Slogging Through A Summer Job

My worst summer job was noteworthy not in that it was uniquely awful but rather that it was ubiquitously awful.

If you grew up in an even semi-rural area of the Midwest in the 1970s, at the ripe age of 13, you had matured enough to spend part of your summer detasseling corn. I was enough of a city girl in my town of 13,000 not to know what a corn tassel was. I did, however, know that in 1978 the $2.65 an hour that detasseling paid far exceeded the 50 cents an hour I was paid for babysitting. That was a lot of 45rpm singles and Tiger Beats; so, when the opportunity arrived, I signed up.

It was perplexing that first day in the cornfield to hear the foreman talk about male and female corn, noting the rows that needed to be detasseled for maximum pollination and crop yield. Male and female corn? I saw none of the familiar markers of such distinction and snobbishly found the designations absurd.

Quickly I learned that the most painful aspect of detasseling was not the hard work, not the sunburn in the pre-SPF 50 days, it was not even the early morning walk to the pick-up point. No, the most painful part of detasseling is that corn hurts. Its leaves are stiff with sharp, cutting edges and a texture akin to a cat’s tongue. It cuts. It cuts your legs, your arms, your neck, your face. And where it cuts, those with sensitive skin such as mine were treated to a dose of “corn poisoning,” an itchy, painful red rash. Nothing ruined a good tan faster.

In the four summers I detassled, I learned to keep my arms covered with a light shirt and trudged on. Yet one day in the cornfield stands apart. We spent one 90-degree day working in a field beside which sat a massive mound of pig poo, that farmer’s fertilizer of choice. As large as a dump truck, it added a special odor to our day. It was the next day, however, that I remember most vividly.

Overnight, it rained. It poured. The skies opened up. And in that torrential downpour, the mound of poo was beaten flat. Flat and spread throughout the field. As we walked the rows that day, the wet, sticky, stinky pig excrement pulled our shoes from our feet with every step. Finally, we gave up, parked our shoes at the end of a row, and schlepped for the remainder of the day barefoot, slogging our way, literally, through crap for a day’s pay.

The Promise of No

We learn it before we toddle. No. It comes with a frown and sometimes a wag of the finger. It sounds sharper, louder. No. The fun stops here.

And so it goes, through childhood, adolescence, young adulthood. No. You can’t stay up late, you can’t go out tonight, you can’t drink yet. No. All that you want seems to live on the other side of ‘No.’ It is, by definition, negative, but I think it also gets a bad rap.

In the big, bad, scary real world, ‘No’ is the engine of progress. The route to the next big thing pauses, more often than not, on ‘No’ before moving forward. Does your boss like this design, this idea, this proposal? No? Don’t fret. 

For an adult, ‘No’ is transformed. The ‘No’ of work is in some cases a statement of belief. We can do better. You can do better. 

At work, I say ‘No’ a lot. It’s entirely possible that I have a reputation for being impossible as a result. I don't particularly care. There are times that ‘No’ wears me out as much as the people to whom I’m saying it. Often, it would be easier to say ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ But I know that on the other side of one more ‘No,’ there’s something bigger, better, faster, more effective. It’s where we need to be, so ‘No’ it is yet again.

Over the past handful of months, I’ve worked on a project that has been beset with many ‘No’s along the way. I have returned to the drawing board more times than I can count. It’s also been one of the most rewarding projects of my career. To work with people who care enough to say ‘No,’ who believe in what we are doing and our collective ability to do better has been challenging, empowering, and exciting. It has been a gift. We’re inching closer to the Promised Land of ‘Yes,’ but it’s all of the ‘No’s along the way that will make ‘Yes’ especially sweet.

So the next time your project merits a ‘No,’ sigh, curse under your breath (or out loud if that’s more your style), then take a deep breath, square your shoulders, and have at it again. Because that ‘No’ is really a promise of a great ‘Yes’ that’s lingering around the corner.

Mr. Sorkin goes to The Newsroom

For the season two premier of “The Newsroom,” I couldn’t stand it. Even though the show was recording, I had to turn from the tied Cubs vs. Cardinals game (ultimately debacle) to watch live so that I could Tweet along. Aaron Sorkin may be the only living writer for whom I would do so, but the prospect of reveling in Sorkinisms with fellow fans was too tempting to pass up.

Having watched the first season pre-Twitter, I was saddened to see that the #Newsroom tweets were largely the snark of “hate watchers,” who had tuned in merely to spew. I love a good snark as much as the next guy, but, for me, Sorkin is sacred ground.

Sure, he can let fly with the anvils. Sure, the preachy gets… preachy, but then, there’s a scene with a guy about a thing that gives me chills, makes me tear up, and emboldens me to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and boom, I’m hooked again.

Thinking about the criticisms, the left leaning political pulpit from which he chooses to pontificate, the cries that he can’t write strong female characters, even the bleating that he plagiarizes (himself) too much, it seems that there’s a different bar he’s expected to clear. He calls himself a playwright. His language is often that of a poet. Given my proclivity for quoting him and dotting my own conversation with Sorkinisms, I have no doubt that if I wrote like that, I’d plagiarize myself, too.

He’s a modern day Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote of Gatsby’s smile, “It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” Sorkin affords something of that to the characters he loves, and it seems what the writer himself most covets from his audience. Forget the missed deadlines, the drug busts, remember this, he whispers, gesturing to his finished product. It is everything.

Even more than Fitzgerald, who longed for an idolized America even as it receded day by day before him, Sorkin is a modern day Frank Capra. Although one directed and the other writes, both tout a flag-waving, earnest, pure view of American democracy. Sorkin’s “The American President” explicitly embraces the “Capraesque” quality of a first visit to the White House. Both artists drink the red, white, and blue Kool-Aid.

