Mangement is Not a Dirty Word

Being a boss is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman.
A lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about.
We start out our careers like gangbusters. We move up through the ranks and finally we reach management and, OMG, we have people we need to supervise. We are bosses!
It's especially difficult when we move up through the ranks at one business because we have developed friendships at work. Then the dynamic changes. And, being women, we try to stay friends with our former peers, which never works.
We can be friendly, but we are no longer friends.
We have to be the boss. We have to make decisions about people we really like. and about a few people we really don't like.
It isn't easy, but advice and assistance from someone who has already done it is a big help.
I heard some good advice at JAWS in Vermont last weekend.
For example: good work is not the same as good leadership. Boy is that true. I know I'm a much better reporter than editor/manager. I had to learn a whole new set of skills for that job.
A good leader spots those qualities in others, even when they don't see them in themselves. Still, leadership is largely learned.
I didn't have to learn to show respect for my employees or to show them I cared about them or to put them as human beings first in my perception -- which are all things that are essential in management.
The tougher thing is, actually, being tough on people.  At least for a chronic people-pleaser like me.
Many of us, when we get into managerial positions, assume the same loyalty from our people as we were willing to give. But, it's hard not to notice when someone is chronically late or calls in sick regularly on Mondays.
So, we end up having to take care of those situations while keeping effluent from falling on our other employees.
When something befalls a loyal employee, we've got to have his or her back and say "come back when you're whole."
It's called "managing up," dealing with superiors. And, it's not always fun.But, if you don't protect your employees, no one else will. And your loyalty to them will bring out their loyalty to you. 

When Women Run the World

The Journalism and Women Symposiums go by the acronym JAWS and are illustrated by a Great White Shark.
Which isn't to say these women are in the least bit predatory. 
Just that they have a sense of humor.
JAWS moves around from year to year and in 2013 was in Essex Junction, Vermont.
It couldn't have been a prettier location, even a few weeks past "peak" that uniquely New England season that refers to the time of year tourists known as "leaf peepers" triple the population of the Northeast states.
The Essex, Vermont's Culinary Resort was packed with some of the brightest, most erudite women ever to sit in the same room and lament the calorie counts in brownies.
Not to pick on men -- although it is tempting -- but women are decidedly un-sharklike when they get together to talk about being professionals and working toward life goals. Women nurture. Not to say men can't be nurturing, too, but it is less instinctive. Most men are like the adult male dog who first pushes the new puppy in the house away. A few male dogs -- I had one -- will wash and cuddle a puppy or even a kitten, but most don't think that way. There aren't being mean. They are being alpha.
Women don't have the time to be alpha. 
We are too busy juggling the aspects of our lives to worry about anything as silly as finishing on top of the heap. 
So, when professional women get together, they don't waste time playing games. They hold seminars and workshops and they talk. They network. There is a lot of give and take. People take suggestions from each other. 
JAWS attracts some of the top women in journalism as speakers and attendees.
One of the sessions was on women in management presented by Amy Resnick, exectuive editor of Pensions & Investments; Paula Ellis, a former Knight Poundation officer, and Stacy Marie Ishamel,  a financial blogger.
Among the salient points they addressed were several that should have been obvious, but occasionally get lost in the clutter of management.
All jobs are consequential and a corollary to that is that every employee, including a contract employee, requires a relationship with the supervisor and that relationship is important. 
Remember, if you aren't a manager now, you might be someday soon.
  

The Secret of Our Success (or Not)

Riker Danzig says the bright red neon sign towering over Morristown's green, a touch of modernity in the historic town. 
The distinguished law firm is proud of its status as the firm with more female partners than any other in the area. And the firm doesn't just rest on its laurels. Twice a year, Riker Danzig, led by the female partners, holds women's leadership events.
Networking is the goal of most attendees and they make the most of the cocktails and hot hors d'orves. Riker Danzig partners and associates mingle with accountants, real estate brokers and other businesswomen. It's a typical scene except for gender.
Each event has a speaker, also female, followed by dessert and coffee. Probably because the attendees are women, the desserts learn toward chocolate. Stereotyping, but delicious. 
At first, the cocktail receptions moved around, but Riker Danzig settled at the Guevenor Morris (now renamed the Westin Governor Morris, but natives know that is incorrect). It is the perfect venue with a balcony for the cocktail party adjacent to a spacious banquet room. And the food and service are consistently great.
The latest even featured Lisa Shallot of Goldman Sachs who spoke about her rise through the ranks and offered some tips from her experiences for women on the way up. 
Most of the mature women in the audience nodded frequently as Shallot spoke about characteristics of many women in the workforce.
Nothing sparked affirmative gestures as quickly as when she talked about women as reluctant to focus on their strengths. Even in their annual reviews, most women focus on their needs for improvement rather than on what they do well.
Shallot advised women to list their strengths, even to the extent of looking at past performance review and asking friends and colleagues for their observations. She pointed out often others perceive strengths in an individual that may escape the person herself. Friends and colleagues may also not see the very thing the woman thinks is her major strength. 
Accepting challenges and moving out of one's comfort zone were other items of advice Shallot offered. 
The audience questions revealed the group was seriously paying attention, but they didn't hesitate to head straight for the chocolate.
 

