160 Miles Northwest of Lansing

160 miles northwest of Lansing: That's where Jeff Zaslow was when he died. He was travelling alone to do a reading about his latest book when he lost control of his car, slid into the path of a semi and was instantly killed.

His wife and three daughters buried him on Monday. Those of us who knew him from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists were hoping that the eulogy by Sully Sullenburger would be videotaped. It wasn't. We felt connected to him. He came to all the conferences. I remember him speaking at the 2006 NSNC Conference in Boston that Suzette Martinez Standring and I co-chaired, where Arianna Huffington also spoke, and we visited the home of John and Abigail Adams and their son John Quincy.

It seems only a minute ago now, 2006. Jeff's career was just taking off: under his belt already were his winning the nationwide competition to replace Ann Landers and also his regular gig with the Wall Street Journal. Still ahead: his writing of The Last Lecture, about the beloved Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. Also The Girls of Ames, and the book about Sully Sullenberger; the book he did with Gabby Gifford and this latest one about fathers and how they do love their daughters. (They are all here. And here is his wonderful face as he stood with Randy in 2007.

The Magic Room: that's the book he was promoting when he skidded on that snowy rode in northern Michigan. The email entitled "Our friend Jeff Zaslow has died" appeared in my inbox Saturday morning and I felt the air rush from my lungs. It came from the folks in the NSNC member, the same people I was with when word came of Michael Jackson's death. The same people I was with in '94 as a fugitive OJ Simpson attempted to outrun law enforcement.

But this felt different. This felt personal, and not just because I knew him to be the kindest most gracious man, who wore his success so lightly. It felt personal to me because I identified with Jeff: the way both of us did book after book, then drove all over the map through snow and darkness to meet with 12 or 15 strangers and talk a while of what matters most in life. Sure there were differences. He had a real publisher doing his books and he made real money. I published my stuff through my own imprint and basically lost money. Still I read this story of his final minutes and I thought that could be me.

I think how close I came to dying that time on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when a legendary November blizzard blew in and I still tried crossing from Erie to State College to Allentown in it, the whole breadth of that big long cow of a state. The long-haul truckers were the only other vehicles on the road in that blinding snowstorm.

I think how close I came the time I almost smashed into the guardrail of the Sunshine Skyway just south of St. Petersburg going 60 miles an hour before I woke and saw where the car was veering.

I read back to all my laments here about doing too much and then having sleep elude me and a cold chill runs through my body. I haven't died yet from some crazy self-inflicted moonshine of a mission but it’s not too late, it is surely not too late.

Jeff did die and how the world will miss him and those three daughters especially whose hearts will never again be young.

Remembering about him these last days I came upon a post I wrote when Michael Jackson died and we were together in Ventura. What's eerie is that Jeff is in it too, in the sense that I named him as the author of The Last Lecture and then posted the video of Randy Pausch, weakened by the cancer that claimed him so young, taking the podium at the last commencement he would attend at his beloved Carnegie Mellon, thinner and fainter of voice than he had been but still so full of life.

We live until we die, they say and the emphasis is on the word ‘live’. We're meant to live each day to the fullest. We owe at least that much to God, who I always imagine standing to one side watching us, and just sort of shyly hoping that we liked it well enough here, and noticed everything, and felt happy and joyful as often as we could.

Now here is the post from June of '08 with Michael, and Randy, and Jeff in it that, eerily, enough is about how it is for children to lose their father young, and here below is Randy Pausch on YouTube in a video that more than 14 million people have looked at.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo]

Writers Unite

In the first official moment of our conference here in Indiana, President  Samantha Bennett began by directing our attention to the Proclamation issued by the governor  congratulating the NSNC on its 43rd convention and touting the importance of us columnists to life as we know it.  “Take a look," Sam said,  "it’s very impressive, very whereas-heavy. There’s a laminated copy in the hospitality suite, a place where, come to think of it, I myself have been laminated on more than one occasion”Not here in Bloomington of course. Our conferences have been held in cities from one coast to another with plenty of stops in between. The first one I came to, motivated as much by the chance to get away from diaper-changing as to collect my small writing-contest prize was in the charming seaside village of Mystic CT. Back then, the membership was heavily and getting  laminated in the hospitality suite seemed almost normal. Now that we’re more than 50% women we’re all nurturing each other in the hospitality suite  and the friskiest thing that happens is that sometimes  Sam executes a few of her famous handsprings which you certainly couldn’t do drunk.Anyway we had a day crammed full of  presentations, were on everything from writing with snap and precision to considering how sadly little humans seem to learn from history and how Dorothy Parker was right. (It’s not that it's one damn thing after another in this life; it’s that it's the same damn thing over and over.) We had live piano music, a panel on Intolerance and Conflict, a killer lunch with the Roll Call of the States. (“Massachusetts,”  Sam belted out calling on my delegation, “Now with one-third fewer Kennedys!” alas alas.)Pulitzer-prize-winning editorial cartoonist Joel Pett gave an illustrated talk and a researcher from the famous Kinsey Institute answered our sex questions. Oh and political satirist  Rick Horowitz led us in a topical song of his own inventing with eight good-sport volunteers holding placards to cue us on the words. In fact give a listen:  That’s Rick on the right in the Hawaiian shirt . Over the left is our girl Sam. And in the middle on the screen? well that’s the topic of Rick’s song, the oil spill which is  keeping columnists and commentators everywhere  busy, plying that ‘pen warmed up in hell” that Mark Twain says we should  pull out anytime people in positions of trust go all venal and self-seeking on us.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iU3-vtZSKg]

