Writing Boots

Vital Speeches, 2.0

For reasons known only them, the powers at McMurry have named me editor of Vital Speeches of the Day.

Depending partly on your age and partly on what corner of the communication world you occupy, this announcement will either mean something to you because you've known about Vital Speeches forever (the first issue came out in 1934), or nothing to you at all because you've never heard of it.

 As a speechwriter said in response to a recent branding query, "Vital Speeches of the Day is our most esteemed chronicle of modern oratory. Of course, we speechwriters honor it as a standard of achievement, but it also commands the attention and respect of scholars. ... The fact that I have been published in it impresses even an Ivy Leaguer."

But like so many other legendary publications, Vital Speeches has lost some currency in the age of the Internet. Unlike those publications, Vital Speeches retains its main proposition: It is still the only reliable collector of the best and most important speeches in the U.S. and the world. And though it has a sister publication called Vital Speeches International (which I'll also oversee), it has taken no detour from its original mission:

The publisher of Vital Speeches believes that the important addresses of the recognized leaders of public opinion constitute the best expression of contemporary thought in America, and that it is extremely important for the welfare of the nation that these speeches be permanently recorded and disseminated. The publisher has no axe to grind. Vital Speeches will be found authentic and constructive.

As editor, I'm determined to see that Vital Speeches once again matters to more than just the veteran speechwriters, professional speakers, Baby Boomer-and-older business executives and thousands of librarians that subscribe to it—but to everyone who cares about what leaders are saying and how they are saying it.

But we're not running commercials during Dancing with the Stars. So it'll take a little time. We're establishing a broad online presence to surround our main online platform, VSOTD.com. (And, to surround you.)

I'd sure love for Writing Boots readers to be among the first to join the Vital Speeches group on LinkedIn, subscribe to the Vital Speeches YouTube channel of historical and contemporary speeches, become a fan of our Facebook page ... and, yes, follow us on Twitter (I told you I was determined, didn't I?).

I also need you to send me any speech you write that you're proud of, any speech you read that moves you. The Vital Speeches address is vseditor at mcmurry dot com. I want the magazine to continue being a publication of record that it's been for 75 years; but I want it to ooze with juicy speeches on all kinds of topics.

As I embark on the job, I ask myself: Murray, you're interested in a lot of different things—so why do you pour this much of your energy into communication?

Because once every few decades or so, the dang stuff actually does what it's supposed to do. And if I ever doubt that, I'll just switch over to Vital Speeches' YouTube channel and I watch this:

Why I've never found 'The Office' any funnier than your average PBS documentary

This list of oddball complaints from managers about their employees reminds us that, in the workplace, everybody's crazy but you and me, and I'm starting to worry about you.

My construction executive father-in-law once employed an engineer who the IT people dinged for looking at Internet porn, at work. The young man was called in, informed that Internet porn-gazing was against company policy.

The next week, IT detected more of the same from the engineer's computer. This time, he was called in and warned if it happened again, it would mean termination.

That was a Friday. On Monday, they found the employee's desk cleaned off and a post-it on his computer:

"If I can't look at porn, I don't want to work here."

Hey, I've worked for publishers my whole life. I could tell you about employees who got married in the conference room, the accountant who threw away customers' checks because she didn't want to put them into the system, a CEO who choked a telephone repairman, an employee who got drunk at the Christmas party and started sucking out of the keg tube ... oh, I told that one last week.

You got any good ones for me?

Writers get sensitive around their periods

Almost five years ago on another blog I wrote about a massively important problem facing the communication profession:

Why is it that seven out of 10 professional writers place two spaces after a period despite the fact that word-processing programs automatically make more space after periods (and have done for more than 20 years)?

Luckily, the "search and replace" function allows me to remove all the extra spaces fairly quickly. But I'm terribly annoyed every time it says, "Word has completed its search of the document and has made 157 replacements."

I'm annoyed because I don't understand why professional writers haven't been able to make this small adjustment in the quarter-century since we stopped using typewriters.

Well I'm happy to report that my qualitative longitudinal study has yielded a more favorable dubious statistic. We're down to four out of 10 professional writers who are still kickin' it old-school, period, space space.

Aside from being potentially bogus, the hopeful statistic also fails to recognize that the remaining two-space cadets are a hardened and hopeless crew.

Witness the response of a communication director when her editor gently suggested that two spaces are one too many:

"Are you calling me old because I learned on a typewriter or just trying to torture me into changing a VERY OLD HABIT??? Yes—I can give it a try.  I can keep you posted on how painful it is, too."

