Journalism for the 21st Century; Revitalizing Journalism Education

Walter Cronkite is a thing of the past. He was called "the most trusted man in America", but today's journalists have lost credibility and the respect of viewers. The rise of celebrity reporters, the Web, 24-hour cable and its unrelenting appetite for content, and bloggers are just some of the factors and forces that changed American journalism.

Read the rest of the story here.

Happy Childless Mother's Day

Sunday is Mother's Day, but Karen has decreed today as Childless Mother's Day--for woman who don't have children, but who are maternal...

See why I like her so much?

Take the power away from big corporations and put it in the hands of the people like Karen and you'll get a much more interesting world...

Bomb scare

Yesterday I got an IM from Al telling me there was a bomb scare at her school. Classes were cancelled, and buildings were closed.

Most people I told just shrugged it off; it's probably a hoax, most said or thought. The thought crossed my mind, but when you're a parent you don't think like that. Well, maybe some parents do; I don't.

But it is our world, isn't it? More crazies are out there, and the chance that someone we love more than life itself could die from some nutcase...am I overreacting? I think ten years ago I might have been, but the world is continually changing, and I don't think people get it...I don't think most Americans get it, and certainly not the somnolent ones in the suburbs.

Bomb-sniffing dogs didn't find anything, and classes resumed.

I'm hating the world more and more. I just don't like what I see.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway

They tore down the Central Artery here in Boston and put up a parking lot.

When they tore down the ugly girders of the elevated Central Artery for the Big Dig, the plan was to make that huge swath of land between downtown Boston and the waterfront a green space named after Rose Kennedy.

But what are they doing? Just bricking it over. It's looking more and more like Government Center, much criticized for being just this barren open spot that's hotter than Hades in the summer and feels like Antarctica in the winter.

Biggie Rat on Washington Street/Downtown Crossing

Was sitting over on Washington Street around noon today. I like to just sit and people watch. Some other guy who was sitting there around those statues of the Irish immigrants just kept talking to me. Straight out of a David Mamet play. The guy was definitely on to something. Or doing something. He was whittling. A letter opener, he said, for a friend. Who the hell uses letter openers? And was he hell-bent on getting me to talk.

"You're not from Boston, are you?" he asked, pointing to my boots. Let's call him, Biggie Rat.
"Yeah," I answered.
"You don't see many boots like that," Biggie Rat said.

Stuff like that.

Then...some other definitely twisted individual came up. Long hair, bad teeth, cheap cologne, talking, talking, talking. Dude, what have you been popping, snorting, sniffing, shooting?

I'm actually enjoying myself by now.

They were talkng about raising kids. Sheesh, what poor child gets raised by these two? I'd rather be raised by wolves. It started with the gum. Hippie offered Biggie Rat some gum. They did a thing about how gum isn't what it used to be, which led to kids eating sweets, which lead Biggie Rat to talk about how "they" don't allow his daughter to have sweets at home which led to Hippie talking about his nephew who is fat because his brother and his wife would keep sweets away from him.

"I saw it coming," he said, grinning, showing his gross teeth.

Then...Hippie noticed some guy. He had just been killing time. Got real serious. Biggie Rat and Hippie quickly palaver, quietly, to the side. Hippie goes up to what looked like a homeless person. I turned around again and they were both gone.

A few more minutes, and Biggie Rat suddenly stood up. "Oh shit, I have to be somewhere in a half hour," he said.

"What did you say your name was?" he asked.

I didn't.

"I'm Mark," Biggie Rat said, offering his hand.

"John," and off he went, crossing to the street into the subway. I checked my wallet and watch.

Vicky McGehee: a writer's a writer

Behind every successful person, there's a good chance there's a writer.

Speechwriters. Ghost writers. Songwriters.

First, writers are the same, no matter what business they're in. I've found this out from hanging around more copywriters than I care to count, and novelists, short story writers, travel writers, reporters...God, the list goes on.

Then this a.m. I was reading this story about Vicky McGehee in the current issue of American Songwriter.



She wrote the lyrics behind a lot of Gretchen Wilson's hits, including Pocahontas Proud, Not Bad for a Bartender, One Bud Wiser, All Jacked Up, Skoal Ring and When I Think About Cheatin'. I Googled "lyrics, Gretchen Wilson" and on most sites I visited there is no attribution to McGehee, even in Wilson's entry on Wikipedia, not that that's any standard. McGehee is listed as one of the composers on Answer.com.

