The Laughing Wolf

Who Am I To Say Such Things ?

This very good question recently came up off list, and it deserves an answer. After all, participation in rational discourse requires a knowledge of the source so that a proper evaluation can be made.

As I wrote in my first post, this is a pseudo-anonymous blog not because I have some deep secret to hide, but rather as a legal means of protecting employers, clients, and others. I speak here strictly for myself, and not as a representative of any company, agency, group, or past or future mother-in-laws. People can figure out who I am easily enough, but that is okay because this is only a pseudo-anonymous effort.

All that rigmarole aside, who am I to say what I say? Why should you give any credence to my posts? Here is my answer to those questions, and the unspoken ones behind them.

I have been involved in communications on a professional basis for more than 20 years. My involvement truly began much earlier than that. My first “newspaper,” really a blog, was a mimeographed thing done in the seventh grade, and I wrote bad poetry, stories, and song lyrics, and reported stories, up until college.

Communications was not what I had in mind for a career. An early inspiration for me was Scotty on Star Trek, who could fix anything, figure things out, drank Scotch, and always pulled things out in the nick of time. I also admired a number of scientists and science-figures, and learned to appreciate things that had a lot of good “skull sweat” in them. The drawback was that my math skills suck, and two years of engineering school convinced me my future lay elsewhere.

Creative writing has always been a love in my life, and I decided to bow out of the engineering war and beat a strategic retreat to writing. I switched schools, and, as written elsewhere, ended up at Columbia College Chicago. They had originated the creative writing program Iowa made famous, so I decided to give them a try.

While in line for the creative writing program during registration, I met up with Darryl Feldmeir who took me aside and basically asked “What are you doing over there when you are already a working journalist?” I had been doing journalism, radio and print, for fun and spending money while in college, and had even used it as a means to get into the first Shuttle launches. It was there that I met the friend and mentor who got me into journalism as a career, and I will get you back for that D2. You and your little cat too.

Darryl’s argument, which included the fact he could graduate me in a much shorter time, won out and I learned the best of the Chicago school of journalism. I also ended up doing a photographic internship at Playboy on a dare from Darryl.

Though I still wanted to do creative writing, there was a matter of paying the bills, so I wrote stories, took photos, and did whatever else I could. The result was getting a story placed in a major national daily, ending up as correspondent-at-large for a magazine focusing on space, and doing some photography in the process. The summation of all of this was learning how to do things right, how to do them right within sometimes severe space constraints, and how to do it right and fast. If you have to have someone who can write well, write it fast, and write a lot, get someone with daily newspaper experience. I also got to be part of some larger “features” and learned, again, how major stories are handled. No Pulitzers here for me, but I have learned from and worked with some award-winners,

One thing to bear in mind with all this is that at the time I was getting started, the average starting reporter made less than $8,000.00 a year. The drill in print was start at a weekly, move up to a small daily, then up to a major, etc. This can be slow, you are broke most of the time, and it is not easy as there are/were a lot more grads than jobs. Though I was working, mostly freelance, it was not lucrative. If I had a dime for every editor who told me the public was not interested in science, I would be a rich man.

PR work, on the other hand, paid much better – twice or more better. So, I found myself going to work as a contract employee at a major military aerospace research and testing center. It was fun, it was horrible, and I learned a lot. I then went back and got my MS in Communications, print-editorial, was inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, the national journalism honorary, and moved on out. I should also mention that I am a member of at least one professional journalism/communications organization, the New York Academy of Sciences, and a lifetime member of the National Eagle Scout Association.

Since that time, I have twice worked for NASA on a contract basis doing science communications and business development related to commercial space activities, continued to do freelance journalism and PR/business development, been published in a variety of international magazines, journals, and other publications, done work in disaster preparedness and emergency operations, and written some truly horrid Great-American-Stories and -Novels. While I have never done too much television, despite having gotten basic training in what is now ENG from the Philips Company in Norway while still in high school, I have had the chance to do some videography and photography, and jumped in as much as I could.

The NASA work has been in many ways the most fun, and most frustrating, of all that I have done. Frustrating can wait, the fun was true fun for a science geek. I got to work on stories about everything from protein crystallography and structure-based (rational) drug design to gamma-ray astronomy. The work on commercial activities was great, and I even – sometimes – got to take part in things, handle hardware, and more. The net result was that I have gotten a wonderful foundation in biotechnology, materials science, and combustion science.

Though I have never taught journalism as a professor, I have taught basic science at a small university, served as a graduate research slave, er, assistant and assisted with classes in basic journalism, and have lectured on writing and communications. On the academic side, other than my degrees, the highlight has to have been being the prime author of an invited paper, and co-author on two others, at a conference in Japan last year.

While I have never had the privilege of serving my country in uniform, along the way I have earned military expert ratings in rifle and pistol shooting – and that was not through ROTC. I have flown on everything from slicks to C-130s, and even have a familiarization checkride in a B-24 Liberator in my logbook. I also ended up doing some rather extensive work on Soviet space and military activities, and did my thesis on observers of same. I am a pilot and turned down a chance to go into the Air Force since it would have entailed becoming a navigator in a Buff, and that was an anathema to someone who feels themselves to be a fighter pilot (aren’t we all). Besides, as the late, great, Martin Caidin put it, there are no fighter pilots down in hell, so I went elsewhere so as to avoid the risk of going down below. That’s my story and I am sticking to it. Being a bit crazy, I also have jumped out of planes and will admit I loved it. Tearing up my knee working on a friend’s motorcycle, alas, put a stop to that. That injury and its physical therapy, came back to haunt me last year doing some mountain climbing and I am now having to undo some of the therapy and do a whole new set. Grumble. That and a recurring shoulder injury have also taken me away from Aikido, which I love.

So there you have it. A fair bit of print experience, a small amount of radio journalism and DJ experience, and a very small amount of TV experience. A lot of fun along the way that has taken me around the world. I have been so lucky in so many ways, especially for someone the doctors did not think would survive childhood. You now have some background, so you can decide on what to believe, or not believe, in my postings. Enjoy.

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