70 Things I Have Learned at (nearly) 70, by Stephen Cain

Stephen Cain shares 70 things he has learned at nearly 70

Last week’s installment of Things I Have Learned featured our youngest contributor, so it seems fitting that this week’s guest blogger is our oldest, about three times Brian’s age.

Stephen Cain’s list challenged me. My vision for this series was to share somewhat universal life wisdom, to pass along experiences that might help one another. Stephen’s list came in with a lot more edge, more criticism of the things he opposes, more calling out what he sees as wrongs and injustices.

We discussed a bit while I hemmed and hawed, and ultimately, it became obvious to me that being able to respectfully discuss the way we all see the world differently is something I deeply value, so why not do that here? While I might not agree with everything on his list, I’m happy to put it out there as a conversation starter. If you see the world exactly opposite, and he helps you realize that, it’s worth it.

If you’d like to debate any of these items, you can find Steve in the roasting heat of the Ann Arbor Art Fairs this week.

His bio: I was mainly an investigative reporter for the better part of 35 years at The Detroit News and later The Ann Arbor News. I took early retirement, went back to school for a bachelor’s and master’s in social science and American culture, make jewelry that I sell mainly at craft shows, and also do woodworking, stained glass and stonework. My wife, Pat, and I split our time between a restored cabin and workshop in the southern Appalachian mountains and a condo in downtown Ann Arbor.

Iʼll be 70 in October, and one thing Iʼve learned is that only a little bit of what passes for wisdom is universal. Most is personal or at best limited to subsets within our culture. So what Iʼm passing on to you is, shall we say, idiopathic. Some is liberal because thatʼs who I am. Some is anti-church bureaucracy, which is different from disparaging faith.If youʼre easily offended, Colleen wonʼt mind if you pass on to a less edgy list.