McGehee also wrote for Reba McEntire (Room to Breathe)" and Big & Rich (Holy Water).

But like I said, she's a writer. And being a writer, being who and what they are, I'm sure she's fine with it all as long as the checks don't bounce and there's a bottle around.

Spam in a can

Airbus built a super jumbo jet that can carry 550 passengers. Just the thought of being cooped up in a freaking metal tube with 449 sweating, smelly, crazy people blasting along at 40,000 effing feet gives me the fantods.

I'm claustrophobic as it stands. Most of the time I'm okay, but once I spent just about an entire trans-Pacific flight standing back by the bathrooms talking to other passengers and with my face pressed against the bulkhead porthole marveling at the Alaskan glaciers. I could have been taken for a freak, but I actually made a few friends on that flight. It was either that or get jammed smack dab in the middle of the center section and start hyperventilating.

But, I don't know what I'm grousing about...I don't have the money to go anywhere that thing's gonna fly, anyway. If I do get out of this country, I'll end up on some puddle-jumper airline run by some ex-pat who sells your ticket in a Quonset hut, loads your pack, flies the plane barely missing on takeoff the top of the volcano where the native population sacrifice virgins, bounces you to a landing, screeching to a halt at the end of a dirt runway with two tires blown in the middle of a banana plantation, and drinks tequila with you that night.

Credit card companies suck, too

Specifically, the ATT Universal Card and Chase, two companies I owe my next-born to.

These two companies now charge their customers, you and me who they are already making a ton of money off of because of their loan shark-like interest rates, $14.99 and $9.99 respectively if we want to pay our monthly payments over the phone.

Let me get this straight. You want me to pay you to pay you back?

And exactly how many billions of dollars did President Bush write off to our "allies" in the Iraq War?

Guardian angels

One of the hardest things for me when my ex-wife and I split up was not seeing my kids on a daily basis. I went from seeing them constantly to seeing them only a couple of times per week. My kids and I are very close. Very physical. When we sit on a couch and watch TV we’re all over each other like hamsters. We touch and kiss each other a lot. We say I love you a lot.

The one thing I missed so much was kissing them on the head right before I went to bed, and checking in on them first thing when I woke up.

I’m kind of a night owl. That’s actually an understatement; I’m a life-long insomniac. I go to sleep by staying up so late that I’m just exhausted. I used to do other things, but those days, hopefully, are over.

Last night I was in bed reading a script and I could hear Kathryn in her room. I got up and she was asleep. Dreaming, I suppose. I like being there when she’s asleep, just in case.

As good as it gets

I wish I had a water-proof latptop for the shower. It’s where I do my best thinking in the morning and the thoughts just flow. Ideas for everything, including this blog, just flow. Must be the combination of hot water and caffeine…

This weekend was as good as it gets. Saturday, Sue and I slept in. Morning coffee on the couch.

Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk

I hate talking on the phone, but Sue and I got to know each other back when by talking for sometimes two hours on the phone. Just before we’d hang up one of us would say, my God, do you know we’ve been talking for almost two hours...!?

It’s still the same.

She’s a remarkable woman. Funny, smart, pretty. She’s lived and traveled all over the world, speaks Japanese, Spanish, and a smattering of other languages including whatever it is they speak in Sri Lanka, and it ain’t Sri Lankan. She loves to read, and is curious about everything in life. When we first started seeing each other, I told her she really didn’t want me, that I was a train wreck. She told this to a friend who said, well, at least he’s a responsible train wreck. Score a point for me. I’m still not sure what she sees in me sometimes.

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
Don’t let ‘em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make ‘em be doctors and lawyers and such.

We headed into Boston, I love riding the train with her, just the feeling of moving with her by my side. Sue bound for South Station and New York, me for the South End and my acting class. Class is what I need to get motivated about acting again. Working with talented people who are serious about their craft. Not people trying to work out their neuroses on stage. Or running away from life in the real world by living “someone else’s” life on stage. This is the real world. This is the theater. Let’s not confuse the two. People looking for the truth in themselves and in the world.

That bears repeating: People not afraid of looking for the truth in themselves.