You are Boring

The other day a reader took exception to the writing style of two of the columnists he sees in his Sunday paper and since one of them is me the paper’s Executive Editor to whom he sent his email sent it on to me. Here’s what it said:

“I HAVE NOTICED YOUR FEMALE COLUMNISTS CAN ONLY WRITE ABOUT THEMSELVES, THEIR FAMILIES OR CUTESY THINGS THEIR CHILDREN OR RELATIVES SAY OR DO OR A 'WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER' ESSAY. THEIR WRITINGS ARE FILLED WITH 'I , ME, MY, WE, ETC.', IN OTHER WORDS A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE COLUMN WITH AN EXCESSIVE USE OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS."

(In other words people and their darn families! Who cares about that?)

“IT IS VERY EASY TO TALK OR WRITE ABOUT YOURSELF” he went on. “ARE NOT COLUMNS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT THINGS? IDEAS? EVENTS?  FAR-AWAY-PLACES? OPINIONS OR CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM? THESE REQUIRE THOUGHT!"

(And, well, he may be right there and the idea realm is a good place to start so how about Intelligent Design for today, kids? Or perhaps Should Form Follow Function? Or, Benevolent Despotism: an Oxymoron or Our Future?)

“LET THIS BE A CHALLENGE,” this reader wound up. “CAN MS. X (as I will call her) OR MS. MAROTTA WRITE A COLUMN WITH MAYBE JUST ONE OR TWO PERSONAL PRONOUNS AND NOT ABOUT THEMSELVES?”

Can we? I have no doubt. Will I? Today anyway? Not likely.  On my writing agenda today I seem to have (a) an account of the bird the flew in our house and lived here undetected until the cat Abraham found him this morning; (b)something so sad I heard at the wake I went to yesterday that stayed with me all night and kept me from sleeping; and (c) a description of me falling face first, all dressed up, into the cargo bin of my minivan.

As to the 'Should I?' part, a Seventh Grade girl named Danielle wrote to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists last March, asking about what it’s like to have as your job the pouring of talk into a tall skinny word-funnel for the newspaper. I said I'd love to be the one to answer her and what I wrote I used as my column that week. It's is still on the NSNC website if you’d like to read it. It’s serious and I stand by it. But if I were the kind of person who enjoyed sassing back I might to “Two words for you Mr. Z who thinks people aren’t interested in reading about other people: Reality TV."

Eyes in My Eyes

For the past four days I’ve been in New Orleans where I found myself so completely out of my element that when a young woman kept calling me “ma’am” I took it for sarcasm.

I was trying to book an appointment through her and was confused about the billing process and so fumbled along with many questions.

“Yes MA’AM”, “No MA’AM”, “Whatever you want to do MA’AM” she said until I got so rattled I flat-out asked if she was annoyed with me.

“Annoyed?! No MA’AM!”

“Really? Because up where I come from nobody calls you Ma’am unless they’re trying not to call you something worse.”

Now it was her turn. “Really?!” she said. And her friend behind the counter chimed in: "If our mothers ever caught us failing to say ‘Ma’am’ we would get plain smacked!”

And that’s how it was for my whole time in New Orleans: I was in a world wholly new to me and found myself thinking again and again of what all my best teachers said to me in the years from 2000 to 2002 when I was studying to be a massage therapist: “What you think it is, it isn’t,” they’d say. “Be humble and before you lay hands on that body before you summon total attention and pray God he send eyes into your hands so you can ‘see’ what’s really there.” In other words, summon all your knowledge, leave your ego at the door and your fine notions too of how You Wonderful You, will bring the healing.