1. I have three messages for my children: Never gratuitously hurt someone else; it is your obligation to leave your little corner of the world at least marginally better for having passed that way; and, never lie to your mother!
2. Prayer may be good for the soul, but the universe is utterly indifferent to your hopes and fears.
3. Doing or saying something that makes another person feel good about themselves is an incredible turn-on.
4. There are as many SOBs with PhDs as there are at the assembly line at Ford. The difference is that they have more subtle ways of screwing you over.
5. Late-blooming women are much nicer to be around than those who never got over being beautiful children.
6. It takes a thousand repetitions for a parrot to learn to say something clever.
7. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over again and again and expecting a different outcome. We fight our wars that way.
8. If you thought about all the ways TV ads are deceptive, it would drive you to distraction.
9. Repeating a really delicious rumor about a boss will come back to bite you in the ass.
10. The gelding knife is the only cure for bully bosses who get off on testosterone.
11. The mistranslation of Mary as “virgin” has screwed up western sexuality for nearly two thousand years.
12. The New River isnʼt.
13. The Catholic Church, in most places and for most of its existence, has served the state as an instrument of social control.
14. Feminism threatens men who pine for Stepford wives.
15. Frieda Kahlo was a more interesting person than Diego Rivera and probably a better painter.
16. When Michigan revised the criminal sexual conduct statutes, why did the male legislators vote to exempt fanny patting?
17. No Child Left Behind tests penalize the best teachers.
18. At least 80 percent of the turquoise on the market is fake, including some showing up in Indian jewelry.
19. Any husband who tells a wife with a gun, “You wouldnʼt dare,” deserves what he gets.
20. If she were smarter, Sarah Palin would be really dangerous.
21. Those who canʼt counter the message demonize the messenger.
22. “12 Bones” in Asheville may be the best rib place in the country. Their signature is blueberry chipotle.
23. Cheap gas makes sense only if you expect the world to end before your grandchildren reach their majority.
24. The one thing Democrats have going for them is that they arenʼt Republican.
25. Excessive cleanliness makes you more vulnerable to pathogens.
26. If Charles were your son, wouldnʼt you hold onto the crown forever?
27. I got good at recognizing undercover cops wandering around Detroit Recorders Court … they were as easy to spot as women with dramatic surgical enhancements.
28. The fittest punishment I can think of would be to condemn shit heads to see themselves the way they really are.
29. They demand justice for everyone else but wants mercy for themselves.
30. The monied interests “bribe” Congress to tilt the playing field in their favor.
31. Never pee on an electric fence or into the wind.
32. The law of unintended consequences rules most of public policy and much of individual initiative as well.
33. I used to think the British were somewhat civilized until I read Irish history.
34. America has had its time in the sun, but I fear it will “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
35. You canʼt get something for nothing unless youʼre a Higgs boson.
36. Einstein said the faster you go the shorter you are, which is only true if you are going headfirst or feet first. Otherwise, you get thinner.
37. Iʼm uncomfortable playing aces and eights.
38. Ignore Nelson Algrenʼs third admonition at your peril.
39. Cesaria Evora has the voice of an angel.
40. Willie Nelson doesnʼt.
41. Newton Minow didnʼt live to see the “Real Housewives of New Jersey.”
42. Never insure a texting bicyclist.
43. The “City of New Orleans” changed the face of America.
44. The mosquitoes of Old Crow can exsanguinate a caribou calf in 48 hours.
45. Dictators never laugh at themselves.
46. Any preacher who claims to know the mind of God doesnʼt.
47. Lady Gaga is a parody.
48. If memories of childbirth didnʼt fade, weʼd be a planet of only children.
49. Inhale before you bring a blowgun to your lips.
50. Jubal Early was Leeʼs most inept general.
51. As a class, bankers are the Jubal Earlys of American capitalism.
52. Apples are immune.
53. Indians along the Xingu give haircuts with pirhanna jaws.
54. Atmospheric carbon dioxide potentiates poison ivy.
55. Will Rogers never met Clarence Thomas.
56. Charleston is the heart of darkness.
57. Arthritic thumbs will be the carpal tunnel of coming decades.
58. One year repeated ten times over does not make a decade of experience.
59. You wonʼt hear “Danny Boy” in the pubs of Doolin or Listoonvarna.
60. Closure is a fraud.
61. Never pet a wolverine.
62. Most people who find incredibly stupid ways to die have already reproduced.
63. Parents usually get the children they deserve.
64. Most prosecutors in leading death penalty states would rather see a man fry than admit a mistake.
65. A really good friend likes you in spite of yourself.
66. Howard the Duck was wrong: The heat death of the universe is off the table.
67. Black truffle anchovy sauce over a charred rare porterhouse is worth the cholesterol.
68. Of more than a million species of acetobacter, perhaps a half dozen will make great vinegars.
69. Androgel and Cialis make old age tolerable.
70. And from my father, who lived to be 92: “Never pound sand down a rat hole!”

Stephen Cain was the sixth installment in the “Things I Have Learned” series, running each Thursday on Newvine Growing. Previous lists have come from:

• me
• Margaret Yang
• Amanda Hirsch
• Scott Daris
• Brian Frankel

Each person’s list is their own. Life teaches us all different lessons, even when we face the same experiences. I’m honored to share this series of life lessons in each contributor’s voice.

If you would like to contribute a list to the Things I Have Learned series, please let me know either in the comments below or by email: cnewvine at gmail dot com.

Tony Collings on his days in international journalism and change

Tony Collings

A former colleague of mine at University of Michigan, Tony Collings, brought an amazing reporting resume to Ann Arbor– he was a CNN correspondent for 16 years, following time as a Wall Street Journal reporter in New York, an AP reporter in Moscow, London and Bonn, and the Newsweek bureau chief in Bonn and London.

I learned how to do one-on-one media training from Tony, the master at making even the most nervous researcher seem comfortable on camera. He left reporting to become a lecturer in communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and PR consultant to U-M.

