past decades. No longer…

The Rolling Stones – Live in Shindig! (1965) by Vilosophe

Everybody put your hands together for a proud young man

8 Replies

We’re all thrilled that my grandson started walking over the weekend. So is he.

He’s been able to do it for months; he just didn’t want to. He has a busy schedule, and he crawls so fast, he saw no point. But over the weekend, he suddenly discovered that walking is a hoot. One of his parents or grandparents will hold him, and the other will beckon from across the room, and he staggers over, laughing hysterically the whole time while everyone cheers him on, and then falls into the arms of the one who’s waiting.

That’s the fun part, you see — the big fall. Into the arms of an adult, or face-forward onto a cushion, or backward onto the carpet. You just can’t get that kind of rush crawling.

Anyway, these pictures indicate just how much he was enjoying himself with this new thing.

You also get to see him with his awesome headphones T-shirt, which is particularly appropriate because his other grandfather, the cool one, is a DJ, and his Dad, my son, is an audio and video professional who’s been doing sound for local bands (including some excellent ones he has performed in) since he was in school.

Our little guy really looks the part to me, with his hair this length — like a member of the British Invasion, circa 1966. Like an extremely cheerful Eric Burdon or someone like that.

In the sequence below, you see him being distracted from some of his Dad’s equipment and persuaded to walk again, which sets off the laughter.

Just another wildly fun day in the studio for a guy who’s a rock star in his own little world…

Dreaming of being unable to sleep, in Munich…

10 Replies

I’m still a bit dopey this morning, even after coffee. I had one of those weird things where you wake up a couple of hours early, and then you lie awake for a long time, and then you wake up thinking you haven’t had any rest, but you realize that toward the end, you were dreaming about not being able to sleep….

OK, maybe you don’t do that, but I do.

What interests me, though is that after the usual pattern, I shifted to a dream that had factual details that fit together, something that dreams don’t often do.

It all started when I woke up at about 4:40 and thought I’d check to make sure my phone was set to wake me up at 6:30 — and couldn’t find my phone. This was real life, although it seemed dreamlike. I searched the house, upstairs and down, a couple of times — thoroughly waking myself — before the “find my iPhone” app on my iPad found it, in a really odd place (in a box, buried under other stuff).

So I set it, put it on the charger, and went back to bed. And lay on one side. Then the other. Then back on the first one. This went on a LONG time. Then I was walking about in the wee hours, unable to sleep, in my grandparents’ house (now my uncle’s house) in Bennettsville. My whole family was there, and I was trying not to wake them.

Then, again, with my family, I was in Europe. It was our last day there, and I was wondering when our flight home was. Turns out we had time to sightsee most of the day. I realized we were in Munich (I’ve never been to the continent, much less to Munich). My older son wanted to go to the 1972 Olympic stadium, and plant a flag (don’t know what sort of flag, but perhaps having something to do with the Olympics) at the highest point of the structure, and photograph it with the city spread out below. (I realized, after I woke up, that that idea had come from the last level of “Call of Duty: World at War,” which both my son and I have played, in which Red Army soldiers plant their flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin.) I said OK, we could do that.

But after that, I wanted to take mass transit to a place associated with the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. I realized there probably wasn’t much to see there, but I wanted to see it anyway. (It seems I don’t have very positive associations in my mind when I think, “Munich.”)

These things didn’t happen in the dream; we just planned them.

I thought it odd that both of those sightseeing ideas actually had a logical connection to Munich. Usually, dreams are more mixed-up than that. Aren’t they?