We Don't Need Another Hero

I have never been one to have "heroes." 
Role models, maybe, but not "heroes."
I remember Jane Fonda once saying women have to be their own heroes. I get that. All too often we don't have anyone appropriate to look up to. More than women in the "first wave," but not so many.
Which is not to say we don't look up to people in our profession.
I had the opportunity to meet one of the people I have long admired.
Geneva Overholser has had many prestigious jobs in the newspaper business, but she first rose to fame when she took a phone call from a rape victim to wanted her story told. 
The press doesn't report the names of victims of sexual assault, but often we wonder if that actually is a good or a bad thing. Protecting their privacy is a good thing on the surface, but doesn't it also perpetuate the idea that there is something to be ashamed of?
The woman who called Overholser at the Des Moines Register thought so. Her name was published and more important, her story was told. It was told in a five-part series, after the trial of the rapist, that won the Register a Pulitzer Prize.
"When we won the Pulitzer," Overholser said, "it sounded like we were campaigning for change, but we were just telling a story."
That's the whole point of what we do as journalists, we tell stories. Sometimes those stories strike a chord and things change and sometimes they don't, but when they need to be told, we tell them. 
When I read about Overholser's decision to run the series, I was very impressed because I knew she would take some flak, but I also knew she was doing the right thing. 
Which is a hell of a thing to aspire to. So often doing the right thing isn't easy and it results in flak from unimaginative people. Or angry people. Or people with agendas. 
So maybe I have some heroes. 

 

What are We Doing to Our Kids?

I'm not one of those people who laments what the younger generation is coming to. 
I always thought that was pretty silly because every generation has trouble with the next one. 
But whenever I hear from people who still have kids in school I do worry about the generation that is running the public education system in this country. 
For one thing, the country on this subject, as on so many, the country is upside down. 
For every $1 spend on early childhood education, $7 is saved later. But, since the Reagan administration, preschool programs have been underfunded. 
It's not rocket science. If you send kids to preschool, they get a head start on education -- hence the name of the program: Head Start. 
In Italy, where pretty much all children go to preschool, there is virtually no spending on special education later because kids with problems are diagnosed early and dealt with. And considering the obscene amount of money we spend in America on special ed (which is fodder for about 10 more columns) we should really look at that. 
Then when kids get into public school, the same government that doesn't want to spend any money on preschool doesn't want to spend money there either. Unless that money goes to more testing. Teachers are inundated with paperwork for evaluation after evaluation. Kids are taught to do well on tests that may or may not have anything to do with anything else. What's wrong with that picture? Maybe everything?
When my kids were in elementary school, even in a tiny town, they had a certain number of opportunities to do projects. Egg drops, roller coasters, science fairs, talent shows. From what moms tell me, the kids in grammar school today don't get a chance to do even basic reports. Even if they had those opportunities, when would the teachers get a chance to grade their papers? 
So many experienced teachers are retiring as soon as they are eligible because teaching isn't what they went into. They are getting evaluated many times a year, even after they have proved their worth. They are bogged down in inane paperwork that has nothing to do with education. They are administering tests that are meaningless. 
They are unhappy. 
And how can the best people possibly go into teaching? Why would they be interested? People go into teaching because they like children, they like teaching, they want to make a difference. If they don't have that opportunity, they might as well find another profession. 
 
 

Farewell, Larchmont

Those of us who came of age in the era when dads went to work and moms stayed home looked at Betty Freidan a little differently than her contemporaries.
She must have scared the women who drove their husband's to the station every morning, who wore housedresses and aprons, who mixed martinis and got dinner on the table every night by 6. Not that they loved the life they had, but it was the only life they knew.
And for the ladies at Larchmont Station, it may not have been fulfilling, but it had its perks, nights in the city, shopping sprees on Fifth Avenue, summers at the Jersey Shore or in the Catskills.
Unbeknownst to them, and their children, not all women of the 1950s and 60s had that life.
It was a less connected time. We didn't have a 24-hour news cycle. We didn't know everything that happened to everyone else.
That was good and bad. We weren't bombarded by fake news, but we also didn't have a handle on people who weren't just like us.
The Larchmont Ladies may have been dissatisfied, but there were far more women who didn't have the advantages of Catskill summers and Bonwit Teller charge plates.
"The best poverty prevention is a paycheck," former Vermont Governor Madeline Kunin told a roomful of professional women at the Journalism and Women Symposium in Essex Junction, VT.
Kunin was from the generation that was scared by Freidan, but she herself wasn't scared by much of anything.
A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Kunin wasn't prepared for the reception, or lack of it, when she applied for newspaper jobs.
She was prepared to move ahead in any career she chose, journalism, politics, academia. And now, author and speaker.
She talks about the feminist movement of Betty Freidan and its broader implications. "She asked women to make the most of their education which is asking for peace and prosperity," Kunin said. Countries that repress women are repressing themselves. They can't maintain prosperity without women."
She counts the US as one of those countries in the sense that it celebrates traditional male values.
"The business community is opposed to family friendly values," she said, even when they are multi-national companies that abide by those values in the other countries in which they operate.
Kunin inspired not only the students and young professionals int he audience, but also the experienced professional women.

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.