During class my oldest left a message that she’d stop by for dinner. I love shopping for food, knowing that a loved one will be eating. Choosing each morsel with care. Sustenance for the body as well as the soul is important. Feed the soul but don’t forget to feed the stomach, too. I’m not a bad cook; not great. Simple is best. Baked haddock with rice.

I said, I'd offer you a beer but I know you're underage. We laughed. She's away at school and has already told me about the fake ID business there. What do you drink when you go out? I asked. Long Island Ice Tea. I laughed.

And we talked. Al and I talk about everything. About family and being in love and her friends and her roommate and my friends. Hopes and dreams. I’m 51 and she’s almost 19, and we’re alike in so many ways because in so many ways we’re starting our lives. Never lose that: that sense of newness and your ideals and wanting to always live life to the fullest.

Then she left to go visit a friend who just had a baby. New beginnings and lives everywhere.

So Saturday night I stayed home alone and played guitar. Does that sound sad? Being alone on a Saturday night? No, I was content. A day filled with loved ones and learning new things about myself and my art, which is just really another word for passions. And toward the end, I sat on the floor of my apartment surrounded by guitars and scribbled notes and downloaded notes and books, my dog drowsing next to me, after discovering new ways to get sounds from an acoustic guitar and it had so much to do with how I was feeling and what I had experienced that day. That is finding truth, and it reflecting in your art.

Sunday was in Boston with my other daughter. She’s the city kid. I took her to my office and showed her around. We wandered the south part of the city, froze to death, had chowder at the Black Rose, a place for tourists but Kathryn and I are so at home in Boston that we live in our own little world. Tourists are like greenhead flies on the beach in the summer: annoyances.

The train ride home was a sleepy one.

USS John F. Kennedy -- Boston

Was in Boston yesterday (Sunday) wandering around with my daughter. The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy was in port, its last ever stop here since it's steaming south to be decommissioned. I've seen it before, from the water in the harbor. It's pretty impressive, especially when you're looking up at it from a 22-foot sailboat. Yesterday we started to walk to see if we could take a tour, but after a while turned around. It didn't seem worth it. That part of Boston isn't very pretty, and the crowd not worth fighting.

If you've never been on board a warship like that, it's worth the experience. They are impressive, awe-inspiring pieces of war technology. It boggles the mind what they can do -- kill in the most violent ways possible, and when you're on-board or even just near them, their sheer size and complexity humbles you. I've visited the USS Massashusetts, a decommissioned battleship in Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts a number of times. I remember feeling a mix of curiosity and depression. So amazing, what the greatest minds of our century came up with. But I couldn't help thinking that it's too bad we couldn't have harnassed all that brain power and money to cure cancer or alleviate some of the suffering in the world, instead of adding to it. Now, some people would argue that I'm naive. No I'm not. I know all about the world we live in.

I'm just saying, is all, that it would be nice. I'm not saying it's practical or it will happen. I'm just saying it would be nice.

The brave and the scared

I’ve gotten some good feedback about stepping back and taking a deep breath and being extremely open and personal on such an open forum like this blog.

Oh, but be so careful about what you ask for in life. You just may get it. People who feel in this life are setting themselves up to really get hurt at times. You can’t feel the good without experiencing the bad, too. The harder you feel the good, the meaner the bad will feel. It just works that way.

But that’s the risk you take. And you don’t have to take that risk. I know a few people who ignore everything about their lives. They put off addressing what I would consider the important things in their life — personal relationships and growth — until things just fester and go past the point of no return. Then, they just move on, leaving hurt and ruin in their wake, and then they get a whole new set of friends or even families and do it all over again while the old set is left to clean up their mess. These people are hurt, damaged people, and you have to tread carefully around them. They’re fearful of intimacy – and I don’t mean sexual intimacy because sometimes they tend to confuse sex for love, but the closeness of, for instance, a friendship – and will lash out terribly because the fear makes them feel vulnerable and scared and threatened. The closer you get, the harder they lash out.

What does this have to do with feeling? And sharing our feelings and our life’s experience? We experience life through our feelings. And if we ignore them, or lie to ourselves about what we’re experiencing, nothing but hurt can come from it.

Let me repeat that: Nothing, and I mean nothing, but hurt can come from that.