Like Capra, the first Hollywood director to garner billing “above the title,” Sorkin is a writer of such note that it is Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom,” despite credits that bill the show after the title as “Created by….” That stature is such stuff as targets are made on. Clearly, the temptation of the target is too much for the haters to withstand.

As for “The Newsroom,” there’s an adrenaline rush when news happens, and you work in news, that he captures. When big things happen in the world, there’s a part of me that still wants to be there, doing that again. For me, the quality, the passion, the craft of his writing, the music of his dialogue all outweigh the occasional wince-inducing diatribe. The man can write. And as long as he continues to put words to paper, I’ll be there to listen.

STEM vs. Liberal Arts: A Fool's Debate

For as long as I can remember, it sometimes seems, I’ve been enmeshed in the Great Debate waged in the halls of academia and beyond. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) vs. Liberal Arts. Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs. Practical vs. Frivolous. Marketable vs. Value-less. Oh my god it’s time to stop.

The number of hours I have spent on this debate is staggering. The number of column inches from academic to popular press dedicated to the subject is patently absurd. How many stories on other topics were never written to take another ride on this merry-go-round? To those who decry the waste of resources aimed at the Liberal Arts, here’s a tip. You will never win that battle in the media because the writers and editors are largely Liberal Arts grads themselves. In fact, some of those media outlets, not to mention the corporations which own them, have Liberal Arts grads at the helm.

To be honest, I don’t quite get why the STEM disciplines like to talk smack about those of us who choose Liberal Arts. Jealousy? Are we following a passion you don’t feel free to pursue? Surely it’s not some nerd’s revenge, because, trust me, we aren’t the other side. We’re the band geeks, the theater geeks, the dorks in AP English, the school newspaper and History Club dweebs. We aren’t the cool kids who picked on you, not even close. You’ll find them elsewhere.

I am reminded of a newspaper ad that hung in the office of my economics professor father. It read. “If a man says, it’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing.... It’s the money.” Given that logic, I can only presume that myopic STEM-exclusive advocates would prefer that all resources were directed to their disciplines. If it makes you feel any better, look at it this way. As long as Liberal Arts majors endure, lots and lots of smart people (yes, there are smart people studying Liberal Arts majors—lots and lots of them) won’t be playing in your STEM sandbox and competing for your STEM jobs. You’re welcome.

Here’s a newsflash though. Liberal Arts majors don’t sit around and suggest that education, nay, the world, would be better if the STEM disciplines just went away. I love my iPhone and appreciate the computer scientists who make it work. I also love the industrial designers who make it beautiful and the interaction designers who make it lovely to use. I’m Team Steve Jobs; the intersection of art and technology works well for me. Keep at it STEMsters. Those of us in the Liberal Arts are perfectly fine with you.

So maybe it’s time to get off our asses.

The world, you see, is an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, complex place. We need people with STEM prowess be competitive. We need a Liberal Arts dimension to lend broad perspectives, to understand, appreciate, and enrich our world. It is the Liberal Arts, as well, which offer immortality. Memory is fleeting. Today’s innovations are replaced by tomorrow’s inspiration. But the words which capture what we’ve accomplished, how we have lived, all that we have done, these stories are the legacy we pass on to future generations. And these are the bastion of the Liberal Arts.

STEM grads, if you’re still bent upon deriding our disciplines and devaluing our relevance, take a moment. Look up the corporate ladder. And don’t be shocked if you find out there’s an English major up there who owns your ass.

On Simple Lives and Shared Experience

Sammy Terry died this week. 

Well, more accurately, Bob Carter, who created and portrayed Sammy Terry, died this week.

If you grew up in central Indiana in the 1960s and '70s, you remember Sammy Terry. Every Friday, following the evening news, Sammy Terry (yes, read cemetery and you would be correct) sat up in his coffin for a turn as host of Nightmare Theatre on channel 4, WTTV, the independent station in Indianapolis. 

With a ghostly laugh, skullcap, overly thick make-up, and his companion, the unquestionably plastic spider, George, Sammy Terry welcomed viewers to the night’s foray into classic Hollywood B-movie horror flicks. “The Mummy,” “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” “Swamp Thing,” these are among the films that made us squeal and powered us through sleepovers giggling well into the morning.

During my elementary school days, all of us knew the programming of WTTV. In those pre-cable days, the independent station stood alongside the three major networks and public television as the sum total of our viewing options. In our younger days, Janie and Cowboy Bob hosted our cartoons, but it was Sammy Terry who ushered us into junior high. 

Bob Carter’s passing led me to You Tube where, of course, there were a handful of Sammy Terry videos to be found. He was as deliciously campy as I remembered, over the top just like the Adam West Batman of my youth whom I adored. Watching the clips brought back memories in the family room of my childhood, the old Zenith TV, the girls I’ve not thought of recently who would remember with the same smile as I did.

It was a simpler time. Five TV channels to choose from, not 500. We walked to school, and our parents didn’t worry that we might not make it there unscathed. We rode our bikes beyond watchful eyes. We anticipated that one day each year when “The Wizard of Oz” was on TV. All experiences my children did not enjoy.

I wonder in 20 years what their shared memories will be. With our 500 channels, banks of knowledge at our fingertips through devices we drop in our pockets, what shared experience is there when each of us customizes our own experience in every moment? What memories will they carry that they know their friends will share as well? Remember when we were in junior high and Facebook was for kids not moms and grandmas? Remember how our parents shuttled us through our over-scheduled lives, and we shut the world out when we popped our earbuds in? It will be interesting to see, and to see what that means for them.

For now, I smile and think of the man who greeted us with a ghostly laugh and a plastic spider when simple entertainment was the warm blanket in which we wrapped ourselves.

RIP Sammy Terry. RIP Bob Carter.

Sammy Terry opening scene