We did an e-mail interview recently about his new book Capturing the News,  which tells the story of Tony’s experiences as a foreign and Washington correspondent — including being captured by AK-47–toting Syrians in Lebanon and being detained by the KGB in Moscow for filing stories about Soviet dissidents.

I also asked him if he missed those glamorous days of international reporting.

Tony Collings' new book is "Capturing the News"

What made you want to become a journalist? I don’t know. Maybe in the genes. My mother was a writer of novels, short stories, plays and nonfiction articles, and my father was an emigre Russian journalist for a Paris newspaper.

How did you get your position at CNN? My friend Dick Blystone, who had been with the AP in London when I was Newsweek bureau chief in London, joined CNN and encouraged me to follow suit, which I did in April 1981. CNN was looking to add a few older, experienced journalists to its staff, many of whom were fairly inexperienced, especially in foreign news. They had an opening in Rome, and it would involve Middle East coverage, and that was appealing.

What was it like to be there in the early days? Exhilarating but also scary. It was fun helping shape a new type of journalism. We never knew whether this improbable network would get off the ground and stay aloft. And there were some nutty moments, as I point out in the book, such as the time when I was in Rome and a producer in Atlanta informed me that the Pope had venereal disease and would I please get a comment from the Vatican.

Why did you decide to leave reporting? After a while you start looking around to see what else you can do in life, and perhaps avoid some of the stress of deadline pressure. My eldest son suggested I might want to teach, and he was right.

What do you miss most about it? The fun, the wisecracks, and the chance to present truthful, important information to the public.

What do you miss least? The stress of deadline pressure, and the long hours which took me away from my family.

Where did the idea for this book come from? Part of it was my desire to share some stories from my experiences as a journalist, including some funny stories. Part of it was my desire to sound off on some of the worst aspects of journalism that bother me.

What surprised you most in your reporting and writing of it? How wrong my memory was, at times, and how sad that when I went to check my recollections against those of my contemporaries, I discovered that some of them were dead.

What one idea do you most want people to take away from your book? To be very cautious and careful when reading, watching or listening to news reports, and always ask yourself: “What is the journalist basing this on? What are the undisputed, independently confirmable facts in this story?”

Tony reporting from near Basra in his TV days

How do you feel about the state of war reporting today? There isn’t enough of it, partly due to heightened dangers, partly due to budget cuts by news organizations, and partly due to public apathy. We’re seeing that now with the reporting about Afghanistan; does the U.S. have any real hope of “victory” and if so how is that going to happen? I really liked the reporting in the PBS Frontline report “Obama’s War,” which is archived online. It shows the real frustrations of American soldiers being told to “win the hearts and minds” of people living in a remote, tribal country that doesn’t seem to share many cultural values of the Americans.

Why is war reporting so important that journalists should risk their lives for it? Wars often change history, and have a tremendous impact on our lives, and we the public, paying in blood and treasure for wars, need to know the truth about them, not what politicians tell us. Getting the truth means getting out on the front lines, and that is dangerous for journalists.

You recently had an emotional reunion with CNN colleagues — any twinge of wanting to get back in the game? Yes. In fact I often dream I’m back there, working on a story. But when I wake up I remember the stress and decide I like it better teaching and writing and enjoying Ann Arbor.

What do you like most and least about your career these days? The most: meeting new students, having time to think and write and stay in touch with family and friends. The least: the occasional academic pettiness (which I stay out of but sometimes have to witness).

What’s next for you? Who knows? I’ve started my blog, capturingthenews.com, and I’ve jotted notes for a novel, and maybe there’s another nonfiction book down the road somewhere, but mainly I’m just continuing to teach and looking forward to seeing my grandson, Milo, who will be two in August.

Ann Arbor News reincarnated as annarbor.com

Reincarnation could be described as the ultimate reinvention: in death you leave behind one body and your soul goes on to another life in a new body.

Not everyone believes in reincarnation, but it would appear the Newhouse family does, at least in business. Their company, Advance, announced this week that the 174-year-old daily newspaper The Ann Arbor News would close in July. In its place, annarbor.com will launch to serve the news needs of the community.