Cut the DSS caseworker some slack redux

I rewrote the post from last month and the rewrite is running in today's MetroWest Daily News:

Four-year-old Rebecca Riley died in December after her parents gave her an overdose of medication, and DSS took a big hit. It’s natural when the system fails in such a dramatic way that criticism will follow. Commissioner Harry Spence, though, in a rare stance for a public official, held his ground when he said that the little girl didn’t fall through the cracks, citing agency procedures that were followed. He also said that, while child abuse deaths are rare in Massachusetts, they do occur and it’s not clear there’s much capacity in the department to alter that. In other words, mistakes happen. Mistakes happen in every quarter of life, and the thing about DSS is that the stakes are so high that when mistakes are made the repercussions are proportionally great and very visible.

DSS caseworkers are like the lineman on a football team. They spend their days in the trenches and you don’t notice them until they get beaten. And, like linemen, when they are beat it can be extremely visible. For the lineman, an opposing player gets through, and maybe it’s only one time during the entire game, but the pretty-boy quarterback is sacked and the opposing player does a victory dance on national TV. In the case of DSS, it usually means a child is dead and a politician is grandstanding for votes, or someone in the paper is calling for someone’s head.

What you don’t ever hear about are the daily struggles the typically overworked, underpaid caseworker has to manage. Most carry a caseload way over the recommended 18 cases. They have to. There are too many cases and too few caseworkers. They could have three or four major cases needing attention all in a day, all that would have serious repercussions like the death of a child if not handled correctly and immediately. Then there's the normal day-to-day work with clients, just keeping them going forward bit by bit. Keeping a father sober. Making sure a kid has some Christmas presents. Making sure a mother stays on her treatment plan. DSS, despite what people think, isn’t in the business of taking kids away from their parents. It’s in the business of first, protecting kids, and then trying to get parents to the point where they can have their kids back. No, it’s not a perfect system, but it is more perfect than the clients it deals with.

So as cold and calculating as it sounds, Rebecca Ripley didn’t slip through the cracks. When parents are as deeply troubled as hers, sometimes there just isn’t anything anyone can do. I do believe, though, that there are plenty of cases in Massachusetts that do slip through the cracks. There are plenty of cases that are marginal, that don’t get on the DSS radar screen. We all have seen families where things just seem kind of funny. A single, middle-aged parent continually parties hard and gets calls from her kid at two in the morning wondering where she is. What kind of life is that for a kid? It’s not life-threatening, but plenty of us know about the adverse affects of a lost childhood. Maybe there’s a kid who’s too clingy for her age. What’s that about? What’s causing that kid to not let go? With another kid you can see the sparks just snapping behind his eyes. Something’s not quite right; we know it. But there’s nothing we can do because we don’t have the hard proof.

The simple fact in our country is this: You need a license to own a dog, but anyone can have a kid. All it takes is one drunken night with a sailor, and a woman is pregnant and two people who never thought about taking care of another human being now are going to carry one of the biggest responsibilities on their shoulders. The child isn’t born out of love, but instead of selfish lust. And the selfishness remains throughout the course of the child’s life.

Many of the parents never felt the love of their own parents, so how are they expected to give love they never felt? And at best the child is cared for out of a practical sense of obligation. They are clothed, fed, sent to school, signed up for sports. All the bases are covered, the parent goes through the motions doing everything that all the other parents are doing, except that one special thing that makes the child know at the end of the day that she is wanted and loved. Kids know when that special something is missing; we all do. There’s no hiding it.

In the end, God willing, the child grows up with some serious, but treatable problems. As therapists like to say, the best thing parents can do is make sure their kids have enough sense to get themselves to the psychiatrist’s couch when they grow up. That means breaking established patterns that the dysfunctional parent brings to the family and facing some really nasty, deep-seated truths about themselves. It’s not easy. And it’s a problem for the individual flying under the DSS radar screen. The ones slipping through the cracks.

It's good to be king

A really nice feeling.

It's the end of (work)day Friday. I'll see Sue, my two daughters, Lulu, and Alice this weekend.

The women in my life. They take good care of me.

Real good care.

Pays my ticket when I speed.

Step back and take a DEEP BREATH

So…starting to get a little squeamish?

A co-worker told me that I was a little angry on this blog yesterday. A little? Hmm…darn it, I was going for a lot of angry; guess I’ll just have to work on that.