And yes, there were two spaces after the period after "try."

Boots readers, help a colleague become less spacey. Tell us how you've made this change. (Or on what basis you flat-out refuse!)

What's the ratio of frequent Shakespeare quoters to assholes?

I think I struck a blow for civilization last week, or at least blocked one against it.

A guy writes to Vital Speeches hoping we'll help him hawk his book, Your Daily Shakespeare—an Arsenal of Verbal Weapons to Drive Your Friends into Action and your Enemies into Despair.

Among the book's attributes: "It is a collection of over 10,000 (ten thousand) daily situations connected to a befitting Shakespearean quotation. ... It is a fertile and inexhaustible resource for any public speaker. ... The tome has 1400 pages, double column, small font and it weighs 3.5 lbs."

My reply: "I must say that I do not think your book is of interest to me or my readers. Call us hayseeds, but we try to avoid being dismissed as windbags who lean on Shakespeare quotations like drunkards to lampposts. It's bad enough when people who actually read Shakespeare quote him frequently. Coming from those who would rely on a resource like the one you have created must be insufferable! ... [W]hat good could you possibly hope to do with this resource? And what social harm are you willing to risk in return?"

Of course he wrote me back, quoting King Lear, King Henry IV, All's Well that Ends Well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The whole thing reminds me of speechwriting guru Jerry Tarver's noble rule against quoting Alexis de Tocqueville in business speeches: "No Quote de Tocque."

Speakers, quit quoting dead people and say something interesting yourself for once.

Kind of my town

If you love Chicago or wish you did or think you could someday, you'll love this.

Thanks to Michael Sebastian for the steer.

The motorcycle for comfort, home for adventure

I’m alone in a diner in Butler, Indiana, eating potato soup and an egg salad sandwich and drinking coffee. I considered one last beery lunch, but I’m already dazed from four hours of pounding into a hard and rainy headwind.

Scout has been counting the days until tomorrow, so I’m determined to get to Chicago tonight.

But I’m not home yet, and I'm still thinking about last night’s party at Tom’s boathouse, on Lake Erie.

Though it was organized as a homecoming thing, there wasn’t any ticker tape.

People don’t care about other people’s travels except as a jumping off point to talk about their own travels. So the more exotic the travel, the less they care.

And to Clevelander, Nova Scotia is exotic. (To a Chicagoan too. I had to show my life insurance agent an electronic map to prove that traveling to Nova Scotia didn’t mean leaving North America.)

So we talked about other things: a fire at a prominent Cleveland bar, a federal investigation of Cuyahoga County politicians, and the locally relevant topic: how guys got their fingers cut off. (At one point in the party, there were three guests with missing digits. Cleveland is a tough town.)

It was a Thursday, so everybody was gone by midnight. Tommy and I took the dog and a bottle down to the beach and talked about the trip—the high points and low points, what the whole thing had meant, what an insufferable know-it-all dick Tommy really is, and how it all came to a head one night on a pool table in Binghamton, New York ….

Now that that writing is done, the trip is finally over.

I’m squarely back into the disorganized daily churn of ambition versus money, small pleasures, regular chores, pointless guilt, bad habits, familiar worries, self-doubt, occasional panic, exceptions to rules, special favors, other people, tight schedules, awkward moments, boring mornings, unplanned-for joy and the whispering hint of a toothache.

What I miss about the trip is the way it organized my life: Gave it a focus—the broad focus of the years and months and weeks of laying the groundwork at home and at work, logistical planning, emotional preparation.

And then the daily doing: Wake up, drink coffee, get on the motorcycle and ride. Take spontaneous detours, or stop only for gas: your call.

The journey was a happy, easy place to live.

Home, I must acknowledge, is where the real adventure is.

But I'm not selling the motorcycle.

In a bad economy, there's karma and then there's the truth

It's been almost a year since the economy began to crater and people's worlds started crumbling. During this year, you've thought a lot about karma and generosity and how we all ought to avoid shame and blame.

But every once in awhile ... a long ago colleague gets in touch, for the first time in a long time.

Come to think of it, for the first time since the last time he was out of work.

He wants to "pick your brain" about the job market. You wonder what that could mean, since the sum of your understanding of the job market is: It sucks.

He's a taker. He was a taker when you worked together—quick to ask a favor, slow to do one, always worried he would be taken advantage of.

You find takers bother you more now than they did before, because there is less to go around, because these days even the givers are in need.

