Running for Your Life: Paper Boy

In the late 1960s, I was a paper boy. I delivered the now-defunct Toronto Telegram on Saturdays to home subscribers in Owen Sound, Ontario, and loved to accompany my pal, Greg Dunham, on his daily route, delivering the Owen Sound Sun Times. Ten years later, I would work at the Sun Times as a cub reporter, and inevitably find myself in the newsboy and newsgirl room, where the papers – hot off the press – were stacked before they were picked up after school for home delivery.

I’ve been in the news business now through almost four decades, reporting and editing for weeklies and dailies, mostly. From the Prescott Journal weekly in Eastern Ontario to the Chelsea Clinton News weekly in West Side Manhattan to the Wall Street Journal to, currently, the New York Post.

At work, I write on a computer now – originally paper in a typewriter – but I don’t read the finished product on one. I’ve tried but it’s ink that runs in my veins so I read newspapers and hardback and paperback books. When it comes to something beyond one hundred words, I print it out. For me the type isn’t real unless I can run my fingers over the page. Especially when it comes to papers. I know too much about headlines and body text, about “widows” and “orphans.” I know when a headline will fit. There are no headlines on the Internet.

When I’m running in the park, I think at times the trees are shuddering when I pass. For those with a bent toward environmentalism, as a lifelong newsman I’ve been a party to the killing of hundreds of thousands of trees. Not something I’m proud of.

The millions of screen readers aren’t a threat to trees. But they are a threat to the beauty of long form writing. With the change in reading delivery systems – from real books to e-books, from newspapers to news websites – comes a restriction to an elimination of a certain kind of writing. The shorter attention span of screen readers spawns ever briefer fiction, ever sparer news items. Keep it busy, keep it moving.

Me, I long to return to a slow afternoon in the newspaper supply room, the papers piling up. Failing that, there’s nothing better than sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading the paper, if it’s a good one, every single article on every single page.

Next: Running for Your Life: Throwback Throwback Thursdays  

Running for Your Life: Running Outside Again!

It might not happen every day. It would be foolish to think so given the kind of winter we’ve had: Blizzards, snowstorms that defied forecasts, ice cover for weeks unlike anything I’ve seen in my 27 years in New York City. Except for the one colossally botched forecast of a non-blizzard that nonetheless shut down the subway and exposed the Keystone Kops media for what they are (“I’m standing in a snowbank here and you can see that my feet are entirely covered by snow!”), Gotham weather has been worse than expected every single day for two months.

That screwy pattern is continuing, but instead of snow and sleet, we’ve rain and clouds. The sun as likely to appear as your clown uncle you loved as a child who never failed to make you belly laugh – something you didn’t do very often – but he didn’t come around to see you hardly at all.

For me, it’s back to the birds. To attempt in this new season to channel those wee things as I finally get back to running on the trails in Prospect Park. Today (March 17) I saw my first cardinal in weeks! And a blue jay, looking resplendent as they do, none the worse for winter wear.

The trees are alive with their sounds. Yesterday (March 16) M and I saw two playful robins in the air, flying united, flutter-balling, which would sound naughty if they were mammals, but as birds it’s meant to describe the frenzy of mating, the best sign I can think of at the moment that after a seemingly endless winter spring has sprung.

 Next: Running for Your Life: Paper Boy

Running for Your Life: On Making Modern Love

It is has simply overwhelming the response to my wife Mary’s essay in the Sunday Styles Section of the New York Times. If you missed it, here it is: http://nyti.ms/1EqyZJL.

My great pal and New York Post writing and editing partner Mike Tully told me yesterday (March 15) that after reading this essay he felt compelled to preorder Mary’s new novel, The Jazz Palace http://bit.ly/1u2XLhD. He said he had every intention of ordering it on or near its official publication date. But that the beauty and craft of the Modern Love column was too enticing, so rather than let another minute go by, he stopped and preordered the book online.

Word to the wise: A preorder is an order. The only difference is, you will get the book sooner than the person who waits until the official date of April 7 to push that button.

To all those readers out there, don’t delay. Check out the book tab in the link above. And do like Mike. I swear you won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: Finally, Running Outside Again !

Running for Your Life: Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary II

Welcome to the second in a series of arguments of just why Liberals Are, yes, Dead Tired of Hillary!

Three blogposts ago, you’ll find the first in the series. That argument gave the domestic political reasoning of why Liberals Are Dead Tired of Hillary.

For the foreign political reasoning, I give you the highlights of a crystal-clear damning of Saint Hillary (aka, Deleter of the Free World, Post cover, March 11) distilled from a review of two books, Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton, and HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, written by Jackson Lears in the Feb. 5 edition of the London Review of Books.

To wit:

• Despite [the differing styles of the Bush and Clinton candidacies], the intent is the same: rewarding friends and punishing enemies, the latter with such precision that one of her staffers fears Hillary will come to seem little different from “Nixon in a pantsuit.”

• Exceptionalists (as in, America must honor its unique responsibility for global leadership) like Clinton are unable to conceive of a multipolar world where some nations might prefer to go their own way.

• While she admits she “got it wrong” in voting for the invasion of Iraq, she shows no sign of having learned from her mistake … Clinton’s courtship of [General David Petraeus] reveals a deeper amnesia. Like most Washington policymakers, she has forgotten the failure of counterinsurgency in Vietnam.

• The exceptionalist outlook transcends party ideology; it is embraced by the Clintons, the Bushes and the entire Washington establishment. We badly need a public debate that challenges this consensus. But we are unlikely to have it, given the widespread assumption that Hillary Clinton is the only alternative to the all too real nightmare of Republican rule. (From a letter written in reply to a reader, March 19 edition)

Next: Running for Your Life: Finally, Outside Again !

Running for Your Life: Live at "The Jazz Palace"

Now’s the time. The worst of the winter is past and official spring is only spitting distance away. Winter had such a hold on us this year that we could be forgiven for losing sight of the fact that we were very nearly upon the season of the speakeasy: to toss our toques and scarves aside and don our spats and flapper dresses.

 ’Cause we’re about to be live at The Jazz Palace http://bit.ly/1AWKSSS.

The link tells you everything you need to know. First, that my wife Mary Morris is about to share with the rest of the world the novel, “The Jazz Palace.” Soon the characters I’ve lived with for years – think Don Draper of “Mad Men,” Walter White of “Breaking Bad” – will be fictive flesh.

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the world thinks of Benny Lehrman, the drama king of “The Jazz Palace.” But like “MM” and “BB,” you might be drawn more to others on the novel’s stage: Napoleon Hill. Or Pearl Chimbrova. Opal or Anna. Or Mister Marcopolis.

Click on the events button http://bit.ly/1AWKSSS. It will be filling with details in the days and months ahead. Your town or city isn’t on the list? Get in touch with your local bookstore. In a book club? Put it on the upcoming reading list. Maybe the author herself will come to discuss it.

Be ahead of the curve, because in no time at all the book will be everywhere. Everyone is invited to be there. To be live at “The Jazz Palace.”    

Next: Running for Your Life: Liberals Dead Tired of Hillary II