We All Wrote Bad Poetry in High School

The Baby Boomers wrote terrible poetry in the wobbling delusion we were Paul Simon. 
We wrote deep, semi-insightful soliloquies, content and confirmed in the knowledge that we understood a world we hadn't yet observed, let alone touched. 
Most of us gave up poetry when we realized we weren't even Donovan, let alone Paul Simon. 
And our generation spawned another great poet of the American idiom, sprung from the Jersey Shore and Highway 9: Bruce Springsteen. 
The jury is still out on the poet laureate of the post-Boomers, but another Jersey boy has dusted the Warren County dirt from his shoes and tossed a sports jacket over his jeans and published his fourth book. 
BJ Ward teaches in the AFA program in creative writing at Warren  County Community College, in itself proof that this bastion of rural Jersey produces more than farmers. A founder of the AFA program, the only one of it's kind in New Jersey and one of only three in the country, Ward has amassed a fan base somewhat smaller than Jon Bon Jovi, but substantial for this tiny corner of the Garden State.
His collegue

 at WCCC, Brian Bradford, calls Ward the love child of Springsteen and Emily Dickinson, but, of the New England poets, I hear Frost in his words:

           And I want to be as precise with my joy today
          As allthe poets are with their suffering
          I want to tell you how on August 13th, I was happy
          even as the world surrounded my breakfast.
Yeah, that ain't Emily.
Perhaps a touch of Auden in My Mother's Last Cigarette, the poem he wrote for Pope John Paul II:
          I said give me back my mother's eyes
          when your priests, all of them, told her she was married
          before God and God was watching
          and she must pray harder. And we did.
         We did.
I even hear a rhythm of Eliot on occasion, such as the title poem from Gravedigger's Birthday:
         I did it all quietly with a sudden solemnity
         not for the cat -- I barely knew it --
         but for the motion, the first ancestral thing
         I had done in years, aware this was traffic
         with old gods.
I could be exaggerating, since BJ is a dear friend, but I don't think so. 
Bradford says he will win a Pulitzer before too long.
If he doesn't, there is some flaw. Somewhere.
The new book is Jackleg Opera.
Buy it. 

I Am Not Snookie

Ok, I had big hair in high school.
And then, again, in the 80s.
And, I love The Shore. The photos above are Ocean Grove. 
But, they could well be Asbury Park -- which is where the party pix was taken. 
The Shore is an essential part of summer. Every summer.
It is The Shore. Not The Beach. Some states may have beaches. I don't care about they.
And, it's Down the Shore. Not Down TO the Shore. Other states may need prepositions. We don't need no lousy prepositions.
Same with Up the Lake, which is the subject of the other 2 photos: Brady Cove on Lake Hopatcong and the dam at the Hopatcong State Park where the lake enters the Musconetcong River.
Ok, ok, I love having a tan and I don't think much about melanoma. I mean, seriously, this is a state where Ford Motor Company poured paint waste into a mine, where Ciba-Geigy snuck a pipe into the Delaware Bay in the middle of the night, where the mob deposited any number of bodies and who knows what else. We're gonna worry about the SUN? Be serious. 
I may have, in my younger days, worn tight jeans and low cut tops. But, normal Jersey Girls know when it becomes too late to wear a Raceway Park halter top -- except maybe to weed the garden. It's been a long time since I sat on Big John Cassidy's lap in a dive bar in Keyport. 
I have been known to wear oversize hoop earrings. Even now.
But, for the post part, I grew up. Mostly. 
I probably didn't grow up as early as most people. That's why they call us Jersey Girls.
And, by the way, don't mess with us.
And don't call us Snookie.