Another has said to me a couple of times that if I don’t want her to read this blog to just let her know. (K: it’s really okay. That’s what it’s for.)

I believe very strongly in the shared experience of life. That we’re all in this together. Not that we are all actually are connected in some mysterious DNA kind of way. But I think we, us, all of us, white, black, green, red, yellow, purple, old, young, gay, straight, bi, curly, believers, non-believers, male, female, and anything in-between, can lend a hand to one another just by cluing each other in on our personal experience of this reality we call life. That we have a heckuva lot more in common that we thought.

I mean, isn’t this what this Internet thang is supposed to be all about? Connecting? Reconnecting a world gone awry?

The digital world has connected us in so many ways, but the one thing it did was strip away all emotion. We’ll say things in email or respond to a blog in language that we would never say to a person face-to-face. All I’m trying to do is put the person back in the digital world.

I lived in a neighborhood where the woman across the street from me died, and I didn’t even know it. Didn’t know her, had no idea that she died until her son took over the house. Two doors down a man, a husband and father of two girls, slowly died of cancer and I knew about it, but didn’t know about it either. (Why were all these people dying in that neighborhood? Thank God I got out alive!) These momentous life events—death is a life event, we just don’t talk about it—and everyone looked the other way.

We work so closely together, but retain that “professional” distance. But what’s wrong with knowing that the person who you’re riding the elevator with has money problems? Gets depressed at times? Gets angry? Regarding yesterday’s blog, I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t angry about some of the things that have happened to me and that some people have done to me; there would be something wrong with me if I wasn’t. These really are just regular, everyday, human experiences. As are even the bigger, darker ones that we keep so secret. Shhh...divorce. Adultery. Alcoholism. Drug addiction. Serious mental illness. Nah, just normal human experiences, I'm sorry to say. It's like sex: We really make too big a deal out of things.

I was talking to Ryan Landry this morning, a founder of the Gold Dust Orphans. Ryan is a self-proclaimed 46-year-old queen, and said he doesn’t consider himself male or female. He considers himself human. Now there’s an interesting concept. He and I just this morning were talking about how he tries to show through drag, vaudeville, and burlesque the similarities we all have as human beings.

It’s a risk. I know it is. Not everyone’s going to buy into this. It’s weird, someone might say. Someone else might say, it’s interesting, but I couldn’t lay myself out there like that. I’m too shy. I’m too private. And there’s the inevitable, he’s psycho, run away.

Well, whatever. I repeat: Wasn’t the Internet supposed to bring us all together? One big digital world? Well, what about it? I mean, do you really want to use it for just selling cars and our used crap on e-bay?

The importance of black

March 1. The first day of the month. I hate the first day of the month. The rent check is due. Child support. Other kids’ expenses. The checking account that looked so hopeful with some serious numbers in it, (serious meaning there’s enough of a buffer that there is no chance of it getting overdrawn) is drained and I have to reach deep into savings that I hope to replace, but still don’t yet know how.

Hope. This world runs on hope. Most of us wouldn’t get out of the bed in the morning if it weren’t for hope.

I have no reason to complain, though, for two reasons: first, I dug my own financial grave, and therefore it's my responsibility to get myself out again. Oh, not that I didn’t have a little help, but that person isn’t going to own up to any responsibility. A true character out of a Tennessee Williams’ play, living inside her own head and fantasies. Or better yet, someone described best by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

This woman has made a selfish career out of ruining other’s lives, her ex-husband’s, her kids’, everyone near to her gets sucked into her little game — she’s so alluring, she plays so well, adept at really fooling others who have no idea of the emptiness and cruelty that reside inside her — then when things fizzle, as she calls it, she just moves on leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces of their lives. They’re called borderline personalities, and if you don’t know about them, Google the word and read about them. If you meet anyone who even remotely fits this description run, run for your life.

But I’m not bitter. LOL. Seriously, if I weren't, I wouldn’t be human.

But I do have one more reason not to complain. It’s in the bible: Where much is given, much will be expected. I have been given an extraordinary amount. I have my health; I feel good. I’m not dying of cancer like someone I know. Hell, I’m not dead, like others I know (Horseman, pass by.) I do have a means of getting along, perhaps not in a grand fashion, but not like the destitute one sees daily on the streets of Boston. I was given talent and drive; I’ve been taught to fish, rather than just given a fish. I been given the ability to enjoy beauty, and to find it everywhere I look, from a painting hung in the MFA to a book of literature to a piece of music to a gorgeous clear morning. But most importantly, I’ve been given loved ones, family and friends. Special people like my two daughters and Sue who love me, as I like to say, despite who I am. And good buddies like John and Baxter and Scott.