You decide you're not going to get back to this fucking guy. Because you know he's going to ask you to give him a recommendation. And when he does, you might have to tell him:

For any job you might apply for, I can think of a dozen unemployed people who are more talented, harder-working, more pleasant than you—and frankly better smelling, too.

Pondering luck is like throwing bricks in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania

On the home stretch, I found myself tallying up what little I know about good fortune and fate. —DM

“Does this seem like kind of a long trip to you?” I asked Tom as we motorshambled around the mountain town of Woodstock, N.H., looking for a our 14^th straight motel room.

“Yes,” he said, without a hesitation. “This is a long trip.”

But it had been utterly the right thing to do.

That was proven far beyond doubt during a few sweet, easy morning rides in the sun that made my heart swell so palpably that I worried—I hoped!—it might be permanently stretched.

The road to ruin doesn't run through Cooperstown, N.Y.

Lou Gehrig said, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." But of course he was only guessing.

And only when you're swimming with the universal tide do you happen into scenes like the one at the family-owned gas station back near St. Peter's, Nova Scotia. Dad is manning the pump. Mom is inside at the cash register, keeping warm on an unseasonably cold and windy summer's day.

Meanwhile, the seven-year-old son is carefully examining our motorcycles, muttering his impressions to himself.

“Which one do you like better?” I ask with a smile.

Unhesitatingly, the boy weighs in, first pointing to my bike. “Orange is my favorite color,” he says. But then he points to Tom’s red tank and offers a counterpoint. “But that one reminds me of Christmas.”

I say the weather reminds me of Christmas, and we all laugh and the kid happily flits back into the warm station to tell his mother about the men and their motorcycles.

When Tom and I get drunk, we’re given—increasingly with age, I’m afraid to say—to go on to one another about how lucky we have been in life, to have had wild adventure and family love, to have had interesting work and rich friendship too.

But pondering fortune is a drunkard’s game, because it can lead to conclusions. And conclusions about fortune are almost always foolish and usually dangerous.

Our good fortune was on my mind as we rode through Pennsylvania, on the last leg of the trip. Two lucky bastards on a three-week trip on shiny toys—kids, wives and work to go home to—using a poor state's leached land as our personal roller coaster.

We stopped for lunch at a tavern in Troy.

The bartender ascertained we were tourists and rattled off a half-formed standup redneck routine about how she had her third baby on Sunday and returned to work the following Thursday. About how she’s so ill-educated that she grew up believing that the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania was connected to the Grand Canyon (of Arizona). About how, if we think she’s a hillbilly, down the road we'd find they have “even less teeth.”

And the teeth were bared.

A yard sign in Meadeville read:

Support the Troops. Period!

In Warren, we stopped at a gas station to ask for a steer toward a cheap motel. The attendant asked where we were from.

“I like Cleveland,” he told Tom approvingly, “because it reminds me of Western P.A.”

“But I don’t like Chicago.” He was glowering at me.

Why not? I asked.

“BHO!” he said.

I looked at him blankly.

“Barack Hussein Obama, the President!”

At the bar at the Holiday Inn that he directed us to, a patron left his USA Today. On the front page, President Obama was throwing out the first pitch at the All-Star Game.

With a ballpoint pen, the guy had casually drawn on horns, and a tail.

 

During the presidential campaign last year, Obama said, “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Of course it was the most accurate thing Obama said during the whole campaign, and the hot water he got into proved the old axiom about politics: a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.

But a broader axiom also applies: Be mighty fucking reluctant to explain people’s fortunes, good or bad, yours or others’. Remember the chipmunks!

Most of the time, your best bet is to ride as aggressively as you dare down the best road you can find and try not to take the weather personally—or take credit for it.

And enjoy what presents itself to be enjoyed. Like the moment on the hotel patio at Lake George, New York, where our wives met us.

As we sipped beer and waited for Cristie and Juli to arrive in the rental car from Albany, I admitted and Tom copped to being a little nervous. And shortly after the happy and giggling reunion, we got the first hint as to why:

Without telling us (or consulting one another) each woman had used the occasion of our absence and the inspiration of our self-will, to get a tattoo.

The old guy talked tough outside the New Hampshire motorcycle shop, but I think if his wife ain't goin' to Sturgis, he ain't goin' either.

What do you do to keep your leader in touch?

Communication

If you teared up a little this it's not because you're a sentimental slob. It's because you're a communicator. (Hat tip to Susy Damon for passing this along.)