My mom graduated from the University Of Oregon Journalism school in 1979, and during her time there she was named Pac-10 Student Sportswriter Of The Year for her work on The Daily Emerald. She used to type her articles and term papers on an ancient manual typewriter, and when she wasn’t using it, I used to haul that piece of heavy equipment into my bedroom and bang out my own stories. The process of feeding a blank sheet of paper in the top and turning out an actual page full of paragraphs seemed downright magical to me then, and it still does, all these words and years later.
My mom went on to become a magazine editor, and through my years of school she always proved to be my toughest editor and critic. Many was the essay I showed her that came back covered in red ink, bleeding out a slow death from all those professional proofreading marks. She pushed me hard, and I love her for that.
In high school, Mr. Jonathan Siegle took me under his lovably pompous wing and taught me the finer points of writing. I vividly remember trudging to Springfield High for early Saturday (!) morning grammar and composition study sessions, which seems absolutely inconceivable to me now, but it happened. After I made my way to the UofO Journalism school, Ann Maxwell-Keding proved to be a generous, patient, and indispensable instructor (Ken Metzler played the same role for my mom during her time there). Ann’s advice and guidance literally changed my life…
I took five years to graduate from the UofO, and my fifth year was better than the first four combined. I bought cheap records, drank good beer, smoked stinky pot, and just like a hippie/student/derelict version of my seven year-old self, sequestered myself away for hours every day and wrote. Love poems to the universe, open letters about Jimi Hendrix, philosophical expositions on the true meaning of chess, short stories about cats with superpowers, taglines for drinking straw manufacturers, crude greeting cards – really any and all babble that burbled up, I wrote it down.
At that time I was interested in writing about music, but decided I didn’t know diddly squat (true enough) and I should wait until I was 35, and put in the requisite amount of listening before I started using permanent ink to jot down my opinions. I spent the intervening years listening to everything I could get my ears on, and in the meantime, the internet and blogs were developed, making it easy for people like me to publish writings for an actual living, breathing audience.
Somewhere in the early evening of this fine Saturday, this blog will record its 1,000,000th hit. That nice round number seemed like a good spot to pause and say thanks. Beyond the three mentors already noted, I have to thank you for providing me with an audience for my rantings and ravings. You’ve been a bigger audience than I expected, and a better audience than I deserve. Thanks for correcting my egregious errors, adding flavor in the comments section, and sharing your passion for music. Thanks for stopping by, and most of all, thanks for reading…
Listen: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) [Sly & The Family Stone]