So, March 1. Totalling up the tally sheet here, some of it is in the red, other parts are deep in the black. The important parts are in the black.

In the Riverside

This is when I realized the US was doomed…

Maybe six years ago I found myself in the Riverside in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was late. I was tired. Not sleepy tired. Worn out tired. I was doing something that night that I facetiously called, putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Exchanging one pain for another. I thought I’d hit bottom, but the funny thing about life is just when you think you’ve hit your low point, you suddenly feel your stomach in your throat and you’re taking another free fall. There’s never a real bottom, only a series of lows that get deeper and deeper.

But sitting in that bar that night I didn’t know how low I’d gotten…only time would tell me that.

The band was made up of Thais belting out American pop tunes. I can’t remember a single one, though through the haze I do believe I remember something by The Doors. If it wasn’t The Doors, then it should have been. And as they played and sang those Western songs with such energy, not quite nailing the songs and not giving a damn one way or another that they weren’t but putting their own twist on them, I realized that the whole world that I knew was just a sitting duck for Asia. The whole Asian world was young and hot and charged, and the Western world, run by a bunch of old white men in suits, didn’t stand a chance. Young and quick over there, old and stupid over here. It’s only a matter of time.

Daddy's Junky Music

Man, there is a dearth of music stores here in Boston. Except for Daddy's Junky Music Store up on Mass. Avenue by Berklee (five T stops from where I work) there isn't one place where a poor boy can walk to at lunchtime to clear his head and get to know a few guitars and be back at his desk for bed check.

And that's kinda sad. Kind of means there isn't a whole lot going on 'round here, doesn't it?

Trying to get to heaven

There are aspects of my job, or maybe it's my mind, that lets me listen to music while I work.

Sometimes I get so jealous. God, I wish I could write like a lot of people, and Bob Dylan's one of them. How does he come up with stuff like this? Great lyrics. Simple melody.

Something just resonates. Maybe I've lived too hard, but I get it...I definitely get it. I get it like my buddy, Scott, and I finish each other's sentences.


Trying to Get to Heaven

The air is getting hotter
There's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn't haunt me like it did before
I've been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

When I was in Missouri
They would not let me be
I had to leave there in a hurry
I only saw what they let me see
You broke a heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
I've been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

People on the platforms
Waiting for the trains
I can hear their hearts a-beatin'
Like pendulums swinging on chains
When you think that you lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I'm just going down the road feeling bad
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

I'm going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don't know what "all right" even means
I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary-Jane
Miss Mary-Jane got a house in Baltimore
I been all around the world, boys
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door

Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I'll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
Some trains don't pull no gamblers
No midnight ramblers, like they did before
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door

$1 or a smile

A man held up a sign this morning asking for either a smile or a dollar. I grinned, and I'm not sure at what--either the sheer delight of someone, anyone, trying desperately to spread some cheer to the people in this city who can be so fashionably cold and aloof, or his bravado for asking for a buck. Forget spare change, this guy is looking for hard cash. Good for him, I thought. He's thinking big. If you don't ask you won't get it. You could hear in his volume and see in his grandiose motions that he was pushing up against something really big, something big he was fighting. Something told me Fellowship. Something about his overly optimistic view of his fellow creatures, something that I've been struggling with lately.

"You got the idea," he yelled at me. I walked over to him, knowing I did have a couple of dollar bills in my pocket. I knew that because I have to collect them for the parking lot at the train station. I value those pieces of scrap paper. But I could give up one for this guy.

"Here ya go," I said, "what are you up to?"

"Well," he replied, "hopefully by the end of the day I'll have a job."

"What do you do?" this copywriter for Buick asked. Hell, maybe we have something in common, I thought, but please don't tell me you're an out-of-work writer.

"I'm a dishwasher," he answered. He said he was trying to get train fare to Dedham.

Dollars to donuts he won't get the job even if he does get to Dedham. But...and this is a really big but...he might have helped me out more today that I helped him, so I sincerely wish him all the luck in the world.