The announcement came Monday and it’s taken me ’til now to blog about it. That’s in part because John had an art opening Tuesday so I didn’t have a lot of spare time to write. But it’s also because I needed some time to process the shock.

I was business editor at the Ann Arbor News from 1997-2000. I still know several hard-working, talented journalists there. This isn’t a distant happening in the news industry. It’s killing the daily newspaper in a city I love, one that in many ways felt like home more than New York does.

Of course I know the newspaper industry is struggling. I’ve written about that before. But I assumed, wrongly, that the publicly held newspaper companies, companies like Tribune with huge debt or papers in cities still lucky enough to have newspaper competition were the ones to watch for closures. Ann Arbor News fits none of those and with a highly educated, literate population, it never occurred to me the News was in danger. It was like learning that a relative you thought controlled diabetes with insulin and diet was dying of kidney failure. 

Turns out the Ann Arbor News already owned annarbor.com, but it used to redirect to MLive

Tony Dearing, who you can see in a video intro on annabor.com, will head content on annarbor.com. We worked together at the News and we share an alma mater, Central Michigan, so we’ve been Facebook friends for a while. When I noticed him mentioning trips to New York on his profile, I sent him a message saying I’d like to catch up on one of his visits.

We went to dinner and he told me he was working on an experimental online project to push the envelope of what newspapers are doing. We had an enjoyable conversation about the challenges newspapers face, the downsides of many newspaper Web sites (especially Advance’s MLive) and how bloggers might play a role in a pro-am online community.

The next day News editor Ed Petykiewicz announced his retirement after about two decades and I marveled that Tony hadn’t even hinted at it. (Here’s the storyabout Ed on MLive, which I couldn’t get to using MLive’s search engine but had to find using Google) But then early the next week came the news that the News would stop publishing, and annarbor.com would take its place along with a twice-a-week print publication. And that was just the start: Bay City, Saginaw and Flint would no longer have seven-day newspapers, and remaining employees would take pay cuts.

Since either Tony is an exceptionally good actor or I’ve lost my edge as a reporter, we got together for brunch this weekend to talk about the project he was sworn to secrecy on last time we dined.

We talked both about the reinvention of the Ann Arbor News and about Tony’s personal reinvention. He’s a newlywed, married on New Year’s Eve, who’s spent his career in newspapers and who’s taken some heat for being a middle-aged print guy leading this Web innovation.

He’s excited about the opportunity. “I am surprised I feel this confident,” Tony said. “I feel that Ann Arbor is such a perfect  market for something like this.”

And as for the risk to his own career? “I’d rather walk into the teeth of it, than just be swept wherever it sweeps me,” he said. “The opportunity to try to save this thing we do was something I couldn’t pass up.”

Tony says that although he doesn’t fit the mold of the young online entrepreneur, he knows his role in the operation. He knows staffing and budgeting, and he says figuring out the finances of the operation is as important as cutting edge tech.

“Our challenge is to create an online community that’s profitable,” Tony said. “We’re creating a business model here.

“I don’t want anybody to think it’s about the Web site or the Web site design. What’s the design of craigslist?” he said. Instead it’s important to create an online community with good professional reporting, an engaged conversation from readers and find a way to make enough money to support it. He wants to appeal both to existing readers of the News and to a broader audience who would never subscribe to a paper.

“This isn’t going to be easy. There isn’t a model,” he said.

He admires elements of http://www.baristanet.com/ and http://www.brownstoner.com/ along with http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ but is wary of talking too much about specifics because he doesn’t want people to infer what annarbor.com will be. He and his team are still figuring that out, and they want it to respond to what residents say at community meetings, not mimicking something already done.

Why is he so confident they can achieve the media holy grail of making a Web site self supporting? He says his team, which includes lead Web guy Hassan Hodges, is sophisticated and energetic, and they’re working with vendors with great ideas. “We have the expertise and the resources to make it work.”

