It brightened my day....

Some of you may have noticed I was MIA for a while. The major reason was a major upheaval in my newspaper life, an upheaval which isn't completely over yet.

No, I'm not giving details, but I have been rather (okay, completely) shell-shocked and feeling down on the biz.

SO......

I stop by a friend's house today, and she wanted to show me a scrapbook someone put together for her son, who just graduated high school. He was a star basketball player on one of the schools I cover.

Included in this scrapbook (which was beautifully assembled) were all the stories I wrote about the team this season, and all the pictures I took which had this player in them. Basketball was just a part of the book, but there they were, my stories and pics.

This may sound corny to some of you, (and I don't care ) but I was really touched. Here is this beautiful keepsake for this great kid, and I had an indirect part of it. Just when I was feeling so down on the newspaper business, here comes a reminder that what we do does mean something.

I realize that we do not write for clippings to be put in a scrapbook and nor would I ever attempt to write for scrapbook clippings, but with what I had to deal with lately, to see what I wrote meant enough to someone to save and put in a memory book brightened my day.

 

that's a great story, girl friend. that stuff's what life's all about. 8) 8) 8)

 

ditto. wish there was something more profound to say.



hey, at least you didn't find your mug all blown up on a page with big X marks on it, right?

 

Mem’ries,
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were

Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?

Mem’ries, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...

The way we were...
The way we were...

 

There are those who believe that every vocation has an element of service to mankind in it. You've done your service if someone cherishes your work that way. May not be viewed as the utmost in journalism by some, but you've made a contribution that someone thought was valuable. Plus, when you left at the end of the day, there was proof you were there. No shame in any of that.

 

Actually, I disagree with your premise that we don't write for scrapbooks.
We do -- at least if you write preps.
No, you might not write a gamer or rip a coach with that in mind. But you just showed who you write for. 30 years from now, no one's going to remember the game -- but the ones you wrote about. You do it for a feature so someone can show their grandkids that their 280 pound grandpa did clear 6-4 in the high jump back in the day.
You might not think about it and that might not be the reason you do it. But, at least with preps, you write for someone's scrapbook every day.

 

Rosie, I had a similar experience when I was leaving my first gig and bound for the left side of the country. A young hockey player wanted me to see his scrapbook and know that I had been a big part of his athletic career. I carry that memory with me and remember it when I get disillusioned with the business, which is a big thing for me right now, too.
If I never write another story again, I'll know I played a role in making some kids feel pretty damn good about themselves on some days.

 

As always, you guys are wonderful! :-*

I would be lying if I said that the thought that something I write would wind up in somebody's scrapbook never crossed my mind. It does. I even wrote a column touching on that subject a couple years ago when the town the newspaper is in celebrated its centennial. The column had to do with how we had researched old issues of our paper for centennial coverage and how it hit like a ton of bricks that in another 100 years some other person would be reading my words to do the same.

To see the feature I wrote on this player when he reached 1,000 career points spread over two pages, along with the photos was pretty cool, and extremely humbling.

And goosebump moment number two happened just a little while ago after I checked my messages when I got home. I received a call from an older woman who read last week's column (it was about the camp I worked at, heck, grew up at, and is now closing). This camp is almost 200 miles away from here, but she used to work there and was wondering if I would be willing to meet with her and 'talk camp.' I never, ever thought I would hear from someone in this area who worked there, let alone heard of it! I know it's legit because of what she said in the message -- only someone who had worked at that camp would have used some of the terms she did. I'm going to call her Wednesday. And I'll even spring for the coffee at the cafe.

For today, I am definitely feeling much better about this business than I have for quite some time.

Oh, and Sxy, I'm sure there are a few out there who wished I had a big X on my mug!

 

Rosie, glad to hear you got a bit of sunshine to break through your recent gloom. Good luck with whatever it is that's been happening in your career.

I also wanted to say I love the original Twins logo. Nice to see it again after all these years. It took me a long time as a kid to figure out what the "TC" meant on the old caps. Actually, I think it was my dad who told me.

 

Great post. Rosie, I hope everything works out for you.

 

Back in my community newspaper editor days, I wrote a column about a young man killed in a car wreck that happened right outside our office and I was one of the first people on the scene. In the article, I wrote about how I felt like such a voyeur and all I could think about was the boy's family (I was not much older than he). I pointed out that simply by writing my column two weeks after the accident I worried that I was worsening the family's pain.

The next day I received by special delivery a beautifully hand-written letter from the boy's mom, saying that my column was perfect and touched the family so and that she was copying it and putting it in as the last page of a scrapbook of the boy's memories.

Twenty years later that remains the greatest moment of my professional life.

 

I've had a couple of experiences like that and it gives me a charge to hear about it whenever I do. One, a guy I didn't get along with all that well when he played happened to hit the series winning home run that season. I wrote the game story. Years later, I bumped into his wife at a Wall of Fame induction ceremony and she told me she had it laminated and hung up at their home.
It's nice to know that your work, and that moment, meant so much to them.

Another time was just this past season. Two cousins scored key goals for the high school hockey team in this one particular game. I made note of the the fact they were cousins, their mothers were sisters and so on.
Their grandmother came up to me later in the season and told me they had laminated a copy of the story and placed it at the grave of their grandfather, her late husband. That's not why we do what we do, but it's nice when it means that much to people