It’s advice not much different from what I have had from the people I most respect most in my primary career as a newspaper columnist. They too say you never can SEE a thing right when you first look at it. You can’t, either because you’re a little nervous, or a little rushed, or else you think you already KNOW what the story is or again you’re too enamored of the notion that Insightful You will bring understanding where understanding has been lacking…

I went to New Orleans for "We Have Not Forgotten," the Katrina-based conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and in these last days have looked at things I never thought to see in this country. Thirty-four months after the storm I saw a man struggling to control his tears as he spoke to us, even though as a public school principal in that hardest hit area of St. Bernard Parish he has likely told these stories of loss a thousand times.

At least I think I saw him struggling. I wasn't a foot away from him as he spoke.

Later, after we’d left him and were lunching hugely at Dooky Chase’s amazing Creole/ Soul Food eatery, I stepped outside into a sudden rainstorm. A brick housing project across the street was being razed and I looked at the sea of dark-red rubble dotted with the brightly colored remains: a bright lawn chair here, a splayed umbrella there. The rain drummed hard, both there and on the street and on the small patched-over houses next to Dooky’s and I looked and looked - for nine, ten, twelve minutes - and knew finally what I would have to do: I would have to come back here again, pray for eyes in my hands and eyes in my eyes, then roll up my sleeves and start in helping.

(Education at every level was affected.)

Happy Anniversary

Well it’s my wedding anniversary today and here I am about as far away as I can be from my man, at this conference that made my bottom hurt with sitting all day through the great programming put on my the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I talked to him on the phone at around 9pm but it’s not the same of course. This is the first time we’ve ever been apart on a June 20 and it feels sad here at five minutes to midnight, so I thought I might post something I wrote about him a few years back:

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Dave Barry wrote a column once about women festooning their houses with candles you can’t burn, wastebaskets you can’t throw trash in, and frilly pillows and shams you must never sleep on. Why do they do this? Because they’re crazy, he says.

Now Dave Barry is a smart and funny man, but he’s wrong this time. We women don’t do this to our homes because we’re crazy. We do it to say, “This is mine.”

I read somewhere that most women just assume the inside of the house is theirs, and so mark it, as any cat or dog would do; and I have to say, it makes sense to me. After all, we’re the ones who pick up the place day to day, who furnish it and clean it – far more often than our male partners do, especially during playoff seasons. And studies show that even women working full-time jobs STILL do the lion’s share of work around the house. No wonder we come to feel the place is ours and begin taking it over, room by candle-filled room.

My man claims I do this According to him I have gone through our whole house leaving little pyramids and piles of my own invention on every surface. Once, he pointed to the rickety cane-seated chair in our bedroom where he parks his pants nights. “This little chair,” he said sadly. “In this whole house it’s all I have left.”

So OK, MAYBE I’ve frilled things up some around here too. When we first moved here, I did our room over in candles and lacy shams myself.

“Isn’t this awfully… feminine for a man’s bedroom?” his mom asked in that certain mom-in-law way. (“His bedroom!” I thought but did not say out loud. “This is my bedroom, into which he gets invited nights!” (I mean, isn’t that the fun of it on a certain level?))

All right so I'll admit I’ve sometimes taken the whole House Beautiful thing a bit far. I think of the night I was trying to sleep in this very bedroom, as my mate followed one ballgame on the radio while monitoring another ballgame on TV – only the video portion to that ballgame was blacked out in our area, causing the screen to be filled with wild and staticky scribbles.

“Hang something over that thing before I lose my mind!” I finally yelled. And when he got up and did that, covering the screen with an ugly beach towel, I screeched again. “No, no! A pretty towel, that matches the decor!”

He shot me a deadpan look, whisked the towel off the TV and let the scribbles at me.

So I lost that round, I guess. But I figure if a person understands that any house really belongs to the one who cleans its bathrooms, she can afford to lose a round here and there.

Anyway, I won a round just last week, when I decided to pay some bills in the bedroom. I so set a card table up among the candles and the lacy shams and pulled up to it the nearest chair.

My husband just shook his head on coming home that night and seeing me sitting in it.

“There goes my one chair,” he said wistfully. “Good-bye, little chair!”

It was adorable. And I like the guy, somehow, even though he’s never once cleaned the bathroom. He can bring in four extra radios and catch five broadcasts at once, if that’s what he wants. He has that sweetness, see.

Call me crazy, Dave Barry, but you find a sweet man like that and you just feel like inviting him into your bedroom.

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And there it is: an old love offering for David Marotta who took my youth, my tiny waist and my last name too. We’ve had a lot of fun though haven’t we Dave? Here’s to 38 more with a man out standing in his field!