I hope he’s right. I believe deeply in the role a newspaper plays in an informed democracy and in stitching together a community, so maybe my old company can lead the vanguard of doing that without smearing newsprint on your hands or having to fish a wet paper out of the bushes.

* Editor and Publisher story on Advance’s announcement of changes in Ann Arbor, throughout Michigan and companywide.

* A Crain’s Detroit Business article on annarbor.com’s chances of success.

* Jim Carty writes a three-part interview with Tony and his own assessment of the chances of annarbor.com’s success on his blog Paper Tiger No More.

* Mary Morgan writes a poignant column on the death of her mother and the Ann Arbor News announcement, which happened within 12 hours, on her Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Joel Zeff, journalist-PR guy-comedian-speaker-author

Remember in high school art class, when you learned that two parallel lines like railroad tracks converge in the distance?

Joel Zeff’s career path looks like that, with his day jobs as a reporter and PR guy merging with his hobby as a stand up comedian and improv troupe member in his current incarnation as a motivational speaker.

The beauty of the story — the thing that’s reassuring for the rest of us — is that he didn’t set out with a plan to merge his interests. In fact, he had no idea people made a living doing what he’s doing today. He just followed the old adage of doing what he loved and letting the details sort themselves out.

I’ve heard that a million times and often the type A/ practical part of my brain chimes in “It’s all well and good to do what you love, but if it’s not something people will pay you for, that’s not a job. It’s a hobby.” Joel’s story resonates for me because he was being practical, paying the bills with a day job he was good at, while he continued to do the thing he loved on the side — and slowly realized he could bring his creative self together with his practical self and do something new.

It’s encouraging because it suggests you don’t need to live on a park bench and singlemindedly pursue your passion to have it happen. Nor do you have to know exactly where you’re headed to end up achieving your goal. Just do what you love and pay attention when opportunities present themselves.

Let me go back to the beginning.

I met Joel when he was a reporter at my hometown paper, the Saginaw News, and I was a newsroom intern. Joel felt he was destined for bigger and better things than my hometown paper, so the first chance he got, he left for the Dallas Times Herald.

Six months later, the paper folded. A feature story about Joel in the paper’s crosstown rival, the Dallas Morning News, says:

The demise of the Dallas Times Herald was the best thing that ever happened to Mr. Zeff’s career – although he didn’t think so at the time.

“I jumped on board the Titanic just as it set sail,” Mr. Zeff says. “I was at the Times Herald for the last six months of its voyage.”

Joel said that in spite of being 23 and unemployed, getting laid off felt like “a huge door just opened.”

He applied for newspaper jobs with no success. With free time to spare, he started doing stand up comedy and taking improv classes, but since he couldn’t see how that was going to pay the rent, he went to plan B and began applying for public relations jobs.

Joel relatively quickly landed one PR job, then got recruited to another firm, and discovered he liked the work and enjoyed learning how the corporate world worked. Meanwhile, he kept doing comedy for fun.

It was sort of a fluke when Texas Instruments, one of his clients, invited him to come to a corporate retreat and run some improv games for the executives. He enjoyed it, and TI liked him enough that they asked him to help provide some entertainment at a trade show.

Joel began to see that maybe these weren’t two separate things — his PR world and his comedy world — and that maybe he could ham it up for people’s enjoyment *and* get paid.

Joel started doing events talking about creativity or team work or the like, still as a sideline to marketing, until he decided in 1997 to videotape one of his events as a demo and send it out. He wrote about that in an email to me:

In 1997, I started focusing on it as part of my business. I taped one of my events. I started sending materials out to clients. And everything just kind of exploded. In the beginning, I would speak for little money and often for free. I was building a name and a reputation. Pretty soon clients were calling me. Speaker bureaus started representing me. The rest is history.

Joel wants you to buy his book. Click on the book and get out your credit card!

At his peak, Joel was doing about 80-100 events a year, but he’s pulled back some to spend more time with his family, now doing 65-80 dates for crowds up to 6,000 people. And he has a new book out so he’s spending more of his energy promoting that.