Sherlockian

Sherlock Holmes is an ico.
For most of us of my generation, Sherlock IS Basil Rathbone and Dr. Watson IS Nigel Bruce.
There are too few of those movies because of Bruce's early death. Rathbone knew Holmes and Watson are more than a team. They are a unit. To be the perfect Holmes, he must have his perfect Watson. 
Perhaps the most perfect Holmes/Watson duo was Jeremy Brett/Edward Hardwicke.Also cut short by an early death, that partnership ended far too soon.
Some people are Sherlock purists. Good for them.
I figure Conan Doyle would be ok with a little license. 
It's arguable Guy Ritchie's version is not Sherlock Holmes at all. They are action-adverture movies set in the 1890s. 
I happen to like the two Guy Ritchie moves. Not as Sherlock Homes movies, but as fun movies. Robert Downey Jr.. is a fine actor in any role. He and Jude Law play off each other very well. 
Sherlock Holmes has always been a buddy story. The play of the two characters against each other is an integral part of each Sherlock Holmes story. In that respect Downey/Law pulls it off. 
And Jared Harris is the best Moriarity EVER.As bright as Holmes and subtle in his evil. 
I was skeptical of a modern day Sherlock when my friend Cece pointed it out to me. 
"You'll like it," she said.
When lots of people say than, you know you'll hate it, but Cece and I have known each other since 9th grade. We bonded over being the offspring of teachers in our high school. Math teachers. Lot of bonding there. So she knows me. Really KNOWS me. 
I love it. Benedict Cumberbatch (don't you love British names?) is Sherlock for the modern era. A new version couldn't be done without a few modification. Watson has a blog. Sherlock has a cigarette habit, not cocaine, although he makes 7% references occasionally. 
But Sherlock is still ignorant of things like basic astronomy. He's still awkward with women. And in love with Irene Adler. 
It can be said there was already a modern Holmes in the American TV show, House, but that was just an homage, a reference. Holmes is ignorant of social graces. House was mean. Watson was married and far less neurotic than Wilson (although I'd watch Robert Sean Leonard read the phone book -- remember him in Dead Poet's Society? I mean he was a CHILD and was incredible.) 
As for the present American show, Elementary, I can't watch it. Bringing Holmes/Watson to America is just too far. Even my son who adores Lucy Liu says it's too ridiculous to be watchable. 
But, there will always be a Holmes. And, there will be successful and disastrous versions. Perhaps the originals would be a great choice for summer reading. 

A Family Affair

Years ago, when I covered Roxbury Township in Morris County, the municipal building was a sprawling structure on Horseshoe Lake.
Recently,  I covered a meeting at the "new" Roxbury Township Municipal Building. Which, to me, was the old telephone company building. You know, when it was THE TELEPHONE COMPANY. When AT&T ruled the world. What was that movie from the 60s, "In Like Flint?" Where the phone company did rule the world? Somewhere is the phone I got from that building when I moved into an apartment in Hackettstown. There was a phone there and I asked them to turn it on. They said they couldn't. They said I had to get a phone. When I got to THE TELEPHONE COMPANY, they said I had to take a phone and plug it in. I said the building was built in about 1880 and you couldn't plug it it. The gal said, "It's an apartment?" "Right." "So you plug it in." 
Ok. So, I went home and called the service people and made an appointment for someone to hard wire the phone. Except he didn't show up. Then he called. I told him the situation and he had the phone company turn on the phone. Did I return the phone they gave me? No. It was a gift.
But, I digress.
I went back to Horseshoe Lake with my friend Sheila last week. The municipal building now has a gym and, more significantly, a little theater.
We were there because a friend, Wayne Thorp, wrote a play and invited us, well, Sheila really, to see it. 
It was a one-act play, featuring four women.
Sheila and I discussed how difficult it must be for a man to write dialogue for four women. Especially four women of a different generation. But Wayne pulled it off. These were educated women and he didn't make the mistake of making them sound less so the more they drank.
The plot of The Price of Illusion revolves around relationships.
In the beginning, I kept thinking the gals sounded amazingly like my cousins and I last fall discussing the dynamics of our lives and our moms over quite a bit of wine on the anniversary of their father's death. 
Then things turned.
The friend of on sister, Helen, reveals a secret that changes the girls' idea of "family."
Helen, you see, who is from the other side of the tracks, is the illegitimate daughter of the girls' father. They don't believe her when she tells them, but another friend in on the action, Nicole, tells them their father routinely hit on their friends. 
Ok, the plot was a bit contrived. What are the chances Helen would find out who her father was, would get a job at the same place as her half-sister, Cassie, and befriend her? But, if you could suspend your disbelief on that and just listen to the women, you see a more universal story underneath. A story about illusions shattered. How many of us have discovered a secret we had trouble believing about someone in our family. Maybe not a secret so terrible, but still.
There is also a class-warfare dynamic int he story since the sisters, Cassie and Tina, grew up affluent and Helen grew up in the projects. To a New Jersey audience, all Wayne needed was the word "Camden," and that said it all. 
Common wisdom says you need two things to travel to Camden, Rosary beads and a Smith & Wesson.
Helen is also Latina, bringing a racial note to the story.
While most of us don't have family secrets that devolve into class and race stories, we can related to many of the issues discussed.
The production was Cabaret-style and wine and soft drinks and goodies provided by the Roxbury Arts Alliance, a venerable group that has done many events in the sprawling township for many years.
I believe that is the best setting for this play because the comfortable tables and chairs ambiance brought home the domesticity of the story.
Matt McCarthy directed. He kept Helen standing for the entire hour and a half -- or most of it. Sheila noted her shoes look uncomfortable, but I've worn shoes like that for hours, it's possible. The trick of making her sort of off-balance was well played. 
The acting was superb. 
Claire Bochenek as the prodigal sister, Cassie, expertly dissolved into drunkenness. Gianna Esposito as the "perfect" sister, Tina, deftly allowed her facade to crumble. Janine Lee Papio as Helen was tough and vulnerable. Jillian Petrie as Nicole, carried off a character that could be peripheral but was really pivotal. 
I really hope The Price of Illusion gets another shot, especially in dinner-theater (or munchie-theater) format.