Typically I try to have a sort of Aesop’s Fables moral to each story. With Joel, you’re in luck — you get two.

First, figure out what you would do for free. Joel says for him, that’s improv. He told the Morning News:

“I always tell my clients, ‘The time I’m onstage is free. That’s what I love to do. You’re paying for me to be away from my family, to travel and deal with the airport, the accounting, the paperwork, the taxes and the research.’ “

Then, figure out how to make that thing you’d do for free into a business. For Joel, that meant doing speaking gigs for free to build exposure in the corporate world and hone his message, then using his business skills to promote himself and to manage his burgeoning career.

Once you figure out where the money is, go after it with intensity. Joel was willing to travel like crazy, shill via email, Web and media appearances, and squeeze in time to write a book, all the name of building his reputation. It was way more work than a standard 9-to-5 job, but that’s part of why it’s important to do what you love — if you love it, you aren’t looking at the clock and counting down ’til you can stop.

“Whatever you’re doing, that should be your passion,” Joel said. “I haven’t had a job since 1994.”

Want to read more? Check out Joel’s blog, if only for the pointers on doing a better presentation. The next crowd you don’t bore with a stiff PowerPoint show will thank you.

Then check him out on Fox and Friends talking about how to recession proof your career. That’s advice we all need, no?

Changing careers when it’s not your idea

Many of my friends are journalists — reporters, editors, photographers, the many things people do to deliver you the news every day.

But with advertising drying up and Wall Street hammering on news organizations that mostly still seem flummoxed by how to make money online, that’s a tough place to make a living.

A graphic designer started keeping track of all the job loses she heard of on a heart-breaking site called Paper Cuts. (I don’t quite understand how to make the map work every time, but the listings are there nonetheless) In 2009, it’s already more than 2,000 jobs. It’s still January. In 2008, it was more than 15,500.

I used to have a map of the U.S. that I used to mark with pushpins for each of the newspapers I'd gotten a rejection letter from. That's part of why my heart sinks every time I see the Paper Cuts map. It's like my personal experience, but on the macro level.

What does that mean? For someone who believes deeply in the role newspapers serve in an educated, informed democracy, it means fewer people playing the watchdog role and consistently monitoring government, business and other institutions, and also fewer people chronicling our lives and knitting the community together. Yes, I know about social media and bloggers but without real full-time journalists reporting the news, how many of them would lose the material they comment on?

That’s the macro level. At the micro level, it means many of the people who’ve lost their media jobs are probably not going to find another. Lots of talented, experienced people are chasing a shrinking number of opportunities.

The American Journalism Review has a new article called “Is There Life After Newspapers?” 

Just under the headline is this subhead: Thousands upon thousands of newspaper journalists have lost their jobs in recent years in endless rounds of layoffs and buyouts. What happens in the next act?  

I met a Michigan grad this week who recently got laid off from her newspaper job. She’s moved home to live with her parents while she looks for work. We had a familiar conversation about how you don’t choose a career known for its lousy pay and rotten hours if you don’t feel a calling, and the prospect of leaving it can be deeply depressing. I cried big boo-hoos when I left a profession that’s not something you do but something you are.

But AJR offers hope. In an unscientific survey of journalists who’ve lost their jobs, they found this.

While the overwhelming majority – 85 percent – say they miss working at a paper, they are often happier in their new jobs. Sixty-two percent tell us they had been satisfied in their old newspaper jobs; 78 percent report being satisfied in their new jobs.

So there’s the moral of the story. You can still be nostalgic for the life you left behind, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also enjoy whatever comes next.

Trying to figure out what to do after your last career dried up? Forbes offers some ideas of $100k jobs that don’t require a college degree. I’m not sure real estate agent is the best choice right now, but maybe it’ll spark some ideas anyway.

Here’s a question for my pals who’ve left newspapers: In retrospect, how do you feel about that decision?